Category: God the Son

The Kingdom of God Is Reality Because the Son Has Risen

The Kingdom of God is reality. It’s what is real. We often walk around as though we are the sovereign ones and as if we have the crowns on our heads.

April 22, 2025 by: Chris Castaldo

Look Up

The kingdom of God is reality. It’s what is real. We often walk around as though we are the sovereign ones and as if we have the crowns on our heads. Life is self-referential. But we understand there’s one true King of heaven and earth—and it is Jesus.

When I was at seminary at Gordon-Conwell, I went on a retreat to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. You know how it goes. I was in a cabin with a bunch of guys, there was someone who snored, and I thought he was going to have a hernia. So at about five o’clock in the morning, I decided to go for a walk. I went down to the lake where we had been the night before, and I remembered the s’mores that we enjoyed eating and the worship songs. I was trying to read my Bible in the moonlight, waiting for the sun to rise—which always seems to take longer than you anticipate.

As I was mulling around and praying, at one point I looked at the mountain behind me and noticed on the treetops way up high that the sun was shining. It occurred to me that while it was still dark down below where I was standing, the sun had already risen up there.

That’s the good news. The Son has risen. Jesus is King. He’s advancing his kingdom in this world, and we have the privilege every day of bowing the knee to him, of surrendering our lives, and submitting and proclaiming his message so that others would give their lives to his reign and his rule. And that’s what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Chris Castaldo is the author of The Upside Down Kingdom: Wisdom for Life from the Beatitudes.

Chris Castaldo (PhD, London School of Theology) is the lead pastor at New Covenant Church in Naperville, Illinois. He is the author of Talking with Catholics about the Gospel and coauthor of The Unfinished Reformation.

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What About Pagan Parallels to the Resurrection?

Skeptical scholars have claimed close connections between the resurrection of Jesus and the dying and rising of other religious and mythic figures. Why should anyone see Jesus as being distinct from such deities?

April 20, 2025 by: Timothy Paul Jones

How the Resurrection of Jesus Is Different Than the Ones in Pagan Myths

Even in ancient times, critics of Christianity noticed some parallels between Christian beliefs and pre-Christian myths. In the late second century, a philosopher named Celsus charged, “The Christians have used the myths of Danae and the Melanippe, of the Auge and Antiope in fabricating this story of virgin birth.” The same philosopher compared the resurrection of Jesus to the mysterious disappearance and return of a well-known poet. In more recent times, skeptical scholars such as Marvin Meyer and Robert Price have claimed close connections between the resurrection of Jesus and the myths of dying and rising deities that marked many ancient myths and mystery cults. Here’s what these critics contend: The most marvelous claims in the Gospels—a miraculous birth, for example, as well as the idea of a deity who dies and rises again—are paralleled in religions that predate Christianity; therefore, early Christians must have fabricated these miracles based on their knowledge of other religions.

I admit there are some surface-level similarities between ancient myths and certain events in the Gospels. Long before the first century AD, the myths of Egyptians deities such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Horus included tales of death and rebirth. So why should anyone see Jesus as being distinct from such deities? Could it be that the New Testament stories of Jesus represent the fictive myth of an ancient mystery cult that’s managed to outlive other mystery cults by nearly two millennia? Or is there something different about the accounts of Jesus’s time on planet earth?

When these claims are compared carefully with the New Testament Gospels, the distinction between Jesus and the supposed parallels becomes quite distinct, for at least three reasons:

(1) The parallels aren’t as parallel as the proponents claims.
(2) Many of the supposed parallels confuse affirmations in the New Testament Gospels with later Christian traditions.
(3) Even if some parallels do exist, the sources of these parallels could be practices that are common features of human cultures.

1. Are the Parallels Really Parallel?

When ancient texts and artifacts are analyzed, the parallels are not as parallel as the skeptics claim. Despite widespread claims that gods like Horus were crucified and resurrected, no such story can be located in any pre-Christian depiction or descriptions. For example, a monument illustrating the story of Horus does not depict him as crucified or resurrected, as some skeptics suggest. Instead, Horus was thought by the Egyptians to have been stung by a poisonous creature and revived by his mother and a moon god—a fate very different from crucifixion followed by resurrection. A close examination of the stories of other gods reveals similar gaps. The theme of dying and rising in other religions was an annual event, connected to the seasons. Unlike the metaphorical returns of dying-and-rising gods, the resurrection described by Christians was a one-time event that took place at one specific point in the earth’s topography, with no relationship to seasonal changes or agricultural cycles.

