WHAT JESUS DEMANDS

FROM THE WORLD

BOOKS BY JOHN PIPER

God’s Passion for His Glory

The Pleasures of God

Desiring God

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Future Grace

A Hunger for God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

A Godward Life

Pierced by the Word

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

The Hidden Smile of God

The Roots of Endurance

The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God

The Innkeeper

The Prodigal’s Sister

Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

What’s the Difference?

The Justification of God

Counted Righteous in Christ

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Beyond the Bounds

Don’t Waste Your Life

The Passion of Jesus Christ

Life as a Vapor

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

When I Don’t Desire God

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

Taste and See

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

God Is the Gospel

Contending for Our All

What

JESUS

DEMANDS

from the

WORLD

JOHN PIPER

C R O S S W A Y B O O K S

A P U B L I S H I N G M I N I S T R Y O F

G O O D N E W S P U B L I S H E R S

W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S

What Jesus Demands from the World

Copyright © 2006 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway Books

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission

of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Getty Images

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible,

English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publish-

ing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights

reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the

Bible .

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard

Bible. ® Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968,

1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version.

Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education

of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

First printing, 2006

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946-

What Jesus demands from the world / John Piper.

p.

cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-845-3 (hc : alk. paper)

ISBN 10: 1-58134-845-2

1. Jesus Christ—Teachings. 2. Bible. N.T. Gospels—Criticism,

interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS2415.P49

2006

241.5—dc22

2006021810

RRD

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To

Benjamin and Melissa

living the love of Jesus

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

13

Suggestions for How to Read This Book

15

Introduction: The Aim of the Book

17

A Word to Biblical Scholars

29

(and Those Who Wonder What They Are Doing)

Demand #1

37

You Must Be Born Again

Demand #2

40

Repent

Demand #3

44

Come to Me

Demand #4

48

Believe in Me

Demand #5

52

Love Me

Demand #6

56

Listen to Me

Demand #7

62

Abide in Me

Demand #8

68

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me

Demand #9

75

Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind,

and Strength

Demand #10

83

Rejoice and Leap for Joy

Demand #11

92

Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul

and Body in Hell

Demand #12

99

Worship God in Spirit and Truth

Demand #13

105

Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart

Demand #14

113

Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of

Daily Life

Demand #15

120

Do Not Be Anxious About the Threats of Man

Demand #16

125

Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride

Demand #17

130

Humble Yourself in Childlikeness, Servanthood,

and Brokenhearted Boldness

Demand #18

138

Do Not Be Angry—Trust God’s Providence

Demand #19

146

Do Not Be Angry—Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness

Demand #20

153

Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven—

Be Justified by Trusting Jesus

Demand #21

159

Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven—

Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus

Demand #22

166

Strive to Enter through the Narrow Door,

for All of Life Is War

Demand #23

174

Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door,

for Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant

Demand #24

181

Strive to Enter through the Narrow Door,

for You Are Already in the Kingdom’s Power

Demand #25

190

Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the

Pharisees, for It Was Hypocritical and Ugly

Demand #26

196

Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of

the Pharisees—Clean the Inside of the Cup

Demand #27

205

Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the

Pharisees, for Every Healthy Tree Bears

Good Fruit

Demand #28

212

Love Your Enemies—Lead Them to the Truth

Demand #29

221

Love Your Enemies—Pray for Those Who

Abuse You

Demand #30

230

Love Your Enemies—Do Good to Those Who

Hate You, Give to the One Who Asks

Demand #31

242

Love Your Enemies to Show That You Are

Children of God

Demand #32

249

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, for This Is

the Law and the Prophets

Demand #33

256

Love Your Neighbor with the Same Commitment

You Have to Your Own Well-being

Demand #34

263

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself and as

Jesus Loved Us

Demand #35

269

Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven by

Giving Sacrificially and Generously

Demand #36

274

Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven

and Increase Your Joy in Jesus

Demand #37

281

Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven—

“It Is Your Father’s Good Pleasure to Give You

the Kingdom”

Demand #38

290

Do Not Take an Oath—Cherish the Truth

and Speak It Simply

Demand #39

296

Do Not Take an Oath—Let What You Say

Be Simply “Yes” or “No”

Demand #40

301

What God Has Joined Together Let No Man

Separate, for Marriage Mirrors God’s Covenant

with Us

Demand #41

307

What God Has Joined Together Let No Man

Separate, for Whoever Divorces and

Marries Another Commits Adultery

Demand #42

317

What God Has Joined Together Let No Man

Separate—One Man, One Woman, by Grace,

Till Death

Demand #43

323

Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar’s

and to God the Things That Are God’s

Demand #44

329

Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar’s

as an Act of Rendering to God What Is God’s

Demand #45

336

Do This in Remembrance of Me, for I Will

Build My Church

Demand #46

343

Do This in Remembrance of Me—Baptize Disciples

and Eat the Lord’s Supper

Demand #47

350

Let Your Light Shine Before Others That They

May Glorify Your Father Who Is in Heaven

Demand #48

356

Let Your Light Shine before Others—the Joyful

Sacrifice of Love in Suffering

Demand #49

363

Make Disciples of All Nations, for All Authority

Belongs to Jesus

Demand #50

369

Make Disciples of All Nations, for the Mission

Cannot Fail

Desiring God—A Note on Resources

377

Scripture Index

379

Person Index

391

Subject Index

393

Al authority in heaven and on earth

has been given to me.

J e s u s

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was possible because generosity has flowed to me

from more streams than I can mention here, indeed more

streams than I know. But I gladly mention several. The elders and

congregation of Bethlehem Baptist Church gave me a five-month

leave from preaching. This was part of their kindness on the twenty-

fifth anniversary of our ministry together at the church. Without this

extended time away, this book would not have been written.

The happy combination of solitude and fellowship at Tyndale

House in Cambridge, England, with its abundant resources, pro-

vided the ideal setting for this kind of research and writing. Bruce

Winter, whose long and faithful tenure as Warden was coming to

an end while I was there, was gracious and stimulating in his wel-

come and friendship. The staff and readers of Tyndale House made

our stay a glad and fruitful season. God knows the anonymous

hands that opened to make this stay possible.

David Mathis, Justin Taylor, and Ted Griffin read the manu-

script with care and helped me make hundreds of improvements.

Carol Steinbach again gathered her team and prepared the Scripture

and Person Indexes, which will help readers find their way around

more easily. Lane Dennis and his team at Crossway Books encour-

aged and supported this project from conception to reality. My wife

Noël set up house in a new place, set me free to write, and read

every word with the eyes that only a gifted wife can bring.

Everything I do hangs on her support.

When someone asks, “How long did it take you to write this

book?” I often answer, “Sixty years.” I know it’s not a satisfactory

14 Acknowledgments

answer. But it does tell the truth that the streams of generosity that

have come together to create this book have been flowing into my life

from the start. I do not doubt that experiences I had from Summit

Drive Grade School in Greenville, South Carolina, in the 1950s to

the University of Munich in the early 1970s and the ministry of the

Word for twenty-five years at Bethlehem shaped what is in this book.

There is no separating life and the labor of writing.

For all the countless streams of generosity—known and

unknown—that have flowed into my life, I thank Jesus, who cre-

ated me and called me and governs all my days, as he does the gov-

ernments of the world and the galaxies of the universe. I pray that

he will use this book to make himself known and treasured and

obeyed as the only Savior from our sin and the only Sovereign over

the world.

SUGGESTIONS FOR

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Long books seem daunting because we think we should start at

the front and read to the back and not skip anything. I don’t

expect most people to read this book that way. I hope some will. I

did structure the book so that matters at the front may help the

reader understand matters further on. And there is a kind of foun-

dation, progression, and climax. But the chapters have enough inde-

pendence that most of them can be read without the others. It will be

obvious when one chapter depends on another.

Therefore, I invite you to step in anywhere. You don’t have to

read the Introduction first. I hope that the way Jesus’ commands

are interwoven will draw you further in, from one issue to another.

I have tried to keep the chapters relatively short so that in gen-

eral they can be read at one sitting for those who only have limited

time from day to day. This is why some of the chapters deal with

the same command from different angles. I thought it better to han-

dle the matter in several chapters rather than in one long one.

Since the focus is on the commands of Jesus in this book, much

about his life and death is not here. If you want to see how I have

tried to portray these more fully, you can look at two other (shorter!)

books where I deal with Jesus and his death: Seeing and Savoring

Jesus Christ (Crossway Books, 2004) and Fifty Reasons Why Jesus

Came to Die (Crossway Books, 2006). And, of course, there are

important books by others that I will be referring to along the way.

Most of all I hope you will pray as you read. Even if you are

16 Suggestions for How to Read This Book

not accustomed to praying, ask God to protect you from any mis-

takes I may have made and to confirm to you what is true. In the end,

what matters is the effect that God produces in our lives through

his written word by his Spirit. That’s what makes prayer so crucial.

In prayer we ask God to transform us in that way.

Finally, may the living Jesus fulfill the purpose of his word as you

read: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in

you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

INTRODUCTION:

THE AIM OF THE BOOK

The aim of this book is God-glorifying obedience to Jesus. To

that end I am seeking to obey Jesus’ last command: “Make dis-

ciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have

commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Jesus’ final command was to

teach all his commandments.

The Impossible Final Command

Actually, the final command was more precise than that. He did

not say, “Teach them all my commandments.” He said, “Teach them

to observe all my commandments.” You can teach a parrot all of

Jesus’ commandments. But you cannot teach a parrot to observe

them. Parrots will not repent, and worship Jesus, and lay up trea-

sures in heaven, and love their enemies, and go out like sheep in the

midst of wolves to herald the kingdom of God.

Teaching people to parrot all that Jesus commanded is easy.

Teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded is impossible.

Jesus used that word. When a rich man could not bring himself to let

go of his riches and follow him, Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel

to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the

kingdom of God. . . . With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:25-27).

Therefore, the person who sets himself to obey Jesus’ final com-

mission—for example, to teach a rich man to observe the command

to “renounce all that he has” (Luke 14:33)—attempts the impos-

18 Introduction

sible. But Jesus said it was not impossible. “All things are possible

with God.” So the greatest challenge in writing this book has been to

discern God’s way of making impossible obedience possible.

Jesus said that this impossible goal happens through teaching.

“Make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all that I have com-

manded you.” There is, of course, more to it than that—like the

atoning death of Jesus (Mark 10:45) and the work of the Holy

Spirit (John 14:26) and prayer (Matt. 6:13). But in the end Jesus

focused on teaching. I take this to mean that God has chosen to do

the impossible through the teaching of all that Jesus commanded.

That’s what I pray this book will prove to be—a kind of teaching

that God will use to bring about impossible obedience to Jesus.

And all of that for the glory of God.

Teaching and Obedience That Glorify God

The reason I emphasize the glory of God is because Jesus did. He

said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your

good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt.

5:16). The ultimate goal of Jesus’ commandments is not that we

observe them by doing good works. The ultimate goal is that God be

glorified. The obedience of good works is penultimate. But what is

ultimate is that in our obedient lives God be displayed as the most

beautiful reality in the world. That is Jesus’ ultimate goal1 and mine.

This helps me answer the question: What kind of teaching of

Jesus’ commandments might God be willing to use to bring about

such impossible obedience? If the aim of obedience is ultimately the

glory of God, then it is probable that the teaching God will use is

the kind that keeps his glory at the center. Therefore, my aim has

been to keep the supremely valuable beauty of God in proper focus

throughout the book.

1 See especially Demand #47.

Introduction 19

Keeping the Commandments Connected to

Jesus and His Work

How then do we keep the beauty of God in proper focus in relation

to Jesus’ commandments? By treating the meaning and motivation

of the commands in connection with the person and work of Jesus.

The person and work of Jesus are the primary means by which God

has glorified himself in the world. No revelation of God’s glory is

greater. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John

14:9). Therefore, his person is the manifestation of the glory of

God. To see him as he really is means seeing the infinitely valuable

beauty of God. Jesus also said, as he was praying, “I glorified you

on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do”

(John 17:4). Therefore, his work is a manifestation of the glory of

God. When we see what he achieved and how he did it, we see the

majesty and greatness of God.

Therefore, my aim has been to probe the meaning and the moti-

vation of Jesus’ commands in connection with his person and work.

What emerges again and again is that what he is commanding is a

life that displays the worth of his person and the effect of his work.

His intention is that we not disconnect what he commands from who

he is and what he has done.

We should not be surprised, then, that Jesus’ final, climactic

command is that we teach all nations to observe all that he com-

manded. This leads to his ultimate purpose. When obedience to his

commands happens, what the world sees is the fruit of Jesus’ glori-

ous work and the worth of his glorious person. In other words,

they see the glory of God. This is why Jesus came and why his mis-

sion remains until he comes.

A Sketch of the Person and Work of Jesus

Anticipating what we will see later in the book, the briefest sketch

of Jesus’ person and work should be given here, so that from the start

the commands rest on their proper foundation. Jesus came into the

world, sent by God, as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. When Jesus

20 Introduction

asked his disciples who they thought he was, Peter answered, “You

are the Christ [that is, Messiah], the Son of the living God.” To this

Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and

blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven”

(Matt. 16:16-17).

When Jesus was on trial for his life, the charge was blasphemy,

and eventually treason against Caesar, because of his apparent claims

to be the Messiah, the King of Israel, the Son of God. The Jewish

high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at

the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven”

(Mark 14:61-62).

Why Jesus Favored the Title Son of Man

Even though Jesus acknowledged that he was the Messiah, the Son

of God, his favorite designation for himself was “Son of Man.” At

one level this title carries the obvious meaning that Jesus was truly

human. But because of its use by the prophet Daniel, it probably is

a very exalted claim of universal authority.

Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of

man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before

him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his

dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (Dan. 7:13-14)

The reason Jesus favored the title Son of Man for himself was that

the terms Messiah and Son of God were loaded with popular polit-

ical pretensions. They would give the wrong impression about the

nature of his messiahship. They could easily imply that he fit in

with the conceptions of the day that the Messiah would conquer

Rome and liberate Israel and set up his earthly kingdom. But Jesus

had to navigate these political waters by presenting himself as truly

the Messiah, even the divine Son of God with universal authority, but

Introduction 21

also reject the popular notion that the Messiah would not suffer

but immediately rule.

The term Son of Man proved most useful in this regard because

though it did carry exalted claims for those who had ears to hear,

on the face of it he was not making explicit claims to political power.

Under this favorite title (while not rejecting the others), Jesus was

able to make his claims that the long-awaited messianic kingdom

of God had come in his ministry.2

The Kingdom of God Had Come into History

The Jewish people longed for the day when the Messiah would come

and bring the kingdom of God. The kingdom would mean that the

enemies of Israel are defeated, sins are wiped away, diseases are

healed, the dead are raised, and righteousness, joy, and peace hold

sway on the earth with the Messiah on the throne. Jesus arrived

and said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;

repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). What he meant was

that in his own ministry the liberating, saving reign of God had

arrived. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then

the kingdom of God has come upon you . . . the kingdom of God is

in the midst of you” (Luke 11:20; 17:21).

But there was a mystery. Jesus called it “the secret of the king-

dom of God” (Mark 4:11). The mystery was that the kingdom of

God had come in history before its final, triumphant manifestation.

Fulfillment was here, but consummation was not here.3 The kingdom

would arrive in two stages. In the first stage the Messiah would come

and suffer, and in the second stage the Messiah would come in glory

(Luke 24:46; Mark 14:62).

2 For a helpful overview of the titles of Jesus in the Gospels in the space of twelve pages see

Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 401-412.

3 For an excellent book-length treatment of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus see

George Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974).

22 Introduction

He Came to Serve and Die for Sins and Rise Again

Therefore, the primary work of Jesus on the earth during his first

coming was to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins. He said,

“Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give

his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And at the Last Supper

with his disciples, he took the cup and said, “This is my blood of

the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of

sins” (Matt. 26:28).

Dying was not his only mission. But it was central. In shedding

his blood he purchased the new-covenant promises. The new

covenant was God’s promise that all who enter the coming king-

dom will have their sins forgiven, will have the law written on their

hearts, and will know God personally (Jer. 31:31-34). The blessings

of this covenant are crucial in enabling us to obey Jesus’ command-

ments. Which makes Jesus’ death of supreme importance in bringing

about the impossible obedience that he demands.

But there was more to his mission. When John the Baptist was

perplexed about whether Jesus was really the Messiah, he sent word

to him from prison: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look

for another?” Jesus answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and

see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed

and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have

good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not

offended by me” (Matt. 11:3-6). In other words, “All my healing

and preaching are a demonstration of my messiahship, but don’t

take offense that I am not fulfilling the political expectation of earthly

rule. I am the one who is to come, but my central mission (in this

first coming) is suffering—to give my life as a ransom for many.”

When his mission was accomplished, after three days in the

grave, Jesus rose from the dead. This was God’s plan. It was an act

of supreme authority over death. “No one takes [my life] from me,

but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down,

and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received

from my Father” (John 10:18). When he was raised, he appeared

to his disciples on many occasions and gave them proof that he was

Introduction 23

physically alive (Luke 24:39-43). He opened the Scriptures to them

so they could see more fully how he fulfilled God’s promises (Luke

24:32, 45). Then he commissioned them to be his witnesses,

instructed them to wait for the promised Holy Spirit, and ascended

into heaven (Luke 24:46-51).

