Biblically speaking, masculinity is what long-term sanctification produces in Christian men and femininity what long-term sanctification produces in women.
How Do the Nonphysical Differences Between Men and Women Relate to the Physical Differences?
In C. S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Perelandra, Dr. Ransom is on the planet Venus and at one point witnesses an angelic celebration. He realizes that some of the angels seem to be masculine and some feminine. We’re told that Ransom “found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore.”1 There was something unmissable and yet also indefinable about this masculinity and femininity. Some of us may relate: we know masculinity and femininity exist, we recognize them when we see them, but we struggle to put our finger on exactly what each consists of.
In his book The Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller makes a similar point:
It is my experience that it is nearly impossible to come up with a single, detailed, and very specific set of “manly” or “womanly” characteristics that fits every temperament and culture. Rather than defining “masculinity” and “femininity” (a traditional approach) or denying and suppressing them (a secular approach), I propose that within each Christian community you watch for and appreciate the inevitable differences that will appear between male and female in your particular generation, culture, people, and place.2
This means that true, biblical masculinity and true, biblical femininity are, respectively, simply what naturally emerges when men and women grow in Christ. Biblically speaking, masculinity is what long-term sanctification produces in Christian men and femininity what long-term sanctification produces in women.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman. We can often recognize real masculinity and femininity when we see it, even if we don’t necessarily feel able to pin such things down.
Writer and teacher Jen Wilkin suggests that our physical differences go some way to explaining our nonphysical differences. For example, she says, the greater physical size and strength of most men compared to most women significantly shapes how each sex sees the world.3 Women, she suggests, will more likely be conscious of physical vulnerability in a way that won’t generally be the case with as many men, and as a result women are more likely to be attuned to and sympathetic toward vulnerability in others.
I was recently glancing at a discussion on Facebook about transgenderism and noticed that someone—not a Christian, by all accounts—made a similar point. The issue was whether transgender women (biological males identifying as female) could fully enter into the experience of womanhood without having had to encounter the world as a biological female, and this commenter (a woman) said, “In my experience men finally ‘get it’ when they become elderly. You have no clue what it’s like to live in a world where half the population can beat you to a pulp.” Entering into older age and beginning to experience a measure of physical vulnerability can help men understand something of what many women have experienced in the course of their whole lives.
This principle—that many of the observable differences between men and women have their origins in our physical differences—makes a lot of sense. Our body, soul, and spirit are deeply connected, as we’ve seen. It would certainly make sense that our bodily encounter with the world would shape how we each instinctively think, perceive, and behave. It would also make sense that the physical commonalities we share as a biological sex lead to general and observable differences between men and women that are nevertheless not absolute and which will vary from culture to culture.
Nonphyscial Differences
Some of these differences may be reflected in biblical passages addressed specifically to men or women. We need to be careful not to read more into such texts than may be there, especially by generalizing from something that may be particular. But it strikes me that in a number of places we may be getting some indirect glimpses into what some of our nonphysical differences look like.
In his instructions to Timothy about church life in Ephesus, Paul directs the following instructions to men:
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. (1 Tim. 2:8)
Paul is directing this call to pray specifically to men. This is not to suggest that Paul doesn’t want the women in the church to similarly lift up holy hands in prayer. The rest of the Bible makes abundantly clear that prayer is not a privilege reserved only for men. All Christians are to be people of prayer. But for some reason Paul felt that this needed to be said to the men in particular.
It seems that Paul’s words were triggered by particular behavior he’d learned about in the Christian circles he was writing to. Among the men, prayer was either being neglected or it was being practiced alongside ongoing enmity between them. Paul’s response is clear: he wants the men to lift holy hands in prayer. The focus is not so much on the hands being lifted as on them being pure. We’ll see at a later point that the Bible shows us a range of postures that were used in prayer—we’ll need to come back and think about that. But the point here is less about the posture than the attitude.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman.
But though there is clearly specific behavior Paul is responding to, we also see that it has wider application. Paul hints at this by saying he wants men to be praying “in every place.” This goes far beyond what the guys are up to in Ephesus; the directive extends to men everywhere (and, by implication, in every time). This is not just for them there; it is for us too.
This being so, it may reflect something more generally true of men than women. Men are generally more likely to need to hear the admonition to pray than women. It is not that women don’t need the same level of encouragement to pray—they do. The issue instead is that perhaps men, overall, are more likely to be quarrelsome—not universally (all men, without exception), absolutely (all men to the same extent, with no variation), or exclusively (only men, as if women couldn’t be quarrelsome), but generally, typically. And if this is the case, then it makes sense of what Paul is calling men to do in response. If there is a tendency for men to be quarrelsome, then calling them to be men of prayer instead is not arbitrary. Rather than wrestle one another in conflict, they are to wrestle God in prayer (like Epaphras, in Colossians 4:12). Better to have “hands raised in prayer to God, not raised in clenched fists towards one another.”4 Inasmuch as men sense this trait within them, it is something that can be channeled in a healthy way and put to spiritual use.
The same may be true of what Paul then says to women in the next verses:
Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. (1 Tim. 2:9–10)
Again, we can assume Paul’s exhortation is prompted by particular behavior among his readers that he had become aware of. He is correcting a real issue in a real place. But (also again) the fact that this comes in a letter in which the aim is to show “how one ought to behave in the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), we can assume it is not only about them but has wider significance beyond Ephesus at that time. If I am correct, we might expect to see another correlation between what Paul is steering them away from and what he is steering them to. The issue seems to be ostentatious dress. Not that Paul is discouraging effort in appearance; he’s discouraging effort that is deliberately attention seeking. This tendency isn’t entirely absent among men, and again Paul is not arguing against personal grooming or taking care in one’s appearance; he is arguing against ostentation.
Surely there is significance in that Paul’s instruction is directed toward women and not toward men. Just as not only men can be quarrelsome, so too not only women can be vain about appearance. But just as it is telling that Paul directed men in particular not to be quarrelsome, it is likely telling that here it is women he directs not to be ostentatious. I think we can legitimately infer from this that ostentation might be more of an issue among women in general than among men.
And just as Paul, observing a particular trait among men, directed them to channel that trait in a more spiritually constructive direction, so too he does the same here. If there is a tendency to draw the attention of others anywhere, it’s better to draw it toward God through good works than toward self through ostentatious appearance.
These texts were both prompted by Paul’s observing and redirecting negative traits. But he observes positive traits too. Writing to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul reminds them of how he had ministered when he had been with them in person:
We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. (1 Thess. 2:7)
Paul often likens gospel ministry to the work of a parent. Here he specifically likens it to the work of a mother nursing small children. There was a warmth and tenderness in his ministry that brings to his mind how a mother cares for such a young child.
We mustn’t read into the maternal imagery more than is clearly there, but it is interesting that Paul should especially associate these traits with women nursing babies. He expects such care to be present among mothers. However typically they may be so, they are clearly not exclusively so, as here we find Paul himself embodying the very same qualities in his apostolic ministry.
This sort of tenderness is not uniformly going to be present in all mothers without exception, nor should men shy away from being characterized by it (or Paul would not be drawing attention to his own example of it). Gentleness, with all that it involves, is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit that all believers are called to bear (Gal. 5:22–23). If it is true that it is more commonly found in women (or at least in nursing mothers), it is not meant to be found only there. This surely is the point. Inasmuch as there may be traits (positive and negative) that are generally true of men and women, we must not be hard and fast about it. Such traits (again, inasmuch as they exist) are not going to be characteristic of any sex absolutely, universally, or exclusively. They may be typical, but they will also be unevenly present and shared with the other sex as well. If, say, gentleness is more typical of women, it isn’t equally true of all women to the same extent. And some men are gentler than some women. This does not mean that such men are in any way lacking in their masculinity; it simply reflects that we manifest the ninefold fruit of the Holy Spirit in differing proportions, between the sexes and within them. God has not called women to bear half the fruit of the Spirit and men the other half. All of us are to be marked by all that comprises this fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. We celebrate these wherever we see them, and we never stigmatize any who bear some of them in surprising measure. Being more manly will never mean being less spiritual. Sam Andreades puts it this way:
Gender comes in specialties. Specialties are things we all might do sometimes, but the specialist focuses on especially doing them. We may do many things for each other that are the same, but the gender magic happens when we lean into the asymmetries. Just as, physically, both males and females need both androgen and estrogen hormones, and it is the relative amounts that differ in the sexes, so the gender distinctives are things that both men and women may be able to do, and do do, but when done as specialties to one another, they propel relationship.5
So the differences that exist are not absolute, as though the things men can do only men can do, and the things women can do no man could ever do. Yet there are some general ways in which men and women are distinct from each other while at the same time being very much alike. We are not meant to be interchangeable, so that all one can do, the other must also do in exactly the same way. It is not always helpful to compare one with another, as though we are pitted against each other in a zero-sum competition.6
As with many things, G. K. Chesterton hits the nail on the head in this short poem:
If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.7
Notes:
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943; repr., London: HarperCollins, 2005), 253.
