“Once Your enemy, now seated at Your table, Jesus, thank You.”1 These words punctuate the chorus of a familiar hymn sung in many churches. As you read these words, which part is more difficult to believe? The fact that you were once an enemy or that in Christ, you are welcome, like family, at God’s table? It depends on how you see yourself and how you think God sees you.
Were we really enemies of God? And, if so, does God indeed welcome us in the most intimate setting of fellowship with him? I think so. The song gets it right. And when we understand this, then things begin to change for us. When we know what we deserve and what God gives us instead, we start to experience increasing gratitude, humility, security, and evangelistic zeal. God is not ashamed of welcoming and identifying with his former enemies. Such people stand out as monuments of his grace.
Theological Framework
Minimizing sin has a dangerous side-effect. It minimizes grace. By downplaying how lost we were, we run the risk of underappreciating how staggering the rescue is. It’s one thing for me to tell you that I got lost in a shopping mall and couldn’t find the way back to where I parked. But it’s quite another matter to be lost in the mountains of Colorado before being dramatically recovered by a mountain rescue unit. When thinking about how sin separates us from God, we have to be clear on the degree of the problem. Otherwise, we risk downgrading the gospel to a friendly volunteer at a kiosk giving directions rather than a breathtaking rescue mission.
The biblical teaching is clear, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Every single person who has ever lived, except for the Lord Jesus, has sinned. A sin is a violation of God’s word (1 John 3:4), either by failing to do what God says or by doing what God says not to do. But that’s not all. Our natural disposition is opposition to God. We were born into this fallen state of rebellion. All of us are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). And this fallen state leads to sinful actions. Sin and separation from God don’t lie dormant. Sin is active. Therefore, all people are sinners both by nature and by choice.
The language the Bible uses to describe people in their unconverted state can be jolting. I think that’s the point. The words are meant to rattle us. Some of the descriptions of unbelievers include “wicked” (Ps. 10:3); “a slave to sin” (John 8:34); “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness” (Rom 1:29); “haters of God” (Rom. 1:30); “inventors of evil” (Rom. 1:30); “enemies” (Rom. 5:10); “hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7); “evil” (2 Thess. 3:2); and “foolish” (Titus 3:3). This language doesn’t reflect ambivalence but rather active opposition to God. In terms of our status before God, we are all sinners, but the degree of expression may differ. As Spurgeon says, “They are all in the mire; but they have not all sunk to an equal depth in it.”2 While some people’s sins may be more pronounced than others, all people—even you and me—-stand naturally opposed to God.
In a summary form, the apostle Paul writes that we “once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). You can see the progression here. Alienation refers to a status; by nature we are separated from God. Hostility in mind is a mind at war with God. This translates into the action Paul labels as “evil deeds.” Even though he hadn’t met the Christians in Colossae and the surrounding regions (Col. 2:1), Paul confidently labels them this way. How could he do this without knowing them personally, without sizing them up morally? Because this is the common condition for all people. Our natural state is helplessly and hopelessly depraved. This is what it means to be lost.
But God acts. He pursues us. He rescues the rebels. Those who were enemies are reconciled through the death of Christ (Col. 1:21–22). Those who were alienated, hostile in mind, and doing evil deeds are now reconciled to God. And one day they will be presented “holy, blameless, and above reproach before him” (Col. 1:22).
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Now and then, we come across a scene in a book, in a film, or in the news that reflects this type of radical reconciliation. And when we do, it shakes us and brings with it a mandatory moment of silence. One example came in a courtroom in 2019. After an off-duty police officer killed his brother, Brandt Jean was allowed to give a victim impact statement. He addressed Amber Guyger, the woman who shot his brother:
If you truly are sorry, I can speak for myself, I forgive, and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you. And I don’t think anyone can say it—again I’m speaking for myself—but I love you just like anyone else. And I’m not gonna say I hope you rot and die just like my brother did, but I presently want the best for you.3
Then he asked the judge if he could hug Ms. Guyger. The judge permitted, and the image of a grieving, yet forgiving, brother hugging the woman who took his brother’s life flooded the news. It challenged the limits of forgiveness and the possibility of reconciliation. To forgive and embrace someone who caused such pain is not common. It’s extraordinary. It’s shocking grace.
Yet, as riveting as this scene was, our reconciliation to God is ratcheted up a few levels. Our crimes against God are even more heinous because God is so holy. And while people commonly show remorse for the consequences of sin, remorse is rarely expressed for the sinfulness of the sin itself. We hate how sin makes us feel. We fear sin’s repercussions or its punishments in this life, but we do not hate how it dishonors God. Looking through the lenses of God’s infinite holiness and our sin’s ugliness, we begin to better appreciate God moving toward his enemies with the embrace of the gospel. By means of his grace, he says, “I love you. I forgive you. I want you to be part of my family.”
Think again about the above-quoted song lyrics: “Once Your enemy, now seated at Your table, Jesus, thank You.” Perhaps you see more clearly the depth of our alienation from God and the loving grace that sets your place at the family table. But if you’re like me, then you’re prone to forget this, especially when you sin or remember things you’ve done. This is why it’s good to see through the eyes of Christ and understand how he looks at those who opposed him. He’s not ashamed of them. Instead, he loves them. He delights in conquering them with his grace and in welcoming them to his feast. Let me show you a couple of biblical examples to make my point and, in doing so, encourage you about the significance and security of the believer’s position in Christ.
He pursues us. He rescues the rebels. Those who were enemies are reconciled through the death of Christ.
Some Implications
Since every person is naturally born with the status of an enemy of God, everyone can relate in some way to these stories of opposition. Though our experiences and sins may be different, nevertheless, our standing apart from Christ is the same. Therefore, it is good for our souls to revisit these examples of how Jesus prioritizes and pursues his enemies. Consider these brief reflections in closing.
Jesus delights to save his enemies. Everything Christ does, he does for the glory of God. The plucking of one sinner from the path of destruction ignites a chorus of rejoicing in heaven (Luke 15:10). If you have come to Christ, you must know that heaven—even the Prince of heaven—rejoices.
Those who oppose God are prospects for grace. We might be tempted to write off certain people as too far from God. But is this true? What does the family photo of Jesus teach us? To paraphrase John Newton, none are so bad that the gospel cannot be their ground for hope, and none are so good as to have any hope without it.4Consider Stephen. The crowd responded to his faithful proclamation of the gospel by pelting him with rocks. How did he respond to that? In his last breaths, he prayed for them, “And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:60). Don’t forget that Saul of Tarsus was a member of that violent mob. The Lord answered Stephen’s dying prayer. Our Lord can cure man’s arrogance. He can lead a man to the knowledge of the evils of his heart.5 May God help us to pray, preach, and share the gospel like we believe that God delights to save his enemies.