According to some reconstructions of sources that depict the birth of a mystery cult deity called Mithras, Mithras was birthed from solid stone. A few skeptics have connected this birth to the birth of Jesus in a stable, since caves were sometimes used to shelter animals; some of them have even referred to this birth of Mithras as a “virgin birth.” And yet, parallels of this sort are too vague and too dissimilar to support the claim that Christians borrowed their beliefs from pagans of previous generations. James Tabor, professor of early Christianity at University of North Carolina in Charlotte, doesn’t believe in the virginal conception of Jesus, and he denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Yet even he recognizes how radically the birth of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels differs from any supposed parallels. According to Tabor,

When you read the accounts of Mary’s unsuspected pregnancy, what is particularly notable . . . is an underlying tone of realism that runs through the narratives. These seem to be real people, living in real times and places. In contrast, the birth stories in Greco-Roman literature have a decidedly legendary flavor to them. For example, in Plutarch’s account of the birth of Alexander the Great, mother Olympias got pregnant from a snake; it was announced by a bolt of lightning that sealed her womb so that her husband Philip could not have sex with her. Granted, both Matthew and Luke include dreams and visions of angels but the core story itself—that of a man who discovers that his bride-to-be is pregnant and knows he is not the father—has a realistic and thoroughly human quality to it. The narrative, despite its miraculous elements, “rings true.”

2. Do the Supposed Parallels Appear in the New Testament or in Later Christian Literature?

Many of the supposed parallels confuse affirmations in the New Testament Gospels with later Christian traditions. For example, some individuals have claimed the word “Easter” comes from “Ishtar,” a Sumerian goddess who died and returned to life. In the first place, the word “Easter” seems more likely to have derived not from “Ishtar” but from an Indo-European root that has to do with “rising.” Far more important, the term “Easter” never appears in the text of Scripture, and Christians didn’t begin using the term to describe celebrations of the resurrection until many years after the Bible was written. As such, the origins of the word “Easter” have nothing to do with the historicity of any event in the New Testament.

3. Where Do Parallels Come From?

Even if some clear parallel did exist between the story of Jesus and previous religious expectations, this wouldn’t warrant the belief that the apostle Paul or the authors of the New Testament Gospels “borrowed” these tenets from other faiths. It might mean that God chose to reveal himself in ways that the people in that particular culture could comprehend. Although earlier religions may have twisted and distorted the human yearning for resurrection, these motifs are rooted in a God-given yearning for redemption through sacrifice that makes the world right and new. C. S. Lewis addressed this possibility with these words:

In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears — as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about “parallels” [in other religions]. . . : they ought to be there — it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.

Timothy Paul Jones is the author of Did the Resurrection Really Happen?.

Timothy Paul Jones (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is vice president for doctoral studies; professor of Christian family ministry; and chair of the department of apologetics, ethics, and philosophy at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jones is the author of numerous books including How We Got the Bible and In Church as It Is in Heaven. He also serves as a preaching pastor at Sojourn Church Midtown in Louisville, Kentucky, and cohosts The Apologetics Podcast. Timothy and his wife, Rayann, have four daughters, Hannah, Skylar, Kylinn, and Katrisha.

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What Does the Cross Have to Do with Justice?

We are justified by the blood of Christ. And as a justified people, we are then called to seek justice for every image-bearer on the planet.

April 18, 2025 by: Jeremy Treat

A Level Playing Field

Justice is such an important issue today, and the cross speaks volumes to this. In fact, for followers of Jesus, you can’t have a biblical understanding of justice apart from the cross of Christ. And at the cross, we see the greatest demonstration of justice in human history: God pouring out his judgment on our sin.

It’s at the cross where we learn, ultimately, that God is a just God. So we have a vision of justice from the cross, but then what we have to learn is that the cross makes us a just people. We are justified by the blood of Christ, and as a justified people, we are then called to seek justice for every image-bearer on the planet.

For us as Christians, I really believe the cross makes us a people of mercy and justice. The cross levels the playing field. You can’t look down on anyone else when you’re at the foot of the cross, because we recognize that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet it’s the grace of God that motivates us to go and serve, to show mercy, to seek justice for all. We really need the cross to understand this today.

Jeremy Treat is the author of The Atonement: An Introduction.

Jeremy Treat (PhD, Wheaton College) is a pastor for preaching and vision at Reality LA, a church in Los Angeles, California. He is also an adjunct professor of theology at Biola University and is the author of Seek First: How the Kingdom of God Changes Everything and The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology. 

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What Does “Begotten, Not Made” Mean?

The Greek word translated “only begotten” is monogenēs, a word used five times in the New Testament with reference to Jesus.

April 12, 2025 by: Kevin DeYoung

Only Begotten Son of the Father

The Nicene Creed confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is “the only begotten Son of God.” The Greek word translated “only begotten” is monogenēs, a word used five times in the New Testament with reference to Jesus (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9).

While most newer translations render the term “only” or “one of a kind,” the King James Version uses “only begotten” in those five Johannine verses. Whatever the proper translation of the word is in each of those five biblical instances, every English translation I’ve ever seen of the Nicene Creed renders the word “only begotten.”

Let’s think about the names “Father” and “Son.” God is Father because he has a Son; Jesus is the Son because he has a Father. That much should be obvious. And the way in which the Father relates to the Son is by “begetting.” The Father generates the Son, and the Son is “from the substance of the Father” (Creed of Nicaea). One thing we can say about the Father that we cannot say about the Son is that the Father is unbegotten. One thing we can say about the Son that we cannot say about the Father is that the Son is begotten.

Okay, but what does that all mean?