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Marriage with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 200.
Jen Wilkin, “General Session 2,” Advance 2017 conference, hosted by Acts29 US Southeast, accessed June 28, 2020, https://vimeo.com/243476316.
Angus MacLeay, Teaching 1 Timothy: From Text to Message (Ross-Shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2012), 99.
Sam Andreades, Engendered: God’s Gift of Gender Difference in Relationship (Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2015), 132; emphasis original.
See the observation by Eric Metaxas in Seven Women and the Secret of Their Greatness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015), xviii–xix.
G. K. Chesterton, “Comparisons,” Poetry Nook website, accessed December 1, 2020, https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/comparisons-4.
Sam Allberry is the associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville. He is the author of various books, including One with My Lord; What God Has to Say about Our Bodies; and Is God Anti-Gay?, and the cohost of the podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
While we should be careful not to reduce gender to cultural stereotypes, we must realize that uprooting gender from biology effectively kills it. If gender can be anything, it ends up being nothing.
What do we say to our sons and daughters who ask, “Daddy and Mommy, what does it mean to be a man or a woman?” Tell them they are made in the image of God and for union with Christ.
In medicine, certain vital signs—breath in the lungs, a pulse felt on the wrist, movement in the eyes—show that a person is alive. The same is true in the church, spiritually speaking: If a local body is truly alive, a few indicators will make it easy to tell. Where these vital signs are present in a congregation, they prove that Jesus Christ is in fact the head of that body.
In medicine, certain vital signs—breath in the lungs, a pulse felt on the wrist, movement in the eyes—show that a person is alive. The same is true in the church, spiritually speaking: If a local body is truly alive, a few indicators will make it easy to tell. Where these vital signs are present in a congregation, they prove that Jesus Christ is in fact the head of that body.
Peter, writing to the churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire, lists four vital signs against which the believers are to measure themselves (1 Peter 4:8–11). Lively churches—in the first century and throughout all ages—are those that possess love, hospitality, service, and praise.
Love Above All
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)
The apostle is concerned in this verse to stress love’s priority and sincerity. Using language that assumes Christian love is already present in the churches, Peter instructs believers to “keep loving one another.” Of course, his command isn’t anything new. It’s built on the very words of the Lord Jesus to His disciples: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).
Peter doesn’t want us to view this love as some form of drudgery. He wants love to be undeniablypresent in the churches, which ought to be defined by people loving each other “earnestly.” The Greek word (ektenē) carries the sense of strenuous activity, like how an Olympic runner springs from the blocks at the outset of a race. In other words, the love described here isn’t some kind of mushy expression grounded in emotion. It’s eager love, sincere love, quality love.
We can’t evade this challenge, especially in light of Jesus’ teaching: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). As we think about our own church bodies, we ask, “Would curious onlookers know that we love Jesus based on how we love one another?” That’s the implication of Peter’s instruction.
A great reason for this love comes in the second half of the verse: We love because “love covers a multitude of sins.” This doesn’t mean that love sweeps sin under the carpet, nor that love avoids confrontation. It instead means that love is ready to forgive and forgive again. Love finds a way to return a silent answer in the face of fury unleashed against us. “Love,” Paul writes in the great chapter on the subject, “is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast” (1 Cor. 13:4).
Sincere Hospitality
Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)
The second vital sign for the body of Christ is hospitality, which is itself an expression of love. Hospitality is love in action. We know we possess genuine Christian love when we reach out to others, sharing what we’ve received.
Certainly, our churches need to be gymnasiums, training people for the rigor of spiritual warfare; they should be schools, instructing members in Christian doctrine and living. But here, Peter reminds us that churches are also hospitals, providing spiritual care in a society overwhelmed with fear, emptiness, and suffering. Love expresses itself in hospitality—in churches whose members open both their hearts and their homes for the hurting. Peter essentially tells the churches, “Be prepared to disrupt your daily routines in order to show hospitality. You’re always on call. You are to stand ready to embrace the traveler.”
A simple expression of hospitality has the power to change lives.
And just as our love is to be earnest, so our hospitality is to be sincere, done “without grumbling.” This goes against our natural tendencies, no doubt. We grumble when we’re inconvenienced. The only way we’ll view hospitality as a Christian privilege is to recall the words of Christ as He reminds His followers that even the most basic forms of hospitality are directed ultimately toward God, not toward man (Matt. 25:31–40).
A simple expression of hospitality has the power to change lives. Almost any Christian can make a home the kind of place that has one extra seat at the table for the lonely student, the recent widow, or the young professional. And who knows but that those who sit at our tables today may one day end up sitting around the table in God’s great kingdom?
Service for Others
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength God supplies. (1 Peter 4:10–11)
Practical Christian service emerges from two facts, according to verse 10.
First, Peter emphasizes that we all have received spiritual gifts. No one is without gifts in the body of Christ. We may not have tons of gifts or even possess the gifts we think we ought to have. But the principle stands: We are empowered with spiritual gifts, apportioned to us by God Himself.
Peter describes the gifts given to Christians as the result of “God’s varied grace.” God’s gifts, in other words, are multicolored, like what we find in a rainbow or in a flower garden—various hues intermingling with one another to create a cohesive whole. The church is a lot like that, with God putting all kinds of graces side by side. In the church, the whole is greater than the individual parts.
No one is without gifts in the body of Christ.
Second, the apostle reminds us that we serve as those who are gifted for the sake of others and not ourselves. The gifts of God’s Spirit aren’t toys to be played with; they are tools used for the sake of encouraging others and glorifying God.
Continuing in verse 11, Peter divides the gifts into two groups: there are those who speak and those who serve. Of course, speaking is a form of serving. But the point in Peter’s classification is to distinguish between gifts that primarily use wordsand those that primarily use deeds—between relevant instruction and practical kindness.The church needs both to be healthy.
Those who speak, we’re told, are to do so as stewards of God’s very words. That is, preachers and teachers shouldn’t draw attention to themselves. They aren’t primarily storytellers but heralds of divine truth. And for those gifted for service, Peter reminds them of the source of their strength: It isn’t found in themselves but in the power Christ provides.
Praise
… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:11)
It’s fitting that the final vital sign Peter lists is praise, for the church exists for the praise of God’s glorious grace (Eph. 1:6).
There is a logical flow of thought from verse 10 to verse 11: When we serve in God’s strength for the purpose He intends, it produces the praise He deserves. Viewing the church’s activity within the framework of praise affects how we go about our living. If we exist for God’s glory, then our service will be both modest and strenuous, recognizing the weakness of “me” and the strength of “He.”
While it’s true that we may add to the list of vital signs for a church body, we can’t take away from those Peter lists here and expect our fellowships to be lively. Love, hospitality, service, and praise are practical evidences of a church’s union to the living God.
If we want these signs to be present in our congregations, we won’t be able to muster them ourselves. We need “grace and peace … multiplied” to us (1 Peter 1:3). And thankfully, in Christ, we have the privilege of being able to take that prayer of Peter’s and make it our own!
This article was adapted from the sermon “Vital Signs” by Alistair Begg.
Addressing Doubts about God’s Justice and Goodness in the Face of Evil
When considering the horrific events of the Holocaust, you can’t help but ask yourself the question, “How could God allow such evil?” In this video, Collin Hansen offers encouragement for those who struggle to trust God’s justice and goodness in the face of evil and suffering.
TGC Hard Questions is a series of short booklets that seek to answer common but difficult questions people ask about Christianity. The series serves the church by providing tools that answer people’s deep longings for community, their concerns about biblical ethics, and their doubts about confessional faith.
Collin Hansen’s short and accessible guide answers suffering peoples’ questions about God’s character by exploring the stories of Job, Jesus, and the Jewish people during the horrific events of the Holocaust. Ideal for both skeptics and Christians who want to help others in their pain, this booklet reminds us that God speaks through the cries of his people and offers us the gift of his Son—a suffering servant who makes all things new.
“The problem of evil is the biggest challenge to Christian faith in every generation. Collin Hansen’s short, wise, and thoughtful book is a superb resource for thinking deeply about it and responding with compassion and clarity.”
—Andrew Wilson, Teaching Pastor, King’s Church London
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.
In this video, Samuel D. Ferguson carefully walks through the core beliefs of the transgender movement, comparing them with fundamental truths expressed in Scripture.
Kathryn Butler speaks to some of the misconceptions about clinical depression, which can be especially challenging for those of us who are followers of Christ.