Our history does not eclipse our status. Paul was a bad guy; there is no doubt. But his past didn’t hang over him. God made him a new person and used him significantly. His former life never defined him but only served as an encouraging example of the kind of mercy people who come to Jesus should expect to receive. In Philippians 3, Paul looks back to who he was (Phil. 3:4–6). Then he reminds himself and his readers of the privilege of the grace of Christ (Phil. 3:7–10). And then he writes words that should be especially precious to those who formerly lived in active opposition to Christ, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13–14). Even though Paul, you, and I were formerly enemies of God, as soon as we come to Christ, we are welcomed at his table. We forget what lies behind, and we press on toward the goal. With our minds set on the loveliness of Christ (Phil. 4:8), we go out, just as he has sent us, to call others home.
Could you imagine how our churches might change if we looked at people the way Jesus does?
Notes:
Pat Sczebel, “Jesus, Thank You,” Sovereign Grace Music, https://sovereigngracemusic.org/
C. H. Spurgeon, “A Great Gospel for Great Sinners,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1885), 31:231.
Ashley Killough, Darran Simon, and Ed Lavandera, “His Hug of Forgiveness Shocked the Country. Yet He Still Won’t Watch the Video from That Moment,” CNN, December 8, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/.
John Newton, The Works of John Newton, 6 vols. (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1824), 2:278.
Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan, 12 vols. (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1849), 4:369.
Erik Raymond is the senior pastor at Redeemer Fellowship Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. He is the author of Chasing Contentment: Trusting God in a Discontented Age and a frequent contributor to many websites and periodicals. He blogs regularly at Ordinary Pastor, hosted by the Gospel Coalition.
According to Jesus, the people who are ashamed of him are those who refuse to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. They’ve considered Jesus unworthy of their devotion and obedience.
We feel shame when some fault, imperfection, or vulnerability of ours conflicts with what we think we should be. Finding this shameful, we attempt to hide.
Sin is not breaking a petty taboo or overstepping a mere tradition. Sin violates the sacred covenant God made with us. Sin also tears down the beautiful solidarity he built among us.
Sin is not breaking a petty taboo or overstepping a mere tradition. Sin violates the sacred covenant God made with us. Sin also tears down the beautiful solidarity he built among us.
For example, in Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance, he uses three words to describe his sin with utter realism:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin! (Ps. 51:1–2)
First, “transgression.” That is, willful, open-eyed, deliberate revolt against God. David knew exactly what he doing when he took another man’s wife and got her pregnant (2 Sam. 11). He defied God. His behavior was like giving God the finger. This is the same word used for Joseph’s brothers deliberately selling him out (Gen. 50:17). It wasn’t a mere mistake.
What on earth was David thinking? Maybe he was feeling confined by his life of obeying God. Maybe he was feeling sorry for himself, like God owed him. Maybe he started thinking, “Why not break free and explore my options?” Restless self-pity gets us doing horrendous things.
Second, “iniquity.” That is, a warped, twisted, destructive act. This word appears in Isaiah 24:1, where the Lord “will twist” the earth’s surface into an unnatural form. The English word iniquity sounds quaint, old-fashioned. But think of Gollum, that weird little villain in The Lord of the Rings. He wasn’t himself anymore. He had descended into something bizarre. Like Gollum, David distorted and degraded his God-given sexuality from life-giving to life-taking, from noble to repulsive.
Iniquity is like taking a smartphone—brilliant communications technology—and using it to hammer nails. That isn’t what a smartphone is for. It will break.
Third, “sin.” That is, missing the mark or losing one’s way. This word appears in Judges 20:16, where some highly skilled men could sling a stone “and not miss.” We too miss when the map says, “To get home, turn right here.” But we think, “I know a better way,” and we turn left. No surprise, then, that we get lost, waste time, show up late, disappoint others, and more. Sin is like trying to get healthy eating junk food. It can’t work. Sin can only miss out and let us down. We end up lost, isolated, depressed—and too proud to admit it.
David sums it up in Psalm 51:4: “[I have] done what is evil in your sight.” “Evil” is a strong word! Can we be honest enough to use that word to describe things we have done, not just what other people have done?
In each kind of wrong—defying God, misusing his gifts, veering off from his path—we end up in the same low place, with losses and injuries and sadness we didn’t foresee. On his thirty-sixth birthday, the brilliant Lord Byron, still a young man, wrote this:
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!1
It’s not as though, if we just sin more cleverly, we can avoid those painful outcomes. No, sin always entraps us in consequences that leave us defeated and shamed. Then our tears flow. Rock bottom, for sure!
How Does God Feel About Us Now?
Does God look at sinners like us with disgust? Why shouldn’t he? Look at what we’ve done—or left undone! What hope do people like us have by now? The Bible shows us the heart of God for sinners like us, who don’t deserve God. Check this out:
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . .
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender. . . .
For I am God and not a man,
he Holy One in your midst. (Hos. 11:8–9)
You are not such a spectacular sinner that your sin can defeat the Savior.
God is agonizing over his people. What grieves his heart, more than their sins against him, is the thought of not having them as his people. “How can I give you up?” is his way of saying, “I could never give you up!” To God, breaking covenant with us is unthinkable, even when we hurt him. And he feels such tender compassion, not because he’s bending his rules, but precisely because he is God: “For I am God and not a man.” In other words, “I am not touchy and explosive and vindictive, like you. I am the Holy One. I am upholding all that it means for me to be God, right in your midst. The door to your better future opens here: my endless capacity to love you.”2
Behold, the God of grace!
And don’t tell him he’s wrong to be so kind. His grace does not need your correction. You need to accept his grace and stop keeping your distance and run to him and fall into his arms. What are you waiting for?
The Bible says Jesus is our sympathetic high priest (Heb. 4:15). The Bible says he deals “gently with the ignorant and wayward” (Heb. 5:2). The Bible is clear: God does not match our sins with his grace. He overmatches our increased sins with his surplus of hyper-grace (Rom. 5:20). His greatest glory is how he responds disproportionately to our sins upon sins with his “grace upon grace” (John 1:16). The whole logical structure of the biblical gospel is summed up in two simple words: “much more” (Rom. 5:15, 17). Your worst sin is far overshadowed by his “much more” grace.
Excuse me for being blunt, but you’ve met your match. You are not such a spectacular sinner that your sin can defeat the Savior. You might as well give in, come out of hiding, and wave the white flag of surrender. What awaits you and me, right down at our lowest rock bottom, is the finished work of Christ on the cross for the undeserving. And we will find such an astonishing hope nowhere else.
All we do in response, all we can do, is receive his grace with the empty hands of faith—and yes, even the dirty hands of sin.
Notes:
Lord Byron, “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year,” PoetryVerse, https://www.poetryverse.com/.