The Arians agreed that Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. This specific language wasn’t the issue. The issue was what those words meant. In a letter to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, Arius explained that God was “the begetter of his only Son before endless ages; through whom he made both the ages and all that is.” Arius would not have objected to saying, as the Nicene Creed does, that Christ was “begotten of his Father before all worlds.” But in the letter to Alexander, Arius also argued that the Son, “timelessly begotten by the Father,” was “created and established before all ages” and “did not exist prior to his begetting.”1 To counter this position, the Nicene Creed made four further statements in definition of “only begotten.”

The Son is “God of God.” The phrase “God of God” is not a superlative like “Holy of Holies” or “King of kings” or “Lord of lords.” The “of” here might better be translated “from,” speaking of derivation. Jesus Christ is God from God, and the fact that God is used in both halves of the formula suggests that the Son is the same kind of God as the God from which he comes. The phrase also communicates that the Son is not a part of God. He is wholly God of wholly God. The generation of the Son does not imply the division of the Godhead or the multiplication of deities.

The Son is God; the Father is God; the Son is of the Father (the Father is not of the Son); and there is only one God. The Son is “Light of Light.” This claim is similar to the last, but not identical. Here we are dealing with a term rather than a title of divine identity. The argument is that if the term light means the same thing with both the Father and the Son, then they must both be of the same essence. The Son is not a different kind of light than the Father. To put it more technically, a property shared in common, with the same meaning in both, signifies a common nature.

The Son is not a lesser light than the Father. The Son is “very God of very God.” This clause is crucial, especially with regard to the Arian controversy. The defenders of Arius might have said that the Son was God of God. They might have affirmed that Jesus Christ was God and that he came from God. They might have affirmed these statements because they reckoned the Son to be a different sort of God than the Father. But the Arians would not have said that the Son is “very God,” for that implies that the Son is no less God than the Father (“very” is an archaic way of saying “truly”). The Word was God—that much was plain from John 1. But for the Arians, the divine Word was a different kind of deity (a created, lesser deity) than the Father. The Nicene Creed will not allow for an Arian misinterpretation of John’s Gospel.

The Son was “not made.” Now we come to the crux of the Nicene argument. There was no way that Arius or his party could possibly defend this assertion. For Arius, one could not be “begotten” unless he was “made” or “created.” Hence, the Nicene Creed is making the all-important affirmation that the Son’s begottenness is not like our begottenness, or not in every respect. The Son’s begottenness is an eternal begottenness. No one created the Son. There never was when the Son was not—not in time and not before time.

A Song to Be Sung

The doctrine of the Son’s begottenness from the Father is called eternal generation. It is a classic and crucial Trinitarian doctrine, but it also a mystery beyond human description. Eternal generation is like human generation in that one essence begets the same essence, but it is unlike human generation in that it does not involve physical reproduction. Eternal generation is hyperphysical (it is outside the physical or material realm), infinite (it does not take place in time), and ineffable (it cannot be fully comprehended). By eternal generation we do not mean that the Father created the Son’s essence, but rather that the Father communicates the essence he shares with the Son.

Nicene orthodoxy teaches us to hold several truths at the same time:

  • The Son is of the same essence as the Father.
  • The Son is to be distinguished from the Father.
  • The Son is of the Father.
  • The Father is never of the Son.

The language of “only begotten” helps explain how all these truths can stand together. The early church thought long and hard about how to explain that the Godhead can consist of multiple persons without there being multiple essences. The Son is equal with the Father because he was eternally begotten of the Father. The Son is also distinct from the Father because he was eternally begotten from the Father. When Jesus says he is in the Father and the Father is in him, he is speaking to the theological reality that the Nicene Creed means to defend (John 14:11). We know that a son is from the “stuff” of his father, and yet a son is not the same as his father, and the father does not come from his son. What we understand intuitively in an earthly sense, the Nicene Creed is trying to explain and safeguard in an eternal and theological sense.

If you find all of this is hard to understand, you are not alone. The most brilliant theologians in history have gladly acknowledged that the doctrine of the Trinity is full of mystery. We are dealing with realities beyond our ability to fully understand or articulate. But mysterious does not mean unreasonable or irrational. It means that we, as finite creatures, do not possess sufficient intellect to fully grasp the infinite. When faced with such glories, it is often wise to think of how we pray and how we sing. Intuitively, led by the Spirit, full of the word, we know that Jesus Christ is to be worshiped just as the Father is to be worshiped. We know, like the earliest Christians knew, that we should sing songs about Jesus and to Jesus.

Think of what we sing at Christmas in that brilliant hymn Adeste Fidelis (“O Come, All Ye Faithful”): “God of God, Light of Light. / Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb. / Very God, begotten, not created.” The Christ child we worship in the manger is none other than “very God of very God,” the only begotten Son who is from the Father but was not created or made by him. Many of us have been reciting Nicene theology since before we could read or write. We know it to be true. We know it to be glorious. We know it to be beautiful. And so we sing.

Notes:

  1. Quoted in Donald Fairbairn and Ryan M. Reeves, The Story of Creeds and Confessions: Tracing the Development of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 55–56.

This article is adapted from The Nicene Creed: What You Need to Know about the Most Important Creed Ever Written by Kevin DeYoung.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. He has written books for children, adults, and academics, including Just Do Something; Impossible Christianity; Daily Doctrine; and The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. Kevin’s work can be found on clearlyreformed.org. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children.