In this video, Jeremy Linneman takes time to explain why the mounting problem of loneliness matters and offers suggestions for how we might build spiritual communities for ourselves.
Some claim that Christianity is oppressive and toxic, but in this video, Dr. Sharon James argues that a biblical worldview is essential for human freedom, flourishing, and fulfillment.
In this episode, Zach Carter and Jonathan Arnold talk through the importance of understanding corporate prayer throughout history and the value of looking to past written prayers as a treasury of wisdom that teaches us how to live before God. Zach and Jonathan also share some of their favorite prayers from church history, reflecting on how these prayers have impacted their own lives and how they can do so for the church today.
Matt Tully
Jonathan and Zach, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.
Zach Carter
Great to be here. Thank you.
Jonathan Arnold
Thanks for having us.
Matt Tully
In the introduction to this new book that you two have worked on together, you write that this project was born from frustrations that you both felt related to churches that you’ve been a part of or at least the church tradition that you both are from. I wonder if you could just start off by explaining a little bit more what you mean by that. What were those frustrations that you felt and, how does that relate more broadly to the way that evangelicals often view their churches, view the past, view church history?
Jonathan Arnold
That’s a great question. My own background, which really poured into the beginning of this project, is from a broad Baptist background that was very unaware of its history, at least in the version that I received. And so as I was moving through my own academic career and realizing that I really didn’t have an understanding of why my church tradition believed what it believed or how it came to be, I, first of all, fell in love with the idea of finding that out and of understanding where we came from and why we do things the way we do them—what’s behind that, if there are good reasons. And sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. And one of those things was the lack of corporate prayer altogether, let alone the understanding of corporate prayer from history and trying to tie into a tradition. And so as I continued to study deeper into the history of the Baptists specifically and found not only some of those controversies that came up over the use of written prayers and the writing down of prayers for future generations, even if they weren’t going to use them in their own time, the recognition that we’ve got a long line of believers that we are able to learn from and to join with across the globe and across time to be able to understand how God has worked in their lives and how he’s continuing to work in ours—being able to see these prayers. So it really started as a personal discipline for me of trying to find prayers that would fit in given circumstances, and where God has worked in the past, and how people have put words to that in order to express both their dependence on God, their love for God, but also their understanding of where they are in their own personal and corporate experiences. And to find those and the ability that those have to speak into my own life currently, and then to share that with other people has been just an amazing blessing for me. And so much of this project was how do I get the chance to share that with other people.
Zach Carter
I think one of the things that I loved about what Jonathan said is, well, I didn’t grow up in church, and so I am a new traveler in this world. And so to be plopped into early 2000s, 2010s evangelicalism and see Young Restless and Reformed going on, see different sorts of resurgences taking place in denominations while declines were taking place in others, one of the things which I was helped most in Bible college but then also in seminary was learning what Jonathan just mentioned—the place from which we come and actually that the work of God to preserve his people over time didn’t start in the Billy Graham crusades in the 1940s. The church existed much, much earlier than that. And so the invitation by Jonathan to work on this project was a great one because it was enriching to my own faith to be a part of sourcing these, which is its own journey and story, because how do you even pick stuff like this? That was a challenge and there is a criteria we had to develop for that, but it was extremely edifying to see normal Christians who are heroes and titans of the faith, but with very normal prayers, asking God for help. It was incredibly edifying. It was an amazing project.
Matt Tully
And going beyond even just this topic of prayer, which is the focus of the book that you guys have worked on together, there is that broader question of the value of history for Christians today. And I think many people have acknowledged or recognized that evangelicalism as a movement can tend to be a little bit ahistorical at times. And Baptists—I’m a Baptist, so I can say this—we don’t have the best track record at times in valuing church history, valuing tradition in different forms. I wonder if you guys have thoughts on why that is the case for us sometimes. Not all denominations, not all Christians, not all churches, but so often it is true that we tend to maybe not feel like there’s as much value in looking to the past. We feel even skeptical of some of these traditions or things that are handed down from the past. What’s going on there in our thinking?
Zach Carter
I’m going to borrow George Marston’s language from his book, which is not necessarily talking about evangelicals, but I think it’s applicable here. Evangelicalism, more than being a tradition, is probably more like a co-belligerency against things. And so evangelicals feel like we don’t have a history because it’s better to think of evangelicalism as an alliance around certain things—Christocentrism, biblicism, activism. Those sorts of things. There’s scholarly articles defining what evangelicalism is, and it’s not worth getting into those here.
Matt Tuly:
Bebbington’s quadrilateral.
Zach Carter
Yeah, that’s right. And Thomas Kidd. Tommy Kidd adds a fifth one—a focus on the work of the Spirit. So those things don’t lend themselves to a historical identity. We’re probably getting in the woods here too, but I think it’s probably where young evangelicals are finding the traditions of Rome or the traditions of the Eastern church compelling, because they feel ancient. But those resources are ours too because we’re part of the universal church ourselves. And so hopefully some of that’s been borne out in this work too. Jonathan, you were about to say something.
Jonathan Arnold
You’ve hit on it, but I think there’s an underlying anti-view of evangelicals that is "we are not this" rather than "we are something." I grew up in Louisiana, which is a heavily Catholic area.
Matt Tully
Also a heavenly place.
Jonathan Arnold
Also a heavenly place.
Zach Carter
At least the food.
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, absolutely. But the idea that I was taught growing up was just "We’re not Catholic." And so much of what we were doing was just because it didn’t look like what the Catholics were doing, rather than we’ve got a reason for this. And I think there’s a large part of evangelicalism and a large part of Baptist tradition which overlap quite a bit that says, "That’s who we are. We’re just not the others," rather than "We have a place to stand on our own." And so often you find, for the Baptist tradition (and we mentioned this, I think, in the introduction), at least in my experience in various churches and various branches of the Baptist tradition, they wouldn’t use corporate prayers, and it was largely because it seemed Catholic. They didn’t want to sound Catholic at all, and so there was no reason to use that, rather than being able to say, like Zach said, these are our resources as well. We come from a united background, even if we come into that Protestant side of things. And then you’ve also got, within the Baptist tradition, a fight over whether we’re Protestants or not and all that kind of stuff. It gets into some complexities there that are well worth learning about, but ultimately land in kind of the same place. It’s been very difficult to find a place for the Baptist and the evangelicals and the breadth of those traditions to be able to say, "This is who we are. This is where we stand." And it makes, then, those much more ancient seeming traditions very palatable to a whole host of people. And so part of our desire in this project is to allow our students to be able to say, "Hey, we actually can land where we do currently and yet draw from this amazing set of resources that God has left his people."
Matt Tully
And Jonathan, how would you summarize what Christians might be leaving on the table if they do remain, to quote from the book, "cut off from the past" when it comes to our history in general but maybe even prayers in particular? What are we leaving on the table when we do that?
Jonathan Arnold
There are several things I think that leads to. One is it leads to a feeling of isolation. You often end up either, as an individual or just as an individual congregation, reinventing the wheel in our theological journey and in our spiritual formation where we don’t really have to. There’s something about being able to sit down with a Samuel Johnson, who just lost his wife, writing a prayer and dealing with the death of somebody in your own life and being able to go, look, God’s people have been here before. And it’s not a it’s not a Band-Aid. It doesn’t solve everything. But to be able to sit with somebody, much like the best of the counselors either in Scripture or even outside of it, that just can sit with you and offer you a shoulder to cry on and to be able to hear you and go, "I can empathize with you." To have God’s people from history being able to do that in their written work, even if they didn’t know that’s what they were going to be doing. I don’t think Samuel Johnson was thinking about future generations when he’s writing in his journal about the death of his wife and how he’s going to deal with this moving forward. And yet in my own family were dealing with the death of a very close friend, a sudden death in a car accident, and to be able to pick up that prayer and to read it and go, "Man, God has been there through the sudden, unexpected death of his children throughout time." And to be able to read that alongside somebody else so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel and I don’t have to think I’m doing it alone. And that’s a real danger. If we cut ourselves off completely from that, then we get to a place where we either think that we’re alone in it or we somehow think that we are the ones who have to come up with all of the details of this and have to create the theology and have to create the rituals or the liturgy in order to do this well. And in reality, that’s not on our shoulders. It’s not something that we’re supposed to bear alone. We get to play a part in that process and leave behind, hopefully, prayers for others, and we get to guide them in their process as well and add our own experience in. And yet we don’t have to try to bear all of that responsibility. For me, at least, it removes a whole host of anxieties, both in the isolation and in the weighty responsibility that feels if I have to do it by myself.