Obedience Is the Fruit of His Work and the

Display of His Glory

On the basis of who he was and what he accomplished, Jesus made

his demands. The demands cannot be separated from his person

and work. The obedience he demands is the fruit of his redeeming

work and the display of his personal glory. That is why he came—

to create a people who glorify his gracious reign by bearing the

fruit of his kingdom (Matt. 21:43).

When he said, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the

lost” (Luke 19:10), he was speaking about Zacchaeus who had just

been so transformed that he gave half his possessions to the poor

(Luke 19:8). In other words, the Son of Man came to save people

from their suicidal love affair with possessions (and every other idol)

and to lead them into a kind of impossible obedience that displays

the infinite worth of Jesus. Therefore, my effort in this book has been

to hold together the meaning and motivation of Jesus’ commands,

the greatness of his work, and the glory of his person.

A Word About Method

I will give more detail about methodology in the following “A Word

to Biblical Scholars” (which I invite everyone to read!), but it seems

good to include at this point some crucial guiding choices that I

have made. My method is to reflect on the meaning and motivation

of Jesus’ demands as they appear in the New Testament Gospels in

the context of his person and work. I do not cite the rest of the

New Testament for my understanding of Jesus in the Gospels. Citing

the whole New Testament is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, and

in my preaching I do not hesitate to bring Scriptures from anywhere

24 Introduction

to help make any text plain, provided I don’t change the meaning

of either text. But in this book I have given my rendering of Jesus

almost entirely through the lens of his own words as recorded in

the Gospels. One of my subordinate aims in this approach is to

encourage confidence in the unity of the New Testament, because the

upshot of this portrayal is so compatible with what the other New

Testament writers taught.

Why This Title for the Book?

A few words about the title What Jesus Demands from the World.

I am aware that the word demands is jarring to many modern ears.

It feels harsh, severe, strict, stark, austere, abrasive. The reason I

choose that word is to confront some of the underlying causes for

why it would feel offensive to portray Jesus as demanding. My con-

viction is that if we rightly understand Jesus’ demands, and if we

are willing to find in him our supreme joy, his demands will not feel

severe but sweet. They would land on us the way the Lady’s com-

mands landed on the beasts in C. S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra: “The

beasts would not think it hard if I told them to walk on their heads.

It would become their delight to walk on their heads. I am His

beast, and all His biddings are joys.”4

But it would be a cheap and superficial spin to give the impres-

sion that Jesus does not in fact often speak abrasively and sound

severe. This is true not only toward his adversaries, the scribes

and Pharisees—for example, in Matthew 23, where he calls them

children of hell (v. 15), “blind fools” (v. 17), “blind guides” (vv. 16,

24), “hypocrites” (v. 27), “whitewashed tombs” (v. 27), and

“brood of vipers” (v. 33). It is also true toward his disciples. For

example, he says, “If you . . . who are evil, know how to give

good gifts to your children . . .” (Matt. 7:11); and to Peter, “Get

behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things

of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33); and again to

4 C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (London: Macmillan, 1973), 76.

Introduction 25

Peter, referring to John’s destiny, “What is that to you? You fol-

low me!” (John 21:22).

And after a blunt and jarring teaching in John 6 (“Whoever feeds

on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” v. 54), John com-

ments that when “many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is

a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ . . . After this many of his disci-

ples turned back and no longer walked with him’” (vv. 60, 66).

Such was the price of how he spoke. My aim is not to gloss over

the tough implications of the word “demands” or to soften the

“hard” sayings of Jesus; the aim is to be changed in our hearts and

in our understanding to such a degree that the tough Jesus is as sweet

to us as the tender Jesus.

Authority and Intimacy Under the

Final Commission

That is my goal. You can feel the two come together in what Jesus

says on either side of his final command to make disciples. On one

side he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given

to me” (Matt. 28:18). And on the other side he says, “Behold, I am

with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The one

says, “I make demands because I have the right. All authority in

the universe is mine.” The other says, “I make demands because I

will help you. I will be with you forever.”

I have tried to structure the chapters of the book to draw the

reader from shorter chapters and gentler demands toward the more

difficult (but no less precious) demands of Jesus.5 This is not merely

stylistic or tactical. It is theologically fitting. Most of the first nine-

teen chapters do not demand any external action. They are essen-

tially about what happens in the mind and heart. These come first

because the kind of obedience Jesus demands moves from the inside

(where the value of Jesus is savored) to the outside (where the value

of Jesus is shown).

Of these chapters, the first seven are “You Must Be Born Again,”

5 For how I chose which commands to include in the book see p. 34-35.

26 Introduction

“Repent,” “Come to Me,” “Believe in Me,” “Love Me,” “Listen to

Me,” and “Abide in Me.” When these demands are seen for what they

really are, they turn the absolute authority of Jesus into a treasure chest

of holy joy. When the most glorious person in the universe pays all

my debts (Matt. 20:28), and then demands that I come to live with him

and enter into his joy (Matt. 25:21), there can be no more desirable

demand imaginable. To such a one I say, with Augustine, “Command

what you wish, but give what you command.”6

Dare He Make Demands of the Whole World?

The other word in the title that sounds provocative is “world”—

What Jesus Demands from the World. Two objections arise. One

is: Did he make demands on the whole world? The other is: Dare

he make demands on the whole world?

One may ask, did Jesus give all these demands to the world, or

did he give them only to his disciples? Is this an ethic for the world

or just for the followers of Jesus? The answer is: The demands he

gave only to his disciples are also meant for the world because he

demands all people everywhere to become his disciples. That is the

point of his final command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all

nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and

of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com-

manded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Jesus dares to lay claim to “all

nations”—all ethnic groups on the planet.7 No exceptions. Jesus is

not a tribal deity. All authority in the universe is his, and all cre-

ation owes its allegiance to him.

Advancing with All Authority but No Sword

He does not send his people to make disciples with a sword. His

kingdom does not come by force, but by truth and love and sacri-

fice and the power of God. “My kingdom is not of this world. If

6 Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 40 (X, xxix).

7 In the final two chapters of this book, I draw out the implications of this verse for the world

and explain the meaning of “all nations” more fully.

Introduction 27

my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fight-

ing” (John 18:36). Jesus’ followers do not kill to extend his kingdom.

They die. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself

and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). “Some of you

they will put to death” (Luke 21:16). Not only will they put the

followers of Jesus to death, but they will do it in the name of their

religion. “The hour is coming,” Jesus says, “when whoever kills

you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, but for now he

restrains his power. He does not always use it to prevent his peo-

ple’s pain, even though he could, and sometimes does. He is with us

to the end of the age, but not always to rescue us from harm. He calls

us to walk the same road he walked. “If they persecuted me, they will

also persecute you” (John 15:20). “If they have called the master of

the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his

household” (Matt. 10:25).

The universal authority of Jesus produces a mission of teach-

ing, not a mission of terror. His aim is God-glorifying obedience to

all that he commanded. The kind of obedience that glorifies God is

free and joyful, not constrained and cowering. Even when the cost

is supreme, the joy is triumphant, because the cause of Jesus cannot

fail. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and

utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice

and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11-12). It

is a costly mission, but a joyful one.

My prayer for this book is that it will serve that global mission—

to “make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that

I have commanded you.” I pray I am a faithful echo of Jesus when

he said, “He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I

have heard from him” (John 8:26).

A WORD TO

BIBLICAL SCHOLARS

(AND THOSE WHO

WONDER WHAT THEY

ARE DOING)

It requires little imagination to hear a New Testament scholar say,

“Good heavens, Piper totally ignores two hundred years of crit-

ical quests for the historical Jesus!” I would understand the response.

It isn’t quite right, however. “Ignores” is not the right word. It would

be more accurate to say that I estimate most of the fruit of those

quests to be unreliable and unusable to accomplish what Jesus aims

to accomplish in the world.

What Fruit from the Quests for the

Historical Jesus?

In this regard little has changed since 1931 when Edwyn Hoskyns

and Noel Davey wrote, “There are no ‘assured results’ of New

Testament Criticism.”1 What this means in regard to the Quest for

the Historical Jesus is not that nothing sure can be said about Jesus,

but that the effort to go behind the four New Testament Gospels

1 Sir Edwyn Hoskyns and Noel Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament (London: Faber and

Faber Limited, 1931), 259.

30 A Word to Biblical Scholars

launches one onto a sea of speculation that has arrived at no island

that could be called a reliable portrait of Jesus.2

Scholars speak of three Quests for the Historical Jesus. The

First Quest was rooted as far back as Benedict Spinoza

(1632–1677), and then worked out through Hermann Reimarus

(1694–1768), David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), William

Wrede (1859–1906), and others. It came to an end under the dou-

ble attack of Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), who argued that it

wasn’t radical enough, and Martin Kähler (1835–1912), who

argued that the historical Jesus, as reconstructed by the critics, was

not the “historic biblical Christ” and was therefore useless for the

faith of the church.3

The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus was awakened in

1953 by a student of Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann. These were

the German giants whom I felt I had to come to terms with in my

graduate school days in Munich in the early 1970s. Interestingly,

both Bultmann and Käsemann lived to be ninety-two years old. But

Bultmann was no longer active in the early 1970s. He died in 1976.

Käsemann was in his sixties when I was studying in Germany, but I

only met him briefly at a seminar in Paris. Along with Günther

Bornkamm these three were the guardians of critical history that I

had to reckon with no matter what saying of Jesus I quoted in my

doctoral dissertation on Jesus’ love command.

2 Ben Witherington III renders the following assessment of the first two Quests: “The upshot of

the first two quests, as much as anything else, was to reveal the frustrating limitations of the

historical study of any ancient person. . . . Nothing is as fleeting as many of the latest trends in New Testament scholarship, including studies of the historical Jesus. This is easily seen simply

by reviewing the trends and impact of the Second Quest for the historical Jesus, which offered

us, among other things, an existentialist Jesus. The historical Jesus and the Jesus that can be

reconstructed by the historical-critical method are not one and the same. More to the point,

the Jesus that is reconstructed by an idiosyncratic use of the historical-critical method or is based on reducing the field of focus to a few passages may have only minimal connections with the real

Jesus.” The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grover, Ill.:

InterVarsity Press, 1995), 247.

3 All the relevant documents by these and other authors are gathered helpfully into one vol-

ume: The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History, ed. Gregory W. Dawes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999). Another helpful collection of historic

essays on the quests for the historical Jesus is The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, ed.

James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight, Sources for Biblical Theological Study, Vol. 10 (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2005).

A Word to Biblical Scholars 31

The Roots of Disillusionment

The upshot of those days in Germany was a growing disillusionment

with the historical effort to reconstruct a Jesus of history behind

the unified portrayal of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels. I

detected a good bit of what seemed to be scholarly disingenuousness.

Scholarly articles would begin with a healthy dose of “perhaps,”

“probably,” “possibly,” and other nuanced qualifiers, but by the end

of the article there had emerged (out of nowhere it seemed to me) a

confidence that something reliable and useful had been found. For

my part I saw massive minds assembling, with great scholarly touch,

a house of cards.

It helps to be sixty years old. I have watched the cards collapse

over and over. For example, who of us today can give any serious

account of the reconstructions of the historical Jesus by Milan

Machoveç ( Jesus für Atheisten, 1972), Herbert Braun ( Jesus, 1969),

or Kurt Niederwimmer ( Jesus, 1968)? But these were the cutting-

edge reconstructions that, by the standards of the guild, I had to

come to terms with. The first two argued with Bultmann that the

kingdom of God in Jesus’ ministry was a mythological construct that

could be dispensed with today as we find the political (Machoveç

was a Marxist) and existential “meaning” of Jesus for us.

Niederwimmer exploited, as the book jacket said, “the assured

results of depth psychology” to find in the kingdom of God “the

objectification of a collective process of consciousness.” I was not

impressed with the fruit of the Second Quest. I had seen glorious

things in the Jesus of the Gospels, and the Quest was offering me

husks and ashes.

I found myself at home in these amazing words of Adolf

Schlatter as he defined what he believed scholarship ( die

Wissenschaft) should be.

I keep myself as free as possible from conjectures and avoid there-

fore the effort to overturn them. This does not seem like a fruitful

business to me. For conjectures are not overturned by producing

more of the same. They sink away when one sees that observa-

32 A Word to Biblical Scholars

tion is more fruitful than conjecture. . . . I call Wissenschaft [schol-

arship] the observation of what exists ( des Vorhandenen), not the

attempt to imagine what is not visible. Perhaps one will object

that the guesswork of conjecture excites and entertains while

observation is a hard and difficult work. That’s true; play is eas-

ier than work. But the Gospel is misunderstood when one makes

a plaything out of it.4

The conviction was growing in me that life is too short and the

church is too precious for a minister of the Word to spend his life try-

ing to recreate a conjectured Jesus. There was work to be done—very

hard work—to see what is really there in the God-given portrayal

of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels.

What Hope for the Third Quest?

The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus “began in the early 1980s,

fueled by some new archaeological and manuscript data, some new

methodological refinements, and some new enthusiasm that histor-

ical research did not need to lead to a dead end.”5 It is still in process,

and there are surveys available of what is happening.6 Ben

Witherington observes, “The desire to say something new and fresh

characterizes almost all of the [Third Quest] works examined in

this study, sometimes to the extreme of preferring the new over the

probable.”7 My own assessment of what is happening is this: To

the degree that the present reconstructions of the historical Jesus

depart from the portrayal found in the Gospels of the New

Testament, they will be forgotten the same way Machoveç, Braun,

and Niederwimmer are forgotten.

There are reasons why this is so.

4 Adolf Schlatter, Der Evangelist Matthäus, 6th ed. (Stuttgart: Calver Verlag, 1963), xi. My translation.

5 Witherington, The Jesus Quest, 12-13.

6 Besides Witherington’s overview cited in the previous footnote, see Larry Hurtado, “A

Taxonomy of Recent Historical-Jesus Work,” in Whose Historical Jesus? ed. William E. Arnal and Michel Desjardins (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 272-295;

Jonathan Knight, Jesus: An Historical and Theological Investigation (London: T&T Clark

International, 2004), 15-56; The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, ed. Dunn and McKnight.

7 Witherington, The Jesus Quest, 247.

A Word to Biblical Scholars 33

First, no reliable or lasting portrait of Jesus has ever been recon-

structed from going behind what the four Gospels portray. There is

no reason to think this will change. The reason is at hand: When you

abandon das Vorhandenen (what exists at hand) for conjectures, you

turn scholarship into an academic game. What is needed to give the

game life is toys. And everybody knows the market and the academy

demand new toys every generation. They cannot last. The tragedy is

how much damage they do to people who do not have roots in the

Gospels—and do not have the benefit of being sixty years old.

The Gospels Have Not Been Overthrown

Second, the portrayal of Jesus in the four Gospels has not been

overthrown by scholarship. The appearance of overthrow arises

from the unwarranted creation of criteria of authenticity that by def-

inition will rule out aspects of the New Testament portrayal.

Thankfully, God has raised up several generations of careful, rigor-

ous, and faithful scholars who are not cowed by the radical critics

and who patiently go about their work establishing the historical

credibility of the four Gospels. I thank God for them. I don’t mean

that they provide proof of the Gospels. I mean they show that the

attacks on the historical validity of the portrayal of Jesus in the

Gospels are not compelling.8

Fragments Lead to Arbitrary Reconstructions

Third, the attempt to reconstruct a reliable, compelling portrait of

Jesus behind the Gospels is an illusion because by definition the

8 In this connection, the following books offer counterarguments to the Third Quest and the

Quest in general: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers

Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1987); Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997); Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel

(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998); D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John

(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 40-68; Jesus Under Fire, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and

J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995); Paul Barnett, The Truth About

Jesus: The Challenge of the Evidence (Sydney: Aquila Press, 1994); Luke Timothy Johnson,

The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional

Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996); Gregory Boyd, Cynic, Sage or Son of God?

Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker,

1995); Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1996); Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998).

34 A Word to Biblical Scholars

method adopted only offers fragments without immediate context.

Floating sayings and events can only be connected arbitrarily. That

means the mind of the scholar, not the reality of Jesus, is govern-

ing the reconstruction. Luke Timothy Johnson has made this point

effectively:

When the compositions are fragmented, chopped into small pieces,

and arranged in arbitrary sequences, they do not work at all. The

literary compositions of the New Testament are analyzed best

when their literary integrity is respected and appreciated.

Approached in this fashion, they can be appreciated as witnesses

and interpretations of religious experience and convictions.9

Only the Gospels Remain

Fourth, the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels of the New Testament

is the only portrayal that has any chance of shaping the church and

the world over the long haul. This is because it is the only one that

people have access to. Whatever the Questers may construct, it will

usually be read by only a handful of people. And even if they turn

it into a blockbuster movie, seen by millions, that will pass without

so much as a memory in ten years, while the Gospels will still be in

the hands of the masses. I will wager my life that this was God’s

idea and that it will be worth all my remaining breath to try to under-

stand what is actually there and teach it faithfully.