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Prayer Is and Should Be Trinitarian

I am more convinced than ever that prayer is and should be Trinitarian. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every single prayer must reference the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

March 30, 2025 by: Pat Quinn

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Like every other Catholic child growing up in the 1960s, I learned the sign of the cross as a standard way of beginning prayer. It involved both action and words. You made a simple motion, first touching your forehead (saying, “In the name of the Father”), then your chest (“. . . and of the Son”), and finally your left and right shoulders (“. . . and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”). I confess I hadn’t thought about this since I was a boy, but it came back to me recently as I was writing on Trinitarian prayer. If nothing else, I was trained very young to think that prayer involved the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This was a gracious gift of God, even though it made little impact at the time.

After decades of reading the Bible, following Jesus Christ, and participating in countless worship services, I am more convinced than ever that prayer is and should be Trinitarian. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every single prayer must reference the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But for prayer to be truly Christian, it must consistently bear witness to the three-in-one.

The Trinity in Creation and Redemption

The reason prayer is essentially Trinitarian is because, according to Scripture, everything is Trinitarian. Genesis 1 and John 1 bear witness to the activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in creation.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:1–2)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1–3)

Second Thessalonians 2:13–14 and other passages similarly show Trinitarian cooperation in the work of salvation.1

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thess. 2:13–14)

John Frame nicely summarizes the mutual deity and work of the Trinity in creation and salvation: “All three stand together as Creator and Savior. Scripture joins them together in contexts of praise and thanksgiving. They are the ultimate object of the believer’s trust and hope. What else can they possibly be, other than one, somehow threefold God?”2

The Trinity and Prayer

This Trinitarian mutuality impacts public prayer in two ways. First, each member of the Trinity is intimately involved in the very act of praying. As the old saying goes, we pray to the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Spirit. Paul Miller helpfully elaborates on the mysterious Trinitarian interplay in the act of praying:

Even now I often don’t realize that I am praying. Possibly, it isn’t even me praying, but the Spirit. Paul said, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). The Spirit is not assisting us to pray; he is the one who is actually praying. He is the pray-er. More specifically, it is the Spirit of his Son praying. The Spirit is bringing the childlike heart of Jesus into my heart and crying Abba, Father. Jesus’s longing for his Father becomes my longing. My spirit meshes with the Spirit, and I, too, begin to cry, Father.3

While Miller is talking about the Trinity moving us in personal prayer, the same is true in public prayer. The Holy Spirit moves leaders to prepare and pray Christlike prayers to the Father on behalf of his gathered children.

The Holy Spirit moves leaders to prepare and pray Christlike prayers to the Father on behalf of his gathered children.

Second, since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equally divine and essential for our salvation, it makes perfect biblical, theological, and practical sense that we would refer to each of them in prayer. Notice how Paul does this in Ephesians 3:14–19. He prays to the Father that the Ephesians would be strengthened by the Spirit so that the Son would dwell in their hearts by faith. This kind of Trinitarian prayer is not simply a formula to follow; it is the natural movement of a mind instructed in gospel truth and a heart enflamed by gospel grace.

While the normal practice for Christians is to pray to the Father through the Son by the power of the Spirit, it is also biblical on occasion to address Jesus in prayer (John 14:13–14). Praying to the Holy Spirit (as opposed to “in” the Spirit—see Eph. 6:18; Jude 20) seems more problematic. There is no biblical precedent for praying directly to the Holy Spirit, and for good reason. He is the most self-effacing member of the Trinity who loves to point to Jesus and apply his work to our lives. But it is also true that he is equally God and worshiped with the Father and the Son. And as it can be said of the Father and Son, so also of the Spirit: without him we would still be dead in our sins and totally unable to pray at all. Therefore, it is appropriate to praise the Holy Spirit and to occasionally petition him in public prayer. Keith Getty’s hymn “Holy Spirit” begins, “Holy Spirit, living Breath of God, breathe new life into my willing soul.”4 Getty’s thoughts on the song are relevant to addressing the Holy Spirit in prayer: “‘Holy Spirit’ is the final hymn I wrote with Stuart Townend as part of the Apostle’s Creed album we created in 2005. In this particular song, we desired the hymn to function as a sung prayer about the Holy Spirit’s renewing power.”5

Matthew Henry’s prayer of adoration is a good example of Trinitarian prayer:

We pay our homage to three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: for these three are one. We adore thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth; and the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made that was made. . . . We also worship the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, whom the Son has sent from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, and who is sent to teach us all things, and to bring all things to remembrance.6

Henry’s prayer concisely exalts the Father as the “Lord of heaven and earth,” Christ as “the eternal Word . . . by whom all things were made,” and the Holy Spirit as “the Comforter . . . sent to teach us all things.” The mind is enlightened and the heart enflamed in praise to the glorious three-in-one. This is the goal of good public prayer.