Matt Tully
Zach, maybe I can play devil’s advocate for a minute for maybe the person listening who does come from a tradition that has been a little bit wary of the value of these things. I could think, especially when it comes to a church’s corporate worship but maybe even an individual’s personal devotional time, I could see someone saying, "We have the infallible testimony of the Bible, and that includes lots of prayers. The Psalms is a whole prayer book. Why would I need to incorporate the fallible voices of church history when God has already given us his word, which is a rich resource for us to mine for language, especially for prayer. Isn’t that enough?"
Zach Carter
That’s a great question. And the first thing I would say, if this was a congregation member, for example, or somebody in that way, the first thing I would do is I would say I don’t want to suggest that you need it. I want to be careful there, because we do only need Scripture, and Scripture does give us all those things. However, I would offer that person a question right back to them and suggest, "Why would you read a biography? Or why would you write a journal and read your journal?" What journals, biographies, and even these collection of prayers are is they’re like landmarkers, where you go back and you can see God’s faithfulness over time in a particular area. One prayer that’s dear to me is from John of Damascus. He writes a prayer where he prays for the conversion of his father. Those who know me personally know that I’m one of the first Christians in my entire family since 1830, and so his prayer is a prayer that resonates with me. John of Damascus’s words are not infallible. John of Damascus is a hero of the faith, to be sure, but he’s not the apostle Paul, and he wouldn’t want for us to receive his words like the apostle Paul. And yet that’s a guy who is very faithful and yet is in a moment of vulnerability, praying for the strength to talk to his dad about the gospel. And I would just say to that brother or sister who would come with that objection, it’s helpful to see how other people have been obedient to God’s word in the past, so they can glean insight and wisdom. What this is is not a prescription. It’s really a treasury of wisdom in how to live before God. And so what we’re really trying to help people see is how other people taken Scripture and prayed its truths in their own context. We’re not looking to replace Scripture in this by any means, but how do you pray in such a way that your prayers don’t become, as one professor of mine said a long time ago, just become about your cat’s hangnails. Prayer meetings can get really derailed, like a hospital list of things going on. Which, to be clear, God cares about those things. That’s not to suggest he doesn’t care about our needs. He wants us to bring them to him. But there’s a way to really say, How do I incorporate Scripture in my life? How do I pray without ceasing? How do I engage in real life, applying God’s word to my life into these really difficult challenges? You can think of these almost as like a poetic biography—how people have lived wisely in light of God’s revelation and been faithful to him in a variety of different circumstances.
Matt Tully
Another concern that sometimes people might have—and then after this last objection, I want to hear you guys talk about the actual prayers that you’ve got in this book—but another concern that people might have is just the distinction between a prepared prayer—one that’s been written down and is even being read perhaps—versus an extemporaneous prayer, where maybe there’s the sense that when I pray extemporaneously, I’m being led by the Spirit. I’m in the moment. It’s not a rote exercise. It’s more genuine. That can be the sense that we can have. What do you make of that? Is there any validity to maybe concern about these prayers being rote versus something more on the fly, so to speak?
Zach Carter
I think an analogy would hold, where you probably, if you’re in a relationship with a significant other, if I have a spontaneous date with my wife, that’s spectacular. But you know what’s also really spectacular? If I take time to think out exactly what I want to do, say, how I want the evening or the day to go, then that’s just as special. And I would suggest that God himself gives written prayers to be done in the context of corporate worship. That’s what many of the psalms are for. But then other ones are extemporaneous records of lament or fear, sadness or praise, and so whether it’s written or whether it’s extemporaneous is secondary only to the fact of does it reflect a genuine heart that’s genuinely moved by the Spirit and its affections towards its Maker and Savior. Because you can write a beautiful prayer and it be completely dead, or you could offer an extemporaneous utterance, Paul says, but if it’s not with love—if it’s not directed towards Christ—it’s meaningless as well. So I think that might be a good answer, but I’d love to know if Jonathan has anything to add there.
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, no, I love that answer. I think there’s something, too, for me personally, as I’m thinking about moving forward and thinking about what’s coming in the week, or especially as a pastor, if I’m thinking about what’s going on in the life of my congregation and working during the week to write a prayer, I think there’s something very unique about that—or very significant, I should say—about the work of the Spirit in my life during the week while I’m prepping that and even while I’m writing and editing a prayer that is designed to be specifically for that situation in the life of my congregation or in the life of a loved one or in the life of a neighbor or whatever that looks like. That does allow for just keeping that idea and those problems and those issues on my mind regularly so that even as I’m constantly thinking about the right words and the right way to say this in a way that is going to be helpful in the middle of a service or in the life of somebody else, that I’m able to pray without ceasing in the midst of that week or whatever the length of time is while the Holy Spirit is keeping that on my mind and allowing me to work through that, and then hopefully it is helping the editing process as that happens. So I think there’s a both/and there. My own tradition is very extemporaneous. I love that. I love being able to hear what people are going through in the moment. But there’s also that time, and we’ve probably all been in situations where the extemporaneous prayer can meander and can either get to the cat’s toenails or can even get to places where, theologically, there are some dangerous things being taught even without knowing it in the midst of a prayer. And so I think there’s a place for caution and a place for preparation that doesn’t preclude the work of the Holy Spirit, as if he somehow can only be spontaneous in the moment.
Matt Tully
Yeah, that’s good. This book includes 100 different prayers from throughout church history. Initially, I think that feels maybe like a lot. There are a lot of different prayers in there from a lot of different people. Obviously, in the grand sweep of church history, it’s such a small fraction. So my first question on that was how did you guys go about actually picking which prayers to include? Were there certain criteria that you had that were always applied, or was it a little bit more free flowing, like just which ones really resonated with you personally?
Jonathan Arnold
I wish I could say it was extremely organized and we had a criteria from the beginning and a matrix that we worked through and it was all worked out. The project, because it started in a more organic way, much of what came about in this project was based around some of the things that I was teaching. In my early church history classes, I wanted to make sure that as I walked into class, rather than starting class with just a prayer about what’s going on in everybody’s life (because you ask for prayer requests, and church history class suddenly becomes about very important things, but not about church history), and so I would always start class with a prayer from somebody that we were studying at that particular period. And so gathering those together was part of what was going on here. So part of this was built around the curriculum that I was teaching through and that I still teach through. And so trying to make sure that I had a wide breadth of prayers that would touch on both the high points—those very significant figures that every church history textbook or every church history class is always going to touch on—but also trying to get some opportunities to show some of the less well-known figures and allowing people to see that God works through the average layperson or the average clergy person during that period of time as well in ways that history has sometimes forgotten if we’re not careful. So looking for those and just gathering those together. By the time we got to the point of putting together a book project, we had a host of prayers. I don’t know how many we have. We still have a collection of them and are continuing to add to them. Those then became the basis from which we chose, and we were looking for ones that sounded like they would actually still apply, that you could actually read them well, that there was something that was time honored about them. We were looking for ones that talked about specific aspects of theology, so you’ll note as you go through these that there are some that are extremely rich in their Trinitarianism. And so you get a feel, especially as the church was going through various issues and doctrinal complications and debates, that the prayers are built to reinforce the orthodoxy that the church had always held to. And so you get very rich theological discussions in several of these prayers that are intended both to be prepared prayers so that the church can be praying these but also to remind them that, yes, we do believe in a triune God; we do believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; we do believe that the Son came in the flesh; and all of those great truths that we want to remind ourselves of. And then we were also looking for, obviously some, breadth across time. We wanted to make sure that we were covering, as best as we could, all of the four eras that we looked at, trying to make sure that we had some representatives from all of those. There are some that, as you’re thinking through what to put together, you want some specific names in there because people are going to look for them. So we have a couple by Charles Spurgeon, who famously prayed very lengthy prayers in his sermons, and you get a feel for that as you look at it in the book just how long they are, which is wonderful, though, in this pastoral mindset of him praying for his people and for his city and for the gospel work that’s going on there. But then we also have prayers all the way back to the ancient liturgies that have been around for millennia. So trying to figure out how to represent that well. We certainly didn’t cover everybody that we’d love to cover. I think we could probably do ten, eleven, or twelve volumes of this before we got to a place where we felt like we had covered a good, wide variety of people. There are plenty of people that we’d like to add, and as we continue to gather more prayers, who knows what that will look like. But at least in my own use of them, they will continue to grow and we’ll add more and more and continue to gather them together and hopefully represent the church well over the course of its entire history.
Matt Tully
As you mentioned, you’ve broken the book into four distinct historical periods, and you have prayers for each of those. You have the early church, the medieval church, the reformation church, and the modern church. So I wonder if we can go through each of those distinct periods, and one of you can pick out one prayer from that period that just stands out to you. Maybe it’s your favorite one. Maybe it’s just one that has some special significance. And then we’re actually going to play an audio recording from the audio book of that prayer so that our listeners can actually hear what you’re talking about. So we’ll actually probably start with that first once you introduce the prayer, and then you guys can share some thoughts on it. Zach, why don’t you get us started with a prayer from the ancient church?