My Approach in This Book

In addition to what I said about method under the subheading, “A

Word About Method” in the Introduction, it may be helpful to point

out here that the process of selecting which commands to discuss was

complex. I gathered and recorded all the commands by reading the

Gospels. This included implied commands (for example, “Blessed

are the merciful” implies “Be merciful”). This list was over five

hundred, counting the multiple restatements among the Gospels.

9 Johnson, The Real Jesus, 167.

A Word to Biblical Scholars 35

The next step was to distinguish commands that would have abiding

significance for faith and life. That is, I excluded commands like

“Pick up your bed, and go home” (Mark 2:11). Finally there was a

process of grouping and categorizing. After several passes, I was able

to include all the commands in about thirty categories. These group-

ings formed the initial structure of the chapters. Some expanded, and

the chapters were divided into two or more. Hence the round num-

ber of fifty chapters. I do not claim to have commented on every

command. My hope is that enough categories and enough specific

commands are handled to give help even for those I may have passed

over.

The Jesus of the Gospels Is the Most Radical

The fifth and final reason why reconstructions of Jesus that attempt

to go behind the Gospels will not last and will fail to shape the

church long-term is that the most radical Jesus is the one portrayed

in the Gospels. So many of the reconstructions of Jesus behind the

Gospels are motivated by the desire to liberate Jesus from the domes-

ticated traditions of the church that fit Jesus into this world in pre-

dictable and compromising ways. That is a good desire. But their

approach accomplishes the very opposite of what is hoped for. To the

degree that the church is trained to distrust the Jesus of the Gospels

and to look for ever new human creations of Christ, the real Jesus

is blurred, and his power to break free from the unbiblical tradi-

tions that bind him is blunted.

This is the point that Luke Timothy Johnson makes so well:

The critical need in the church and the world is the “real Jesus” of

the Gospels. Johnson’s words are a fitting conclusion to this Word

to Biblical Scholars and a launching pad for What Jesus Demands

from the World.

Does the church act triumphalistically, or treat its people arro-

gantly? Is it an agent for the suppression of human needs and

aspirations? Does it foster intolerance and small-mindedness?

Does the church proclaim a gospel of success and offer Jesus as a

36 A Word to Biblical Scholars

better business partner? Does it encourage an ethos of prosperity

to the neglect of the earth’s good, or an individualistic spirituality

to the neglect of the world’s needy? Are its leaders corrupt and

coercive? Such distortions of Christianity can find no harsher critic,

no more radical rejecter, than the Jesus found only in the pages of

the New Testament, the Jesus who was himself emptied out for

others and called his followers to do the same.

The Jesus to whom Saint Francis of Assisi appealed in his call

for a poor and giving rather than a powerful and grasping church

was not the Historical Jesus but the Jesus of the Gospels. One must

only wonder why this Jesus is not also the “real Jesus” for those

who declare a desire for religious truth, and theological integrity,

and honest history.10

10 Ibid., 177.

Demand #1

YOU MUST BE

BORN AGAIN

Jesus answered . . . “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be

born again.’” —John 3:5, 7

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born

again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” —John 3:3

In the third chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to “a man

of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews” (John

3:1). Pharisees were the experts in the Jewish Scriptures. This is

why Jesus was astonished that Nicodemus was baffled about what

Jesus meant by “You must be born again.” Nicodemus asks, “How

can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into

his mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4). Jesus responds, “Are

you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these

things?” (John 3:10).

A New Spirit I Will Put Within You

In other words, an expert in the Jewish Scriptures should not be

baffled by Jesus’ demand, “You must be born again.” Why not?

Because there are so many clues in the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus

and Nicodemus had in common. God had promised a day when he

would cause his people to be born again. One of God’s clearest

promises is in the book of Ezekiel. Jesus echoed Ezekiel’s words

when he said, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he can-

not enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Being “born again” is

38 Demand #1

described as a birth from water and Spirit. Those two terms, “water”

and “Spirit,” are linked in Ezekiel 36:25-27. God says:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all

your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within

you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and

give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and

cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

God promises cleansing from sin and the gift of a new human spirit

by the presence of his own divine Spirit. Jesus thinks Nicodemus

should make the connection between his demand to be born again

and Ezekiel’s promise of a new spirit and the gift of God’s Spirit.

But he doesn’t. So Jesus explains further by describing the role of

God’s Spirit in bringing about this new spirit: “That which is born

of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”

(John 3:6).

The Dead Cannot See

Flesh is what we are by nature. It refers to ordinary humanity. By our

first birth we are only flesh. This natural human condition, as we

experience it, is spiritually lifeless. We are not born spiritually alive

with a heart that loves God. We are born spiritually dead.

That’s what Jesus implied when he said to a would-be disciple

who wanted to go home to a funeral, “Leave the dead to bury their

own dead” (Luke 9:60). In other words, some are physically dead

and need burying. Some are spiritually dead and can bury them. He

implied it again when, in his parable of the prodigal son, the father

says, “This my son was dead, and is alive again” (Luke 15:24).

That’s why “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of

God” (John 3:3). The dead can’t see. That is, they can’t see God’s

kingdom as supremely desirable. It looks foolish or mythical or

boring. So they “cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). They

cannot because it is foolishness to them.

You Must Be Born Again 39

Jesus sees all of humanity divided into two parts: those who are

merely born once—“born of the flesh,” “the (spiritually) dead”—

and those who are “born again” by the Spirit of God—those who are

alive to God and see his kingdom as true and supremely desirable.

The Wind Blows Where It Will

Nicodemus is not entirely wrong to be baffled. There is a mystery.

Jesus says so in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes, and

you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or

where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” In

other words, “Nicodemus, you need new spiritual life—a second

birth.”

And what Jesus demands from Nicodemus, he demands from

all. He is speaking to everyone in the world. No one is excluded.

No ethnic group has a greater bent toward life. Dead is dead—what-

ever our color, ethnicity, culture, or class. We need spiritual eyes. Our

first birth will not get us into the kingdom of God. But we do not

cause ourselves to be born again. The Spirit does that. And the

Spirit is free and blows in ways we do not comprehend. We must

be born again. But this is a gift of God.

Look away from yourself. Seek from God what he alone can

do for you. Moral improvement of the old you is not what you

need. New life is what the whole world needs. It is radical and super-

natural. It is outside our control. The dead do not give themselves

new life. We must be born again—“not . . . of the will of the flesh nor

of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). That is what Jesus

demands from the world.

Demand #2

REPENT

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the king-

dom of heaven is at hand.” —Matt. 4:17

I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repen-

tance. —Luke 5:32

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this

generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching

of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is

here. —Matt. 12:41

Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. —Luke 13:3, 5

The first demand of Jesus’ public ministry was, “Repent.” He

spoke this command indiscriminately to all who would listen.

It was a call for radical inward change toward God and man.

What Is Repentance?

Two things show us that repentance is an internal change of mind

and heart rather than mere sorrow for sin or mere improvement of

behavior. First, the meaning of the Greek word behind the English

“repent” (metanoewv , metanoeø) points in this direction. It has two

parts: meta and noeø. The second part ( noeø) refers to the mind

and its thoughts and perceptions and dispositions and purposes. The

first part ( meta) is a prefix that regularly means movement or change.

Repent 41

In view of the way this prefix regularly functions,1 we may infer

that the basic meaning of repent is to experience a change of the

mind’s perceptions and dispositions and purposes.

The other factor that points to this meaning of repent is the way

Luke 3:8 describes the relationship between repentance and new

behavior. It says, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Then it

gives examples of the fruits: “Whoever has two tunics is to share with

him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise” (Luke

3:11). This means that repenting is what happens inside of us. Then

this change leads to the fruits of new behavior. Repentance is not

the new deeds, but the inward change that bears the fruit of new

deeds. Jesus is demanding that we experience this inward change.

Sin: An Assault on God

Why? His answer is that we are sinners. “I have not come to call the

righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). What was Jesus’

view of sin? In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus describes the son’s

sin like this: “He squandered his property in reckless living . . . [and]

devoured [it] with prostitutes” (Luke 15:13, 30). But when the prodi-

gal repents he says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before

you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:21).

Therefore, throwing your life away on reckless living and prostitutes

is not just humanly hurtful; it is an offense against heaven—that is,

against God. That’s the essential nature of sin. It’s an assault on God.

We see this again in the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He

said that they should pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves for-

give everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). In other words,

sins that God forgives are compared to the ones people commit

against us, and those are called debts. Therefore, Jesus’ view of sin

is that it dishonors God and puts us in debt to restore the divine

1 For example, meta is used as a prefix in the words metabainø (transfer or change from one place to another), metaballø (change one’s way of thinking), metagø (lead or move from one place to another), metatith∑mi (convey from one place to another, put in another place, transfer), metamorphoø (change in a manner visible to others, be transfigured), metastrephø (cause a change in state or condition, change, alter), and metaschematizø (change the form of something, transform, change), etc.

42 Demand #2

honor we had defamed by our God-belittling behavior or attitudes.

Later we will see how that debt gets paid by Jesus himself (Mark

10:45). But for us to enjoy that gift he says we must repent.

Repenting means experiencing a change of mind so that we can

see God as true and beautiful and worthy of all our praise and all our

obedience. This change of mind also embraces Jesus in the same way.

We know this because Jesus said, “If God were your Father, you

would love me, for I came from God” (John 8:42). Seeing God with

a new mind includes seeing Jesus with a new mind.

The Universal Need for Repentance

No one is excluded from Jesus’ demand to repent. He made this clear

when a group of people came to him with news of two calamities.

Innocent people had been killed by Pilate’s massacre and by the fall

of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:1-4). Jesus took the occasion to

warn even the bearers of the news: “Unless you repent, you will all

likewise perish” (Luke 13:5). In other words, don’t think calamities

mean that some people are sinners in need of repentance and others

aren’t. All need repentance. Just as all need to be born again (John

3:7), so all must repent because all are sinners.

When Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous but sin-

ners to repentance” (Luke 5:32), he did not mean that some per-

sons are good enough not to need repentance. He meant some think

they are (Luke 18:9), and others have already repented and have

been set right with God. For example, the rich young ruler desired

“to justify himself” (Luke 10:29), while “the tax collector . . . beat

his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ [and he] went

down to his house justified [by God!]” (Luke 18:13-14). (For more

on Luke 18:9-15, see Demand #20.)

There Is an Urgency to This Demand Because

Judgment Is Coming

Therefore, none is excluded. All need repentance. And the need is

urgent. Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Repent 43

What did he mean by perish? He meant that the final judgment of

God will fall on those who don’t repent. “The men of Nineveh will

rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they

repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater

than Jonah is here” (Matt. 12:41). Jesus, the Son of God, is warn-

ing people of the judgment to come and is offering escape if we will

repent. If we will not repent, Jesus has one message for us: “Woe to

you” (Matt. 11:21).

This is why his demand for repentance is part of his central

message concerning the kingdom of God. He preached that the long-

awaited kingdom of God is present in his ministry. “The time is ful-

filled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the

gospel” (Mark 1:15). The gospel—the good news—is that the rule of

God has arrived in Jesus to save sinners before the kingdom arrives

at his second coming in judgment. So the demand to repent is based

on the gracious offer that is present to forgive and on the gracious

warning that someday those who refuse the offer will perish in God’s

judgment.

To All Nations Beginning from Jerusalem

After he had risen from the dead, Jesus made sure that his apostles

would continue the call for repentance throughout the world. He

said, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the

third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness

of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning

from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46-47). So the demand of Jesus to repent

goes to all the nations. It comes to us, whoever we are and wher-

ever we are, and lays claim on us. This is the demand of Jesus to

every soul: Repent. Be changed deep within. Replace all God-

dishonoring, Christ-belittling perceptions and dispositions and

purposes with God-treasuring, Christ-exalting ones.

Demand #3

COME TO ME

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you

rest. —Matt. 11:28

Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me

and drink.” —John 7:37

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me

shall not hunger.” —John 6:35

You refuse to come to me that you may have life. —John 5:40

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus,

come out.” The man who had died came out. —John 11:43-44

When a person is born anew and experiences repentance, his

attitude about Jesus changes. Jesus himself becomes the cen-

tral focus and supreme value of life. Before the new birth happens

and repentance occurs, a hundred other things seem more impor-

tant and more attractive: health, family, job, friends, sports, music,

food, sex, hobbies, retirement. But when God gives the radical

change of new birth and repentance, Jesus himself becomes our

supreme treasure.

His Yoke Is Easy, and His Burden Is Light

Therefore, his demand that we come to him is not burdensome. It

means coming to the one who has become everything to us. Jesus did

not come into the world mainly to bring a new religion or a new law.

He came to offer himself for our eternal enjoyment and to do what-

Come to Me 45

ever he had to do—including death—to remove every obstacle to this

everlasting joy in him. “These things I have spoken to you, that my

joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

When Jesus demands that we do things—like “Come to me”—the

essence of these demands is that we experience the life that most fully

savors and spreads his supreme worth.

As Jesus looks out over the religions of the world—including

the Judaism of his day—he sees people who are laboring under heavy

loads to earn the favor of whatever deity they believe in. He did not

come to replace that God-appeasing load with another one. He came

to carry that load and call us to himself for rest. “Come to me, all

who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my

yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in

heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy,

and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). Make no mistake, there

is a yoke and a burden when we come to Jesus (there would be no

demands if this were not true), but the yoke is easy, and the burden

is light.

There Is a Burden, But It’s Not Jesus

But perhaps it’s not easy and light the way we think it is. Jesus also

said, “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life”

(Matt. 7:14). The reason it is hard is not because Jesus is a hard

taskmaster. It’s hard because the world is a hard place to enjoy Jesus

above all. Our own suicidal tendency to enjoy other things more

must be crushed (Matt. 5:29-30). And besides our own sin, many

people are angered that we do not love what they love. So Jesus

warned, “Some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by

all for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:16-17).

But Jesus is not the burden. When we come to him, he is the

burden-lifter, the soul-satisfier, and the life-giver. “Jesus stood up and

cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink’” (John

7:37). Coming to Jesus means coming to drink. And the water we

drink in fellowship with Jesus gives everlasting life. “Whoever drinks

of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The

46 Demand #3

water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water

welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). The demand that we come

to Jesus is the demand to come to the fountain of life and drink.

Jesus is not satisfied to lure us into obedience with images of life-

giving water. He will also draw us with promises of life-sustaining

bread. “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger”

(John 6:35). Jesus himself is the bread of heaven—the source and

essence of everlasting life. He will draw us with promises of deliv-

erance from perishing (John 3:16). The demand that we come to him

is therefore like the demand of a father to his child in a burning

window, “Jump to me!” Or like the demand of a rich, strong, tender,

handsome husband to an unfaithful wife, “Come home!” Or like the

demand of a rescue squad that finds you on the point of death, dehy-

drated after days in the desert, “Drink this!”

“You Refuse to Come to Me That You

May Have Life”

But the personal tragedy of sin and spiritual blindness is that people

do not come. Jesus grieved over his people. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen

gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt.

23:37). “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them

you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you

refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).

Why don’t people come to Jesus? At one level the answer is

because they “refuse to come.” In other words, people do not want

to come. Some call this the choice of free will. Jesus would proba-

bly say it is the choice of a will enslaved to sin. “Truly, truly, I say

to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Jesus

would say that people do not come to him because they are enslaved

to their supreme preference for other things. “The light has come

into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light

. . . everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not

come to the light” (John 3:19-20).

Come to Me 47

How then has anyone ever come, since we are all enslaved to

sin and spiritually dead (see Demand #1)? Jesus’ answer was that

God, in his great mercy, overcomes our resistance and draws us: “No

one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John

6:44). “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the

Father” (John 6:65). God grants the gift of new birth and repen-

tance, which opens the eyes of the spiritually blind to the truth and

beauty of Jesus. When this happens, all suicidal objections fall. We

are finally free. And, finally free from slavery, we come.

“Lazarus, Come Out!”

Jesus came into the world to gather his flock from all the world (John

11:52). He lays down his life for them and demands that they come

to him. Though he weeps over those who do not come, he will not

be frustrated in his design. He will succeed in gathering a people

for himself. He speaks with absolute sovereignty when he says, “I

have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and

they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd”

(John 10:16). He must bring them. They will heed his voice. They

will come.

When you hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Come to me,” pray

that God would give you eyes to see Jesus as irresistibly true and

beautiful. Pray that you would hear this command the way Lazarus

did when he was dead. “[Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus,

come out.’ The man who had died came [out of his grave]” (John

11:43-44). When you come to Jesus like this, you will never cease

to praise and thank him for his sovereign grace.

Demand #4

BELIEVE IN ME

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in

me. —John 14:1

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else

believe on account of the works themselves. —John 14:11

While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become

sons of light. —John 12:36

[ Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and

put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but

believe.” —John 20:27

Why does Jesus demand that we believe in him? And what does

believing in him really mean? The reason Jesus demands

that we believe in him is that all human beings are in a desperate sit-

uation, and only Jesus can rescue us. He demands belief in himself

because we cannot rescue ourselves but must look entirely to him

for help. Jesus is the only one who can save us from this danger. For

our own sake he demands that we trust him. It is as though a fire-

man finds you almost unconscious in a burning building that is about

to collapse, throws his insulated tarp over you, picks you up, and

says, “Hold still as I carry you. Don’t move. Don’t try to help me. I

will get you out. You must let me do it. Trust me.”