Notes:

  1. See also Rom. 1:1–6; Gal. 3:10–14; Eph. 1:3–14; Col. 1:3–8; 1 Thess. 1:1–5; Titus 3:4–7.
  2. John Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 643.
  3. Paul Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2009), 64–65.
  4. Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, “Holy Spirit” (Getty Music Label, 2019).
  5. Keith Getty, quoted in Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters (blog), August 10, 2012, worshipmatters.com/2012/08/10/holy-spirit-breath-of-god-gettytownend-hymn/.
  6. Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer, ed. J. Ligon Duncan (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1994), 24–25.

This article is adapted from Praying in Public: A Guidebook for Prayer in Corporate Worship by Pat Quinn.

Pat Quinn (MA, Calvin College) is director of counseling ministries at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan, where he also serves as an elder and teacher. Quinn led worship at University Reformed Church for several decades, composing many worship songs and congregational prayers. Pat is married to Judie, and they have two grown children.

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An Open Letter to Anyone Who’s Hit Rock Bottom

If you’ve hit rock bottom, you know one thing for sure. It’s horrible. I know it too. You’re not alone. Jesus is down here, and he welcomes you.

March 24, 2025 by: Ray Ortlund

This article is part of the Open Letters series.

Dear friend,

If you’ve hit rock bottom, you know one thing for sure. It’s horrible. I know it too.

You’re not alone. Jesus is down here, and he welcomes you. His friends are down here, and we welcome you. Rock bottom isn’t where we wanted to go, obviously. But here we are. And to our amazement, rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace. That’s the first thing we need to know. Down at rock bottom, we discover that hope is waiting for us—with open arms too.

Here’s the second thing we need to know. Before we can start feeling hopeful again, before we can risk getting excited about our future again, we must get closer to God. He is where hope gets traction. He is our hope. Without him, why care about anything? With him, we can face life as it is, and we will prevail. We will even laugh again.

So, our pain gets us to reach out to God with a deep urgency. We’re sure not playing churchy games anymore, are we? But we are wondering, Where do we turn now? We really need God. But where can we find him? Amazingly, God anticipates our need, our question. He tells us where he can always be found:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
     who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
     and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
     and to revive the heart of the contrite.” —Isaiah 57:15

Okay then. Now we know. God dwells in two places. He lives way up high, up in the holy place, in eternal heaven above. And he also lives way down low, among the lowly and the contrite, down with the crushed and devastated people, down at rock bottom.

The thing is, we can’t go up to his lofty dwelling place above—not while we’re still living in this world. But we can go down to his humble dwelling place below, down at rock bottom, where the lowly and the contrite are being revived by his grace in Christ. His dwelling place high above is beyond our reach. But rock bottom way down low is where we can go, and where we do go sooner or later. And God loves it down there. It’s where his grace is reviving broken people. They’re coming alive again. They’re getting excited about their future again. What a great place to be! Sign me up!

That’s how Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw it. It’s how she felt:

He has shown strength with his arm;
     he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
     and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
     and the rich he has sent away empty. —Luke 1:51–53

I’m guessing you’re ready to say the same.

Rock bottom is where great things are finally starting to happen, thanks to Jesus and his gospel of grace.

So let’s take our next step. Our part in all this is to accept, deeply accept, a new realization, a new reality. And it’s sobering. Here it is. That life you and I wanted to live, that life we even expected to live, that ideal “designer life” where we’d be happy and popular and well-off and in control, our careers trending well, our children getting above-average grades, and we have enough money coming in to keep trouble out—that life, that world, that social space I call “the mushy middle.” It isn’t heaven above, and it isn’t rock bottom below. It’s a culture floating around in between.

Nearly everybody wants to live there! And why not? That world, with its neighborhoods and career tracks and social events, it’s pleasant, convenient, prestigious. But there is a problem with “the mushy middle.” It’s a serious problem, though few people pay much attention. The problem is, it can be harder to find God in “the mushy middle.” Oh, he’s there all right. Of course, he’s present there. He’s present everywhere. But the clutter, the ease, the selfishness make it easier to marginalize God and harder to experience him. And the reason for our obliviousness there is downright scary. God will never agree to being used as a lifestyle enhancement for the privileged few. Never.

So “the mushy middle” looks nice. But it’s much better to be down at rock bottom. It’s where God is near—so available, his arms wide open.

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What then is happening down in the low place, where God is so wonderfully present? Two things.

One, God is “reviving” the contrite and the lowly. Isaiah’s word “revive” means to reinvigorate. It’s about exhausted people getting fresh strength, crushed people standing tall again, injured people feeling alive as never before. And what if you’re not eager to become more religious? I’m not either. But who doesn’t long for the richness and fullness of life? It’s what God gives to the contrite and lowly.

They don’t deserve God, and they know it. But through the cross of Christ, they receive God with the empty hands of faith. And he gives them all that his grace can do—forever.

Two, the contrite and lowly are also discovering one another. I include this, because “the contrite” and “the lowly” in the last two lines of Isaiah’s verse are plural nouns. Yes, God draws near to the individual: “. . . him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.” But God also gathers the contrite and lowly together as a new community. And what a community!