Cf. Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 836.
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.
Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry discuss the connection between gospel doctrine and gospel culture and share what it looks like when a church is theologically careful but culturally sick.
Parents, has your child ever said, “No! Don’t turn off my screen!” Why is too much screen time not good for your child? We have some thoughts that the Bible has pointed us to. As we think about how Christians evaluate technology and screen time, it’s admittedly challenging because there’s no Bible verse that says, “Thou shalt not use an iPad,” or a commandment that says “You can have twenty-five minutes of screen time per day.”
So as we think about this issue, there’s prudence and wisdom involved. I think wisdom and prudence are best informed by what we see in Genesis 1. When God creates us as human beings, our existence is an embodied existence—meaning, it’s something that is real, it’s earthy, it’s there—which means our best attempts to remove real friendships and real relationships and exchange that with a Zoom screen or a FaceTime call is never going to be truly adequate.
Please hear me: I’m not saying we can’t use Zoom or that FaceTime is bad. No, those things can actually be really good. But they shouldn’t be substitutes for what God has designed for us, which is to honor the reality that this life is meant to be lived in fellowship with our friends and like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ.
As we’ve thought about technology in our own home, we’ve thought about it less as an on-off switch and more as a dimmer switch. And so as we’re training our children, we are trying to give them a little bit more responsibility over their technology that they can handle. As we’ve been working with our thirteen-year-old daughter, we’ve been trying to train her with technology a little bit at a time. As we're training her, we’re trying to help her understand that technology is not all bad. Technology can actually be used as a good thing. God gave dominion over the earth when he gave it to Adam and Eve. He gave us dominion over things in order to create with the human creativity he designed us with. And so technology is flowing out of that creativity.
But technology can also be dangerous, sinful, and unrighteous. And so we have to train our children to start to see those differences and be responsible for those. We also want to help our daughter understand that there are going to be times when she has to be aware that what’s going inside of her heart may not be good, and she has to start safeguarding her heart by limiting what’s going in and seeing that what goes in comes out. We are a part of that training of safeguarding her heart and her mind.
God wants us to have physical, intimate, face-to-face community.
We also don’t want her to get so caught up in digital relationships that she loses her face-to-face relationships. God wants us to have physical, intimate, face-to-face community. And so we want to help her limit her technology so that she can have real, live, intimate community relationships.
And finally, we have to parent, and she has to obey. God has authority over us. He safeguards us. He limits us in different ways. And we have authority over our children, to limit and safeguard them. There are going to be times when they don’t agree with what we say when we tell them to turn off their devices, but they have to obey us, because we are doing what we feel is right for them. They are required to obey us just as we are required to obey God—even though sometimes we might not like the limits that he puts on our lives as well. So parents, stand strong against the technology that is looming in your household, and do your best to help transfer the responsibility to your kids, and guard them while you’re doing that.
Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an associate dean in the School of Theology. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.
Christian Walker is an accomplished curriculum writer and educator with experience both directing a large children’s ministry in a local church setting as well as spending numerous years in elementary education. She is a teacher at a classical Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky. She resides with her husband and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.
As a parent, we’re often trying to help our kids overcome fears that they might be encountering in their lives. But we have to remember that God never promises bad things won't happen to us.
Betrayal crushes us, because real relationships are built on trust. Real friendship is grounded in the solid bedrock of steady faithfulness. When we trust someone, we take a risk.
Betrayal crushes us, because real relationships are built on trust. Real friendship is grounded in the solid bedrock of steady faithfulness we can count on through thick and thin. When we trust someone, we take a risk. We hand over to them something of ourselves deep within. We become vulnerable. If our trust is then violated, it isn’t just our plans that get changed. Our hearts get broken. It couldn’t be more personal—and sharply felt.
The Bible helps us understand why so much is at stake in these bonds we form together. We are not trivial beings, not the way God created us. And the glory of it all shines most brightly in our relationships—or it should, anyway. Scripture shows us the way-down-deep glory, the divine glory, in faithful human relationships. We see it again and again in one of the Bible’s central themes: covenant.
For example, the preface to the whole Bible is Genesis 1–11. There God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you” (Gen. 6:18). What was God doing by saying that? He was committing himself. He didn’t have to. Nobody even asked him to. But God got involved—willingly, sincerely. He obligated himself, so that he couldn’t back out, no matter what it would cost him.1 Why would God stick his neck out like that? Because he cares. He really does care about this train-wreck world. And he’s committed to taking us all the way, to where our happiness will never end.
Rock-solid covenantal faithfulness—God sums up the beauty of it when he says to us, as he does repeatedly, “I will be your God, and you will be my people” (see Gen. 17:7; Ex. 6:7; etc.). In other words, “Here is my solemn promise to you, always and forever. I will be God to you—for all that God is worth. And you will be my people—my own dear ones. We will always be together, whatever it costs me.” And here is my point. Doing life together in that covenantal way is the big, wraparound category for everything else in the whole Bible (Gal. 3:15–29). It is the key insight into the God-defined reality we are living in.
Here’s why I think that’s amazing. Covenant means that we’ve parachuted into a universe where Ultimate Reality is not politics, not even physics, but relationships—personal, lasting, beautiful relationships of promises made and promises kept. It’s who God is, and who God made us to be. Other gods aren’t covenantal. “The idea of a covenant between a deity and a people is unknown to us from other religions and cultures.”2 Covenant living is uniquely Christian. And if a covenant-keeping God created us to be covenant-keeping people together, then violating trust is not only the betrayal of a friend. It is a stab in God’s back.
Let’s all admit how we’ve let others down. But part of God’s covenant with us is to help us even there. He promises to create in us new hearts that will do the right thing, no matter what (Jer. 31:31–34).
The bottom line is this. Covenantal relationships of commitment and trust are not a human invention we can modify for our convenience. The beauty of costly faithfulness is a divine gift worthy of our reverence. Covenantal living is essential to human flourishing. We live together in community by making promises and keeping promises. God dignifies all our relationships with one another with covenantal dynamics.
Here’s how practical it gets. When I walk into a room, in that moment I literally owe everyone there my best. And they owe me their best. We aren’t always good at it. But let’s be clear in our resolve to be faithful to one another, by God’s grace. The essence of our beauty together is a “you can count on me” vulnerability.
When your trust was violated, you weren’t crazy to feel how much was really on the line. Something truly worthy was being trashed. Keeping our word with one another glorifies God and honors people. But betrayal is living hell.
Somewhere I heard Jordan Peterson point out that, in Dante’s Inferno, the deepest level of hell is reserved for treacherous people guilty of betrayal. And their hell is not a lake of fire but of ice. One Dante scholar explains: “This is Dante’s symbolic equivalent of the final guilt. The treacheries of these souls were denials of love and of all human warmth. Only the remorseless dead center of the ice will serve to express their natures.”3 No wonder you found betrayal utterly chilling. What came after you was seriously evil.
