Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 12

Why We Should Use the Language of Brokenness

It’s an opinion that pops up in my social media feeds every now and again from well-meaning believers critical of the therapeutic influence on Christian preaching and teaching. “Stop saying people are broken. They’re sinful. That’s the problem.” Or some variation of the same. At a speaking engagement recently a fellow in a Q&A time asked for my thoughts on the language of “brokenness” in preaching. Is it okay to say people are broken? Or that the world suffers from brokenness? It’s obviously on people’s minds.

Look, I get it. I am not a fan of whitewashing the human predicament—or, rather, the human offense—before our holy God. Too many preachers and teachers do downplay or ignore sin altogether, and this is spiritually dangerous, because disobedience—and the wrath we deserve because of it—is our primary problem. And yet, I cannot go where so many seem to suggest we go, which is to abandon the language of brokenness as it pertains to the human problem. No, we shouldn’t replace the concept of sin with the concept of brokenness. But speaking of people’s brokenness is a valid and biblical category for Christian preaching and teaching. Here are three reasons why:

1. Because we’re not gnostics.

If we use only the category of sinfulness as it pertains to human and social dysfunction, we may unintentionally drift into the pseudo-gnostic error of treating matter or anything physical as inherently bad. Yes, all creation is groaning (Rom. 8:22) because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, but this does not make creation and the created order in and of itself bad. That sin and its effects infect everything good doesn’t make good things innately sinful. It is the inability to conceive of brokenness as a category, in other words, that gives rise to the kind of asceticism the Bible forbids. The errors that arise from the mistaking of broken for sinful are numerous. We see it in the “puritanical” approach to sex, the legalistic approach to culture, the domineering approach to gender roles, the fearful approach to any earthly joys or pleasures. All of these things and more are affected by the fall. And we are able of course to approach them in sinful ways. Yet none of them is sinful in and of itself. For example: A married couple’s sexual intimacy is undoubtedly affected by the fall, but marital sex is not inherently sinful. Losing the category of “broken” loses this distinction.

2. Because we don’t believe in karma.

This may be the most important reason to preach and teach with the category of brokenness. If we only speak of human problems as the result of sin, especially without biblical nuance, we inadvertently give the impression that all of people’s sufferings are the result of their personal offenses against God. (I know some preachers and counselors actually say that very thing, but I think they are in the minority. I am here addressing those who may be giving this impression unintentionally.) Someone comes to you for counsel. They suffer from depression or crippling anxiety. Do they need to trust God more? Sure. We all do. But mental and emotional afflictions are similar to physical afflictions—they are the result of living in a broken world, not always (or even often) the direct result of personal sins.

Jesus himself addresses this issue in John 9 when he is approached about the man born blind. The disciples want to know if this disability is the result of the man’s sins or his parents’. They could not conceive of the blindness not being owed to God’s judgment for disobedience. And of course we know that in the grand scheme of things, this kind of brokenness is God’s judgment on the world because of capital-S Sin. But specific effects are not always specific judgments. Jesus says the man isn’t blind because of someone’s sin (John 9:3), directly refuting this karmic vision of suffering. Not all difficulties are judgments. People are broken. Brokenness as a category gives us a good theology of suffering and hardship.

3. Because undue guilt is anti-gospel.

Our primary “issue” is the spiritual divorce between us and God because of personal sin. To avoid or ignore that is to obscure the gospel. And yet we can obfuscate this message by heaping more guilt upon needy souls than they have the right to bear. Here is something I wrote in my book The Imperfect Disciple:

The sins of garden-variety human beings are frustratingly redundant. I don’t recall ever moving on from one area of battle to another with anybody I’ve ever “done discipleship” with. Nobody ever “achieved victory.” It’s the same old thing every time. We like our ruts, and our ruts like us.

And it’s not just the sins that don’t seem to go away; it’s the wounds too. These two things are not the same! We have to get that straight, first of all. Too many foolish teachers in the church equate wounds with sins, and vice versa, and this needlessly complicates people’s following of Jesus. We further traumatize victims when we tell them their wounds are sins, and we demotivate repenters when we tell them their sins are wounds.

But this confusion is somewhat understandable in that both sins and wounds linger. Our deepest wounds and our deepest sins are both awfully persistent.

Too many times to count, I’d be sitting with some wounded person recounting their past week, a mix of good times and bad, but the culmination of which has led them back to my counsel, hungry for a good report, eager for some final, concluding release. I recall one of my favorite disciples, an early-middle-aged woman who was a relatively new believer. She loved the things of God and was thirsty for the living water of the gospel. But she still struggled with angry outbursts (sins) and she still suffered from the trauma of abuse as a child (wounds). These were very much connected realities in her soul, and every time we met we would spend our time working through the routine maintenance of grace, untangling sins from wounds, sorting out her responsibilities from her vulnerabilities, distinguishing what she owed from what was owed to her.

If we fail to make the distinction between sins and brokenness, if we collapse brokenness into the all-encompassing category of Sin, we can do great harm to people’s consciences, quench the Spirit’s work in their lives, and frustrate the implications of the gospel, which doesn’t just empower our holiness, but also announces our freedom.

Ministers of the gospel are not called to announce more guilt than is due. There is plenty to announce, to be sure. But conflating brokenness with sin creates confusion where there should be order and shame where there should be liberty. The language of brokenness helps us give clarity to the gospel and, if I can be forgiven the imperfection of the phrase, “helps” the gospel give clarity to sinners.