Zach Carter
I think one prayer to highlight would be from Ephrem the Syrian—a prayer for the singing of the church. Ephrem was one of these interesting people from the East. We don’t typically know about him because he was from the Eastern Roman Empire, but he was in the early monastic period, and he really just focused on ministry in his local congregation. He ultimately died from the plague, but it’s evident from his life that he gave himself to his congregation, and he died probably because of his contact, actually, with people who were sick. He wrote tons of songs, but one of the things that I think I love most about this is we don’t typically think about the fact that we should ask for God’s help before we sing to God. And that was his motivating factor in this prayer here.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer together.
Prayer for Godly Singing and Speaking
Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–373)
Whatever is allowed, let us sing, Lord, with instruments and
in the open. Let us not utter anything that is not permitted,
seeing these are but the instruments of frail creatures. Lord,
let my tongue be a pen for your glory, and let the finger of
your grace use it to write words that are edifying. The pen,
Lord, cannot write of its own accord. It needs someone to
write with it. In the same way, please do not let my tongue
begin to speak without you. Let it be an instrument in your
hand. Specifically, do not let it be used to say anything that
is not edifying. Indeed, praises be to your teaching!
Matt Tully
Zach, tell us a little bit more about when Ephrem actually lived. What do we know about the lifespan of his life?
Zach Carter
He was in the early fourth century, so probably born somewhere around 306 AD. The interesting thing about him is that there’s some confusion about this moniker that’s attached to him. It’s probably because everybody was confused about Aramaic in early scholarship. A lot of his stuff that he wrote were hymns to teach orthodoxy, and so his most probably well-known collection of hymns is called The Hymns Against Heretics, which helped popularize these ideas. Here’s what’s interesting. In the early church, heretics often used songs to teach their teachings, so Ephrem recognized that if he was going to match them and match their efforts, he himself would have to write songs. So he put many orthodox teachings into hymns, but wrote tons of commentaries and collections of sermons that still stand today. And so that prayer is significant to me because it emphasizes both the importance of singing in the life of the church but then also our need to prepare our hearts to sing to God.
Matt Tully
Zach, if you had to pick just one line from this prayer that you would say is your favorite, one that always hits you in a powerful way, what would that line be?
Zach Carter
Because he’s writing in that context of heresy and what we ought to sing and what we ought to not sing, if you don’t mind, I’m going to actually read the two lines because they’re almost like a stanza. "Let us not utter anything that is not permitted, seeing these are but the instruments of frail creatures. Lord, let my tongue be a pen for your glory, and let the finger of your grace use it to write words that are edifying."
Matt Tully
It’s amazing. It is so poetic.
Zach Carter
I think it’s just beautiful to think about. It echoes the epistle of James, where our tongues can either be used for blessing or cursing. And he’s acknowledging that, and he’s asking God to help his tongue be an instrument of blessing. And I think it’s just a good reminder for us that we are still tempted to the same things that his time period was, and the same vulnerabilities in the church to false teaching through music is still one that we face today. And then the ability of us to see ourselves as either instruments of incorrect cursing or incorrect speech, to be open to correction from the Lord and be open to letting our tongues be used for his glory, I think is an important reflection for us.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, let’s move to the medieval church. What’s one of your favorite prayers from that section?
Jonathan Arnold
I think the one that keeps coming back to mind for me is one by Bonaventure who is writing in the thirteenth century, and it’s his journaling about a prayer that is actually also included in the collection, a prayer by Anselm about 150 years earlier. And so in this prayer, Bonaventure is praying his own prayer, and he quotes a lengthy quotation from Anselm, which to me is very much what we’re doing in this entire project—of reading the prayers of those that came before us and being able to engage them in a way that makes them our own, brings them into our own experience, but recognizes what has come before us. So in our collection, it’s Prayer 57, which we’ve titled Prayer to Know Christ by Bonaventure.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer right now.
Prayer to Know Christ
Bonaventure (1221–1274)
I have not yet expressed or even begun to understand, oh
Lord, just how great the rejoicing will be from your blessed
ones. Of course, they will rejoice as much as they love, and
their love will match their comprehension. But the question
remains: How much of you will they be able to grasp and,
thus, how much can they actually love you? In this life, no
eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has the heart of humanity
even begun to grasp how well they will know you and,
therefore, love you in the next life.
Oh God, I pray that I may know you and love you so that I
may find my joy in you. If I am not able to know and love you
completely in this life, at least allow me to make some progress
every day until the moment of completion arrives. Let the
knowledge of you so develop in me here in this life that there,
in the next life, it may be complete. Let the love of you so grow
here in this life that there, in the next life, it may be full. Here,
let my joy be great in hope; there, let it be full in actuality.
Lord, through your Son, you have commanded us—no,
you have counseled us—to ask, and you have promised to
grant this request so that our joy may be full. Faithful God,
I beg of you, please make my joy full. I ask, Lord, precisely
as you have suggested through your wonderful counselor;
I will receive what you have promised by your truth so that
my joy may indeed be made full.
For now, let my mind meditate on this joy. Let my tongue
speak of it. Let my heart love it exclusively. Let my conversation
focus on it. Let my soul hunger for it. Let my flesh
thirst for it. Let my whole being desire it until I finally enter
the joy of my Lord, who is the triune and one God, blessed
forever and ever. Amen.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, tell us a little bit more about Bonaventure. He’s might be a name that some people have heard before but they might not know much about him. It’s even an interesting name that he has. What do we know about him?
Jonathan Arnold
Probably where most people know the name is from the Catholic university that’s named for him that every once in a while around this time of the year they’ll usually have a team that gets into March Madness. So people will hear St. Bonaventure’s, which is very much named for him. He is a Franciscan friar who did most of his work, at least his academic work, at the University of Paris, which was the university of the day. His dates are from 1221–1274 or thereabouts. He was very influential in his contemporaries’ lives. He’s written a ton of theological works. He interacted with Anselm, as he does in this prayer, he interacted with Augustine and his writing largely in an Augustine tradition, but he also was very focused on the pastoral side of theology. Really seeing how the even more academic theology could be applied in life and how that shows in the average Christian’s ability to engage with God. So he’s writing at the height of the medieval church, and so it has all of the trappings of the medieval church, which is for both good and for bad. There are some obvious problems that come out in that era. But as he’s writing these prayers and as he’s writing his particular works, he writes a very influential commentary on the book of Luke that is still quoted regularly. It has remained a significant work in that field ever since he wrote it. So that’s 800 years on now. But he is ultimately seen as extraordinarily significant, given the title of a doctor in the church by a pope in the sixteenth century, so recognizing that there was some significance to his legacy. But significantly, he also shows up in Protestant literature—people who are coming later on and have turned their back on the Roman Catholic Church. And we know that story, hopefully. But they still see the benefit of what Bonaventure was doing and the fact that Bonaventure really gets at the heart of what Augustine had seen as the gospel and what the remnant had always seen as the gospel in the life of the church. And he’s able to pull that in in the midst of a highly academic and a very brilliant mind and yet one that was very encouraged by seeing the average lay person being able to understand the truths of what was going on in the theological tradition.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, if you had to pick just one line from this prayer, which one would it be?
Jonathan Arnold
It’s hard to pick a line, but I think the ending to this particular prayer is absolutely beautiful. He says, "For now, let my mind meditate on this joy. Let my tongue speak of it. Let my heart love it exclusively. Let my conversation focus on it. Let my soul hunger for it. Let my flesh thirst for it. Let my whole being desire it until I finally enter the joy of my Lord."
Matt Tully
That’s beautiful. Let’s turn to the Reformation era, probably an era that most of our listeners will be most familiar with. We’ve got some of the major figures like the Luther and the Calvin. But I wonder, Zach, if you could pick a prayer out of this section that might be from a lesser known person, somebody that we’re not quite as familiar with.
Zach Carter
I assume you don’t want Luther or Calvin because they are so well known, so I’m going to turn our attention to a guy named Henry Skougal. This is prayer 89, Prayer of Sanctification. Skougal’s interesting because he isn’t really known to us, but people who are immensely influenced by him are probably known by almost all of your listeners. George Whitfield, Charles Wesley, John Wesley—these were individuals who had Skougal’s work. Skougal had written a defense of the Christian faith and kind of a manual for spiritual piety was universally praised by the figureheads of the First Great Awakening. Even though Skougal lived in the mid seventeenth century, dying around 1678 and the First Great Awakening isn’t until the next century, but his work is very influential for them because Skougal holds up this idea of knowledge of God and knowledge of our failings and our knowledge of that their genuine Christian life is one which is moved by God in piety. Those would be feelings of adoration, feelings of affection, and then a desire to do holy works. That would be probably the quickest way to summarize. So his Prayer of Sanctification is probably the best one because it reveals that theology within his thought, which is that we have to know who God is to know how unholy we are, and then we need God’s help to be made holy like he is.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer together.