There is only one thing more costly than giving our hearts away. And that is not giving our hearts away at all.
There is only one thing more costly than giving our hearts away. And that is not giving our hearts away at all. In his classic work The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis helps us see the alternatives always before us:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.4
Thank you for giving your heart away. Even though your trust was broken, still, you stepped into covenant. You did the Christlike thing. Way to go! The Lord will honor you for staying true to him when it was costly.
This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. (1 John 3:11–12)
Maybe you weren’t perfect in that covenant relationship. But you were Christian. In fact, that was your crime. It was your integrity that made you someone’s sacrificial lamb.
Notes:
Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 287: “Covenant means ‘a solemn commitment of oneself to undertake an obligation.’ ”
Moishe Weinfeld, “be rith,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 90 (1970): 278, quoted in Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 148.
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Modern Library, 1996), 270.
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1960), 169.
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.
Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend . . .
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.
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:
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.
John Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 643.
Paul Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2009), 64–65.
Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, “Holy Spirit” (Getty Music Label, 2019).
Keith Getty, quoted in Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters (blog), August 10, 2012, worshipmatters.com/2012/08/10/holy-spirit-breath-of-god-gettytownend-hymn/.
Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer, ed. J. Ligon Duncan (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1994), 24–25.
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.
The eternal communion of Father, Son, and Spirit is the grounds for our communion with him and one another. Our triune God, simple and perfect for all of eternity, has always been the one God.
There are better ways and worse ways to explain the Trinity. We can describe a pie chart where we split God up into parts, and this is one of the worst ways to explain the Trinity.
Looking at prayers that came from those before us was just an opportunity for me to personally dive into where the church has been and to understand that we’re not alone.
Doug O’Donnell discusses the new Daily Liturgy Devotional, sharing how he really wrote the book for himself first and foremost, and how it has impacted his devotional life recently.
We have to remember that the vine dresser loves the vine, and the vinedresser loves the branches. And his pruning is not just hacking away or lopping off things carelessly, but he’s very, careful.
Pruning does sound painful, doesn’t it? And so I think it’s important to remember who’s doing the pruning. Scripture says, “My Father is the vinedresser . . . I am the vine; you are the branches” (John 15:1, 5).
We have to remember that the vinedresser loves the vine, and the vinedresser loves the branches. His pruning is not just hacking away or lopping off things carelessly, but he’s very careful. He is very precise, and he only removes and takes away that which hinders bearing fruit. That’s what the text says.
And in fact, it says, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2). So we need to remember who he’s pruning. He’s pruning those who are abiding in Christ.
The word abide actually means “to remain” or “to endure.” And so there’s a sense that as we abide in Christ, we trust the vine dresser enough to remain under his pruning. We trust that he is doing a good work—that he is taking things away from us that are not good for us and that hinder the fruit of sanctification in our own lives and also the things that hinder the fruit of good works in our lives. And so the Father, because he is a loving vine dresser, is going to carefully take those things away. And so our job as the branch is to abide, to remain, to trust. And there is great joy in that.
Courtney Doctor (MDiv, Covenant Theological Seminary) serves as the director of women’s initiatives for the Gospel Coalition. She is a Bible teacher and the author of From Garden to Glory as well as several Bible studies, including Steadfast; Remember Your Joy; and In View of God’s Mercies: The Gift of the Gospel in Romans.
Jesus commands that we go on repenting, coming, believing, loving, and listening. The transformation of repentance continues. Coming to Jesus again and again continues.
On good days, the fruit of the Spirit list is an encouraging list—a reminder that the Spirit is at work in you. On bad days, it can be a crushing list—a testimony to how far you have yet to go.
Courtney Doctor and Joanna Kimbrel delve into the key questions and concerns that arise in women's ministry, touching on practical issues like how to get started and how to encourage discipleship.
Of all the harrowing images from the Second World War, of mushroom clouds and floating corpses, one of them stands out to me. The picture was taken in 1942, outside Ivanhorod in Ukraine. A mother is running from left to right, holding and perhaps shielding her child.
The scene itself was not rare. It played out tens of millions of times, across dozens of nations, to families long forgotten to history.
What’s rare is that someone chose to capture the scene on film, someone who approved of what that photograph depicted.
At left stands a German soldier, rifle aimed at the mother and child. In just a split second after this picture was taken, mother and child would both be dead.
As I write, we have just learned the fate of a Jewish family captured in the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023. Terrorists from Gaza captured the Bibas family, then killed the mother, Shiri, and her two sons in captivity. One child strangled to death by bare hands was four years old. The other, with red hair like his brother, was just ten months old.
As I write, we have also just commemorated the three-year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine in what Vladimir Putin termed a de-Nazifying campaign. And just like that, the fields of Ivanhorod don’t feel so far away, and 1942 doesn’t feel like so long ago.
So, where is God in a world with so much evil?
That’s a question I can’t avoid asking when I look around the world today. And it’s a question I certainly can’t avoid asking when I look to history. Can this fallen, brutal, cruel world really be God’s plan? Every night my family gathers in our home library to read the Bible, sing, and pray. My older son often asks about the war in Ukraine. How do I answer? What is God’s answer to our many, fervent prayers?
Stupid Kindness
When we turn to Scripture, we find anything but safe and sanitary answers. Instead, we find many of the most faithful, inspired writers of Scripture asking the same hard questions. We remember Lamentations 3 for being one of the most beautiful passages in all the Bible, the inspiration for one of the greatest songs in our hymnbook. We read in Lamentations 3:21–24:
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
Go a little further in the chapter, though, and the prophet Jeremiah’s perspective, or at least tone, begins to change and darken. We read in Lamentations 3:43–48;
“You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us,
killing without pity;
you have wrapped yourself with a cloud
so that no prayer can pass through.
You have made us scum and garbage
among the peoples.
“All our enemies
open their mouths against us;
panic and pitfall have come upon us,
devastation and destruction;
my eyes flow with rivers of tears
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
You can imagine these words in the mind and on the lips of Shiri Bibas as she huddled in the family safe room in Nir Oz and tried to shield her two sons in captivity. You can see the look of sheer terror on her face, as the ordeal that would lead to her death and the death of her sons was captured on video by terrorists.
And you can imagine these words, this wild swing of emotions, when Jewish families finally debarked from cattle cars at concentration camps to a fate we know in hindsight was already sealed. Maybe no one has captured these emotions more poignantly than Vasily Grossman in his twentieth-century classic novel Life and Fate. His Jewish mother died in Berdichev, Ukraine at the hands of the invading Germans in 1941.
Grossman wrote of the elation Jews felt when they escaped the stinking, cramped trains and were told they were going straight to the bath house. “No merciful God,” Grossman wrote, “could have thought of anything kinder.”