The Desperate Situation We Are in

Of course, most people don’t feel the need for a divine fireman to res-

cue them. So what is this desperate situation that only Jesus can

Believe in Me 49

rescue us from? Jesus put it like this. Notice the words “perish,”

“condemned,” and “wrath of God.”

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that who-

ever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For

God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever

believes in him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe is

condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of

the only Son of God. . . . Whoever believes in the Son has eternal

life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the

wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:16-18, 36)

The desperate situation we are in, Jesus says, is that we are under

the wrath of God. This is owing to our sin (see Demand #2). God

is just, and his anger is rightly kindled against human attitudes and

behaviors that belittle his worth and treat him as insignificant. All

of us have done this. In fact, we do it every day.

God Sent Jesus to Die in Our Place

But the amazing truth is that God has sent his Son Jesus into the world

not to add to this condemnation, but to rescue us from it. And the

way Jesus rescues us is by taking the condemnation on himself, dying

in our place, and then demanding not heroic acts of penance but that

we trust him. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd

lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). In other words, Jesus’

death was purposeful. He intentionally laid it down in our place.

Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of the astonishing prophesy

of Isaiah 53 (cf. Luke 22:37; Isa. 53:12). Isaiah prophesied seven

hundred years before Jesus came that a Servant of the Lord would

come to die for his people.

We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he

was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our

iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone

50 Demand #4

astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD

has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:4-6)

The reason Jesus demands that we believe on him is that there is

nothing we can add to this rescue from the wrath of God. Jesus

became our substitute. The sins that should have brought condem-

nation on us, God laid on Jesus. God’s love planned an amazing

exchange: Jesus endured what we deserved so that we might enjoy

what he deserved—eternal life. And the way we come to enjoy this

life is by believing in Jesus. That’s what he said: “Truly, truly, I say

to you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47; cf. Luke 8:12).

What Does Believing in Jesus Mean?

Therefore, not many questions are more important than this: What

does believing in him really mean? First, it means first believing cer-

tain historical facts to be true. When Jesus’ disciple Thomas doubted

that Jesus was raised physically from the dead, Jesus came to him

and said, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your

hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John

20:27). Belief is not a leap in the dark. It has foundations and con-

tent. It is based on what really happened in history.

But believing in Jesus means more than knowing true things

about Jesus. It means trusting him as a living person for who he

really is. This is why Jesus spoke of simply believing in him. “Believe

in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1; cf. Matt. 18:6). Believing in

Jesus is more than believing about Jesus. We trust him.

Being Satisfied with All That God Is for Us in Jesus

Notice that Jesus offers himself to us not merely as a rescuer to be

trusted but as living water to be drunk—not to mention offering

himself to us as Shepherd (Matt. 26:31), Bridegroom (Matt. 9:15),

Treasure (Matt. 13:44), King (John 18:36), etc. What does it mean

to “believe in” Jesus as life-giving water?

Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink”

(John 7:37). “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will

Believe in Me 51

never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become

in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). In

another place, Jesus connected this drinking with believing in him

and coming to him: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me

shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John

6:35). In other words, believing in Jesus and drinking the water

that wells up to eternal life are the same.

Believing in Jesus when he offers himself to us as life-giving

water does not mean merely believing that this water gives life. Water

gives life when we drink it. Jesus gives life by being trusted. Trusting

Jesus as water, therefore, means drinking the water. That is, it means

“receiving” Jesus and all the life-giving grace of God that comes to

us in him. “Whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt.

10:40; cf. John 13:20). Believing in Jesus includes drinking Jesus as

the soul-thirst-quenching water of life. That is, it means savoring and

being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.

The Fireman Illustration Was Inadequate

So the illustration I used above of trusting the fireman is insuffi-

cient. It’s true as far as it goes. Jesus is a rescuer. We must hold still,

not move, and let him carry us to safety out of the burning wrath

of God. But it is possible to trust a fireman that you do not admire.

He may be an adulterer and drunk in his time off. He doesn’t ask you

to believe in him for all that he is, or to receive him, or to savor his

life. But Jesus does. He is so much more than a rescuer. Therefore,

believing in him is more than trusting in his rescue skills.

Jesus came not only to rescue us from condemnation but also

that we might enjoy everlasting life, which means that we might

experience all that God is for us in him. “This is eternal life,” he said,

“that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom

you have sent” (John 17:3). He knows what we need far better than

we do. We need rescue from the wrath of God, and we need a soul-

satisfying relationship with God. This is what Jesus came to give. It

comes to us in one way alone—by believing in him. Therefore, he

gives his demand to the world: “Believe in me.”

Demand #5

LOVE ME

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,

and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of

me. —Matt. 10:37

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me,

for I proceeded and came forth from God.” —John 8:42, RSV

Jesus Commands the Emotions

I recall reading a book in college that argued: Love cannot be a feel-

ing because it is commanded, and you can’t command the feelings. In

other words, love must simply be an act of the will or a deed of the

body without involving the emotions or affections. But the problem

with this argument is that the premise is false: Jesus does command the

feelings. He demands that our emotions be one way and not another.1

He demands, for example, that we rejoice in certain circum-

stances (Matt. 5:12), and that we fear the right person (Luke 12:5),

and that we not feel shame over him (Luke 9:26), and that we for-

give from the heart (Matt. 18:35), and so on. If a feeling is proper

1 The most thorough study on emotions in the New Testament is now Matthew Elliott’s Faithful

Feelings: Emotion in the New Testament (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2005). He

writes, “Part of the essence of the Christian is how he or she feels. We must recover some of the

insight of Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, Augustine and others as they rightly emphasize the role of

emotion in the believer’s life. With a little work we can come up with a clear idea of the emotional characteristics of the members of the kingdom of God. They love God and each other, they take

joy in what Jesus has done in the past and what he will do in the future. They have secure hope

that God will triumph. They become angry at sin and injustice and are jealous for God. They

embrace the sorrow of the suffering as their own and grieve over sin. But this emotional life is

rarely glimpsed in our theologies where emotion is not emphasized as a sign of true faith. Not

only do Christians live the ethics of the kingdom, they also feel the attitudes and emotions of

the kingdom. This is part of the picture that is very clear in the New Testament. These feelings

are a result of good theology and are a necessary component of faith” (263-264).

Love Me 53

to have, Jesus can demand it. The fact that I may be too corrupt to

experience the emotions that I ought to have does not change my

duty to have them. If Jesus commands it, I should have it. My moral

inability to produce it does not remove my guilt; it reveals my cor-

ruption. It makes me desperate for a new heart—which Jesus came

to give (see Demand #1).

Love for Jesus Is Not Less Than Deep Affection

Jesus’ demand that we love him may involve more than deep feelings

of admiration for his attributes and enjoyment of his fellowship

and attraction to his presence and affection for his kinship, but it

does not involve less. At least two things that he said show this. He

said, for example, that our love for him must exceed the love we have

for mother and father and son and daughter. “Whoever loves father

or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves

son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37).

The love that binds us to these relationships is not mere willpower.

It is deep with affection. Jesus says that the love we must have for

him is not less than that, but more.

The other evidence that Jesus requires our love to be more than

good deeds is in John 14:15. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will

keep my commandments.” Sometimes people use these words to say:

Loving Jesus is keeping his commandments. That’s not what it says.

It says that keeping Jesus’ commandments comes from our love for

him. It does not separate deeds from love, but it does distinguish

them. First we love him. Then because of this—overflowing from

this—we do what he says. Love is not synonymous with command-

ment-keeping; it is the root of it. So the love that Jesus demands is

something very deep and strong—like the closest family bonds of

affection that we have, but greater than that and more than that.

Love for Jesus Springs from a New Nature

Jesus’ demand to be loved like this implies that we must have a new

nature—a new heart. How else can we love someone we have never

54 Demand #5

seen more affectionately than we love our dear children? Loving

like this is not in our fallen human nature. Jesus made this plain

when he said to those who did not love him, “If God were your

Father, you would love me” (John 8:42). In other words, “The rea-

son you do not love me is that you are not in the family of God.

You don’t have the family nature—the family spirit, the family heart,

preferences, tendencies, inclinations. God is not your Father.”

Jesus came as God’s unique, divine Son (Matt. 11:27) so that

fallen sinners like us could become non-divine sons of God with

hearts and ways like his. “To all who did receive him, who believed

in his name, [Jesus] gave the right to become children of God” (John

1:12). That’s why Jesus could say, “Love your enemies . . . and you

will be sons of the Most High” (Luke 6:35). Through the new birth

( Demand #1) and faith ( Demand #4), Jesus gives us the rights and

the inclinations of the children of God. At the center of those incli-

nations is love for Jesus, God’s Son.

He Who Is Forgiven Little, Loves Little

How God enables us to love Jesus more than we love our closest

friends and relatives is not a total mystery. The gift of the new birth and

repentance—the new nature of a child of God—is brought about

through seeing the glory of Jesus’ love for us. Jesus taught this provoca-

tively at a dinner party. A strict Pharisee, who had little love for Jesus,

invited Jesus to dinner. While they were reclining at the low Middle-

Eastern table, a prostitute entered and poured ointment—mingled

with her tears—on Jesus’ bare feet and wiped his feet with her hair. The

Pharisee was indignant that Jesus would allow this.

So Jesus asked a question of the Pharisee: If a moneylender forgave

two debtors, one who owed him five thousand dollars and the other fifty,

which would love him more? He answered, “The one, I suppose, for

whom he cancelled the larger debt.” Jesus agreed, then said, “Do you see

this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet,

but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You

gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss

my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my

Love Me 55

feet with ointment.” Then Jesus concluded: “She loved much. But he

who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:36-48).

This is a story about the way great love for Jesus comes into

being. It comes into being when we are given eyes to see the beauty

of Jesus in the way he loved us first. We did not love him first. He

loved us first (John 15:16). Our love for Jesus is awakened when

our hearts are broken because of our sin (unlike the judgmental

Pharisee) and when we taste the sweetness of Jesus’ forgiving love

preceding and awakening our love for him.

The Demand That We Love Him Is an Act of Love

There is no doubt that this love will produce the fruit of obedience

to Jesus’ other commandments (John 14:15), and that it will incline

us to fulfill the ministry he gives us to do (John 21:15-22), and that

it will produce a longing that Jesus be honored and blessed (John

14:28; 5:23). But beneath all this fruit is the fundamental reality of

heartfelt love for Jesus—strong feelings of admiration for his attrib-

utes, abiding enjoyment of his fellowship, undying attraction to his

presence, warm affection for his kinship, and strong gratitude for

loving us before we loved him.

These emotions and this fruit are what Jesus meant when he

referred to our being “worthy” of him: “Whoever loves father or

mother more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matt. 10:37). Loving Jesus

with these affections and with this fruit makes us “worthy” of Jesus.

This does not mean that we deserve Jesus, as in the phrase “the laborer

is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7, literal translation). It means that

Jesus deserves this kind of love. Our worthiness means that he has pro-

duced in us affections and behaviors that are suitable and fit for his

worth. They correspond properly to his value. (Compare the use of the

word “worthy” in the phrase, “Bear fruits worthy of [that is, suitable

to] repentance,” Luke 3:8, literal translation.)

Jesus demands that he be loved by the world because he is infi-

nitely worthy to be loved. And since our love for him is the enjoy-

ment of his glory and presence and care, therefore Jesus’ demand

that we love him is one more way that his love overflows on us.

Demand #6

LISTEN TO ME

He called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all

of you, and understand.” —Mark 7:14

As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let

him hear.” —Luke 8:8

Take care then how you hear. —Luke 8:18

And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she

had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his

teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she

went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has

left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord

answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about

many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good

portion, which will not be taken away from her.” —Luke 10:38-42

The entire life and work of Jesus is one great argument why we

should listen to his word. Page after page of the New

Testament Gospels pile up reasons to turn off the television and lis-

ten to Jesus. Here are some of those reasons—and why so many

don’t listen.

No One Ever Spoke Like This Man

Jesus’ ministry was so astonishing and so threatening that his adver-

saries wanted him out of the way. So the Pharisees “sent officers to

arrest him” (John 7:32). But to their dismay the officers came back

Listen to Me 57

empty-handed, not because Jesus had good bodyguards, but because

his teaching was so stunning. “The officers . . . came to the chief

priests and Pharisees, who said to them, ‘Why did you not bring

him?’ The officers answered, ‘No one ever spoke like this man!’”

(John 7:45-46). When they listened to Jesus, they could not follow

through with their mission to arrest him.

Jesus Speaks the Very Words of God

When Jesus finished his famous Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds

were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who

had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29). This author-

ity was not because of a personality trait or a pedagogical tech-

nique. The reason is much deeper. His words have authority and

power, Jesus says, because they are the words of God. “I have not

spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has him-

self given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak”

(John 12:49). “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me”

(John 12:50; cf. 8:28). “The word that you hear is not mine but the

Father’s who sent me” (John 14:24). Jesus’ words have authority

because when he speaks, God speaks. Jesus speaks from God the

Father and as God the Son.

Jesus’ Words Silence Supernatural Powers

But the authority of Jesus’ words is not only the compelling power

of God-revealed truth. There is another dimension. It also carries the

force to defeat supernatural powers. Once when Jesus met a demon-

possessed man he rebuked him and said, “Be silent, and come out

of him!” (Mark 1:25). When the demon convulsed the man and

came out, the crowd was amazed and said, “What is this? A new

teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits,

and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). This same power of Jesus’ word

healed leprosy (Matt. 8:3), deafness (Mark 7:34-35), and blindness

(Matt. 9:28-30). And most remarkable of all, with a simple word

three times Jesus raised the dead. “Little girl, I say to you, arise”

58 Demand #6

(Mark 5:41-42). “Young man, I say to you, arise” (Luke 7:14-15).

“Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43-44).

Jesus Has the Words of Eternal Life

Therefore, Jesus’ words were life in more ways than one. They

could sustain physical life and restore physical life. But more impor-

tant than that they were the indispensable way to eternal life. It is a

wonderful thing to be raised from the dead—but not if you are sim-

ply going to perish later in hell. The most precious thing about the

words of Jesus, and the most important reason to listen to him, is

that his words lead to eternal life.

Once when Jesus had finished teaching some hard things,

“Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

So Jesus said to the twelve apostles whom he had chosen, “Do you

want to go away as well?” To which Peter responded, “Lord, to

whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:66-

68). This was not mere enthusiasm for a charismatic teacher. Jesus

confirmed Peter’s judgment: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh

is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life”

(John 6:63). Jesus agrees. He speaks the words of eternal life.

Everyone who wants eternal life should listen to the words of Jesus.

How do Jesus’ words give eternal life? We have already seen that

eternal life comes through believing in Jesus: “This is the will of my

Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him

should have eternal life” (John 6:40; see Demand #4). The reason the

words of Jesus lead to eternal life is that they awaken this faith. Belief

in Jesus does not come by the waving of a magic wand. It comes by

hearing the word of God through Jesus.

Jesus’ Words Awaken Faith

One of Jesus’ most important parables was about sowing seed on

four kinds of soil. The seed represents the word. One kind of soil is

the trampled path where the seed falls and the birds snatch it away.

Jesus explains it like this: “The ones along the path are those who

Listen to Me 59

have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from

their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved” (Luke 8:12).

What this shows is that Jesus sees his word as the key to believing

and being saved. If the word is taken away, there will be no faith in

Jesus. And if there is no faith in Jesus, there will be no salvation—

no eternal life. First comes hearing the word of Jesus, then comes

belief in Jesus, then comes eternal life. “Whoever hears my word and

believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5:24).

The reason Jesus’ words awaken faith in him is that they reveal

who he really is and what he does to obtain eternal life for us. We

see the glory of Jesus and the all-sufficiency of his work through his

word. But not everybody does. Some hear his words, but do not

hear them as true and compelling. They see what he is talking

about, but do not see it as beautiful and convincing. So Jesus said,

“This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do

not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand”

(Matt. 13:13).

Why Do They Not Hear and Believe?

Why do so many people not hear what Jesus is saying? Jesus said

to his most bitter adversaries, “You seek to kill me because my

word finds no place in you” (John 8:37). That is a striking phrase:

“My word finds no place in you.” Their minds and hearts are shaped

(or stuffed) in such a way that when he speaks, what he says won’t

fit in their hearts. This seems to imply that there is a certain readiness

for Jesus’ word that goes before his word and enables us to hear him.

That is in fact what Jesus teaches.

When Jesus was on trial at the end of his life, Pilate pressed

him to confess that he claimed to be the king of the Jews. Jesus

responded by saying, “For this purpose I was born and for this pur-

pose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John

18:37). Jesus came to speak the truth. His words are truth. Pilate

responded cynically, “What is truth?” In other words, there was

“no place” in Pilate for Jesus’ words. But that did not take Jesus off

guard. Nor did it mean that Pilate had hindered God’s plan. Jesus

60 Demand #6

had the final and decisive word about Pilate: “Everyone who is of the

truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

So now we have another striking phrase—not only, “My word

finds no place in you,” but also the even more remarkable phrase,

“Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” On the one hand,

there are people whose hearts and minds have no room for the voice

of Jesus. And on the other hand, there are people who are “of the

truth.” They listen to Jesus. They do have room for his word. There

is, you might say, a truth-shaped readiness to hear the voice of Jesus.