20 Quotes from “Supernatural Power for Everyday People”

My new book Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God’s Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life released just a few weeks ago. Here are some quotable highlights:

1. When we relegate our intentionality with God to a minute fraction of our time, it’s no wonder we feel distant from him during the times we happen to be thinking about him and lack power during all the other times. Whatever we focus most of our conscious time on will invariably dominate the way we think and feel. (8)

2. Too many of us spend our Christian lives waiting on something big to happen, completely oblivious to the fact that the biggest thing that could ever happen to us already did, and it’s more than enough. (14)

3. Craving more and more extravagant evidences of the Spirit is an easy way to demonstrate our lack of satisfaction with the gospel of Jesus. (15)

4. What is it that you and I need in both the storms of life and the ordinary boredom of life? Not good advice and not inspirational pick-me-ups. No, we need power. We need real power. (20)

5. Receiving the glory of Jesus changes us. This is why the gospel cannot be boring. It declares and imparts the glory of Christ. If you find the gospel less interesting than miraculous signs, it is only because you do not see how surpassingly wonderful the gospel is! The gospel cannot get boring any more than Jesus can get boring. (23)

6. Our modern self­orientation holds out the promise of needlessness but ironically only enhances our sense of need. This is a modern tragedy that has effects on nearly all aspects of our lives, overflowing into every compartment of ourselves. (39)

7. The worst thing that can happen to you is to get everything you want and be extremely comfortable for a long time yet be relationally disconnected from God. Separation from God is tragic, and it is tragic how little people feel that separation. (48)

8. This is how the Christian life is designed to work: from beginning to end, the Holy Spirit envelops us in the loving will of God, seeding promise after promise in us and sending power after power through us by his breathed­out, infallible Word. In fact, we cannot even live apart from the Word of God. (52)

9. The Spirit is speaking to us through his Word when we go to listen, and the Spirit is helping us pray when we go to speak to God. Your time in the Bible is the primary means by which the Holy Spirit empowers you to live your life. (71)

10. Hearing from God through the Bible is bigger than simply discovering some religious guidance or personal pick-­me-­ups for the week. It involves hearing the secret workings of heaven set loose in the everyday stuff of earth. (93)

11. Just as we are saved because of the Father’s commission, the Son’s atonement, and the Spirit’s regeneration, we continue to partake in the very nature of God because of the Father’s enduring love, the Son’s eternal righteousness, and the Spirit’s enlightening power. (95)

12. Contentment trusts God to be God. Discontentment, on the other hand, reveals our fear of everything but God—­fears of lack of safety, of financial insolvency, of what others might think of us, even of “spiritual immaturity.” (101)

13. We don’t find our strength in the stuff of the world; we find it in the work of the Spirit. But to be filled with the Spirit and learn this supernatural contentment, we must often be emptied by the Spirit of all else that might satisfy. (103)

14. You will find it easier to fast joyfully if you are feasting on the revelation of his Word. Feasting on the Scriptures and Christ himself prepares us to joyfully fast from the promises of fulfillment made by our consumer culture. (113)

15. The Devil is more afraid of the desperate believer on his face crying out of hunger for the living God than he is of anybody up on his feet rebuking him with random spiritual aphorisms. (118)

16. The church is where God’s Spirit is doing the grand rebuilding of humanity and human relationships. To consider the church optional is to miss out on the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s super-naturalizing of mankind! (147)

17. This is perhaps the chief way the Holy Spirit comforts us in our afflictions. He reminds us of what Christ has done for us. And this is not because the Spirit is at a loss as to how to encourage us. He’s not like our well-­meaning friends who like to spout cheap inspirational clichés and lame pick-­me­-ups, mainly out of their own discomfort at our pain. He knows the biggest help we could ever get is from the power of the gospel. (156)

18. Nothing the Spirit gives us or does for us is meant to culminate in our own glory. Even when he is comforting us, strengthening us, guiding us, and enlightening us, he is doing so that we might better magnify Christ. (169)

19. All gifts granted by the Spirit are given so that Christ Jesus will receive glory. We are not given any gift, whether teaching or tongues, works of service or words of knowledge ­to glorify ourselves. The Spiritual gifts aren’t keys to becoming super Christians. They are distributed mainly that we might contribute to the magnification of Jesus. (182)

20. The Spirit doesn’t just awaken our souls to desire Jesus, he takes up residence in our souls to satisfy us with the goodness of Jesus we now desire. From his place inside the temple of our bodies, the Spirit seeds good fruit, shapes godly thoughts, and empowers holy living. (189)

You can buy Supernatural Power for Everyday People via Amazon.com or wherever Christian books are sold.

Repenting of Confirmation Bias Christianity

confirmation bias — The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.

“All of our hearts are idol factories,” John Calvin once said. We are never not worshiping. But there is one big idol all our little manufactured idols themselves serve, and that idol is us. There’s really no new idolatry in our brave new world; we just find new ways with which to orient our worlds around ourselves.

I think you and I see this every day in the world of social media, and it was ramped up especially so during the last election cycle. When it comes to political pontificating, my Facebook feed in particular appears to be one huge exercise in confirmation bias—my liberal friends share and “amen” articles, videos, and memes that fit their pre-adopted left-leaning narratives, and my conservative friends share and “amen” articles, videos, and memes that fit their pre-adopted right-leaning ones.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. It is stunningly easy to fall into, this “confirmation bias” thing. If something sounds true—meaning, it seems to fit what we already believe—we believe it to be true without corroborating. It is the widespread epidemic of confirmation bias that has given us the relatively new phenomenon known as “fake news.”

But there’s a spiritual component at play here too. The reason we fall into confirmation bias politically is not essentially a political problem. It is a human problem, which is to say, it is a sin problem—which is to say, it is a problem of self-interest and self-worship. The truth is, you and I are prone to conducting our entire lives along the narratives constructed from confirmation bias.

What is our bias?

That we are the center of the universe. That our happiness is what is most important in life and that our preferences are—or ought to be—the laws of the land.

So whatever fits this bias is “true.” And whatever does not is repudiated, or simply ignored.

How would you know if your Christian life has become hijacked by confirmation bias? Here are some possible diagnostic signs:

When you hear a particularly challenging or convicting sermon, you think mainly of who elseneeds to hear it or who else it ought to apply to—”I really hope my spouse/child/friend/etc is listening right now”—instead of how it might apply personally to you.
You don’t really have close friends who know the struggles going on in your private world—your family, your marriage, your workplace, and so on.
You don’t pray much for God’s forgiveness.
You think every strained or broken relationship you’ve ever experienced has always been the other person’s fault, and you struggle to see how you might have contributed to the problem.
You have a problem with your temper.
You constantly rehearse the failings of others in your mind and imagine dialogues with them in which you “put them in their place” and “win.”
You passive-aggressively say things aloud or share things on social media that you mean for other people to be chastened or convicted by.
You have a ready stack of excuses for your problems and sins but not many for others, especially those who’ve offended you in some way.
You inwardly enjoy it when someone you dislike fails in some way.
If you say “I’m sorry” it is often followed by the word “if,” and if you say “I forgive you” it is often followed by the word “but.”
You have a tendency to say, “I told you so.”