Soon, of course, they learned the reality. Within minutes, the elderly, women, and children had been gassed to death and then cremated. How can such evil even be comprehended? How could the fathers and husbands carry on in their grief?
“How can he continue to exist,” Grossman wrote, “seeing the glow in the sky flaring up with renewed strength? Now the hands he had kissed must be burning, now the eyes that had admired him, now the hair whose smell he could recognize in the darkness, now his children, his wife, his mother.”
Grossman, a veteran of the Red Army, became famous for questioning whether the Soviets and Nazis were really so different, given their shared lust for mass murder. But he became one of the most beloved and respected writers of the 20th century because of his gift for depicting poignant scenes of love within the horrors of the Holocaust. You feel the ache in his pen for a love that can never be extinguished, the love between a mother and her son.
“This kindness, this stupid kindness, is what is most truly human in a human being,” Grossman wrote. “It is what sets man apart, the highest achievement of his soul. No, it says, life is not evil!”
Lament for Evil
I wrote the new book Where Is God in a World with So Much Evil? as a lament for evil—past, present, and future. I wrote about the image of God and countless attempts to snuff out life and blame its Author. I wrote about the evil within—our war against the world, the flesh, and the devil—and our desperate need for the steadfast love of a Lord whose mercies never end.
The problem of evil is a problem of humanity and humility. Asking God hard questions is acceptable, even welcome. It’s sanctioned by Scripture and part of what it means to be made in God’s image. The problem, then, is that we don’t always like his answers. Because in Scripture, as in history, we see that we are capable of both better and worse than we imagine.
“Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness,” Grossman observed. “The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed—while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”
Truth is the first victim of any great evil. There is much we don’t understand about God’s ways in the world. Evil begins, as it did in the Garden, when we imagine we know better than he does, when we take vengeance into our own hands, when we divide people between good and evil instead of identifying the sin that separates us from God. Only Christ can set us free from the cycle of revenge that makes our world go ‘round (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 5:1).
Lamentations never resolves the tensions we encounter in chapter three. At the end of the book, we read in Lamentations 5:19–22:
But you, O LORD, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
Why do you forget us forever,
why do you forsake us for so many days?
Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old—
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and you remain exceedingly angry with us.
When we look to the cross, we find the resolution God planned from before the beginning. Seeing Christ, we know God has not rejected us. God is not angry with his people because, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
So, where is God in a world with so much evil? Look to Christ—the answer to our prayers, the guarantee of our future, the victor over sin and death.
Collin Hansen (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the vice president for content and editor in chief for the Gospel Coalition and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and wrote Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation. He is an adjunct professor and cochair of the advisory board at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. You can follow him on X at @collinhansen.
What problems with our lives, priorities, and even theology do we not recognize? What would it look like to wake up to our own blind spots and to lovingly engage with those with whom we disagree?
Collin Hansen shares insights on deepening your theological convictions in the age of rampant de-conversion and de-churching with a tool that has stood the test of time: catechisms.
For many Christians—and pastors included—when you take a first look or a fresh look at the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1, there can be a little bit of surprise that the first one mentioned is not that he’s a Christian and regenerate. Paul assumes that. It’s not some other attribute which we might consider central to pastoral ministry. Rather, it’s this umbrella term, and it might be a strange term to many of us: “above reproach.”
What does it mean to be “above reproach”? Some ears, maybe tender consciences, hear “above reproach” and think that’s unattainable. Maybe they think of it as a kind of blamelessness or even an utter sinlessness. That’s not what “above reproach” means. “Above reproach” is a very outward-oriented, public-facing qualification. It gets set right at the beginning of the list of elder qualifications—the public nature of the office. Other ears might hear “above reproach” as a really low bar, meaning that I don’t need to have some taint on my public reputation. For many people, that’s not very difficult, and they think this is a really low bar and attainable.
But one thing that it does get at is in addition to the public nature of the office, the exemplary function of the Christian ministry of pastors and elders, they need not be world-class orators or the greatest minds in the world or have administrative savvy. They are typically normal, healthy, exemplary Christians.
The elders are meant to embody—in their leadership and in their teaching—the kind of healthy Christians that we want the whole flock to grow toward. And so it’s important, given the public nature of the office and its exemplary function, that the elders be above reasonable reproach.
In other words, we want to be able to say about every pastor and elder in the church, “Be like him,” and not immediately need to qualify that. There are some men who, by virtue of their own indiscretion, both in the world’s eyes as much as in the churches, are not above reasonable public reproach. And they should not be pastors and elders.
There are others wrongfully have been accused, and we should stand by them and evaluate that clearly. But God means for the leaders in the local church to be those who are above that public reproach.
David Mathis serves as senior teacher and executive editor at desiringGod.org; a pastor at Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota; and an adjunct professor at Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis. He and his wife, Megan, have four children. He is the author of several books, including Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.
As Christians, we have our conflicts and controversies to grieve about our leaders, but the risen Christ has not left us to confusion about what to expect, pray for, and hold our leaders to account for.
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.
We All Need Reminders!
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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.
In this episode, Ray Ortlund talks through what it means when God says he dwells not only in the high and holy place but also way down low with those at rock bottom. Ray shares how even in betrayal, loneliness, feeling trapped in sin, or death, God is waiting there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you, Matt. It’s a privilege to be with you.
Matt Tully
Ray, you write in this new book that you’ve written, a book that, as the title suggests, is trying to meet people when they’re at their lowest, when their life has taken a turn that has maybe caught them by surprise and they just feel like they are at their wits end. And you write in the book that there are many ways for us in our lives to actually hit rock bottom. And I wonder if you could just start us off by telling us what that was like for you. Have you ever hit rock bottom? What did that look like?
Ray Ortlund
I think it’s inevitable. Sooner or later, something really bad comes and finds us. For me, it’s hard to talk about it, Matt, because it remains unresolved, and it’s still heartbreaking, and I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But I was among people who made promises and didn’t keep their promises. So I put my trust in their pledges and assurances. I think I should have done that, as I stand before the Lord, but they didn’t keep their end of the bargain, and it all fell apart, and it was very costly. And it shook me to my core. My parents and my Sunday school teachers and so forth, from the beginning of my life, taught me God loves you. And what then happened in that unfortunate experience was done in the name of Christ. So I actually had the terrifying thought, Have I been wrong all these years? Maybe the truth of my existence is that God hates my guts. That would explain everything. It would make sense. Now, I figured out soon enough that I was right the first time. God does love me. But then I had to go back and rebuild everything from the very deepest foundations. I couldn’t go back to my Christianity, as I had navigated it and understood it prior to that heartache, and just sort of tweak that, upgrade that, improve that. It was too shocking. It was too devastating. I had to rethink from the very deepest foundations. And that was a major turnaround in my life. It was the beginning of my real ministry and the beginning of a profound happiness that I didn’t experience prior to that. So I am living proof, Matt, that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
Matt Tully
It is just amazing. You hear anyone who’s been through profound suffering of some kind will kind of say the same thing, that there’s this clarity that can come. There’s a focus and even a recognition that things that maybe you thought were okay, things that seemed fine or healthy, maybe weren’t as healthy as you once believed they were. Why is it that suffering and pain—whether it’s the pain of betrayal, like maybe what you were talking about, or sickness, or some other just hardship that comes at us—why does that tend to have such a clarifying power in our lives?