The best people I’ve ever known I discovered down at rock bottom. Are they recovering from some hard things? Yes. Some really hard things. But the contrite and lowly are also relaxed, honest, open, gentle, and downright fun. They listen well. They care sincerely. They are tearful, and they are cheerful. They pray, and they work. They believe the gospel, and they confess their sins. You don’t have to wonder about them. They have your back, and you have theirs. I love it down there with those precious people! You’ll love it too.

It's a privilege to be your friend down here, where God dwells and where broken people get their lives back.

God bless you.

Warmly,
Ray

Ray Ortlund is the president of Renewal Ministries, the pastor to pastors at Immanuel Church in Nashville, and a canon theologian with the Anglican Church in North America. He is the author of several books, including Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel; The Death of Porn; and the Preaching the Word commentaries on Isaiah and Proverbs. He is also a contributor to the ESV Study Bible. Ray and his wife, Jani, have been married for fifty years.

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Jesus’s Final Command Revealed His Ultimate Goal

Teaching people to parrot all that Jesus commanded is easy. Teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded is impossible.

March 23, 2025 by: John Piper

The Impossible Final Command

I am seeking to obey Jesus’s last command: “Make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). Jesus’s final command was to teach all nations to keep his commandments.

Actually, the final command was more precise than that. He did not say, “Teach them all my commandments.” He said, “Teach them to observe all my commandments.” You can teach a parrot all of Jesus’s commandments. But you cannot teach a parrot to observe them. Parrots will not repent, and worship Jesus, and lay up treasures in heaven, and love their enemies, and go out like sheep in the midst of wolves to herald the kingdom of God. Teaching people to parrot all that Jesus commanded is easy.

Teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded is impossible. Jesus used that word. When a rich man could not bring himself to let go of his riches and follow him, Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. . . . With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:25–27).

Therefore, the person who sets himself to obey Jesus’s final commission—for example, to teach a rich man to observe the command to “renounce all that he has” (Luke 14:33)—attempts the impossible. But Jesus said it was *not impossible. “All things are possible with God.” So the greatest challenge in writing this book has been to discern God’s way of making impossible obedience possible.

Jesus said that this impossible goal happens through teaching. “Make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” There is, of course, more to it than that—like the atoning death of Jesus (Mark 10:45) and the work of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) and prayer (Matt. 6:13). But in the end Jesus focused on teaching. I take this to mean that God has chosen to do the impossible through the teaching of all that Jesus commanded. That’s what I pray this [message] will prove to be—a kind of teaching that God will use to bring about impossible obedience to Jesus. And all of that for the glory of God.

Teaching and Obedience That Glorify God

The reason I emphasize the glory of God is because Jesus did. He said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). The ultimate goal of Jesus’s commandments is not that we observe them by doing good works. The ultimate goal is that God be glorified. The obedience of good works is penultimate. But what is ultimate is that in our obedient lives God be displayed as the most beautiful reality in the world. That is Jesus’s ultimate goal and mine. This helps me answer the question: What kind of teaching of Jesus’s commandments might God be willing to use to bring about such impossible obedience? If the aim of obedience is ultimately the glory of God, then it is probable that the teaching God will use is the kind that keeps his glory at the center.

The ultimate goal of Jesus’s commandments is not that we observe them by doing good works. The ultimate goal is that God be glorified.

Keeping the Commandments Connected to Jesus and His Work

How then do we keep the beauty of God in proper focus in relation to Jesus’s commandments? By treating the meaning and motivation of the commands in connection with the person and work of Jesus. The person and work of Jesus are the primary means by which God has glorified himself in the world. No revelation of God’s glory is greater. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Therefore, his person is the manifestation of the glory of God. To see him as he really is means seeing the infinitely valuable beauty of God. Jesus also said, as he was praying, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). Therefore, his work is a manifestation of the glory of God. When we see what he achieved and how he did it, we see the majesty and greatness of God.

Therefore, my aim has been to probe the meaning and the motivation of Jesus’s commands in connection with his person and work. What emerges again and again is that what he is commanding is a life that displays the worth of his person and the effect of his work. His intention is that we not disconnect what he commands from who he is and what he has done.

We should not be surprised, then, that Jesus’s final, climactic command is that we teach all nations to observe all that he commanded. This leads to his ultimate purpose. When obedience to his commands happens, what the world sees is the fruit of Jesus’s glorious work and the worth of his glorious person. In other words, they see the glory of God. This is why Jesus came and why his mission remains until he comes.

This article is adapted from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life According to the Gospels by John Piper.

John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.

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How the Persons of the Trinity Reveal Themselves

Each of the three persons of the Trinity is unique in the way they reveal to us this dimension of infinite depth behind their presence, so we ought to attend to them in different ways.

March 17, 2025 by: Fred Sanders

Eternal Father, Eternal Son, Eternal Spirit

We meet the triune God as he gives himself to us in the history of salvation, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Specifically, we meet the Trinity as the incarnate Son, his heavenly Father who loves the world and elects a people, and the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, whom Jesus and the Father poured out on all flesh after the ascension of Christ. We meet them, that is, in the middle of their missions for us and our salvation. We might say that we meet a salvation-history Trinity in the Bible and in our Christian experience. But the persons of the Trinity have a depth of life behind those missions, and that infinite depth is precisely what the actual doctrine of the Trinity points to.