Whoever Is of God Hears the Words of God

Jesus describes these two kinds of listeners with two other phrases:

If they do not hear they are not “of God,” and if they hear they are

his “sheep.” The non-listeners he describes like this: “Whoever is of

God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them

is that you are not of God” (John 8:47). Now we have three descrip-

tions of the non-listeners: they have “no place” for Jesus’ word, they

are not “of the truth,” and they are not “of God.” This is a sobering

revelation. It means that our condition as fallen sinners unfits us for

hearing the truth—especially as it comes from Jesus.

We are not neutral like a metronome wand poised straight up

between truth and error—waiting dispassionately to be inclined to

one side or the other. No, we are heavily tilted toward selfishness and

all the errors that support it. When Jesus speaks, unless God acts to

give us ears to hear and eyes to see, there will be no place in us for

the words of Jesus.

This explains why Jesus said:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid-

den these things from the wise and understanding and revealed

them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious

will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and

no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father

is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal

him. (Luke 10:21-22)

Listen to Me 61

When he had said this, he turned to his disciples and said, “Blessed

are the eyes that see what you see!” (Luke 10:23). Blessed indeed!

Blessed by God. This seeing is the work of God. Only God can give

us eyes to see and ears to hear. That’s why Jesus says that those

who do not listen to his words are not “of God” (John 8:47). This

is the blessing we desperately need—the blessing that God would

make in our hearts a place for the truth.

“My Sheep Hear My Voice”

Finally, Jesus calls those who do have a place for truth his sheep:

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”

(John 10:27). Therefore, we can know we are his sheep if we listen

to his voice. We know we are his sheep if there is a truth-shaped place

for his word in our hearts, and we welcome what he says.

Therefore, I urge you on behalf of Jesus, listen to his word. Be

like Mary and sit at his feet (Luke 10:39, 42). Don’t turn away

from the command of his Father given on the Mount of

Transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well

pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5). Don’t miss the merciful attrac-

tion in the words, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words

will not pass away” (Mark 13:31). Don’t hate yourself by rejecting

the one who said, “These things I have spoken to you . . . that your

joy may be full” (John 15:11; cf. 17:13). Listen to Jesus.

Demand #7

ABIDE IN ME

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself,

unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in

me. —John 15:4

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my

love. —John 15:9

If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will

know the truth, and the truth will set you free. —John 8:31-32

Jesus’ demands are for a lifetime. He does not demand a single

decision to repent or come or believe or love or listen. All these

continue. The transformation of repentance continues. Coming to

Jesus again and again continues. Believing in him hour by hour

continues. Listening to his word as the daily source of spiritual life

continues. Jesus demands the engagement of our minds and hearts

every day of our lives.

A transaction with Jesus in the past that has no ongoing expres-

sion in our lives was a false transaction. When Jesus said, “If you

abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31), he meant

that if we don’t abide, we are not truly his disciples. And the oppo-

site of true disciples is false disciples. That’s what we are if we count

on past experiences without ongoing devotion to Jesus.

A Lifelong Extension of Encountering Jesus

One way that Jesus taught the necessity of an ongoing devotion

was to demand, “Abide in me.” There is nothing uniquely religious

Abide in Me 63

about the word abide. In the language of the New Testament, it is the

ordinary word for “stay” or “continue” or sometimes “dwell.” Jesus

meant: “Stay in me. Continue in me. Keep me for your dwelling.”

It is the lifelong extension of encountering Jesus.

The context of this demand is the analogy of a vine and its

branches. Jesus compares himself to the vine, and us to branches:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by

itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you

abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides

in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from

me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

This picture helps us understand what Jesus meant by abiding in

him. The main point of the analogy is that power to bear fruit—

that is, power to live a fruitful life of Christ-like love (John 15:12)—

flows from Jesus if we stay vitally connected to him. Then we are like

a branch connected to the vine so that all the life-sustaining, fruit-

producing sap can flow into it. Jesus is explicit in claiming to be the

power that we need to live fruitful lives. He says, “Apart from me

you can do nothing.” Abiding in Jesus means staying vitally con-

nected to the life-giving, power-giving, fruit-producing branch,

namely, Jesus.

The Moment-by-Moment Cause of Every

Good Thing

In other words, Jesus demands that he be the moment-by-moment

cause of every good thing in our lives. “Apart from me you can do

nothing.” Nothing! Really? Well, we could sin and stop bearing fruit

and perish without him. But that’s not what he promises to pro-

duce. He means: “Without me you can do nothing truly good, truly

God-honoring and Christ-exalting and self-abasing and eternally

helpful for others.” Abiding in Jesus means staying vitally connected,

hour by hour, to the one who alone produces in our lives every-

thing he demands.

64 Demand #7

If You Abide, You Bear Fruit

But practically, what does this mean in our experience? What is this

“staying vitally connected”? How do we do this? One important

part of the answer is to make clear that abiding in Jesus is not the

same as bearing fruit or keeping his commandments. Fruit-bearing

and commandment-keeping is the result of abiding. If we abide, we

bear fruit.

Jesus does not contradict this when he says, “If you keep my

commandments, you will abide in my love” (John 15:10). This does

not mean: Keeping his commandments is abiding in his love. That

would be like saying: Fruit is being connected to the vine. No. Fruit

is the result of our being connected to the vine. They are not the same

thing. What Jesus means is that if you don’t keep the command-

ments, that is, if you don’t bear the fruit of love (for love is the sum

of his commandments, John 15:12), you have ceased to abide in him.

For the truth stands: “Whoever abides in me . . . bears much fruit”

(John 15:5).

So the answer to our question, “How do we abide in Jesus?” is

not “by bearing fruit” or “by keeping the commandments.” That

misses the whole point. The point is to discover how to bear fruit. The

answer is, by abiding in Jesus. And so the question becomes: How

do we abide in Jesus? What does it mean in actual experience?

Practically, How Do We Abide in Jesus?

Jesus uses two other similar phrases that point to the answer. He

refers to abiding in his love. And he refers to abiding in his word.

Both of these point toward abiding as continual trust in the truth

of Jesus’ words and in the certainty of his love.

Abiding Means Trusting in Jesus’ Love

Not to abide in Jesus’ love would mean that we stop believing that

we are loved by Jesus. We look at our circumstances—perhaps per-

secution or disease or abandonment—and we conclude that we are

not loved by Jesus anymore. That’s the opposite of abiding in the

Abide in Me 65

love of Jesus. So abiding in his love means continuing to believe,

moment by moment, that we are loved.

Everything that comes into our lives under Jesus’ sovereign

authority (Matt. 8:8) is part of his love for us. If it is pleasant, he

says, “That’s how my Father cares for the birds of the air and the

lilies of the field; how much more you!” (cf. Matt. 6:26-30). And if

it is painful, he says, “Fear not, the worst that can happen is death,

and I have overcome death. I will be with you to the end. And you

will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (cf. Matt. 10:28; 28:20;

John 11:25-26; Luke 14:14). Abiding in Jesus means trusting that

this is true—and true for you. That is, it means living on this truth

moment by moment. It flows to us like sap flows to a branch. We

receive it and get our life from it every day.

Abiding Means Trusting in Jesus’ Word

Similarly, this is true with the phrase, “Abide in my word” (John

8:31). This cannot mean merely, “Keep my commandments.” Rather

it means, “Keep on trusting my word. Keep on trusting what I have

revealed to you about myself and my Father and my work.” The

context of John 8:31-32 confirms this: “Jesus said to the Jews who

had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my

disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you

free.’” The result of abiding in Jesus’ word is being set free. From

what? From sin. That’s the slavery Jesus has in mind, as John 8:34

shows: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” So freedom

from sin is the fruit of abiding in the word. “If you abide in my

word . . . the truth will set you free.” Not sinning is the fruit, not

the definition, of abiding in the word. So keeping the commandments

of Jesus, which is another way of describing liberation from sin, is

not the meaning of abiding in his word, but the fruit of it.

So we conclude that abiding in Jesus—in his love and in his

word—is trusting that he really is loving us at every moment and that

everything he has revealed about himself and his work for us and our

future with him is true. We are taken back to what we saw in the

chapter on believing in Jesus ( Demand #4). Believing in Jesus as

66 Demand #7

our living water means drinking the water—savoring it and being

satisfied with it. So it is with the sap that flows from the vine to the

branch. We receive it, drink it, savor it, and satisfy our souls with

it. This daily ever-renewed satisfaction in Jesus is the key to bearing

fruit.1 This is what it means to abide in Jesus.

Jesus Keeps Us Abiding

As easy as it seems to abide, to stay implanted, to drink, to rest in

Jesus, the truth is that we are often tempted to find our life-giving sap

from another plant. And besides our own sinful tendencies, the

devil himself wants to snatch us out of the vine, and we must pray

daily, Jesus said, that God would “deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13).

Therefore, we need to remind ourselves that Jesus does not leave us

to ourselves. Even though he commands us to abide in him—and

we are responsible to abide there, and guilty if we don’t abide—

nevertheless he himself keeps us there. And we would not abide there

without his crucial keeping.

Jesus showed us this in at least three ways. He said that no one

can snatch his own sheep (that is, his own true branches) out of his

hand.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I

give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will

snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to

me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of

the Father’s hand. (John 10:27-29)

Then he prayed to his Father that God would cause us to keep on

abiding in his name (that is, in Jesus). “Holy Father, keep them in

your name, which you have given me. . . . While I was with them, I

kept them in your name . . . and not one of them has been lost

except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled”

1 I have tried to explain this and give many practical examples of how this works in real life in

the book The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in FUTURE GRACE (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 1995).

Abide in Me 67

(John 17:11-12). So it is God who does the decisive work in keep-

ing us in the vine.

Then Jesus himself illustrated how he prays for his own disci-

ples and preserves them from falling away. He predicted Simon

Peter’s three denials on the night before his death. But then he spoke

with sovereign authority to Simon in words that should encourage

all of us. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you,

that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that

your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen

your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Jesus prayed for Simon’s keeping

and knew it would happen. He said, “when you have turned,” not

“if you turn.” God’s answer to Jesus’ prayer was sovereignly deci-

sive. Yes, Simon’s faith faltered, and he sinned by denying Jesus.

But his faith did not fail utterly. He was not cut off from the vine.

Jesus prayed for him. And there is no reason to think Jesus has

ceased praying for us this way today.2

We are not idle in the battle to abide in Jesus. But in the end the

battle is assured because it does not depend finally on us. Jesus

wins. No one can snatch us out of his hand. He and his Father are

greater than all. Therefore, his demand that we abide in him is that

we keep trusting the one who keeps us trusting.

2 Some commentators on the Bible disagree that Jesus keeps his own by making sure that they

keep abiding in him. They point, understandably, to John 15:1-2, 6: “I am the true vine, and

my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and

every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. . . . If anyone does not

abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown

into the fire, and burned.” Does this mean that we can be truly attached to the life-giving vine

and then later be “taken away” and “thrown into the fire”? I don’t think that is what Jesus is

saying, mainly because of the three reasons given above. Rather, I think Jesus means that there

are those who appear to be truly in the vine, but are not. They have a kind of attachment, but

it is not real and life-giving. Judas is the clearest example in Jesus’ ministry. He was “attached”

to Jesus for three years: there was a kind of influence flowing into him, and he received many

blessings from Jesus. But he was not truly attached in a life-giving way. So eventually he was

“taken away”—not away from true life, but away from the artificial attachment that looked real

for a season but was not.

Demand #8

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

AND FOLLOW ME

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up

his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. —Matt. 16:24-25

Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. —Mark 1:17

I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in dark-

ness, but will have the light of life. —John 8:12

Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead. —Matt. 8:22

If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the

poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow

me. —Matt. 19:21

Jesus was fully human and fully God (John 1:1, 14). He was not

God with a human veneer—like a costume. He was a real, flesh-

and-blood man, a carpenter’s son (Mark 6:3). So when he said to

fishermen or tax collectors, “Follow me,” their obedience was a con-

crete, physical act of putting their feet on the ground and walking

behind Jesus and being part of his traveling team.

Following Jesus When He Is Not Here

But Jesus knew that he would not always be on earth to have fol-

lowers in this physical sense. “I am going to him who sent me. . . . I

tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me 69

not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will

send him to you” (John 16:5, 7). Jesus was fully aware that the

movement he began would continue after he had gone back to his

Father in heaven. This was his plan (see Demand #45).

Therefore, the demand that we follow him was relevant not only

for his physical days on earth but for all time. He made this clear at

the end of his earthly ministry. He had risen from the dead and was

about to ascend to the Father. He told Peter that he would suffer

martyrdom someday after Jesus was gone. Peter wondered if he

was the only one and asked Jesus what would happen to his fellow

apostle, John. Jesus answered, “If it is my will that he remain until

I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:22).

What this implies about “following Jesus” is that it happens

after he is gone. Until Jesus comes again, he expects his disciples on

earth to “follow” him. So following Jesus is not limited to physi-

cally walking around Palestine behind him. Jesus demands it of every

person in every country in every age.

Following Jesus Means Joining Him in What

He Was Sent to Do

When Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, who were fishermen by

trade, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men”

(Mark 1:17), he was using imagery relevant to them for some-

thing that applies to everyone who follows Jesus. The demand to

follow Jesus means that everyone should join him in what he came

to do. And he tells us repeatedly what that was. “The Son of Man

came . . . to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “The

Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). “I

have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance”

(Luke 5:32). “I came that they may have life and have it abun-

dantly” (John 10:10). “What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this

hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father,

glorify your name” (John 12:27-28).

In summary, then, he came to “die for the nation [of Israel],

and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children

70 Demand #8

of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:51-52). He came to

gather a people—specifically, to gather a people in allegiance to him-

self for the glory of his Father—by dying to save them from their sins

and to give them eternal life and a new ethic of love like his (John

13:34-35). Therefore, when he demands that we follow him, he

means that we join him in that task of gathering: “Whoever does not

gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23). There are no neutral fol-

lowers; we either scatter or gather. Following Jesus means continu-

ing the work he came to do—gathering a people in allegiance to

him for the glory of his Father.

Following Jesus into Suffering

Continuing the work he came to do even includes the suffering he

came to do. Following Jesus means that we share in his suffering.

When Jesus calls us to follow him, this is where he puts the empha-

sis. He knows he is heading to the cross, and he demands that we

do the same. He designs his entire life and ministry to go to Jerusalem

and be killed. “I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the

day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away

from Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33).

So he “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). And he knew

exactly what would happen there. It was all planned by his Father

when he sent him into the world. “See, we are going up to Jerusalem,

and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and

the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over

to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog

him and kill him. And after three days he will rise” (Mark 10:33-34).

That’s the plan—down to the details of being spit on.

That was the design of his life. And he knew that his own pain

would also fall on those who followed him. “If they persecuted me,

they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). So the unflinching focus

of his demand was that we follow him in suffering. “If anyone would

come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and fol-

low me” (Matt. 16:24). Jesus put the emphasis on self-denial and

cross-bearing.

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me 71

Suffering for Jesus with Joy Shows His

Supreme Value

He did not die to make this life easy for us or prosperous. He died

to remove every obstacle to our everlasting joy in making much of

him. And he calls us to follow him in his sufferings because this life

of joyful suffering for Jesus’ sake (Matt. 5:12) shows that he is more

valuable than all the earthly rewards that the world lives for (Matt.

13:44; 6:19-20). If you follow Jesus only because he makes life easy

now, it will look to the world as though you really love what they

love, and Jesus just happens to provide it for you. But if you suffer

with Jesus in the pathway of love because he is your supreme trea-

sure, then it will be apparent to the world that your heart is set on

a different fortune than theirs. This is why Jesus demands that we

deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him.

Suffering for Jesus Is Temporary; Pleasure in

Jesus Is Eternal

Of course, the pain is temporary. He does not call us to eternal suf-

fering. That’s what he rescues us from. “Whoever loves his life loses

it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”

(John 12:25). “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s

will save it” (Mark 8:35). Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure

in Jesus is eternal. When Peter said (perhaps with a tinge of self-pity),

“See, we have left everything and followed you,” Jesus responded,

without coddling Peter’s self-pity, “Everyone who has left houses or

brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my

name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life”

(Matt. 19:27, 29). In other words, there is no ultimate sacrifice in fol-

lowing Jesus. “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just”

(Luke 14:14). “Your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:12).

Even before heaven, joy abounds along the hard road that leads

through death to resurrection. Nothing can compare with the joy

of walking in the light with Jesus as opposed to walking in the dark-

ness without him. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever

72 Demand #8

follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”

(John 8:12). Following Jesus does indeed lead through suffering

and death. But the path is luminous with life and truth. Jesus

promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt.