If more than one of those signs fit you, you may be a confirmation bias Christian.

So what’s the antidote?

How do we spiritually work against our confirmation bias?

1. Examine yourself. Knowing and acknowledging we have this problem is necessary before we can even address it. The problem with confirmation bias is that our biases are embedded, they are presumed, felt as “natural.” So we aren’t typically conscious that we’re doing these things. Paul tells Timothy to “keep a close watch on yourself” (1 Tim. 4:16).

2. Repent. This is why Jesus said that if anyone wanted to come after him, they must deny themselves and take up their cross. This means constantly repenting and thus constantly redirecting our bias outward, away from ourselves and constantly redirecting our indictments inward, into our own souls. And this is why Martin Luther said “All of life is repentance—because Jesus said this cross-taking must happen daily and because every day we wake up biased towards ourselves and against others.

3. Press the gospel reset every day, remembering that Christ’s mercies are new every morning for us. And this mercy is meant to be shared, not hoarded. When we remind ourselves about our union with Christ, we cultivate a fearlessness to repent, a boldness to “own up,” a courage to be transparent with others, and an impulse to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

Growing Old Graciously

Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.

— Psalm 90:12

I have officially entered that season of life where we talk about life having “seasons.” I’m getting old, y’all. I am daily, officially, unceremoniously getting old. I’m in that wonderful honorific limbo between youth and senior citizenship called “middle age,” named of course after the time in history where everybody lived behind moats and tried not to get poisoned. By high-sodium foods, I assume.

In all seriousness, though, I’ve thought a lot about my journey into and through middle-agedness, precipitated mainly by my transition out of the pastorate and into the pew and having pastored quite a few elderly saints before that transition. I’ve seen men and women grow old well. And I’ve seen some men and women grow old not so well. I do not want to be in the latter camp, and I’ve determined to begin thinking about it now, at the relatively young-old age of 42. I don’t want age to sneak up on me, because that’s how one grows grouchy, I suspect. I may not be able to grow old gracefully—seriously, every morning something new creaks and I am in danger of injury just from yawning—but I can certainly, by God’s grace, grow old graciously. Here’s how:

1. I can commend the younger generation.

Did you know the millennials have ruined everything? All you have to do is go to Google, type in “millennials killed,” and the auto-fill will give you a complete rundown of all the ruination these whippersnappers have managed to craft in their few short years of cultural dominance. What these search results won’t tell you is that a lot of the stuff they killed probably should be dead. In any event, I’m not a huge fan of dogging on the younger generation, if only because it’s such an old man thing to do. Let people without the Spirit of God in their souls shake their fists and yell about which feet touch their lawn; let’s the rest of us encourage, exhort, and edify our little brothers and sisters.

Paul commands Timothy not to let anyone look down on his youthfulness; I don’t want to be the kind of man who puts Timothy in the position of having to obey that command. What can I do? I can be appropriately and constructively critical, yes, but I can be abundantly moreso cheerful. I can look at the younger generation (of believers, especially) and commend all the good I see in them, all the ways they are an improvement on my generation, all the advantages they have to spread the kingdom in fresh, exciting, and Jesus-magnifying ways. I want my younger siblings in Christ to know that I am for them.

2. I can pour into the younger generation.

It is not enough, for me, to be a cheerleader. Often appreciation for youth without engagement leads us simply to idolize youthfulness or even inappropriately desire to remain young. I don’t want to be Uncle Rico, reliving my glory days vicariously through young people who increasingly find my reminiscing creepy or lame. I want to actually equip, to the best of my ability, the younger generation. I don’t know everything, but what I do know, I can share.

This is one reason why I’ve enjoyed this season of service at Midwestern Seminary and directing the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church—from these vantage points I don’t have to be a passive observer of the younger generation’s ministry journey. I can actually assist. I don’t want to get crusty holding on to the ministry reins longer than I ought. I want, as I get older, to increasingly loosen my hold on those reins. Or, to use another metaphor, my leg of the race is winding up—I may not be done running yet, but it’s time to start passing the baton. We’ve all seen the older saints who refuse to give up control; it’s not a good look. So I don’t want to just clap my hands for the younger generation of ministers; I want to lend a hand.

3. I can pick my critical shots.

I watch the evangelical landscape with dismay as older saint after older saint seemingly tarnishes their legacy with curmudgeonly criticism on the daily. Getting wrapped up in intramural theological controversies, getting bogged down in never-ending culture wars, getting caught up in gross political idolatry. I don’t want to go that route. I want to be biblically critical, yes—to call out sins and false teaching in appropriate and prophetic ways. But I do not want to get so scared of change and transition that I make my last laps around this track about denominational in-fighting, vain social media disputations, soapbox fearmongering, and so on. I realize that any good I’ve accomplished, any commendable legacy I’ve created thus far, can easily be overshadowed by a graceless last season. I don’t want to go out like that, so I want to be more circumspect about the criticisms I make. The situation must be really dire—a real corruption to the church or a real obfuscation of the gospel—for me to weigh in with much energy. And I want to trust wise counselors who may help me see when I’ve misjudged even those situations.

4. I can refrain from trying to reinvent myself.

When I was a young church planter in Nashville, I frequently shared a coffee shop workspace with a 50-something pastor who wore embroidered skinny jeans, Affliction tees, and had the spiky tips of his carefully crafted bedhead frosted. I thought to myself: Don’t be that guy. I don’t want to treat aging like something awful, nor youth like something all-precious. That’s a surefire way to get old gracelessly. As I get older, I hope that I am growing more in my security in Christ and thus becoming more free to be myself. I don’t have to hide behind a persona or a platform. I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. The truth is, people see through it anyway, especially the older I get, because the more awkward I get about it. One of the blessings of getting older is coming to care less what others think. I want to embrace that (in the right ways). It’s much less stressful.