Prayer for Sanctification
Henry Scougal (1650–1678)
Most gracious God, Father and fountain of mercy and goodness,
who has blessed us with the knowledge of our salvation
and the way that leads to it: Make our hearts excited with the
pursuit of that knowledge and that way because many things
endeavor to distract us.
Let us not presume on our own strength or resist your
divine assistance. While we are working to confirm our salvation diligently,
teach us to depend on you for success. Open our eyes, oh God,
and teach us from your law. Bless us with a diligent and tender
sense of duty to it and a knowledge to
discern things contrary to it. Direct us to keep your statutes
so that we are not ashamed when we examine whether we
have kept your commandments.
Fill our thoughts with a robust and holy disdain for the
trivial entertainment with which the world attempts to allure
us. Fill them to an extent that the strife would not be able to
cloud our judgment or betray us to sin. Turn our eyes away
from desiring worthless things, and make us alive in your law.
Fill our souls with such a deep sense and full persuasion of the
gospel truth that you revealed that it would regulate our lives,
especially our interactions with others. Fill us so that the life we
live in the flesh we would live through faith in the Son of God.
Oh, that the infinite perfections of your blessed nature and
the astonishing expressions of your goodness and love would
conquer and overpower our hearts! That our thoughts would
be constantly rising toward you like flames of devout affection
and would increase in sincere and active love toward all the
world, for your sake! That we would wash away all filthiness
of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in reverence, without
which we can never hope to behold and enjoy you!
Finally, O God, grant that consideration of what you are
compared to what we are in order to keep us both humble and
meek before you, but also stir in us the strongest and most ardent
aspirations toward you. We resign and give ourselves to the
direction of your Holy Spirit. Lead us in your truth, and teach
us, for you are the God of our salvation. Guide us with your
wisdom. And then, receive us in your glory, to the credit and
because of the intercession of your blessed Son, our Savior. Amen.
Matt Tully
Zach, if you had to pick a line out of this, or maybe multiple lines out of this prayer, which ones stand out to you the most?
Zach Carter
Probably just his prayer right in the middle where he asks, "Direct us to keep your statutes so that we are not ashamed when we examine whether we have kept your commandments. Fill our thoughts with a robust and holy disdain for the trivial entertainment with which the world attempts to allure us." And I think that captures the single-minded focus of the First Great Awakening and its emphasis on turning away from the trivialities of the world, and an intense white-hot, pure dedication to the things of the Lord. I think that the germ of that is certainly here in this prayer. It matures, for sure, in the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield.
Matt Tully
I wonder if other people are feeling what I’m feeling right now. As I hear some of these prayers, the full text, even a line like the one you just shared, they can feel so relevant today. These are prayers that are written hundreds of years ago, and yet a prayer that God would fill our thoughts with a holy disdain for trivial entertainments with which the world attempts to allure us—what person living today in our social media age, completely blanketed by entertainment of all kinds and distractions and temptations, we all feel the triviality of the entertainment world around us and how it can distract us from the Lord and from what he’s called us to do and be. And so, again, so many of these prayers can feel so timely today.
Zach Carter
It’s Scougal’s Neil Postman 1.0, right? The idea that the world is distracting is, of course, a biblical one. To go back to what Jonathan said at the very beginning about why this project is so valuable, when Christians have an ahistorical perspective on their faith, and they can’t see the superintending providence of God’s work preserving saints over time, what we miss is that the same temptation—I think Jonathan said specifically that we don’t feel like we have to reinvent the wheel. We face the exact same temptations to be distracted. The medium has changed, but there were distractions since Scougal’s age. And so the battle for the Christian from the beginning has been to not look at the apple, whatever the apple is in your day and age. Let not the typologist get too obsessed with the fact that there are apples that we’re actually looking at all the time. But, certainly, we do need to be comforted by the fact that Christians have been faithful, and God has kept a people for himself for generations. Even just revisiting some of these, I just feel so comforted, remembering that God is so kind to keep for himself a people. And the same things that we are battling, he has kept people through in the past.
Matt Tully
I think sometimes we can tend to think that the situations that we’re facing today in the modern world are distinct and they’re unique from what maybe previous generations or eras of Christians have faced. And I think there is something comforting and encouraging and even motivating—a bit of a kick in the pants—to know that actually, fundamentally, we’re not facing new things. Christians have always been called to faithfulness in the midst of many of the same temptations and challenges that past generations have felt. Let’s go to this last era of church history, the modern period. Jonathan, I wonder if you could share a last prayer for us from that period that really stood out to you.
Jonathan Arnold
There’s one by William Jay, who’s another one of these figures that is probably often overlooked in our own era, but in his day was extraordinarily well known, largely for his preaching ability, his ability to command a pulpit and to provide exegetical exposition in a way that was accessible to his congregation, which included a whole host of very well-to-do people as well as the lower class that were able to engage together. But his prayer that we have in number 95, labeled a Prayer for Right Perspective, is one that, again, is one of these timeless ones that fits well in our world.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that one together.
Prayer for Right Perspective
William Jay (1769–1853)
Oh Lord, help us remember that gratitude is more fitting
to us than complaint. Our afflictions, indeed, have
been light compared to our guilt. They have been few
compared to the sufferings of others. They have all been
attended with innumerable alleviations. They have all been
necessary, all given to us with a regard for our welfare,
all designed to work together for our good. We bless you
for what is past, and we trust you for what is to come.
Indeed, we cast all our cares upon you, knowing that you
care for us.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, tell us a little bit more about William Jay. For those of us who aren’t as familiar with him, where did he live, and what was his occupation?
Jonathan Arnold
Jay was a pastor. He was an independent pastor, so he was not part of the Church of England, but was, at a time when the evangelical movement was really just getting started, he’s one of these influential figures that’s at the beginning of the broadening of that evangelical movement. And he worked with some of the major figures of the day, or maybe a better way to say it is they worked with him, because he was one that was more well known and had a large platform for his day. So he worked with people like William Wilberforce, John Ryland, some of these names that your audience may very well be familiar with. But in their day, they saw the network that he had, the ability that he had to bring the gospel to places that it had never been before, and even to make church and church going as part of a spiritual formation movement, even outside of the requirement of going to the state church. Seeing that as part of everybody’s desire to grow and to engage their own Christian tradition is a significant one. So he’s working in Bath, England, and that’s where he spends almost all of his time. He’s the minister at Argyle Chapel, which was a very significant chapel there as the evangelical movement, at least the modern version of the evangelical movement, really got going. He was very focused in his time. He dies in 1853, so he overlaps Charles Spurgeon by a little bit, but basically his predecessor, as far as a major preacher in England. But one of his focuses was on the catechetical understanding or training of the family. And so he produces prayer books and he produces handbooks for his congregants to use in their homes, specifically for the father to use as the major discipler of children. So he produces a work called The Domestic Minister’s Assistant, and the domestic minister, then, is the father in this case that is supposed to be responsible for the whole household. He puts himself in a long tradition. This is not new to him. People like Richard Baxter in the Puritan era, Martin Luther had produced a very similar type of work, all focusing on the work of the father as the one who is responsible for the religious stewardship. But Jay carries that on and really produces some of the finest work in that genre over the entire of church history. So it’s still well worth getting, for people who are interested in making sure that their family is well discipled. And even for your own soul, it’s a great work. And he’s got several of those kinds of collections.
Matt Tully
And that’s another great example of the way that sometimes we can think of the modern world, where the idea of a family devotional or a family resource for parents to use with their children, it feels maybe very modern. But actually, throughout church history, some of these resources that today feel perhaps a little bit inaccessible or intimidating, they were designed for very similar practical reasons—trying to help God’s people to teach the Bible, to teach the truths of the faith, to teach people how to pray. It’s all meant to be very practical.
Jonathan Arnold
And to recognize that the stewardship of those that are closest to you and the ones that God has placed under you really falls on you as the father, as the parents, and as those that are in the household. That it’s not to be given out to other sources alone. It’s always great to have the church come alongside and help disciple your children. I’ve got a great church here that has a great youth program, and I’m very grateful for it. But ultimately, my children need to hear and be discipled by me and my wife rather than primarily by the youth minister and the leaders there. But the church has always had that thought in mind. And like you said, it goes all the way back, and we could find examples earlier than Martin Luther and all the way through of people who focused on that idea of stewardship and of passing on the faith to the next generation starts primarily in the nuclear family. It goes elsewhere from there, but starts there.