Ray Ortlund
That’s a profound question, Matt. I wish I had a better answer for you, but let me just take a stab at it. I think we launch into life with the assumption that what we’re going to do is accumulate more and more. And I don’t mean just money and wealth and things, but we’re going to, as we go through life, accumulate more credibility and more assurance and more confidence and more skills and so forth. And we don’t realize that we don’t really get traction for the great things in life by gaining more and more, but we get traction by losing more and more. And we don’t go there until we’re forced to by circumstances, when we’re forced into shedding assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and so forth that have just seemed obvious our whole lives. When we finally let go of that and lose it, then we have that significant aha moment when the living Christ becomes more real—existentially real—than ever before. And that really is the point. It’s not a philosophical question. It’s not even a psychological question. It’s a matter of suffering the loss of all things that I may gain Christ (Phil. 3).
Matt Tully
You write in the book that there’s no rock bottom that’s too deep for Jesus. And that’s the main message, essentially, of the book is (spoiler alert) Jesus is there when we hit rock bottom, and that’s where he does his best work for us. But I could imagine somebody listening to that comment, listening to what you’ve said even thus far, and to those of us who have been Christians for a long time, who have been in the church maybe all our lives, who have walked with the Lord, a statement like that can just kind of sound a little trite. It can sound a little cliched. Of course Jesus meets us there. We’ve heard that. And it can be, if we’re honest with ourselves, it can be something that in the abstract doesn’t maybe sound all that comforting. It doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary. It just seems familiar. So, again, is that something that you would you say you’ve come to understand in a deeper way? You always would have said that Christ meets us in our lowest points, but is there something about going through it that you think has helped you to see that more clearly or more vibrantly?
Ray Ortlund
Didn’t C. S. Lewis say that pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world? That’s true for me, Matt. I have loved the Lord as long as I can remember. That’s a huge blessing. I am not disparaging that at all. I’m not taking anything away from his care for me all those many years growing up. But the other night, Jani and I were watching Father of the Bride. Do you know that movie?
Matt Tully
Oh yeah. Classic.
Ray Ortlund
The home where that movie is filmed was my neighborhood in California. That home was about three blocks away from our place, and so the street that you see there, I walked that street every day to school. I grew up in that world in a healthy family and a healthy church. I just thought this is normal, average reality for everybody. I had no idea. Now, again, I am so grateful to God for every way he blessed me all those years. But I was just saying to a friend this morning at breakfast that for me, personally, for far too long as a pastor, I didn’t really understand what people were lugging into church every Sunday. The questions, the fears, the regrets, the heartache, and so forth. And I am so grateful that I hit rock bottom. I finally began to understand what 99 percent of the human race is experiencing at this moment right now. And they’re entered into my heart this fierce sense of care for them, respect for them. I want to protect them. I want to provide a safe place for them to come in, take a deep breath, discover hope, rethink life, and so forth. I’m very earnest that they will not be mistreated. And so in Nashville at Emanuel Church, we used to have what we called the Emanuel mantra. We wanted to communicate that this is a church anybody can come to, and this is a Christian church for people who stink at Christianity. And we called it the Emanuel mantra. It was very simple: One, I’m a complete idiot. Two, my future is incredibly bright. Three, anybody can get in on this. I used to say that from the front, because I wanted to communicate to people who are just barely able to crawl into church, “You don’t have to serve. You don’t have to donate. If all you can do is just come and sit and heal, you’re so welcome here.” That, I think, is what this verse in Isaiah is talking about, that the High and Holy One dwells among the devastated, the crushed, the contrite, and the lowly.
Matt Tully
Let’s go there, Ray. Isaiah 57:15 is this verse. It’s a key verse for you and for this whole book. And I wonder if you can start off by reading it aloud for us, and then explain why you say it has these healing powers.
Ray Ortlund
In a way, this is the Christian gospel in one verse. It doesn’t explicitly mention the cross, but this is the hope and the good news of God’s grace for the undeserving in one verse. “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.’” So when we really need help, when life is not normal, when we are terrified, everything’s falling apart, where do go to find God? Well, that verse says God dwells, he lingers in, keeps an address at two places. One, way up high. It says, “I dwell in the high and holy place.” But we can’t go there. And he also dwells way down low among the lowly and the crushed and the contrite. So God dwells up in this heavenly place with angelic beings and also way down at the bottom of human society with devastated, terrified, exhausted people who are wondering if they even have a future anymore. And in between those two extremes—way up high, way down low—is a social space that I call the mushy middle. Now, the mushy middle is where the kids are above average, the career is on track, we have enough money to keep a lot of trouble out and a lot of comfort in, and “church” is a weekend option for upgrading our already pretty good life to an even better life. And the Jesus in that “church” is the chaplain to the mushy middle. And he never judges. He’s grateful to have our attention for a whole hour on a Sunday morning. He never disagrees with us, and he’s just there for us. You know what I mean? Now, there’s a lot of so-called Christianity like that. Some churches cater to the mushy middle. The problem is that it’s just harder to find the Lord there. Now, God is present everywhere, but he’s not present in the same way everywhere. And when he says in Isaiah 57:15, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and I dwell down among the crushed and lowly,” that means he manifests and reveals himself, gives himself, moves close in those two places—way up high and way down low. So that’s where we go to find God.
Matt Tully
What are some of the other warning signs? If someone’s listening right now and they don’t want to be in the mushy middle, they don’t want to be content with a passive, a little bit distant, uninterested kind of relationship with God, what are some of the warning signs that they should be looking at in their own life to assess, “Am I comfortable in this kind of Christianity?”
Ray Ortlund
One indicator would be how do I perceive people who are devastated? Do I look at them with disdain? Do I look at them and think, Well, I may not be perfect, but I’ve never sunk that low. If I regard people who are struggling and suffering as beneath me, well, Jesus told the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. And one, he says, stood there and said, “God, I thank you. I do all these good things, and I’m not like that guy over there.” Now, this man, the Pharisee, was Reformed. He said, “God, I thank you. I give you all the glory that I’m superior.” And the other man just basically crawled in on his hands and knees and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus said that man went home justified. The parable begins, “And Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they are righteous and despised others.” Those two always go together—one’s own complacency and self-admiration with disparaging others. So perceiving others in a condescending manner, looking down on them—that’s a pretty serious indicator I might be stuck in the mushy middle.