5. I can keep learning and growing.

As you get older, change appears to happen more quickly. And as you get older, you adjust to change more poorly. One dynamic I’ve seen take place in churches in transition—intentional revitalizations or just the youth that comes with growth—is that older saints watch their churches grow so quickly and thus change so quickly. And they already feel increasingly uncomfortable with a rapidly changing outside world. They’re getting slower, the world is getting faster. It makes emotional sense, then, that the one place where they’ve felt at home (and more in control) is church. And it makes sense that changes in church can strike them as quick, unnecessary, or even wrong.

I want to commit now, even as I’m beginning to feel the angst of cultural and technological changes, as I am beginning to experience daily the reality that I’ve effectively aged out of the world’s target demographic, not to turn off my heart and brain. Too many older saints have effectively retired from the Christian life. I may not be able to keep up with the young, but I’d rather lag behind than drop out of the race. So I keep reading, keep watching, keep discussing. These young punks got a lot to learn from me. And I’ve got a lot to learn from them.

I want the second half of my life to find me still moving. Life is not a sprint; it’s a marathon, and I prefer to finish strong.

The righteous thrive like a palm tree and grow like a cedar tree in Lebanon. Planted in the house of the Lord, they thrive in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age,

healthy and green.

— Psalm 92:12-14

Where I’ll Be, Spring 2018

Every now and then, for those who are interested, I share selections from my upcoming speaking dates. If you’re in any of these areas and able to attend, would be great to meet you.

This weekend I’ll be speaking at the Downline Ministries Summit in Memphis, TN.

February 23-24, 2018 – BUILD Men’s Conference. Grand Haven, MI.

March 9-10, 2018 – Christ Church Conference on the Atonement. Carbondale, IL.

March 23-24, 2018 – BUILD Men’s Conference. Lutanda Toukley, NSW. Australia.

March 25, 2018 – St. Paul’s Anglican Church – Chatswood. Sydney, NSW. Australia.

March 30-April 2, 2018 – Easter Conference. Ulverstone, Tasmania. Australia.

April 17-19, 2018 – Lancaster Bible College. Lancaster, PA. I think this will be my fifth year preaching chapel services at LBC!

April 28, 2018 – The Gospel Coalition Iowa. Cedar Rapids, IA.

May 4-5, 2018 – Realign Rochester Conference. Rochester, NY.

May 18-19, 2018 – Corporis Conference. London, Ontario. Canada.

View complete listing of speaking engagements here. And if you’re interested in having me speak or preach at your church or event, inquiries may be sent via this page.

The Revisionist History of the Gospel

Do you ever get the sense from any of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s calling his disciples that he is looking for the cream of the crop?

Does it appear as if Jesus is making a bee-line for the seminaries and the synagogues to find the A-list ministry studs?

Even after three years walking side by side with their Messiah these fellows can’t quite get their acts together. With the cross looming ever nearer on the horizon and blood sweating from his brow, his motley band of losers is napping on him. They’re sleeping. He’s bleeding.

He must really love them.

Jesus, of course, is not surprised by any of this. He knew what he was getting. He knew what he wanted. I find it staggering, for example, that Jesus, knowing everything Peter would say and do—including deny Christ publicly—still says, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18).

If you understand just what Jesus is doing here, it’s almost laughable. It’s laughable, that is, if you don’t understand the gospel.

Peter is perhaps the most impetuous of all the twelve. Peter speaks before he thinks. Peter is all “ready, fire, aim.” Peter is jumping out of boats, chopping off ears, setting up tents instead of worshiping. And in Matthew 16, Jesus calls him a rock. N. T. Wright says Jesus calling Simon Peter a “rock” is like when we nickname a fat guy “Slim.”

And yet, this is a dynamic we see over and over in the Scriptures, that God calls sinners beloved.

The revisionist history of the gospel makes us more than we are:

Gideon is down in the winepress, laying low out of fear of the Midianites, and the angel of the Lord greets him as a “Mighty man of valor.”

Peter himself says in 1 Peter 3:6 that Sarah called Abraham lord and Christian women are her daughters if they don’t fear anything frightening, which is weird because Sarah seemed frightened all the time, as well as fairly manipulative.

If you think those are interesting character revisions, consider that in Romans 8, Paul says you and I are “more than conquerors.” I mean—have you met you?

And here Jesus calls Peter a rock.

What is happening here? It’s the revisionist history of the gospel at work. That we sinners could be called holy must mean that the good news is really good, and that’s entirely of grace.

Last year we commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, from which we are reminded of the monumental recovery of the biblical tenets of salvation by grace alone received through faith alone. And what’s so wonderful about the doctrine of “faith alone” is that it reminds us that we need not be strong to receive the strength of Christ, just trusting. The church Christ is building is built by grace alone. And the sinners who find refuge in this church are grafted in by grace alone. They are grafted in by grace alone received through faith alone into the one who alone has conquered sin and death and will eternally live.

To repeat: what’s so wonderful about the doctrines of grace alone and faith alone is that you needn’t have a strong faith to receive all the riches of grace, just a true faith.

Clearly salvation is all of grace.

And this is why, by the way, I don’t think the most reasonable interpretation of Matthew 16:18 is that the “rock” immediately being referenced is Jesus himself but rather the Peter who is confessing Jesus. I was always taught that the rock Jesus is referring to is himself—and in a way this is true—but that is not the plain reading of the text. He is saying “I call you rock. And on this rock I will build my church.”

Now, the Roman Catholics base their entire system of the papacy upon this reading of the text and say that Jesus is establishing Peter as the first pope. You have to piggy-back a whole lot of assumptions and a whole lot of extrabiblical theology into this verse to make it mean that. But I think evangelicals have often overcompensated trying to avoid that interpretation by saying the rock in question isn’t Peter at all. But if we understand the theology behind what Jesus is doing here, we shouldn’t have a problem with it.