Matt Tully
Maybe a final question for each of you. Zach, maybe you can start us off. Is there any prayer that you came across, that you recorded, or you wrote down and you just couldn’t fit it in the book for some reason? It didn’t make the cut, but you felt really bad that you had to actually cut this one out because you love it so much.
Zach Carter
Oh, there were honestly so many. And I think that probably the best example of some just because of copyright law and either inaccessibility in translation, there are dozens of works that I would have loved to have seen put in. Even one of the works that is featured but there are other prayers in it that couldn’t make the cut, Isaac Watts has an entire directory. He produced a manual very much like William Jay did. And Isaac Watts’ book contains a ton of those. There’s a figure, Lewis Bailey, who wrote a book called The Practice of Piety, and it’s a manual which predates these. It’s more in the era of Skougal, and none of his prayers are in there, but he has prayers for before you open up Scripture to do your private devotionals, here’s a prayer to pray. And so there are dozens of these prayers that live on in a Clippings document on my desktop.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, how about you? Is there any single prayer that stands out to you that you wish could have been in here, but it just didn’t quite make the cut?
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, there were, like Zach said, there were several that I think kind of stand out. We’ve got a couple from the pen of Elizabeth I, who was very involved, especially early in her life, in theological writings and was obviously involved in the theological debates of the day as as the Church of England was coming about and was coming to its final formation. And so she leaves behind a couple of just beautiful prayers that demonstrate her own faith in the middle of those crises, or even early on before she’s even crowned Queen, that have been left to us. We would love to be able to include all of those kinds of things, but those stand out to me. I kind of come back around to those. I live in that era in my own historical studies, and so it often shows up just as a reminder of where those various crowns were and how that played out in their own personal life as well.
Matt Tully
That’s great. Jonathan and Zach, thank you so much for taking the time today to help us understand a little bit more what you’re doing in this really wonderful little book—to just remind us all, perhaps, of the riches of church history, the riches of our own heritage as Christians, and what we can draw from that heritage.
Jonathan Arnold
Thanks for having us. This has been wonderful.
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.
1. Israel’s exile is the major theological catastrophe of the Old Testament.
Israel’s exile to Assyria and Babylon occurred over a series of events from 722 BC to 582 BC. You can read about them in 2 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 24. And although forced deportation is awful enough in its own right, these waves of exile were coupled with two other deeply significant events: the toppling of David’s dynasty and the destruction of Solomon’s temple. In 2 Samuel 7 we read of how God had given his people “rest” in the land, and in turn promised to David that he would have a kingdom forever and a son to build God’s temple. Subsequently, Solomon is that first royal heir, and he builds God’s temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 1‒10). Thus marks the pinnacle of God’s saving purposes to date: God’s people in God’s place under God’s king and worshipping in God’s sanctuary. All of that is an affirmation that the Lord God is truly for his people, and with his people, and saving his people. What then is the exile but a stripping away of all of that? Because of the sins of their kings (1 Kings 14:15; 2 Kings 21:9), the people are driven out of the land, deprived of a king, and made to watch their temple crumble—all of which begs the terrible question as to whether God has abandoned his people and/or been defeated by the Assyrian and Babylonian gods. The OT “exile,” therefore, is a collection of disasters that create an unthinkable theological quandary. It must be resolved!
2. The Bible’s theology of exile long predates Israel’s historic exile.
Yet, the OT’s theology of exile does not start in 2 Kings. Rather, Israel’s exile is a microcosm of a much larger exile. In Genesis 3:24, Adam and Eve are ejected “east of the garden of Eden” because of their sin (Gen. 2:17; 3:6). Israel’s experience of exile, therefore, is representative of all humanity’s exile from our original home in God’s glorious presence. This is why Israel’s exile matters to everyone, even if we are not Israelites. For it is only through Israel’s return from exile that we too can return to the true presence of God. We also learn from Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden that there is a critical theological link between exile and death. They are told that they will die the day they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17). But on the day they eat of that tree, they do not die—strictly speaking. But they are expelled from the garden, and later they do die (Gen. 3:23–24; 5:5). We can conclude, therefore, that exile is a form of death, and death is a condition of being in exile. And such is the state of the world under “the curse” of sin (Gen. 3:17).
3. Return from exile motifs are all over the Old Testament.
The theology of exile and return is subsequently baked into the entire OT. The calling of Abraham demonstrates this in Genesis 11‒12. As he moves westward from Ur to “the land,” he is symbolically coming back to the presence of God. In turn, the language of Eden is used throughout Exodus by Joshua to describe the land promised to Israel (see esp. Ex. 3:8; Lev. 26:11‒12). Thus, Joshua’s entrance into the land is symbolic of a return to the garden of Eden (see esp. Josh. 1:13; 21:43‒45). Equally, insofar as the tabernacle is meant to look like and commemorate the garden of Eden (Ex. 24‒25), the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 comprise a liturgical return from exile—the high priest bearing Israel, and by extension all humanity, back into the presence of God. The point of all this is that Israel’s calling, escape from Egypt, entrance into the land, and worship practices all remember Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden and create the hope for all humanity’s return to the presence of God someday.
4. Return from exile is often associated with resurrection.
Throughout the OT these symbolic returns from exile are often accompanied with resurrection symbolism. Two examples will have to suffice. When Israel escapes from Egypt, it is said that they “go up” or “go out” (Ex. 3:8, 12, 17; 6:6, 11, etc.), which is the same language used of “going up/out” of the grave in other OT texts (cf. Gen. 46:4; Ps. 18:15‒16; Jonah 2:2, 6). Thus, Israel is metaphorically resurrected in their exodus! Also, when the prophets speak of Israel coming out of their Babylonian exile, they describe it as a resurrection of the nation (see Isa. 25 and Ezek. 37). In both of these cases, an atoning sacrifice is necessary to precipitate the return and resurrection (Ex. 12; Isa. 53).
5. Jeremiah says the exile will last 70 years, but Daniel says it will last 70 x 7 years.
The most famous prediction of the duration of Israel’s exile comes in Jeremiah 29:10, “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.” I say this is famous not because we know it very well, but because other biblical authors often refer to it. See 2 Chronicles 36:21, Ezra 1:1, and Daniel 9:2. But it is striking that upon seeing that those 70 years are ended, Daniel prays that the Lord will return his people to the land (Dan. 9:3‒19). But then the angel Gabriel appears to Daniel and says, “Seventy weeks [or “Seventy sevens”] are decreed about your people and your holy city . . . . ” That means that while the exile will end in one sense (Ezra does lead many home), it is ordained by the Lord actually to extend the conditions of the exile to seventy times seven years! I don’t think that number is meant to pinpoint a precise date, but to speak of a lengthening of the exile (and all it meant under #1 above) to a further horizon while all still under God’s sovereign timing.
6. With Jesus’s birth, teachings, and miracles the return from exile has begun.
The NT, therefore, opens with this ongoing exile emphasis (cf. Matt. 1:11‒12; 2:15, 18). But Jesus’s ministry is the dawning of the end-of-exile light (compare Matt. 4:12–17 with Isa. 9:1–2)! He heals diseases and raises the dead (compare Matt. 11:2‒6 with Isa. 35:1‒7). He offers “rest” from a heavy “yoke” (compare Matt. 11:28‒30 with Isa. 9:4 and Jer. 6:16). And he feeds his people on the mountains of Israel (compare Matt. 14:13‒21 with Ezek. 34:11‒14). All of these teachings and actions are clear prophetic signs that the exile is about to truly end through Christ.
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7. Jesus’s death and resurrection together are the climactic return-from-exile events.
I commented above that “exile is a form of death” and that “death is a condition of exile.” Conversely, throughout the OT the return from exile is described as a kind of resurrection. With that sort of background in place, Jesus’s death and resurrection can easily be seen as his own personal exile and return. Only his return to the presence of God is not like a resurrection, but a true historical bodily resurrection. Thus, all those images of return and resurrection in the OT were always pointing to Christ’s climactic work. Two NT texts help us understand this. In the context of describing the meaning of Christ’s death, Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” As we saw above, the OT “curse” is that of exile. Then in Hebrews, we learn how Jesus has now gone into the true sanctuary of God (Heb. 8:1‒5). Thus, in Jesus’s death he has become the Christian’s substitutionary victim of exile as he pays the consequence of death on behalf of his people for their sins. And in the resurrection and ascension, he representatively entered into the true sanctuary of God on behalf of his people. Because sin leads to exile and death, Jesus has endured the exile and death due his people on their behalf. And because return from exile means resurrection into the presence of God, Jesus has been raised to minister in the heavenly sanctuary on behalf of his people.