Each of the three persons is unique in the way they reveal to us this dimension of infinite depth behind their presence, so we ought to attend to them in different ways. Perhaps the easiest one to understand is the Son. When Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born in Bethlehem, he began his incarnate existence. He became fully and truly human, without ceasing to be fully and truly divine. But he, the person who became incarnate, had already existed before his human birth. He preexisted, in the absolute sense of the term. This is not true of any other human beginning, and it is the chief difference between Jesus and the rest of the human family (more foundational than his virgin birth or his sinlessness). All other humans come into existence from a state of nonexistence, and can be said to preexist only in the improper sense that in the hearts of their parents, or in the providence of God, plans and provisions have been made for them. But when it comes to the Son of God, we have a case of actual preexistence. It is not a paradox, for we do not say that Jesus preexists his own existence; we only say that the Son preexists his incarnation. The pre- in the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ points backward from his taking on human nature; that is the event which this person exists pre-.

Previous to the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14) by taking on human nature, the person who is Jesus Christ already existed. Admittedly, it is odd to call this person “Jesus Christ” before his birth in Bethlehem and his receiving a human name (Jesus) and title (Christ). You could say, if you wanted to be very precise, that he may have existed, but he wasn’t Jesus Christ yet. That is a distinction worth making. But there are several reasons not to enforce such scrupulosity in the way we talk about him. First, we know this person, and we have to call him something. “Unincarnate Word” is just not warm enough to call to mind all that we know about him based on his time among us. Second, there is biblical warrant. On those rare occasions when the Bible explicitly points back to the eternal depth behind the incarnation, it usually anchors its statements in the concrete name of Jesus. When Paul, for example, talks about the eternal Son and calls him Christ Jesus (“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God . . .” Phil. 2:5–6), we should not rush to correct him: “Oh, Paul, the pre-incarnate one was not yet Jesus or Christ.” Paul may be using the kind of shorthand we use when we say, “The sixteenth president of the United States was born in this cabin.” At the time he was born, of course, he wasn’t the sixteenth president of the US, and he may not yet have been named Abraham; he was an unnamed, mewling infant. And before Abe Lincoln was conceived, he was nothing, unless you want to count as preexistence such things as a twinkle in his father’s eye, or the plan for Lincoln in the foreknowing mind of God. But unlike Abe Lincoln and everybody else, Jesus Christ was already somebody before he was the newborn infant of the first Christmas.

We should take note of the reason that all created analogies break down at one crucial point in understanding the doctrine of Christ’s preexistence. When we say that Jesus Christ existed “pre” his incarnation, we do not mean he preceded it by any finite amount of time. The Son of God preexisted his incarnation the way the Creator preexisted creation: infinitely. Preexistence may be easy to say, but that one little syllable, pre-, is a quantum leap from Here to There, from time to eternity. Before you have finished saying that syllable, you have left behind everything measurable and manageable. Following the biblical argument that leads to this affirmation is one thing, but once you have followed the trail to the place where you confess, with the Christian church of all ages, the preexistence of Christ, you have framed a thought that catapults you into the being of God. Jesus Christ preexisted his incarnation eternally, as God.

But who was this person before he took on the nature of humanity, the name of Jesus, and the title of Christ? He was the Son of God. When the biblical authors say that God sent his Son into the world (John 20:21; Gal. 4:4; 1 John 4:14), gave his Son for the world’s salvation (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10), or spoke definitively through his Son (Heb. 1:1), they are presupposing that the Son was already in existence as the Son, a person present with God the Father from eternity. He did not become the Son when he became incarnate; God did not so love the world that he gave somebody who became his Son in the act of being given. God, already having a Son, sent him into the world to become incarnate and to be a propitiation for our sins. So when the apostles encountered Jesus Christ, they were encountering “that which was from the beginning . . . the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” That is why they could claim to have “fellowship . . . with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1–4).1

Jesus Christ, then, is eternally the Son of God; or, he is the eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity. He is God the Son, in the first place, for Trinitarian reasons. He is called Son because he is the Son of the Father from all eternity. When he becomes incarnate, he becomes the son of Mary, the promised son of David, the Messiah. But there was never a time when he became the Son of God; that is who he eternally and essentially is. For us and our salvation, the eternal Son became the incarnate Son.

Having paid close attention to how the eternal Son made himself known, we can also see how, in the same central event of salvation history, the first person of the Trinity revealed the eternal depth behind his personhood. The first person of the Trinity is God the Father. God is called the Father, in the first place, for Trinitarian reasons. He is the Father because he is Father of the Son, from eternity, at home in the happy land of the Trinity. He did not become the Father at Christmas, or at any point in human history, or in any pretemporal history. He did not undergo any transformation from being not-the-Father to being the Father. There was never a time when he existed as a solitary God without his Son, so he was always God the Father. This is a straightforward implication of confessing the deity of Christ. If Jesus is God the Son, God must always have included Son and Father.

Jesus Christ preexisted his incarnation eternally, as God.