28:20). And where Jesus is present there is joy—joy in sorrow for

now, but joy nevertheless. “These things I have spoken to you, that

my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Ruptures in Relationships with People

This is why the ruptures caused by following Jesus are not devas-

tating. There are ruptures in relationships with people, relation-

ships with possessions, and relationships with our vocation. Jesus

has jolting ways of describing the cost of following him in relation to

people. “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead”

(Matt. 8:22). “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own

father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,

yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26 ).

In other words, following Jesus is so supremely important that it

calls for behaviors that are sometimes going to look like hate to the

world. I have seen this lived out in agonizing choices that mission-

aries make to take their little children to risky places and leave

aging parents behind, well cared for, but perhaps never to be seen

on earth again. Some call it loveless. But Jesus has his eyes on the

nations and what love demands in their case.

Ruptures in Relationships with Possessions

Following Jesus also ruptures our relationship with possessions.

There once was a rich young man who loved his possessions too

much. So Jesus cut to the heart of his idolatry with the demand, “If

you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the

poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me”

(Matt. 19:21, see Demand #20). If something gets in the way of

following Jesus, we must get rid of it.

And this is not unique to that rich man but applies to all of us:

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me 73

“Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my

disciple” (Luke 14:33). Renouncing what you have may not always

mean selling it all. Jesus commended Zacchaeus for giving half of his

goods to the poor (Luke 19:8-9). But renouncing all does mean that

everything we have is totally at Jesus’ disposal for purposes that

please him and that it must never get in the way of radical obedi-

ence to his command of love.

Ruptures in Relationships with Vocation

Then there is the rupture that following Jesus brings to our vocation.

When Jesus called the twelve to follow him, none of them was a

professional Jesus-follower. They were fishermen and tax collectors

and the like. They had jobs. Incredibly, it went something like this:

“As [Jesus] passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the

tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and fol-

lowed him” (Mark 2:14). Just like that! (As far as we know.) For

most of us it was not that simple. But it does happen.

And it may happen to you. Not everyone should leave his voca-

tion to follow Jesus. When one man wanted to leave his homeland

and follow Jesus, Jesus said, “Go home to your friends and tell

them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had

mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). Most of us should stay where we are

and follow Jesus in all the radical ways of love demanded by our

present position and relationships.1 But not everyone. For some—

perhaps you (even as you read this)—following Jesus will mean a

risky rupture in your vocation. Do not be afraid to follow him away

from the familiar.

Following Jesus Is Costly and Worth It

Jesus has no desire to trick you into following him with a kind of

bait and switch. He is utterly up front about the cost. In fact, he

urges you to count the cost. “For which of you, desiring to build a

1 For more on what obedience to Jesus looks like in the secular workplace, see the chapter

“Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5” in John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, Ill.:

Crossway Books, 2003), 131-154.

74 Demand #8

tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has

enough to complete it? . . . Or what king, going out to encounter

another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether

he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him

with twenty thousand?” (Luke 14:28, 31). Let the call to follow

Jesus be clear and honest. “In the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). It is costly,

and it is worth it.

Demand #9

LOVE GOD WITH ALL

YOUR HEART, SOUL, MIND,

AND STRENGTH

Jesus answered, “The most important [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O

Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with

all your mind and with all your strength.’” —Mark 12:29-30

Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb,

and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have

done, without neglecting the others. —Luke 11:42

But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have

come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another

comes in his own name, you will receive him. —John 5:42-43

Jesus came to restore human beings to the kind of relationship

with God and each other that we were created for. The most

important thing he has to say about that restored relationship with

God is that we were meant to love God with all our heart and soul

and mind and strength. Jesus assumes that loving God means lov-

ing him for who he really is, and so his vision of who God is per-

meates all that he says.

Know God, and Love Him for All That He Is

God is the Creator. He created human beings (Matt. 19:4) and all the

universe (Mark 13:19). He sustains all he made, governing its small-

76 Demand #9

est details of birds and lilies. “Are not two sparrows sold for a

penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your

Father” (Matt. 10:29; cf. 6:30). He is a God of wisdom (Luke 11:49)

and righteousness (Matt. 6:33) and power (Matt. 22:29) and wrath

(John 3:36) and compassion (Luke 15:20) and love (John 3:16). He

is a person, not a mere force, and can be known as a Father who

loves us as his children (John 1:12; 16:27). Jesus demands of us,

“Love this God. Love him with all that you are for all that he is.”

To love God we must know him. God would not be honored

by groundless love. In fact, there is no such thing. If we do not

know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken

love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point in

calling it love for God. There may be some vague attraction in our

heart or some unfocused gratitude in our souls, but if they do not

arise from knowing God, they are not love for God.

Jesus: Revelation of God, Litmus Test of

Our Love for God

Therefore, Jesus came into the world to make God known, that he

might be truly loved. Jesus said to his disciples:

“If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said

to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus

said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not

know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How

can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:7-9)

Jesus so deeply reveals God that receiving Jesus becomes the test of

loving God and having him as our Father. “If God were your Father,

you would love me” (John 8:42). If we won’t have Jesus, we don’t

have God. He made himself the measure of our knowing and lov-

ing God. “I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If

another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can

Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength 77

you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not

seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:42-44).

In other words, Jesus is so fully God-reflecting and God-exalt-

ing that denying him means denying God. Jesus knows that his adver-

saries “do not have the love of God within [them]” because they do

not receive him. “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me”

(Luke 10:16). If they loved God, they would love him. He makes God

known more clearly and more fully than any other revelation.

Therefore, it cannot be that one has love for God but rejects Jesus.

“I Made Known to Them Your Name”

Therefore, if we are to love God, we must know him as he is revealed

in Jesus. Before Jesus came, God awakened love by the revelation of

himself in his word—which always pointed toward Jesus. “You search

the Scriptures,” Jesus said, “because you think that in them you have

eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39).

But now that Jesus has come, it is the revelation of Jesus himself that

awakens love to God. “No one knows the Father except the Son and

anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27).

This is what Jesus did for his disciples. He made God known.

In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, he says, “I made known to them your

name, and I will continue to make it known” (v. 26). This is the long-

awaited fulfillment of the prophecy in the Law of Moses: “The LORD

your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring,

so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with

all your soul, that you may live” (Deut. 30:6). Jesus is the fulfill-

ment of that prophecy. Therefore, we cannot love God apart from

the revelation of Jesus who changes our hearts to know God so

that we see him as compellingly beautiful.

Seeing and Savoring God as Compellingly

Beautiful

The reason I use the phrase “compellingly beautiful” is to stress two

things. One is that loving God is not a mere decision. You cannot

78 Demand #9

merely decide to love classical music or country western music, much less

God. The music must become compelling. If you don’t love it, something

must change inside you. That change makes it possible for the mind to

experience the music with a compelling sense of its attractiveness. So it

is with God. You do not merely decide to love him. Something changes

inside you, and as a result he becomes compellingly attractive. His

glory—his beauty—compels your admiration and delight.

The other thing I am emphasizing in the phrase “compellingly

beautiful” is that love for God is not essentially behavior but affec-

tion—not deeds but delight. God’s glory becomes our supreme plea-

sure. We begin to prefer above all else to know him and see him

and be with him and be like him. There are several important rea-

sons for believing that love for God is most essentially an experi-

ence of the affections, not behavior.

Loving God Is First, Loving Our Neighbor

Is Second

First, Jesus distinguished the first and second commandment. He said,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all

your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first com-

mandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as

yourself” (Matt. 22:37-39). Therefore, loving God cannot be defined

as loving our neighbor. They are different. Loving God is first. Loving

our neighbor is second. The first is primary and depends on no greater

obedience. The second is secondary and depends on loving God. They

are not separated, for true love for God will always bring about love

for people. But they are different. This means that the behaviors of

love toward others are not the essential meaning of loving God.

They are the overflow or fruit of loving God. Loving God is not the

way we treat others. It is a compelling admiration and delight in God.

“Their Heart Is Far from Me”

Second, Jesus said to the Pharisees when they criticized the freedom

of his disciples, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is

Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength 79

written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is

far from me; in vain do they worship me’” (Mark 7:6-7). Jesus says

that external actions—even religious ones directed toward him—

are not the essence of worship. They are not the essence of love.

What happens in the heart is essential. The external behaviors will

be pleasing to God when they flow from a heart that freely admires

and delights in God—that is, when they flow from love for God.

The Opposite of Loving God Is Hating

and Despising

Third, Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will

hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one

and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matt.

6:24). The opposite of loving God is “hating” and “despising.”

These are strong emotional words. They imply that the positive

counterpart is also a strong emotion. So loving God is a strong

inward emotion, not a mere outward action. But someone might

say that “serve” is the key word here and implies that love for God

is serving God. But that is not what it says. It says that the reason you

cannot serve two masters (God and money) is that behind the behav-

iors of serving are two diametrically opposed passions: hate versus

love, devotion versus despising. Jesus does not equate loving God

with serving God. He roots serving God in loving God.

An Adulterous Generation Seeks for a Sign

Fourth, when the Pharisees, who had no love for Jesus (or God, John

5:42), said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you,” Jesus

replied in a way that shed light on the nature of loving God. He

said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no

sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matt.

12:39). Why does he call them “adulterous” for seeking a sign?

Because God was Israel’s husband (Ezek. 16:8), and Jesus was God

coming to reclaim his unfaithful wife. That’s why he alludes to him-

self as the “bridegroom” (Matt. 25:1ff.).

80 Demand #9

Why would a wife (Israel represented by her leaders) stand before

her husband (Jesus) and demand a sign that he was her husband? Jesus

says it is not owing to innocent ignorance. It’s owing to an adulter-

ous heart. In other words, Israel does not love her husband. She loves

other suitors—like the praise of men (Matt. 23:6) and money (Luke

16:14). What this teaches us about the love Jesus demands for God is

that it is like a faithful wife’s love for her husband—not mere exter-

nal behavior but heartfelt affection and admiration and delight. It

should be modeled not on the service of a slave, but on the Song of

Songs. “We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love

more than wine; rightly do they love you” (Song 1:4).

With Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

When Jesus demands that we love God with all of our heart, soul,

mind, and strength, he means that every faculty and every capacity

of our being should express the fullness of our affection for God—

the fullness of all the ways that we treasure him. These four facul-

ties and capacities overlap in meaning:1 heart, soul, mind, and

strength. But they are not identical. “Heart” highlights the center

of our volitional and emotional life without excluding thought (Luke

1:51). “Soul” highlights our life as a whole, though sometimes dis-

tinguished from the body (Matt. 10:28). “Mind” highlights our

thinking capacity. And “strength” highlights the capacity to make

vigorous efforts both bodily and mentally (Mark 5:4; Luke 21:36).

The function of these faculties and capacities in relation to lov-

ing God is to demonstrate that love.2 It may be that “heart” is men-

1 Concerning “heart” and “mind,” consider that the one other place in the four Gospels where

“mind” (diavnoia) occurs other than in the command to love God “with all your mind” (ejn

o{lh/ th/` dianoiva/ sou) is Luke 1:51, where it is translated “thoughts” and happens in the

“heart”: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts

[dianoiv /a] of their hearts.” So “mind” and “heart” are not always distinct. Concerning “heart”

and “soul,” consider that Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the

soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). This implies that “soul” is the fullness of life or personhood apart from the body. Therefore, it would include

the “heart,” even though it is more.

2 In the command to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” the Greek prepositions behind the English translation “with” are not the same each time this command is used in the Gospels. All three gospels are quoting

Deuteronomy 6:5 where the Hebrew preposition used is b]. (Ú ,d oa ]mAl ;k ]bW `Ú ]v ]p ænAl ;k ]bW Ú ]b ;b ]lAl ;k ]B). But Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength 81

tioned first because it is seen most especially as the source of love that

is expressed through the soul (life), mind (thought), and strength

(effort). Luke especially seems to take it that way, because he uses a

different Greek preposition in the phrase “with all your heart” than

he does in translating the other three phrases (see note 2). In any

case, the point is that every faculty and capacity that we have should

display at every moment that God is our supreme treasure.

Every Capacity Treasures God Above

All Things

Loving God is most essentially treasuring God. And loving him with

all the heart and all the soul and all the mind and all the strength means that every faculty and every capacity treasures God above all things

and in such a way that our treasuring of any other thing is also a

treasuring of God. In other words, there may be other good things that

we may rightly treasure in some measure. But we may not treasure

them in the place of God. We may only treasure them as expressions

of treasuring God. If one of our human capacities finds pleasure in any-

one or anything in such a way that this pleasure is not also a delight

in God, then we have not loved God with all that capacity.

This way of seeing love for God is confirmed by the way God

was loved in the Psalms. Jesus saw himself as the goal and focus

and fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures, including the Psalms

(Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:27; John 5:39). We would expect him to

demand a love that extends and fulfills what the psalmists experi-

Matthew 22:37 translates the preposition with ejn every time ( jagap vhsei~ k vurion t ;on qe von sou ejn {ol /

h th/` kardiv /

a sou kai; ejn {olh t `/

h yuch/` sou kai; enj o{l /

h th/ d

ìanoiv /

a sou). Mark 12:30 trans-

lates it with ejx every time ( jagap vhsei~ k vurion t ;on qe von sou jex {olh~ t `h~ kard via~ sou ka ;i j ex

o{lh~ th` yuch` sou kai; ejx o{lh~ th`~ dianoiva~ sou kai; ejx o{lh~ th`~ ijscuvo~ sou). Because of this, I am inclined to see enj and exj as two ways of expressing the same instrumental meaning

of the Hebrew word b]. In other words, both mean more or less “by.” The heart and soul and

mind and strength are the instruments by which we demonstrate love for God. A slight variation to this interpretation is suggested by Luke’s peculiar way of translating Deuteronomy 6:5.

He uses the preposition exj in relation to “heart” but enj in relation to “soul,” “strength,” and

“mind (ajgaphvseij kuvrion to;n qeovn sou ejx o{lh~ [th`~] kardiva~ sou kai; ejn o{lh/ th/` yuch/` sou kai; enj ol{h/ th`/ ijsc i

uv > sou kai; j

en l

o{ h/ t `

h/ diano a

iv / sou, kai; t n

o; plhsiovn sou w~J seautonv, Luke

10:27). One wonders if Luke intended to say that the heart is the “source” (hence ejx), while

the soul, mind, and strength are the spheres in which this love is demonstrated (hence ejn).

That would fit what I am stressing, namely, that love for God is a matter most essentially of

the affections (of the heart) and secondarily demonstrated in the action of the life of mental

and physical effort.

82 Demand #9

enced. In the Psalms we read of love to God that is absolutely exclu-

sive: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth

that I desire besides you” (Ps. 73:25). “I say to the LORD, ‘You are

my Lord; I have no good apart from you’” (Ps. 16:2). What can

this exclusivity possibly mean, since the psalmists also speak, for

example, of loving other people (Ps. 16:3)?

We get a clue in Psalm 43:4 where the psalmist says, “Then I will

go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy.” This last phrase

(“my exceeding joy”) is literally, “the gladness of my rejoicing” or

“the joy of my exultation.”3 This points to God as the joy of all our

joys. In all my rejoicing over all the good things that God has made,

God himself is the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. In all my

rejoicing in everything, there is a central rejoicing in God. Every joy

that does not have God as the central gladness of the joy is a hol-

low joy and in the end will burst like a bubble. This is what led

Augustine to pray, “He loves thee too little who loves anything

together with Thee, which he loves not for thy sake.”4

Let Not Your Love Grow Cold

Therefore, I conclude that Jesus’ demand to love God with all our

heart and soul and mind and strength means that every impulse

and every act of every faculty and every capacity should be an

expression of treasuring God above all things. Jesus warned that this

most important of all demands would be widely forsaken in the

last days. “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will

grow cold” (Matt. 24:12, NASB).

Beware lest your love for God grow cold in these days.

Remember, we will love him to the degree that we know him. And

remember that only Jesus can make him known in truth and full-

ness (Matt. 11:27). Therefore, look steadily at Jesus and pray that he

would reveal God as compellingly beautiful. “Whoever has seen

me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

3 The Hebrew phrase is two words for joy or rejoicing (ylyiG‡I tjæmc]i).

4 Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book 10, Chapter XXIX.

Demand #10

REJOICE AND LEAP

FOR JOY

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you

and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son

of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your

reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the

prophets. —Luke 6:22-23

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scor-

pions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall

hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are

subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in

heaven. —Luke 10:19-20

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a

man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that

he has and buys that field. —Matt. 13:44

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and

that your joy may be full. —John 15:11

Surprised by Joy

Jesus’ demand that we “rejoice . . . and leap for joy” (Luke 6:23;

cf. Matt. 5:12) is astonishing for so many reasons that it would

take whole books to unfold all of its surprising implications.1 Half

1 I wrote a little book to get people started on this path, The Dangerous Duty of Delight

(Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2001), and a bigger book to go deeper, Desiring God: Meditations

of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003).

84 Demand #10

a century ago C. S. Lewis responded to this surprise by looking at the

inescapable evidence in the Gospels. He wrote:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the stag-

gering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would

seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex

and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child

who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can-

not imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We

are far too easily pleased.2

In other words, the demand that we be happy is not marginal or

superfluous. It is a shocking wake-up call to people who are finding

their happiness in all the wrong places. Jesus’ solution to our love

affair with sin is not merely that we tear out our sin-loving eyes (Matt.