In a way, this is a parallel to what Paul develops further in Ephesians 5: “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

So is the church being built upon sinners? Yes—sinners who confess Christ as Lord and their only hope for escaping hell and conquering death. With Christ as our chief cornerstone, the church is being made up of all kinds of sinners all over the world, Jew, Greek, slave, free—anyone and everyone who is able to confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He builds his church up out of the redeemed.

In other words, Jesus is the Rock, but Peter is a rock. And so are you and I. And God is building his church out of us.

This is simply another way of saying that you and I part of the body of Christ.

So how can he say this? How can he say that his building his church on quote-unquote “rocks” like Simon Peter and like you and me? Because anyone who confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God has raised him from the dead is an unconquerable, unstoppable person.

I know, I know—you don’t feel unstoppable. I don’t either. But in Christ, that’s exactly what we are. In Christ, we are new creations; the old has passed away, and the new has come. We have died with him and been raised with him. We who are sinners are now declared saints because of the righteousness of Christ credited as our own righteousness. How great is that?

So by faith we are counted righteous, and God remembers our sin no more. In Christ, because of his obedience, it’s like we never sinned!

Thank God for the revisionist history of the gospel.

The Top 125 Influences on the Gospel-Centered Movement

Who has shaped this gospel recovery movement? I’ve thought a lot about the myriad voices speaking into the gospel-centered tribe, mostly for the better, and asked around with quite a few influential folks themselves to compile this list. First, however, a few caveats:

1. The list gets more and more arbitrary as it goes on. The criteria consists solely of my own subjective appraisal with the input of others’ subjective appraisals. I am prepared for your critiques and yes-but’s, but please note that none of us should take this too seriously.

2. I tried to think keenly about all the folks whose voices have given shape to this still-developing movement, sometimes called “young restless and Reformed” (YRR), “neo-Reformed,” “gospel-centered,” etc. Some of the names included are folks who worked largely behind the scenes but were influential in networks and resources. Some of the names included would not consider themselves a part of this movement; some never did. And yet their influence is still in my mind undeniable. There are some names included that some (most?) of us in the tribe might wish to distance ourselves from now. And yet their influence is still, for better or worse, part of what has made the tribe what it is. The contributions of some of these people were formative. Some are still formative. Some are beginning to become formative. In a year, two years, five years, names from nearer the bottom may be nearer the top, and vice versa. Let the reader understand.

3. With the exception of the recently departed R.C. Sproul, Jerry Bridges, and Elisabeth Elliot, I have only included still living figures. So you will not see highly influential Puritans or Reformers or other key figures in church history, both ancient and recent. No Luthers, no Spurgeons, no Calvins, no Edwardses, and no Stotts, no Lewises, no Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

4. It should go without saying, but since this is the Internet: None of the people on this list is more or less important than anybody else. Or more or less important than you. I love you. Don’t be mad at me.

All right, here goes:

The Top 125 Influences on the Gospel-Centered Movement

1. John Piper

2. Matt Chandler

3. Tim Keller

4. R.C. Sproul

5. Mark Driscoll

6. Al Mohler

7. D.A. Carson

8. John MacArthur

9. Justin Taylor

10. Francis Chan

11. Tullian Tchividjian

12. Collin Hansen

13. Tim Challies

14. Russell Moore

15. C.J. Mahaney

16. Wayne Grudem

17. Lecrae

18. David Platt

19. Jen Wilkin

20. Jerry Bridges

21. Thabiti Anyabwile

22. Mark Dever

23. Paul Tripp

24. J.I. Packer

25. Kevin DeYoung

26. Ligon Duncan

27. Michael Horton

28. Ben Peays

29. Paul Washer

30. Elyse Fitzpatrick

31. Voddie Baucham

32. Bryan Chapell

33. Sinclair Ferguson

34. Timothy George

35. Ann Voskamp

36. James White

37. Keith and Kristyn Getty

38. Joshua Harris

39. Ed Stetzer

40. Bruce Ware

41. Bob Kauflin

42. Derek Thomas

43. Crawford Lorritts

44. Tony Reinke

45. Eric Mason

46. Trevin Wax

47. Tom Schreiner

48. Darrin Patrick

49. Derek Webb

50. Gloria Furman

51. Thom Rainer

52. J.D. Greear

53. Douglas Wilson

54. Carl Trueman

55. Shai Linne

56. Graeme Goldsworthy

57. Joni Eareckson Tada

58. Matt Smethurst

59. Elisabeth Elliot

60. Bob Thune

61. Alistair Begg

62. Joe Carter

63. Ray Ortlund, Jr.

64. Scotty Smith

65. Scott Sauls

66. Owen Strachan

67. Mike Cosper

68. Joe Thorn

69. Carl Ellis, Jr.

70. David Powlison

71. Leonce Crump

72. Don Whitney

73. Steve Nichols

74. Sam Storms

75. Dane Ortlund

76. Trillia Newbell

77. Douglas Moo

78. Steve Timmis

79. Ed Welch

80. Nancy Leigh Wolgemuth

81. Sam Allberry

82. Rosaria Butterfield

83. Phil Johnson

84. James K.A. Smith

85. Greg Koukl

86. John Frame

87. Steve Lawson

88. Iain Murray

89. Louie Giglio

90. Randy Alcorn

91. Mike Bullmore

92. Trip Lee

93. Wendy Alsup

94. Daniel Montgomery

95. Andreas Kostenberger

96. Stephen Um

97. Dave Harvey

98. Matt Boswell

99. Jemar Tisby

100. Kevin Vanhoozer

101. Jeff Vanderstelt

102. Hershael York

103. Danny Akin

104. Matt Carter

105. Andrew Peterson

106. Ted Tripp

107. Conrad Mbewe

108. Aaron Ivey

108. Matthew Lee Anderson

109. Jackie Hill Perry

110. Zack Eswine

111. Doug Logan

112. Karen Swallow Prior

113. Mary Kassian

114. Dustin Kensrue

115. Brian Croft

116. Jason K. Allen

117. Art Azurdia

118. Justin Holcomb

119. Jim Hamilton

120. Jason Kovacs

121. Sally Lloyd-Jones

122. Tope Koleoso

123. Dhati Lewis

124. Eugene Peterson

125. Ted Kluck

“Supernatural Power for Everyday People” Releases Today!