Usually when we think about God the Father, we are tempted to consider his fatherhood as being grounded in something else besides this core Trinitarian basis. We tend to associate his fatherhood with the things he has freely chosen to do in salvation history. For example, God the Father predestined the chosen ones to be adopted as sons (Eph. 1:5), an act in which he determined himself to become the adoptive Father of the elect. But great as this saving, adoptive fatherhood is, it belongs in the sphere of something God does, not something that determines who he is. He would have been God the Father if he had never adopted created sons and daughters, because he would have been God the Father of God the Son. It is understandable that when we think of God the Father, our minds and hearts leap first to this gracious adoptive fatherhood. But there is something behind that adoptive fatherhood, and when we ask about the essential grounding of God’s fatherhood, we must look further into the being of God, where we find a foundation of fatherhood that does not presuppose us. It would be a mistake to make the fatherhood of God the Father depend on human sons and daughters: he was the Father before we got here.

An even bigger mistake, however, is the more common one of thinking that the main reason God is “the Father” is that he has created, or “fathered,” the world. In the few places where the Bible does talk about God as the parent of all creation, or the Father of all humanity, it tends to use this language in a metaphorical or poetic way (see Job 38:28; Acts 17:28). The main idea in Scripture is not that every creature already is a child of God the Father but that those who receive Jesus are given the right to become sons of God (John 1:12) on the basis of the work of Jesus, the essential Son of God. There was a school of thought in nineteenthcentury liberal theology that proclaimed the central idea of Christianity to be “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”2 Turned into a system, this idea of universal fatherhood was theologically disastrous. Classic FOGBOM (Fatherhood Of God, Brotherhood Of Man) liberalism made the gospel seem like a description of a general state of affairs rather than an announcement of what God has done in Christ; it was never able to account for sin or recognize the need for a costly redemption; and it quickly lost its grip on the doctrine of the Trinity.

But it is not only nineteenth-century liberals who made the mistake of thinking first of creation when they hear God called “Father.” It is an easy mistake to make if we let our minds be guided by a general symbolism of fatherhood instead of by the main lines of biblical teaching. The generalized, cosmic idea of fatherhood is probably one of the reasons many people visualize God as an old, white-haired, bearded man. God the cosmic father is always devolving into God the cosmic grandpa in the popular mind. Scripture, by contrast, points to something very specific and much less sentimental when it calls God “the Father.” It points to the fact that within the life of the one God, there is an eternal relationship of fatherhood and sonship. The first person is Father for Trinitarian reasons first of all. He is the Father of the Son by definition. That is who he is. Consequent to that is what he does: he acts to become the Father of those whom he predestined for adoption as sons (Eph. 1:5). Finally, in an extended or poetic sense, it may sometimes be appropriate to depict God’s general love and care for all his creatures by using a parenting metaphor. But to start with cosmic fatherhood is exactly backwards. God did not have the world as his son; he so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16).

The same logic that we have seen with the Father and the Son applies also to the Holy Spirit: he is who he is for Trinitarian reasons, as the eternal third person of the Trinity. Based on that Trinitarian identity in which he exists together with the Father and the Son, he freely steps into the history of salvation and does what he does. The work of the Spirit is closely linked to that of the Son at every point. It is the Spirit who brings about the Son’s incarnation by causing his conception in the womb of the virgin. It is the Spirit who anoints and empowers the Son in his messianic mission. And the Spirit is finally, at Pentecost, poured out on all flesh only when the Son’s work is completed. The Spirit’s work is to indwell believers, applying the work of Christ directly and personally to them. He is who he is as the eternal Spirit, and he does what he does in salvation history as the Spirit of Pentecost.

Because the eternal Son became the incarnate Son, we had much to say about his sonship. Tracing the line back from his appearance in Bethlehem is how we learned anything about the Trinity at all, for this is the central event in which God revealed that he had a Son. We had relatively less to say about the Father, and most of it was directly connected with the Son: the Father is the person of the Trinity who is obviously at the other end of the relationship that makes the Son the Son. But we have least of all to say about the eternal divine person who is the Holy Spirit, not because he is any less God, or any less a person, or any less related to the other persons of the Trinity. He is all those things, just as fully as the Father and the Son are. But his self-revelation is less direct than the Son’s, and his relationship to the other persons is not as immediately evident as the Son’s and Father’s, whose mutual relationship is built into their very names. We should avoid the urge to fabricate more concrete things than have actually been revealed about the Spirit or to pretend that our knowledge of the Spirit’s corner of the Trinitarian triangle is as intricately detailed and elaborated as the Son’s.

Notes:

  1. For a brief, accessible explanation of eternal sonship and a refutation of alternative views, see John MacArthur, “Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ,” accessed October 3, 2016, http:// www.gty.org/Resources/Articles/593.
  2. The most influential statement of the case for “the fatherhood of God and the infinite value of the human soul” was by Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? (New York: Putnam’s, 1902). G. E. Ladd refutes the classic liberal case in his “God the Father” article in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, E–J, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 511.

This article is adapted from The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders.

Fred Sanders (PhD, Graduate Theological Union) is professor of theology at the Torrey Honors College at Biola University. Sanders is the author of The Deep Things of God and blogs at fredfredfred.com.

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