5:29), but that we be mastered by joy in a new reality, namely, God.

In His Joy He Goes and Sells All That He Has

Central to his preaching was the announcement that the kingdom of

heaven had come near. He meant that he was the King and that his

work was the arrival of the saving rule of God (Luke 11:20; 17:20-

21). So he told a very short parable to show how people come into the

kingdom. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden

in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he

goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44).

The parable means that God’s saving presence and sovereign

reign are so valuable that when people see them for what they really

are—treasure hidden in the field—they count everything as nothing

compared to the vast fortune of being part of that reign. And Jesus

leaves no doubt about the internal experience of that “conversion.”

It is joy-driven. He says, “In his joy he goes and sells all that he has

and buys that field.”

2 C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1965), 2.

Rejoice and Leap for Joy 85

It cannot be otherwise. Jesus came into the world with good

news, not bad news. He does not call us to a willpower religion

that feels only duty and no delight. He calls us to himself and to his

Father. Therefore, he calls us to joy. Of course, it is not joy in things.

Jesus is not preaching a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel—one

of America’s most lamentable exports to the world. It is joy in God

and in his Son.

This is why the parable describes coming to the kingdom as

“selling all.” The demand for joy does not encourage us to retreat

one millimeter from the radical demand of Luke 14:33, “Any one

of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

We renounce all those joy-giving things because we have found the

treasure hidden in the field and we have been given eyes to see that

this treasure—this glorious God—is infinitely more valuable than

everything we possess or could possess in this world. This is why

we renounce it all with joy.

Self-denial and the Quest for Joy

This is the meaning of self-denial. Renounce everything on earth in

order that you might have Jesus. Sell all, so that you might have the

kingdom. C. S. Lewis captures the spirit of Jesus’ demand for self-

denial when he says:

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about

self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and

to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and

nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do

so contains an appeal to desire.3

In other words, we deny ourselves because beyond self-denial is great

reward. Jonathan Edwards goes even deeper in his analysis of how

Jesus’ demand for self-denial relates to his demand for joy.

3 Ibid. , 1.

86 Demand #10

Self-denial will also be reckoned amongst the troubles of the

godly. . . . But whoever has tried self-denial can give in his

testimony that they never experience greater pleasure and joys

than after great acts of self-denial. Self-denial destroys the very

root and foundation of sorrow, and is nothing else but the

lancing of a grievous and painful sore that effects a cure and

brings abundance of health as a recompense for the pain of the

operation.4

If this is true, then Jesus’ demand for self-denial is another way of

calling us to radically pursue our deepest and most lasting joy. They

are not competing commands. They are like the command to be can-

cer-free and the command to have surgery.

Our Joy Is Not Mainly in Prosperity but in

Obedience and Pain

What astonishes us most immediately when Jesus says, “Rejoice

. . . and leap for joy” is that he is saying it precisely in the context

of pain. “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they

exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account

of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy” (Luke

6:22-23). When Jesus demands that we rejoice, he has not forgot-

ten the kind of world we live in. It is filled with suffering. And he

promises that some of that suffering will fall on us as his disciples.

“They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering

you up to the synagogues and prisons . . . and some of you they

will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake”

(Luke 21:12, 16-17). “If they have called the master of the house

Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his house-

hold” (Matt. 10:25). “If they persecuted me, they will also perse-

cute you” (John 15:20).

Jesus has not forgotten that. In fact, he demands that we fol-

4 Jonathan Edwards, “The Pleasantness of Religion,” in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A

Reader, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Douglas A. Sweeney (New Haven,

Conn: Yale University Press, 1999), 23-24.

Rejoice and Leap for Joy 87

low him in that painful path of love (see Demand #8). Therefore,

the joy he demands now (“in that day,” Luke 6:23) is not chip-

per. It is not joy-lite. It is not superficial or marked with levity.

This is the mistake of too many people and too many churches.

They think that Jesus’ demand for joy is a demand to tell jokes

or weave slapstick into Christian corporate life. I don’t smell the

Jerusalem-bound Jesus in that atmosphere. Something has gone

wrong.

What’s wrong is that the aroma of suffering is missing. For

Jesus the demand for joy is a way to live with suffering and to out-

last suffering. Therefore, this joy is serious. It’s the kind you fight

for by cutting off your hand (Matt. 5:30) and selling your posses-

sions (Matt. 13:44) and carrying a cross with Jesus to Calvary (Matt.

10:38-39). It has scars. It sings happy songs with tears. It remem-

bers the dark hours and knows that more are coming. The road to

heaven is a hard road, but it is not joyless.

The Root of Holiness

Jesus’ demand that we rejoice is the key that unlocks his demand

for holiness. What chokes the purifying power of spiritual life and

destroys Jesus’ would-be disciples is the “cares and riches and plea-

sures of life” (Luke 8:14). And what severs these strangling vines

most decisively is the power of a superior pleasure. Jesus said that

it is “in his joy” that the believer sells everything. In other words, it

is his joy that cuts the stranglehold of sin.

Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensual-

ity. It isn’t. It is hopelessly weak and ineffective. Willpower religion

usually fails, and even when it succeeds, it gets glory for the will,

not for God. It produces legalists, not lovers. Jonathan Edwards

saw the powerlessness of this approach and said:

We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them

to a godly life. . . . The common argument is the profitableness of

religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of [moral]

88 Demand #10

profit; ’tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them

with their own weapons.5

In other words, the pursuit of pleasure in God is not a compromise

with the sensual world but is in fact the only power that can defeat

the lusts of the age while producing lovers of God.

The Root of Joy in Suffering Is Great Reward:

Jesus

Jesus bases our present joy explicitly on the hope for great reward.

“Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is

great in heaven” (Luke 6:23). He does not define the reward. But in

the whole context of his life and message, the essential reward is

fellowship with Jesus himself and with God the Father through him

(John 17:3, 24).

There are several pointers to this understanding. For example,

Jesus says to his disciples just before his death, “You have sorrow

now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one

will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). The indomitable joy

that Jesus promises is based on his own presence: “I will see you

again.”

Similarly Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my

joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

This fullness of joy is mentioned by John the Baptist, and he bases

it on the presence of Jesus, comparing Jesus to a bridegroom and

himself to his friend: “The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and

hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this

joy of mine is now complete” (John 3:29).6 John’s “complete” joy

is based on the presence of Jesus.

5 Ibid. The preceding and following paragraphs are adapted from John Piper, “A God-Entranced

Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later,” in A God-Entranced

Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004), 29.

6 The word “complete” (peplhvrwtai) translates the same Greek word (plhr vow) that is used in

John 15:11 (plhrwqh`/), 16:24 (peplhrwm venh), and 17:13 (peplhrwm venhn). Each refers to the joy

of the disciples being full. Since John 3:29 and 16:24 base that joy on the presence of Jesus, we

may assume the other two very likely refer to that as well.

Rejoice and Leap for Joy 89

Therefore, I conclude that the essence of the reward that we

count on to complete our joy is the fullness of the presence of Jesus

experienced in the age to come. The reason that we can rejoice now

is not only that we taste that future fellowship in hope, but also

that Jesus is with us now by his Spirit. He promised us, as he left to

return to the Father, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to

you” (John 14:18). “I am with you always, to the end of the age”

(Matt. 28:20). He said that the Spirit of truth would come and

make Jesus gloriously real to us even though he is physically absent.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will . . . glorify me, for he will

take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14). Therefore,

even though we can’t see Jesus now, we hope in him with great joy,

and he sustains that joy by his continual presence.

Jesus Purchases and Provides Our Joy

How then shall we obey this demand of Jesus to “rejoice . . . and leap

for joy”? We will take heart from the fact that Jesus offered himself

to die for the forgiveness of our sins—the forgiveness of our fail-

ures to rejoice in him as we ought. At the Last Supper he took the cup

of wine and said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured

out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). This is why

he came in the first place: “The Son of Man came . . . to give his life

as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). So our joy has this solid

foundation: Jesus shed his blood so that our failures to rejoice in him

might be forgiven.

Then we take heart that he promised to work for us in such a

way that the very love that the Father has for the Son would be the

experience of our own hearts. He prayed, “I made known to them

your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love

with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them”

(John 17:26). Consider carefully that the love the Father has for the

Son is not a merciful, forgiving love. The Son has no sin and no

flaw. He needs no mercy. The love the Father has for the Son is

nothing but infinitely joyful admiration and fellowship. This is what

Jesus says will be in us. Therefore, I take this to be a promise to work

90 Demand #10

in us to make sure that our joy will be the very joy that the Father has

in the Son. We are not left to ourselves to rejoice in Jesus as we ought.

Jesus is committed to making it happen.

The Demand to Rejoice in Jesus as a Means to

Glorify Jesus

Finally, I conclude from Jesus’ commitment to glorify the Father

and the Son (John 17:1) that his intention to sustain our joy in him

is part of what it means for us to glorify the Father and the Son. In

other words, I conclude that rejoicing in the Father and the Son is

essential to glorifying God. If this is true, we have a powerful con-

firmation of the duty to pursue our joy—namely, because it dis-

plays the glory of God.

This truth should make us tremble at the horror of not rejoic-

ing in God. We should quake at the fearful lukewarmness of our

hearts. We should waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not

to pursue our fullest satisfaction in God. There is one final word

for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: trea-

son. What a motivation this should be to obey the demand of Jesus,

“Rejoice . . . and leap for joy.”

There Is No Limit to the Intensity of Joy in Jesus

It is true that a passion for happiness can be misdirected to wrong

objects, but it cannot be too strong. Jonathan Edwards argued for

this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1. The text

reads, “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” Edwards drew

out of the text the following doctrine: “Persons need not and ought

not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.”

Instead, he says, they ought

to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires

and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. . . . Our hungerings and

thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too

great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite

value. . . . [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by

Rejoice and Leap for Joy 91

laying yourself in the way of allurement. . . .7 There is no such thing

as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue

as temperance in spiritual feasting.8

Therefore, be encouraged that God made you to rejoice in him. Do

not settle for any lesser joy. Lay yourself in the way of allurement.

That is, fix your eyes on the all-satisfying treasure of Jesus Christ

who loved us and gave his life as a ransom for our everlasting joy.

7 Quoted from an unpublished sermon, “Sacrament Sermon on Canticles 5:1” (circa 1729),

edited version by Kenneth Minkema in association with The Works of Jonathan Edwards,

Yale University.

8 Jonathan Edwards, “The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast,” in Sermons

and Discourses, 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth Minkema, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol.

14 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 286. The preceding two paragraphs are

adapted from “A God-Entranced Vision of All Things,” 27-28.

Demand #11

FEAR HIM WHO CAN

DESTROY BOTH SOUL AND

BODY IN HELL

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in

hell. —Matt. 10:28

But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over

them, bring them here and slaughter them before me. —Luke 19:27

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed,

into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” . . . And

these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into

eternal life. —Matt. 25:41, 46

The Descriptions Jesus Uses for Hell

Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He referred

to it as a place of “outer darkness” where “there will be weeping and

gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). In other words, all the joys that

we associate with light will be withdrawn, and all the fears that we

associate with darkness will be multiplied. And the result will be an

intensity of misery that makes a person grind his teeth in order to

bear it.

Jesus also refers to hell as a “fiery furnace” where law-breakers

will be thrown at the end of the age when he returns. “The Son of

Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom

Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell 93

all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery

furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”

(Matt. 13:41-42). He calls it “the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22), “eter-

nal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41),

“unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), “eternal punishment” (Matt.

25:46).

This last description—“eternal punishment”—is especially

heartrending and fearful because it is contrasted with “eternal life.”

“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into

eternal life.” In this contrast we hear the tragedy of loss as well as

suffering and endlessness. Just as “eternal life” will be a never-

ending experience of pleasure in God’s presence, so “eternal pun-

ishment” will be a never-ending experience of misery under God’s

wrath (John 3:36; 5:24).

Hell Is Not a Mere Natural Consequence of

Bad Choices

The word wrath is important for understanding what Jesus meant by

hell. Hell is not simply the natural consequence of rejecting God.

Some people say this in order to reject the thought that God sends

people there. They say that people send themselves there. That is

true. People make choices that lead to hell. But it is not the whole

truth. Jesus says these choices are really deserving of hell. “Whoever

says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to [that is, guilty of, or deserving of]

the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22). That is why he calls hell “punish-

ment” (Matt. 25:46). It is not a mere self-imposed natural conse-

quence (like cigarette smoking leading to lung cancer); it is the

penalty of God’s wrath (like a judge sentencing a criminal to hard

labor).

The images Jesus uses of how people come to be in hell do not

suggest natural consequence but the exercise of just wrath. For

example, he pictures the servant of a master who has gone on a

journey. The servant says, “My master is delayed,” and he “begins

to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards.”

Then Jesus says (referring to his own sudden second coming), “The

94 Demand #11

master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect

him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces

and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weep-

ing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 24:48-51). This picture repre-

sents legitimate and holy rage followed by punishment. Jesus will

“put” (qhvsei) him with the hypocrites.

Jesus told another story to illustrate his departure from the earth

and his return in judgment. He said, “A nobleman went into a far

country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. . . . But

his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do

not want this man to reign over us’” (Luke 19:12, 14). When the

nobleman returned in his kingly power to reward those who had

trusted and honored him with their lives, he punished those who

rejected his kingship: “As for these enemies of mine, who did not

want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them

before me” (Luke 19:27). Again the picture is not one of hell as a dis-

ease resulting from bad habits, but of a king expressing holy wrath

against those who rebuff his gracious rule.

Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and

Body in Hell

This is why Jesus said, “Fear him who can destroy both soul and

body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The fear he demands is not fear of hell

as a natural consequence of bad habits, but of God as a holy judge

who sentences guilty sinners to hell. This demand to fear God as a

holy judge seems discouraging at first. It seems as though following

Jesus means leading a life of anxiety that God is angry with us and

is ready to punish us at the slightest misstep. But that is not what

Jesus calls us to experience as we follow him.

It seems amazing to us, perhaps, that immediately following his

warning to “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,”

Jesus says something designed to give us deep peace and full confi-

dence under God’s fatherly care. The very next sentence goes like

this: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them

will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of

Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell 95

your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more

value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31).

In the same breath Jesus says, “Fear God who casts into hell”

and “Do not fear because God is your Father who values you more

than the sparrows and knows your smallest need.” In fact, the all-

providing fatherly care of God is one of Jesus’ sweetest and most per-

vasive teachings:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather

into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not

of more value than they? . . . Therefore do not be anxious, saying,

“What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we

wear?” For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heav-

enly Father knows that you need them all. (Matt. 6:26, 31-32)

God Is to Be Feared, and God Is to Be Trusted

How does Jesus mean for us to experience these two truths about

God—he is to be feared, and he is to be trusted? It won’t do to sim-

ply say that “fear of God” means “reverence for God” rather than

“being afraid of him.” That does not fit with the words, “Fear him

who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you,

fear him!” (Luke 12:5). Of course, it is true that we should rever-

ence God, that is, stand in awe of his holiness and power and wis-

dom. But there is also a real fear of him that can coexist with sweet

peace and trust in him.

The key is that God himself is the one who removes his wrath

from us. Our peace does not come from our removing the God of

wrath from our thinking, but from his removing his wrath from us.

He has done that by sending Jesus to die in our place so that, for

everyone who believes in Jesus, God’s wrath is taken away. “As

Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus said, “so must

the Son of Man be lifted up [on the cross to die], that whoever

believes in him may have eternal life [not wrath]. . . . Whoever does

not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains

on him” (John 3:14-15, 36). When Jesus cried out on the cross,

96 Demand #11

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), he

was experiencing the wrath of God’s abandonment in our place—for

he had never done anything to deserve being forsaken by God. And

when he said finally from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30),

he meant that the price of our salvation—our deliverance from God’s

wrath and into all God’s blessings—had been paid in full.

Jesus had said that he came “to give his life as a ransom for

many” (Matt. 20:28), and now the full ransom was paid and the

work of absorbing and removing the wrath of God was finished.

Now, he says, everyone who believes has everlasting fellowship

with God and is fully assured that the wrath of the Judge is gone.

“He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life”

(John 5:24).

Fearing Unbelief

What then is left to fear? The answer is unbelief. For those who fol-

low Jesus, fearing God means fearing the terrible prospect of not

trusting the one who paid such a price for our peace. In other words,

one of the means that God uses to keep us peacefully trusting in Jesus

is the fear of what God would do to us if we did not believe. The

reason we do not live in the discomfort of constant fear is because

we believe. That is, we rest in the all-sufficient work of Jesus and in

our Father’s sovereign care. But at those moments when unbelief

tempts us, a holy fear rises and warns us what a foolish thing it

would be to distrust the one who loved us and gave his Son to die

for our anxiety-free joy.

Hugging God’s Neck Takes Away Fear

One illustration has helped me see how this experience works. When

my oldest son Karsten was about eight years old, we went to visit a

man who owned a huge dog. When we opened the door, the dog

looked at my son almost eye to eye. That’s a fearful prospect for a lit-

tle boy. But we were assured the dog was harmless and that he really

liked children. After a while we sent Karsten to the car to get some-

Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell 97

thing we forgot. As he ran across the yard, the dog gave a deep growl

and loped up behind him. The owner leaned out of the door and

called to Karsten, “You better just walk; he doesn’t like it when

people run away from him.”