My new book Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God’s Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life releases today! This book is an inspirational and practical guide for believers interested in pursuing a Spirit-filled life.

Would it change your life to know that there is a way to live your everyday life supernaturally? Most of us would say “yes.” In my new book, I show you how. For the homemaker wondering how to get through the stress of washing dishes and making meals nobody seems to appreciate; for the cubicle jockey punching her time-card every day wondering if what she does really matters; for the teacher or leader wondering if he is making an impact; for the student afraid of the future; for every believer struggling to get through daily life, Supernatural Power for Everyday People offers the hope of meaning and purpose, and also the promise of power. We can get beyond just “getting by.” We can prevail and live a life of far more joy, contentment, and peace than we ever thought possible.

A practical book written in a devotional tone, Supernatural Power for Everyday People shows readers how to rely more fully on the power of the Holy Spirit for growth and satisfaction in their lives.

Here’s what some people are saying about it:

“A book on supernatural living is something one expects from a charismatic or Pentecostal preacher, not a Gospel Coalition blogger. But this is what makes Jared C. Wilson’s effort to convey the other-worldly power of the Holy Spirit so intriguing, infectious.  Make no mistake, our God is a supernatural being who works supernaturally.” — Kyle Idleman, pastor and author of not a fan and Grace is Greater

“In his book Supernatural Power for Everyday People, Jared C. Wilson points out that the Holy Spirit is not just someone who simply counsels and comforts, but rather our God who convicts and guides. He is the one with the supernatural power to affect our heart, strengthen our resolve and lead us to action. Whether associated with the holy rollers or one of the frozen chosen, or neither, we all need to embrace this book.” — Mike Cosper, author of Recapturing the Wonder

“Words like ‘supernatural power’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ in our current cultural and religious moment, have been wielded and to some extent hijacked by pastors with big personalities and big money.  Jared brings them back here…and brings us back here to a simple, biblical, no-fluff look at the supernatural power that changes ordinary people like you and me. As I read, I found myself worshiping. I found myself craving the Spirit more than his miracles. Get this book. No gimmicks, snakes, or gold dust here — just real power for real people.” — Matt Papa, songwriter, recording artist, and worship leader

“Many of us wonder how our God is supposed to supernaturally work in our lives, but we are often confused by the mixed messages we hear in various Christian communities. Jared C. Wilson does well to convey how God supernatural acts, if we merely submit to his will.” — Caleb Kaltenbach, pastor and author of Messy Grace

“The word supernatural is often mistaken and misused in Christian circles. But in Supernatural Power for Everyday People, Wilson corrects the misnomers and rights the mistakes by revealing the supernatural being God reveals himself to be. The Bible is full of supernatural events and experiences that we should embrace and enjoy. Let’s live it.” — Greg Gilbert, author of What is the Gospel? and FAVOR

You can buy Supernatural Power for Everyday People anywhere Christian books are sold. Here’s an Amazon link.

If you’ve been blessed by this work, I would also appreciate your sharing about it on social media or posting a review on Amazon, both of which is a huge benefit to helping get the word out. Thanks!

Maybe You Need to Wave the White Flag

One of our perennial problems is that we mistake the behavioral tidiness and normalcy of our everyday routines for spiritual tidiness and normalcy. But this is a trap all too common in modern life. We have compartmentalized our spirituality.

What I mean is, too many of us have begun thinking of our spirituality as just one aspect of our lives, perhaps referred to as our Religious Self. On Monday through Friday, we live the life of our Vocational Self (what many of us think of simply as our Normal Self). On Saturday, then, we live the life of our Recreational Self. When Sunday comes, it’s time for us to become our Religious Self.

The Vocational Self goes to work, eats meals, pays bills, and does the regular mundane tasks thought necessary to well-adjusted adulthood. The Recreational Self is how we compensate for the stress of spending time as our Vocational Self. The Recreational Self is the reward we give ourselves for paying the dues of our Vocational Self. Then we become our Religious Self on the days or in the moments when we feel especially needful of a higher power or simply when we feel the need to access our “spirituality.”

Each version of our self resides in its own neat compartment. Each version of our self stays in its own lane. It’s rare for us to access multiple versions of ourselves at the same moment. It’s as if we think of our inner life like a board room table occupied by multiple employees—directors, if you will, of our multiple responsibilities or interests. Around the table we divvy up workloads and time commitments to our Normal Self, our Recreational Self, our Religious Self. We may even have slots assigned for Family and Friends and Education. It feels coherent and cohesive. But in fact, it is quite disjointed and divided.

I knew that someone in my church was trying to live a compartmentalized life when they would say things like, “I just don’t have much time for God these days.” Or when they’d say theologically confused things like, “I guess I just need to trust in my faith more” (which is basically like saying “I need to have trust in my trust”).

You know that someone is living a compartmentalized life when their social media bio includes a Bible verse but their photos display them unashamedly engaged in all kinds of things the Bible forbids or warns against.

The man secretly indulging in his porn addiction while constantly complaining about gay marriage is living a compartmentalized life. The woman who neglects her kids to spend hours and hours on the internet blogging about how to be a better mom is living a compartmentalized life. The unmarried couple who are unapologetically living together but regularly attending church on Sunday are living a compartmentalized life.

The “power problem” with this way of living should be somewhat obvious. If we assign God and his Word a portion of our lives, we are at the same time seeking to detach the other portions from his sovereign power. This is what the Bible calls “quenching the Spirit.”

The compartmentalized approach promises to make our lives easier, more manageable. But any time we try to put areas of our life “off-limits” to God’s authority or to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, we find the rest of our lives given to greater and greater messiness.

The most significant practical issue with compartmentalized living is that our Religious Self inevitably becomes our smallest self. Many Christians say they believe in the God of the Universe and have trusted in the Son of God as their Lord and Savior but then spend the bulk of their lives obeying other lords and trusting other saviors.

When we relegate our intentionality with God to a minute fraction of our time, it’s no wonder we feel distant from him during the times we happen to be thinking about him and lack power during all the other times. Whatever we focus most of our conscious time on will invariably dominate the way we think and feel.