8. Jesus’s ascension, the gift of the Spirit, and the creation of the church are return-from-exile effects today.
But the story of return from exile does not end there. The world continues to feel the effects of Jesus’s return-from-exile mission as his people are born again, evangelize others, and persevere in their faith. Paul tells us that we experience Jesus’s resurrection power when we put our faith in Jesus. Romans 6:4 says, “[J]ust as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (see also Gal. 2: 20). And Peter too says that God “has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Thus, Jesus’s personal return-from-exile resurrection power is extended to his people. We can say, therefore, that Christians participate on Jesus’s return-from-exile experience through our union with him (see also Eph. 1:20; 2:5‒6; Col. 3:1‒3). Related, whenever we evangelize unbelievers, we are extending Jesus’s come-out-of-exile summons to the world (compare my comments in #6 above on Matt. 4:12‒17 with Matt. 28:18‒20). In this way, the rest of the world also experiences Jesus’s end-of-exile ministry. And finally, Romans 8 and Hebrews 3‒4 use a lot of the language of the exodus to describe how Christians persevere in their walk. Insofar as Israel’s exodus and eventual entrance into the land are also return-from-exile motifs (see #3 above), then so too are the struggles of the Christian life. Our head—the Lord Jesus Christ—has gone before us into the glorious presence of God, and in that sense, we can say we too have returned from exile. But it is also true that experientially, in this life, we are returning from exile. And to God’s great praise and our comfort, he is with us in our return-from-exile trek through this life.
9. The Bible’s theology of exile and return is only finally resolved in the last chapters of Revelation.
Our full and final return from exile will only be complete when Jesus returns and resurrects our bodies (1 Thess. 4:13‒16). Then we will enter into the new heavens and the new earth, a cosmic Edenic homecoming (Rev. 21‒22)! This beautiful passage in Revelation 21:1‒4 says it all:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Into this new reality, “the kings of the earth will bring their glory” (Rev. 21:24). And so the Bible’s long exile-and-return drama ends as Christ’s people enter into a geographic location where we will dwell with God forever. All because Christ has “died, and behold [is] alive forevermore” (Rev. 1:18)!
10. A biblical theology of exile is deeply relevant for forming the Christian life.
This biblical theology of exile and return is vital for Christians to understand. For one, it helps us read our Bibles better, and that is always good. Notice all the bits of the biblical narrative that I referenced throughout #1‒9 above: Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, exodus, Sinai, tabernacle, land, David, temple, Solomon, the prophets, Jesus’s birth and teaching and miracles, Jesus’s death and resurrection, regeneration, evangelism, perseverance, and our future hope. The Bible’s drama of exile and return helps us organize and make sense of all that together. Secondly, this biblical understanding of exile and return gives us a theology of history. And that is very important too. It tells us where we are in God’s world and when we are in God’s plans. We are one step out of exile and one step back into Eden! Christ is our “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb. 6:19–20; cf. also Heb. 10:20)—and very soon, we are destined to follow him there! In a world profoundly confused about who they are, what is good, what is true, what is beautiful, and what is the meaning of life, this theology of homecoming is beautifully refreshing, inspiring, motivating, hope-giving, grounding, and identifying. Friend, if you’re still reading this, rejoice with me in the return-from-exile salvation Christ has brought, and open up your mouth to call others out of exile with you!
Nicholas G. Piotrowski (PhD, Wheaton College) is the president of Indianapolis Theological Seminary where he also teaches hermeneutics and New Testament courses. His other books include In All the Scriptures and Matthew’s New David at the End of Exile.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sighing on Sunday: 40 Meditations for When Church Hurts explores the difficult—but unfortunately not uncommon—circumstances of pain experienced by people from others within the church.
Sighing on Sunday: 40 Meditations for When Church Hurts explores the difficult—but unfortunately not uncommon—circumstances of pain experienced by people from others within the church.
Author Megan Hill is a pastor’s daughter and a pastor’s wife who draws from her own experience of seeing people wounded within the church community to compassionately address feelings of neglect, rejection, betrayal, and even abuse. In this collection of forty Scripture-based meditations, she offers empathy and biblical insights into how to heal from these difficult circumstances.
The book offers encouragement by pointing to faithful biblical figures, including the apostle Paul, who experienced criticism, neglect, and abandonment from those within the church. Yet in all of these struggles, Paul still acted in love.
This book is candid, relatable, and saturated with the Gospel. It was written to address difficulties among believers, including strained relationships, unmet expectations, leadership failures, division, and personal feelings of isolation. Sighing on Sunday also offers words of warning against Satan’s tactics that draw those who are hurting into deeper misery and redirects them to the steadfast love of Christ, who remains the head of His church despite its imperfections.
If you’ve experienced these challenges or know someone who has, request Sighing on Sunday.
While our hospitality should start in our local churches, it shouldn’t stop there. In addition to welcoming one another, we should welcome unbelievers, as well as needy saints.
The New Testament word translated as hospitality is literally “love of strangers.” We know we’re not wrong in applying the term to welcoming those in our churches because each of the hospitality commands is nestled within passages about brotherly love. At the same time, while our hospitality should start in our local churches, it shouldn’t stop there. In addition to welcoming one another, we should welcome unbelievers, as well as needy saints.
Once when Jesus dined in the house of a Pharisee, he said to his host:
When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12–14)
The world schemes and calculates, “What can I get out of this in this life?” But Christians are strategically storing up treasure in heaven. Imagine the meals and accommodation there!
We bonded with our former next-door neighbors because they had kids the same age as ours and a friendly labrador who liked to play with our golden retriever. They had lived in Dubai for a long time and were happy to join us for dinner and attend our Christmas carol parties, but they never showed interest in the gospel.
Nevertheless, when a Muslim friend of theirs wanted a Bible, they came to us. As a result, I was able to lead my neighbor and her Muslim friend in a Bible study through the Gospel of Mark. Eventually both started coming to church.
How well do you know your neighbors? I confess, my husband and I have gone through seasons of being more or less involved with our neighbors—often realizing that we had wrongly become too “busy” to reach out. But fellow Christian, make time to invite your unbelieving neighbors into your life for the sake of the gospel.
Remember, you don’t have to go it alone. Are there other church members in your neighborhood with whom you can partner? For instance, I know several women who rotate hosting neighbors for dessert. They use “get to know you” questions aimed at deepening their conversations and have found that many neighborhood women are lonely and in need of friends. Through rotating dessert nights, they have ample opportunity to share the best news in the world with their neighbors.
Thank God that Jesus extends his welcome beyond those of worldly repute—even to the likes of you and me!
Do you have neighbors, coworkers, friends from school, or other relationships you can invest in for kingdom purposes?
And what about the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? Is there a prison you can visit? A retirement home? A crisis pregnancy center? Is someone in the hospital? Can you invite someone into your home who cannot return the favor? Jesus welcomes those with nothing to give, and so it should also be with us. Thank God that Jesus extends his welcome beyond those of worldly repute—even to the likes of you and me!
Another way of extending hospitality beyond your church is by opening your home to missionaries or traveling saints. Living in Dubai, we’ve had this kind of welcome offered to us numerous times when we’ve traveled back to the United States. We’ve been shown hospitality by longtime friends in Austin, new friends in Williamsburg, a single pastor who bought a big home in Texas to house missionaries on furlough, and other dear saints who have sacrificed their time and space to make us feel welcome. We’ve even had a family give us their car to drive for months at a time. These saints remind me of Gaius whom John commends in 3 John 5–6:
Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.
Gospel-workers depend on the hospitality of the saints.
The book of Acts is a record of hospitality extended in the early church. People like Jason, Priscilla, and Aquila risked their necks to show hospitality to those who were preaching the gospel. Hospitality toward gospel-workers is all over Paul’s epistles. He expects hospitality for himself from both churches and individuals (Rom. 15:24, 32; Philem. 22). He asks the churches in Rome to show hospitality to Phoebe, writing, “Welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you” (Rom. 16:2). He asks the Colossians to welcome Mark and Titus and to help Zenus and Apollos as they travel through Crete, instructing, “See that they lack nothing” (Titus 3:13).
Housing and supporting traveling missionaries and gospel-workers is a privilege— one that is mutually beneficial. Hearing about what’s happening in other parts of the world makes us thankful for our access to Bibles and fellow believers, and it spurs us on to pray for those who haven’t yet heard the gospel. One day, we’ll worship God face-to-face with the people we’ve prayed for!
Do you have a spare room or an empty basement? Use them to bless missionaries you know or that your church supports. Who knows? The Lord may just use one visiting missionary to get you overseas for gospel work too.
As God has welcomed us, we have the responsibility and privilege to extend our welcome to others beyond our local church.
Keri Folmar is a member of the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai, where her husband is the senior pastor. She has three adult children and is the author of The Good Portion: Scripture and the Delighting in the Word Bible study series.
There are three things that I think are really great for children's ministers to think about when thinking about giving, being hospitable, and giving their grace-filled presence to families coming to their church.