Matt Tully
I think this is a helpful nuance to what you’re saying, because I think someone could hear what you’ve said about the mushy middle and think, Well, does that just mean if there are good things going in my life, if my life isn’t in crisis right now, does that mean I’m necessarily there? But it seems like the real emphasis here is even how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive God and our need for God. Do we see him as kind of an optional add-on, or do we see that every day I desperately need his grace in my life?
Ray Ortlund
Yes. Thank you, Matt. That’s a great point. The Lord is so kind to us. He gives so many good gifts. Right now I’m doing some work in Ecclesiastes, and I’m really struck at how often Solomon uses the word “give” when he describes what God does. God gives joy. God gives work. We’re just being showered with his good gifts every day, and we praise and thank his holy name for every single one. And what if life were endless crisis and intensity? It would be unsustainable. It would crush us. I’m just saying, inevitably, there comes a time when everything falls apart and we have to rethink everything. And what I’m saying is that’s not a catastrophe, that’s not actually a disaster. That’s a breakthrough, by God’s grace. And that’s when he becomes more real than ever before. And even as we sort of recover and he graciously puts his hand under our chin up above the surface of the water, we begin to breathe again and we begin to hope again. We take with us, from then on, a more vivid heart awareness of his nearness, his care, his gentleness, his humility, his sensitivity, his thoughtfulness, his patience. Matt, Jani and I spent a day with David Powlison, the biblical counselor—what a dear, precious man he was—back in Philadelphia, right in the middle of our rock bottom. And it was just a great day. And several years later, I saw David at an event and he said, “Ray, how are you doing with all that?” And I said, “David, I’m embarrassed to admit to you how much it still bothers me and kind of eats at me.” And he said, “Ray, God is patient.” Oh, those three words! God is patient. Matt, he’s not looking at you and me with a stopwatch in his hand. Click. “Okay, come on. Let’s see some progress here. What are you waiting for?” It’s not like that. Where would we be without the patience of God? I don’t change quickly. I don’t change easily. But God is patient, and when we go to that place of deep sorrow and loss and heartache, he’s not only there; he’s there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, you mentioned your story of rock bottom, which is maybe in the broad category of betrayal. And that’s one of the categories that you address in the book. You hit on a few other ways that we can sometimes hit rock bottom. I wonder if you could just walk us through those. The next one that you highlight is when we feel trapped by our sin. Speak a little bit to the ways that God can use those feelings to make himself real to us.
Ray Ortlund
I forget which of our Puritan fathers it was, but he said it so well. “Satan shows the bait, but he hides the hook.” And we all know exactly what he’s talking about. We fall for a temptation, we’re restless—Following Jesus is so confining. Why can’t I think for myself? Why can’t I explore my options? And then we go do something really reckless. And then we find it gets its hooks into us. It’s easy to get in and hard to get out. Every single one of us understands that. Jesus said, “He who sins is a slave to sin.” It gets a power over us and inevitably, we go there. When we’re the ones who do the betraying, well, thank God for brick walls that we run into, where we finally have to face ourselves and own up and just fall before the Lord—and perhaps others—and confess our sins. James 5:16: “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” The Roman Catholic Church has confession as an ordinance in the formal structures of their ministry. I think James 5:16 is talking about something far more profound, but we Protestants, to whom do we confess our sins? And it says confess your sins to one another. So this is mutual. There’s a transparency in real Christianity. And then it says, “Pray for one another that you may be healed.” That’s where healing is found. When we’re trapped in our own sins, confession and prayer with Christian brothers and sisters, as is appropriate, however that might be appropriate in any given relationship.
Matt Tully
I know that’s something that you and your church have done for a long time very intentionally, but you’re right, it’s something that sounds good in theory, but we struggle to actually do that in our lives. Another one of the categories of hitting rock bottom that you address is loneliness. And loneliness is one of those struggles that just by definition, it’s something that we often struggle with alone. When we don’t have that community, that’s what it is. It’s the lack of true community. So how does God meet us if we’re feeling alone?
Ray Ortlund
Solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment. And it’s really, really hard to bear. So many people in our nation today say they have no friend. They’re lonely. Our relationships and community groups and institutions that used to bring us together when America was sort of a more traditional culture, they’ve broken down. And we’re all aware of it. We all suffer the effects. My dad used to say, and I love how he said this, he said, “Take a risk, and go give your heart away.” I would say to anyone who’s lonely, look around and ask yourself (you can pray about it as well, of course), Who do I respect? Who do I trust? And go have coffee with that person. Go stick your neck out. Open your heart and say, “You know, I would really like to go to a deeper place with some trusted friends. And I wonder if we could put together something that maybe we could try it for three months and see how it works. We could get together for coffee every other week or something like that, maybe read some Scripture. And I would love the privilege of becoming vulnerable and transparent with you. Do you want to think about that? Could we consider that?” Now, that’s a scary step to take. Okay, well, let’s take it. Let’s not let fear hold us back. In Hamlet, old Polonius says to his son, as I recall, about friends, “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried.” In other words, you’ve chosen them as friends, they’ve been tested, they’ve been found faithful. “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Okay, here’s a goal for every single one of us for the rest of our lives. We will stop losing friends. We will regain lost friends. We will make new friends, and there will be less loneliness in this world.
Matt Tully
A final category that you deal with, which is the ultimate enemy here that we all face at some point, is death itself. And I wonder if there’s someone even listening right now who is facing death, whether it’s their own death—they’ve just got some diagnosis or they have something that’s inevitably leading in a certain direction—or maybe they have a loved one that has recently passed away, and they’re just wrestling with the reality of death. It’s a reality that we so often push away from our consciousness until it becomes impossible to ignore. What does God say to us in the face of that death?
Ray Ortlund
Matt, that’s such a poignant question. Thank you for asking that. I read somewhere that back in the Victorian days of the nineteenth century, people talked frankly about death, but sex was the taboo subject. We have flipped that. We never stop talking about sex, but death, we have no idea. And then when we do go to a funeral, it’s not called a funeral. It’s called a celebration of life, and it’s sort of chipper and upbeat. Well, okay, I understand in a way what that’s about, but they’re going to call my funeral a funeral, Matt. I’m making sure of that.
Matt Tully
Why?
Ray Ortlund
A friend the other day called me a death non-avoidant person.
Matt Tully
That’s an interesting compliment, I guess.