It’s not good that our spiritual life is compartmentalized, fit into the larger order of our so-called “normal” lifestyle. Most of us have arranged things to be as convenient as possible, and even when we have the inclination to “do hard things,” we are usually too tired to do them. Some of us are not faced often with the opportunity to serve or help others, for the simple reason that we rarely make time to interact with others in substantive ways in the first place. We find it difficult to be generous with others because we are generally generous with ourselves and think of others as window dressing in our life. And over time, just doing the regular, ordinary, mundane, “easy” things of life seem to take more and more out of us, because we have cordoned them off from our only hope for minute-by-minute power.

Then, every message we consume only reinforces the problem as it promises to alleviate it. Our normal environments and their “gospel” messages keep sending us further into ourselves—which is where all our issues began in the first place.

This is not the way God has designed life to be lived.

So what’s the answer?

The first thing he ought to do is recognize that this sense of longing, this nagging sense of emptiness is itself a gift! It is in fact something God is doing. God is speaking to us. He has led us right into our own Ecclesiastes, where we will realize, like King Solomon did, that all the comings and goings and doings and earnings can never satisfy the eternity in our heart (Ecc. 3:11).

This realization of dissatisfaction is a severe mercy from God himself. It is a mercy because the worst thing that might happen to us is to be completely content and happy apart from experiencing the power of God. No, this nagging sense of dissatisfaction is a gift of the Spirit, a form in fact of the Spirit’s conviction of us over our sin. We all ought to beg the Spirit to make us dissatisfied when we are distracted from God and neglecting our worship of him.

In fact, any time any human being is dealing with utter emptiness and lack of fulfillment in life, it is the result of the God-embedded message in them that they need him. The Holy Spirit who separates order from chaos is warning them about life apart from his power.

And when we listen, that is the Spirit’s power working too.

Are you listening?

Perhaps it’s time for you to head to the boardroom of your interior life and fire all those other directors. You need to give every employee a pink slip. You need to let them know that their services are no longer required.

Then you need to go out into the office space of your life and knock down all the cubicle walls with extreme prejudice. You need to vanquish the compartments of your inner life.

If you have experienced the Spirit’s conviction, you have been primed to experience the Spirit’s power.

Maybe you need to wave the white flag.

While submitting to the Spirit’s conviction may seem to promise less control, less security, it is instead the way to maximize the power available to every square inch of your life. You will now be surrendering the eight-lane highway of your life to the free reign of the Spirit of the living God. His joy will now spill over into every compartment. And when you expose more and more of your inner life to the otherworldly message of God, so will his power spill over into your outer life too.

This power is in fact what Jesus Christ has promised you.

This is an edited excerpt from my brand new book, Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God’s Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life, which releases January 23. See the special pre-order offer of free resources with purchase by clicking on the link above.

The Beauty of Conversion

To many, the Christian doctrine of conversion appears anything but beautiful. They say it’s coercive—“No one will force their beliefs on me!” Or it’s offensive—“Who are you to say that what I believe and how I live is wrong?”

In those senses, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The most important thing about doctrine is not whether it’s ugly or beautiful, but whether it’s false or true. That said, the true doctrine of Christian conversion is just plain beautiful.

On one level, conversion is beautiful in the same way that all kinds of transformations are beautiful. In primary school, children study the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly or tadpole to frog. In Sunday school, children learn how those transformations illustrate the change in a human heart from “dead in sin” to “new creation.” A flower blooms, an egg hatches, a baby bird spreads its wings for the first time. Each of these transformations is beautiful in its own way, but they are also all beautiful in the same way. In so many nooks and crannies of creation, God has hardwired the revelation of his glory which is brought to bear in the changing of spiritual death to eternal life.

One of the laws of the natural world is that things left to themselves don’t progress but regress. Everything dies. Yet in this very realm, God has encoded the beauty of change to something better here and there. Are these not all signposts to the wonder of salvation?

In fact, conversion is bigger than this. It is beautiful in its simplicity (think Rom. 10:9) and in its complexity (think Eph. 2:1-10).

But it’s not enough to say that salvation is beautiful. Let’s show.

1. Conversion is beautiful in its orchestration.

There is a defining moment of conversion: one moment we don’t savingly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that God has raised him from the dead, and the next moment we do.

That initial decision to believe, to lay hold of Christ with the empty hand of faith, is the moment a predestined sinner minding his own business gets tangled up in the ordo salutis. God’s crosshairs were on him from time immemorial, but now the effectual call has met its appointed time. The planned way of a man has been interrupted by God’s guidance of his steps (Prov. 16:9).

Conversion is in some sense both the fruition of God’s plan and one point along its route. It’s a decisive moment, but how much deliberation is behind that moment! We see the outline of this deliberation in Romans 8:30: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Our eyes can behold people repenting and professing their faith in Christ, but they cannot behold the eternal weight of glory leading up to it and flowing out after.

There are multiple volumes to write about each step in Romans 8:30’s outline. There is beauty within beauty within beauty. A mustard seed of faith planted in the broken heart of a desperate sinner is the culmination of God’s foreknowing this sinner from before the foundations of the earth. Even in eternity past God, in grace, overlooked the eternal offense of this individual’s cumulative lifelong sin, predestining him in love for adoption as a cherished son. And then God sent his only begotten Son to provide the sinless atonement for him, that he could be justified by the righteousness of Christ upon the Spirit’s regenerating of his stony heart. It’s simply staggering, isn’t it? And that this seed of justifying faith would grow through the faithfulness of the Father to administer a sanctifying faith, again through the Spirit’s work, all the way to the promise of glorification, is more staggering still.

2. Conversion is beautiful in its promise.

And oh, that promise! Isn’t it getting at what we all really want? What saint and sinner alike hope for every day? Everyone wants change. Everyone wants to believe bad will become good, and wrong will be set right. We all have our ideas on how this can be accomplished, but everyone basically wants the same thing—life.

God has set eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11), and every waking moment thereafter is an expression of worship of one god or another, the expression of our innate desperation for the real, the true, the lovely, the promise of better and righter. Bruce Marshall famously wrote, “The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”[1] This is true for all our idolatries—be they sex or spirituality—but the overarching truth is that no one left to his own devices is seeking the God (Rom. 3:11). We want our gods to be God. What we are looking for is, in fact, found in the One whom we wickedly want to avoid.

So those who “find God” are actually those who are found by God. Our comforter the Spirit is scouring the earth, seeking whom he may raise to life. God is patient with his foreknown idolaters, not wanting any of us to perish but all of us to come to repentance. His Spirit turns the lights on in our heart, calls out “Come forth” from the mouth of our tomb, and the unbelievable becomes believable. I can be different! I can change! I can know God and thereby know life! As the hymn says, “No guilt in life, no fear of death—this is the power of Christ in me!”

The gospel reveals the real hope for me and for this world. All the beauty of creation, of the arts, of the human striving for progress and enlightenment is summed up and found true in Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, buried, resurrected, and glorified. And just as his resurrection is firstfruits (1 Cor. 15:20-23), so our conversion to saving faith is the promise of conversion to immortality—that “we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:50-53).

3. Conversion is beautiful in its myriad workings.

The conversion of men to saving faith in Christ is beautiful in all the decisive moments it encompasses. Many in my generation and others “got saved” as we walked down an aisle, raised our hand, or repeated a formulaic prayer. And many in my generation who have become pastors will not resort to such special pleading in order to invite response to the gospel. We must all take care to make sure the biblical gospel is preached in biblical ways. But what a miracle that God uses fallible men exercising imperfect means to administer the perfect power of the good news of Jesus Christ!

I am not a dispensational pretribulational rapturist (anymore), but my conversion came after the Holy Spirit in his wisdom used a cheesy 1970s “left behind” type of movie to soften my heart to desire Jesus for forgiveness and security. I would not employ such means today, but I am grateful that God is not snobby about the ways he brings his children to life. He doesn’t put on airs. His strength is perfected in our evangelistic weakness, even in our flawed preaching and pleading. It is amazing to me how God simultaneously works through and in spite of our gospel ministry.

All conversions to Christ result from finally beholding him as our Christ, the offering for our salvation. An obvious example is Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Very dramatic, that moment. For others, the moment is less dramatic. A child prays a prayer in children’s church. A man goes forward at the end of a church service. One fellow I know said he’d sat in church every Sunday for nearly three years before it finally occurred to him, “Wait—I need to be saved. I need to believe this.”

In That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis in his inimitable way captures the ordinariness and the heaviness of one woman’s conversion:

What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond. There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. . . . 

In this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unflattering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in a space without air. The name me was the name of a being whose existence, she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump. . . .

The largest thing that had ever happened to her had, apparently, found room for itself in a moment of time too short to be called time at all. Her hand closed on nothing but a memory. And as it closed, without an instant’s pause, the voices of those who have not joy rose howling and chattering from every corner of her being.

“Take care. Draw back. Keep your head. Don’t commit yourself,” they said. And then more subtly, from another quarter, “You have had a religious experience. This is very interesting. Not everyone does. How much better you will now understand the Seventeenth-Century poets!”

. . . But her defenses had been captured and these counter-attacks were unsuccessful.[2]

The demons oppose her, sometimes contradicting directly, sometimes changing the meaning of her experience. But nothing—not even angels or demons—can separate Jane from the love of God. So in the quiet of an English garden, as in the expectant prayers at the sanctuary altar, or in the solitude of a lonely soul reading a Bible in an armchair, eternity drops down.

The myriad ways God brings dead people to life are beautiful, some instantaneously recognizing stark new realities, others realizing of their need over time. Some hear the message for the first time and respond in faith. Others hear the message all their lives but do not have the spiritual “ears to hear” until some day far down the road. This is artful. There is God, in the vast array of human experience and daily life, in the mundane and the spectacular, rehearsing resurrection over and over again. And even the most ordinary of conversions is extraordinary. The angels celebrated no less for my daughter’s first expression of saving faith in her room at bedtime a few years ago than they did Paul’s 2,000 years ago. Every conversion is a miracle. And the great beatific vision of Christ makes beatific visions of us (2 Cor. 3:18).

4. Conversion is beautiful in its source.

Because the Creator is glorious, all he does is glorious. And because of this vital truth, it is not true enough to say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty lies objectively in the triune Godhead, whether beheld by mortals or not. David asks to dwell in the house of the Lord and to gaze upon the Lord’s beauty (see Ps. 27:4), but even if the Lord does not answer such prayers, his beauty is not diminished one bit.

On the other hand, God’s beauty—more often called his glory—is reflected, magnified even, in the increase of beholding. So one of the beauties of God’s raising dead men to new life is that they come to reflect his beauty in sermon and song and hearts filled with thanksgiving (Col. 3:16). After Peter witnessed the sufferings and resurrection of Christ, he was able to refer to himself as “a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed” (1 Pet. 5:1). To answer the call of the gospel in saving faith, then, is in some way to obtain that beauty, and so magnify it. “To this he called you through our gospel,” Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:14, “so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Conversion is beautiful because God is beautiful. He is beautiful in the greatness and majesty of his glory, the weighty sum of all his attributes and qualities. The way the Bible talks about God’s beauty is, well, beautiful. From the holiness brought to bear in the Pentateuch narratives to the gushing of the psalmists to God’s epic reply to Job to the wonderment of the prophets to the witness of the Gospels to the epistles’ ecstatic exultations and divine doxologies to John’s bewildering apocalypse, the Bible is beautiful with God’s intrinsic and overwhelming beauty.

And this God—this marvelous, inscrutable, and holy God—knows us and loves us and chooses us and calls us and saves us. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). For all the beauty of conversion (and there is still more to be explored for all eternity), it is sourced in and overshadowed by the beauty of God himself, whose glory extends without limits for all time, as well as to us, that we would see it and know Jesus and be changed forever.

—

[1] Bruce Marshall, The World, The Flesh and Father Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945), 108.

[2] C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 318-319.

A version of this article originally appeared in the 9Marks Journal.