Ray Ortlund
Yeah, I think it was meant to be, actually. Because, brother, if Christ is risen, and we’re following him into resurrection immortality, we can stop avoiding, fearing, ignoring death. We can look at it right in the face and say to death, “You sorry loser! You have no claim on me at all. You think you’re going to win? Well, I’m going to show you. I’m going to dance on your grave.” We should be cheerfully defiant of death. And I’m thinking of John 21, when Jesus speaks to Peter. Jesus describes to Peter how he’s going to die. I wish the Lord would do this for me. I would be very interested to know in advance. But he says that to him. This is in John chapter 21:9: “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.” Now, here’s why I love that so much, and it’s true for every Christian, not just Peter. When Peter died, he didn’t just die; he glorified God. Matt, you and I, unless the Lord comes back first, there’s going to come a day when we die. We have a birthday, we have a death day. We know our birthday, we don’t know our death day, but God has that day circled on his calendar for me and for you and for everyone listening. And when that day comes and we can no longer care for ourselves, we can no longer breathe, and our body shuts down, in that moment, we will be glorifying God. How? Well, John, the author, says, “And after saying this, Jesus said to Peter, ‘Follow me.’” Now, I love the realization, Matt, that you and I don’t have to orchestrate how we die so that we make sure our death glorifies God. All we do is today, at this moment, follow Jesus. And then tomorrow, follow Jesus. And then the day after that, follow Jesus. He’ll take care of everything. He will lead us to a death that will glorify God. For example, and this is actually quite spectacular, my own dad. The man was a saint. He had pulmonary fibrosis. His lungs became hardened and sort of leathery, and they didn’t process oxygen well, so he often felt as though he was underwater, fighting for breath, especially if he exerted himself. And I don’t know how this happened, but one time mom found him on the floor of their home in California. He had collapsed, fighting for breath. Mom, of course, was so distressed. She was there with him. And between gulping down some air, dad said to my mom, “No, Anne, no. This is a gift. It’s a gift.” Dad trusted God and he followed Christ, even when Christ led him into pulmonary fibrosis. And he received it not as a curse but as a gift. And then the day he died, in 2007, the family gathered there at his bedside, they read Scripture, they sang hymns, dad gave a word of patriarchal blessing to the family, and died. Now, Matt, I don’t know if I’m going to have consciousness to speak to Jani and my children. Maybe I’ll die in a car accident. I don’t know. God decides that. But what we know from John 21 is that if we will follow Jesus, he will lead us not only into each day but to that final day. And however it goes down for me, however it goes down for you and every listener, a Christian following Jesus doesn’t just die, but glorifies God. In fact, back in I can’t remember which chapter it is—I think Deuteronomy 32—God says to Moses, “Moses, I want you to go up on that mountain there and die and be gathered to your people.” What a remarkable command. God’s going to give me that command someday, and you, and every listener. And that means that when you and I die, we will be obeying God. Our last moment in this mortal world will be a moment of wonderful obedience, faithfulness, consecration. And then God said to Moses, “Die and be gathered to your people.” The Apostle’s Creed refers to the communion of saints. Matt, you’ve got that picture of Martin Luther up behind you there in your study. And Matt, when you walk into heaven, it may well be that there you’ll be and you will see the Lord. Maybe he’ll be fifteen feet away, and he will look at you, and you will look at him, and he will smile at you. And he might give you a great big bear hug. He’ll say, “Welcome.” And then all these other people, the communion of saints, you’ll be gathered to your people. Martin Luther might come up with a great big, vigorous handshake and invite you into a conversation about justification by faith alone! It’s just going to be wonderful. And we’re one heartbeat away from that glorious eternal welcome.
Matt Tully
I love that at the end of that chapter on dying, you share a little anecdote from World War II, where a newspaper reporter asked C. S. Lewis what he would do if the German Luftwaffe dropped a bomb on him in England. And obviously, England knew what it was like to be bombed by Germany. London was bombed. And Lewis had this incredible little line in response. I wonder if you could tell us what he said.
Ray Ortlund
It was an Australian journalist, and the British knew that the Germans were working on the atomic bomb. So it was not just any old bomb; it was the big one. And Lewis said, “If I see that bomb heading straight for me, I’m going to stick out my tongue at it and say, ‘Poo! You’re just a bomb. I am an immortal soul!’” I love that!
Matt Tully
That’s just amazing. But it has that perspective. It’s not that death is relativized for a Christian. We understand its limits. It has a power over us, but it’s a limited power. It’s a power that will be undone in the last day. And that’s such an incredible, incredible thing for us to hold on to as we face whatever our rock bottom might be, that ultimately it will be undone by our Lord.
Ray Ortlund
I think the Lord is calling us to face not only death, but all the sufferings that lead up to it. To face our sufferings and advancing age, decrepitude, injury, and so forth—face it all with a cheerful defiance. Death will take us out, but at every step along the way, we prevail by not being intimidated and not being disheartened, but by rejoicing in Christ every step of the way. In fact, Matt, here’s how we can wake up every day by God’s grace for his glory: we’re going to go give the devil a really bad day, and we’re going to have fun doing it, and we’re going to glorify Christ. And that doesn’t mean that we’re sparkling, perfect Christians. We have many weaknesses and many failings. But even that we offer to Christ cheerfully. He is our all-sufficient Savior. Martin Luther, again, he’s taught me more than anyone else about cheerful defiance because Jesus is our all-sufficient Savior. Jesus loves and saves sinners, Matt. Let’s admit it. If we want in on Jesus, we’ve got to be, as Isaiah says, among the contrite and lowly.
Matt Tully
Ray, to close this out here, I wonder if you might consider praying for those of us who are listening, but especially for the person who maybe does find him or herself in this rock bottom spot, whatever it might be. Maybe it is that betrayal. Maybe it is their own sin, where they just feel completely trapped. Or maybe it is some kind of sickness or illness, some physical infirmity that they can’t escape. I wonder if you would pray to close us, that they would understand what Christ means to them right now.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you for that. It’s a very sensitive suggestion. So many people are suffering right now, suffering deeply. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for being the Lord of the lowly. You dwell in a high and holy place, but also down here with us at our lowest, with us at our worst. You are not aloof. You’re not above it all. You’re not too busy for people like us. But you are down among us right here, right now. So we pray for everyone listening. Lord, give us an awareness—an existential, real-time awareness—of your nearness to us at this very moment. Your heart for us, your care for us, your presence. We are so grateful that we are not God forsaken. So grateful for your presence, your favor, your advocacy, your cross, your Spirit, your word. Now, Lord, whatever our next step is, help us to take that step right now. Give us that grace, Lord. Thank you. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Ray, for speaking with us today.
Ray Ortlund
Oh, it’s a privilege. Thank you, Matt.
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Rosaria Butterfield encourages us to engage our LGBTQ neighbors for Christ, highlighting how God used the radically ordinary hospitality of Christians to draw her to himself.