A huge dog that loves children but does not like people to run

away from him is what God is like. If we will trust him and enjoy

him and throw our arms around his strong neck, he will be every-

thing we ever hoped for in a friend. But if we decide that there are

other things we want more than him and turn to run away, he will

get very angry. Jesus said this as clearly as we could wish in Luke

19:27, “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to

reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”

Fearing God means fearing the terrible prospect of running away

from the merciful, all-providing, all-satisfying reign of King Jesus.

Hell Means That Sin Is Unfathomably Serious

Jesus’ demand that we fear the one who can destroy both soul and

body in hell teaches us to see sin as more serious than we ever

dreamed. The reason so many people feel that eternal hell is an

unjust punishment for our sin is that they do not see sin as it really

is. This is because they do not see God as he really is. When Jesus tells

us what he will say to those who are going to hell he says, “Then will

I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers

of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:23). They are workers of “lawlessness.”

That is, they break God’s law. Sin is against God first, then man.

Therefore, the seriousness of sin arises from what it says about

God. God is infinitely worthy and honorable. But sin says the oppo-

site. Sin says that other things are more desirable and more wor-

thy. How serious is this? The seriousness of a crime is determined,

in part, by the dignity of the person and the office being dishonored.

If the person is infinitely worthy and infinitely honorable and infi-

nitely desirable and holds an office of infinite dignity and author-

ity, then rebuffing him is an infinitely outrageous crime. Therefore,

it deserves an infinite punishment. The intensity of Jesus’ words

about hell are not an overreaction to small offenses. They are a

98 Demand #11

witness to the infinite worth of God and to the outrageous dishonor

of human sin.

The Precious Gift of Fear

Therefore, give heed to Jesus’ clear demand to fear the one who

can destroy both soul and body in hell. Hear it as a great mercy.

What a wonderful thing it is that Jesus warns us. He does not leave

us ignorant of the wrath to come. He not only warns. He rescues.

This is the best effect of fear: It wakens us to our need for help and

points us to the all-sufficient Redeemer, Jesus. Let it have this effect

on you. Let it lead you to Jesus who says to everyone who believes

in him, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure

to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).

Demand #12

WORSHIP GOD IN

SPIRIT AND TRUTH

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will

worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking

such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship

him must worship in spirit and truth. —John 4:23-24

Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you

serve.’” —Matt. 4:10

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments

of men. —Matt. 15:8-9

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love

the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You

cannot serve God and money. —Matt. 6:24

Everyone in the world worships something. From the most reli-

gious to the most secular, all people value something high

enough to build their lives around it. It may be God, or it may be

money. But what makes it worship is the driving power of some cher-

ished treasure that shapes our emotions and will and thought and

behavior. Into this universal experience of worship Jesus demanded,

“Worship [God] in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). In other words,

bring your experience of worship into conformity with what is true

100 Demand #12

about God, and let your spirit be authentically awakened and moved

by that truth.

The Hour Is Coming and Is Now Here

When he said this, he was talking to a Samaritan woman near her

hometown. She had challenged him about the difference between places

where Samaritans and Jews worship. She said, “Our fathers wor-

shiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place

where people ought to worship” (John 4:20). Jesus responded by turn-

ing her attention away from geography to something astonishing that

was happening in her very presence. He said, “Woman, believe me,

the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will

you worship the Father. . . . The hour is coming, and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”

(John 4:21, 23). This is a radical statement—to say that the hour is now

here when worship in Jerusalem would cease! What did he mean?

Jesus made the breathtaking claim to be the long-awaited Jewish

Messiah. The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he

who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus

responded, “I who speak to you am he” (John 4:25). So when Jesus

says that the time “is now here” when we will no longer worship in

Jerusalem, he meant that the kingdom of the Messiah has dawned and

there was going to be a radical break in the way people worship.

“Destroy This Temple, and in Three Days

I Will Raise It Up”

The reason is that Jesus intended to take the place of the temple him-

self. In other words, the “place” where worship would happen—the

“place” where people would meet God from now on—would be Jesus,

not the temple in Jerusalem. He communicated this in several ways.

For example, he stood in the temple and said, “Destroy this temple,

and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The people were aston-

ished and said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and

will you raise it up in three days?” But the Gospel writer explained,

Worship God in Spirit and Truth 101

“He was speaking about the temple of his body” (John 2:21). In

other words, Jesus meant that when he was raised from the dead, he

would be the new “temple”—the new meeting place with God.

Jesus said something almost as startling when he was criticized

for letting his disciples pick grain and eat it on the Sabbath. Jesus’

response to this criticism was to point out that David, the king of

Israel, had fed his band of men with the bread of God’s house that

was only designed for the priests to eat. He made the connection

with himself and his band of men by saying, “I tell you, something

greater than the temple is here” (Matt. 12:6). In other words, “The

Messiah, the son of David, is here, and he himself is going to take the

place of the temple.”

Not in This Mountain or in Jerusalem,

but in Spirit and in Truth

So when Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming,

and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in

spirit and truth,” he meant that a whole new approach to God in wor-

ship had come with the coming of the Messiah himself. No longer

would geography be relevant: “Neither on this mountain nor in

Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” Instead, what takes the place

of external geographic concerns are internal spiritual concerns: “Those

who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The external

places of Samaria and Jerusalem are replaced with the spiritual reali-

ties of “spirit and truth.” What matters now is not where you wor-

ship but whether you worship God in accordance with the truth and

whether your spirit is authentically awakened and moved by that truth.

All Worship Should Be Through Jesus

and of Jesus

The key new truth is that worship now happens through Jesus. He is

the temple where we encounter God. This is true first because he poured

out his blood “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28) and “gave his

life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45) and opened the way through

102 Demand #12

his own crucified and risen body for us to be reconciled with God (John

3:16, 36). There is no way that sinners could offer acceptable worship

to God without having Jesus’ blood as a go-between with God.

It’s true that worship now happens through Jesus because he

himself is God. He is not simply the mediator of worship between

us and the Father; he is also the one to be worshiped. He made this

claim indirectly and directly. He forgave sins, which only God can do

(Mark 2:5-11). He accepted worship from his disciples (Matt. 14:33;

28:9). He claimed eternal preexistence with God: “Truly, truly, I

say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He said he

was one with the Father: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”

(John 14:9). “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). So all should

“honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (John 5:23).

Therefore, all worship “in truth” will be worship of Jesus and

through Jesus. For “whoever does not honor the Son does not honor

the Father who sent him” (John 5:23).

Worship in Spirit

What about the phrase “in spirit”? “The hour is coming, and is

now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in

spirit” (John 4:23). Some interpreters take this to refer to God’s Holy

Spirit. I have taken it to refer to our spirit. But probably these two

interpretations are not far apart in Jesus’ mind. In John 3:6 Jesus

connects God’s Spirit and our spirit in a remarkable way. He says,

“That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In other words, until

the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit with the birth of new life, our

spirit is so dead and unresponsive, it does not even qualify as spirit.

Only that which is born of the Spirit is (a living) spirit. So when Jesus

says that true worshipers worship the Father “in spirit,” he means

that true worship comes only from spirits made alive and sensitive

by the quickening of the Spirit of God.1

This “spirit” is essential in worship. Otherwise worship is dead.

1 This paragraph is adapted from John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, revised and expanded edition (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003), 82.

Worship God in Spirit and Truth 103

Or to use Jesus’ phrase, it is “in vain.” “This people honors me

with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship

me” (Matt. 15:8-9). A heart (and spirit) alive and engaged with

God is essential. Jesus is contrasting authentic worship in spirit and

truth with external worship that focuses on Samaria and Jerusalem.

What makes it authentic is not only that the worshiping mind grasps

the truth of Jesus, but also that the worshiping spirit experiences

awakening and is moved by the truth that the mind knows. A person

who has no affections for God awakened by the truth of Jesus is

not worshiping “in spirit and truth.”2 And a person with great affec-

tions built on false views of God is not worshiping “in spirit and

truth.” Jesus demands both: worship in spirit and in truth.

All of Life Is Worship

One implication of this vision of worship is that it applies to all of life

as well as to services of corporate worship. The essence of worship

lies in our mind’s true vision of God and our spirit’s authentic affections

for God. This means that whenever we display the worth of God by

words or actions that flow from a spirit that treasures him as he really

is, we are worshiping in spirit and in truth. We may be at work or at

home or at church. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we see the

glory of God in Jesus (truth), and we treasure him above all else (spirit),

and then we overflow by treating others with self-sacrificing love for

their good. Few things display the beauty of God more. For followers

of Jesus, therefore, all of life should be this kind of worship.

This is powerfully illustrated by the connection Jesus makes

between worshiping God and serving God. When Satan tempted

Jesus to worship him, Jesus responded, “Be gone, Satan! For it is writ-

ten, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you

serve’” (Matt. 4:10). Serving was often attached to worshiping as an

outward expression of religious ministry in the temple. But now the

temple is Jesus. How is the “service” of worship transformed?

2 See Chapter Three, “Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism” in Desiring God for a fuller defense of this statement and how it fits with the reality that our feelings are unstable, sometimes high and sometimes low.

104 Demand #12

You Cannot Serve God and Money

We get a surprising glimpse of what service3 to God means for Jesus

in Matthew 6:24. He said, “No one can serve two masters, for either

he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the

one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” The

surprising thing here is that serving God is compared to serving

money. But how do you serve money? Not by helping money or

meeting money’s needs. You serve money by treasuring it so much

that you shape your whole life to benefit from what money can do

for you.

So it is with God in the way Jesus sees the service of worship.

We do not help God or meet God’s needs (“The Son of Man came

not to be served,” Mark 10:45). Rather we serve God by treasuring

him so much that we shape our whole life so as to benefit from

what he can do for us. And, unlike money, what God can do for us

above all other treasures is be for us everything we have ever longed

for.

The Infinite Worth of God in Jesus

Therefore, all of life is service to God. That is, all of life is shaped

by our passion to maximize our experience of the supreme worth

of God in Jesus. So we end where we began. All the world wor-

ships something. From the most religious to the most secular, all peo-

ple value something high enough to build their lives around it—even

if unconsciously. Jesus demands that every person in the world build

his life around the infinite worth of God in Jesus. Consider what you

are worshiping. Then ask Jesus to open your eyes to the truth of

God’s supreme worth and to awaken your spirit to treasure him

above all.

3 The word for “serve” in Matthew 6:24 (douleuw

v ) is not the same as the word for serve in Matthew

4:10 (latreuwv). The latter usually refers to the religious activity in the temple. The former refers usually to what a slave does for a master. My point is that it is precisely the newness of Jesus’ situation that makes plain how even the “slave” kind of service is worship in a new way.

Demand #13

ALWAYS PRAY AND

DO NOT LOSE HEART

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to

pray and not lose heart. —Luke 18:1

Pray for those who persecute you. —Matt. 5:44

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray

to your Father who is in secret. —Matt. 6:6

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles

do. —Matt. 6:7-8

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your

name.” —Matt. 6:9

Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his

harvest. —Matt. 9:38

How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to

those who ask him! —Luke 11:13

Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. —John 16:24

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may

be glorified in the Son. —John 14:13

Jesus intends to create a praying people. His demand is clear, and

the issue is so important that he tells us why, how, for whom, and

what we are to pray. And though we might think that the Son of God

106 Demand #13

would be above the need to pray, he sets the example for us, as a

perfect human being, by rising early in the morning to pray (Mark

1:35) and seeking times alone to pray (Matt. 14:23) and sometimes

spending the whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12) and, in the end,

preparing for his suffering by prayer (Luke 22:41-42).

Why? For the Glory of God

Why did Jesus think prayer was so important for his followers?

The reason is that prayer corresponds with two great purposes of

God that Jesus came to accomplish: God’s glory and our joy. Jesus

said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father

may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). Prayer is designed by God

to display his fullness and our need. Prayer glorifies God because it

puts us in the position of the thirsty and God in the position of the

all-supplying fountain.1

Jesus knew the Psalms and read Psalm 50:15 where God, like

Jesus, demands that we pray for help and shows that this gives glory

to God: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and

you shall glorify me.” Prayer is designed as a way of relating to

God, so that it is clear we get the help and he gets the glory. Jesus said

that he had come to glorify his Father. “I glorified you on earth,

having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4).

Part of what God had given him to do was to teach his disciples to

pray, because when we pray in Jesus’ name, “the Father [is] glori-

fied in the Son” (John 14:13).

Why? For Our Joy

The other purpose Jesus came to accomplish was our joy. Everything

he taught was aimed to free us from eternal-joy-killers and fill us

with the only joy that lasts—joy in God. “These things I speak in

the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (John

17:13). One of his most pervasive teachings for our joy was the

1 I do not mean to imply that prayer is only asking and not also thanking and praising and

confessing. But this chapter simply focuses on prayer as petition, which is the main way Jesus

talks about it.

Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart 107

teaching on prayer, and he made his motive explicit: our joy. “Ask,

and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). The

most wonderful thing about prayer, as Jesus demands it, is that it is

perfectly suited to secure God’s glory and our joy.

These are great incentives for us to obey Jesus’ demand that

we “always . . . pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). To these he

adds other incentives, because he is so eager for us to feel hopeful

in our praying. He says, for example, “Your Father knows what you

need before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8). The point is that we don’t

need to multiply pious phrases in prayer hoping that we might

awaken God’s attention or inclination. He is our caring Father,

and he is all-knowing. He will answer. Then Jesus underlines God’s

readiness to answer by comparing him to a human father, but point-

ing out that God is far more eager to answer than human fathers.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and

it will be opened to you . . . which one of you, if his son asks him

for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give

him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good

gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in

heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt. 7:7-11)

So in answer to the question why we should pray, Jesus says: because

God is very inclined to hear and answer our prayers—which is not

surprising, since prayer is designed to magnify God’s glory while sus-

taining our joy in him.

How? Simplicity

How then are we to pray? The readiness of God to answer and his

perfect knowledge of what we need before we ask means that we

should be simple in our wording and reject anything like a repeti-

tive mantra that would imply God is aroused by our monotonous

incantations. “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as

the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many

108 Demand #13

words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need

before you ask him” (Matt. 6:7-8).

How? With Perseverance

This does not mean there is no place for perseverance in prayer. In

fact, Jesus is explicit in telling us to be persistent in prayer over a long

period of time, if necessary, as we seek some crucial breakthrough

in the cause of righteousness for his glory (Luke 11:5-8; 18:1-8). The

point is not to finally break God’s resistance but to discover, by

patient prayer, God’s wisdom as to the way and time the prayer

should be answered. He is not disinclined to help his children and

glorify his name. He simply knows better than we do when and

how the answer should come. Therefore, our persistence in prayer

shows both our confidence that God is our only hope and that he will

act in the best way and the best time in response to our persistent

pleas.

How? Through His Death and in His Name

The confidence that we have in prayer is owing to Jesus. He did not

just teach us to pray—he died for us and rose again to remove insu-

perable obstacles to prayer. Without the death of Jesus, our sins

would not be forgiven (Matt. 26:28) and the wrath of God would

still be against us (John 3:36). In that condition we could expect no

answers to prayer from God. Therefore, Jesus is the ground of all our

prayers. This is why he taught us to pray in his name. “Whatever you

ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in

the Son” (John 14:13; cf. 16:23-24). Ending our prayers “in Jesus’

name, Amen” is not a mere tradition; it is an affirmation of faith in

Jesus as the only hope of access to God.

How? With Faith

This implies that Jesus does indeed want us to pray with faith.

“Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith”

(Matt. 21:22; cf. Mark 11:24). Some have taken verses like this

Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart 109

and turned them into the power of positive thinking. They believe

that if we can be confident that something will happen, it will indeed

happen. But that would be faith in our faith. When Jesus teaches us

how to “move mountains” by faith, he says explicitly, “Have faith

in God” (Mark 11:22). There seem to be times when God makes

clear to us that his will is to do a particular thing. In that case we may

be perfectly confident that very thing will be done. In that sense Jesus

says to us, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have

received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). It is God who does

it, and our belief rests on him and his revealed will. Otherwise, we

would be God, and he would run the universe according to our

will, not his.

Jesus makes it clear that there is a kind of filter that our prayers

must pass through in order to be sure that they are according to

God’s will. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask

whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Here

Jesus’ promise is more clearly qualified than in Mark 11:24.2 Are

we trusting in him as our all-supplying vine? And are his words shap-

ing our minds and hearts so that we discern how to pray according

to his wisdom?

Praying in faith does not always mean being sure that the very

thing we ask will happen. But it does always mean that because of

Jesus we trust God to hear us and help us in the way that seems best

to him. It may mean that he gives us just what we ask, or that he

gives us something better. Will a father give a son a stone if he asks

him for bread? No. But neither will he give him bread if it is moldy.

He may give him cake. Sometimes God’s answers will overwhelm us

2 Even in the context of Mark 11:24, there is an implied qualification of the promise, “Whatever

you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” The very next verse

says, “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that

your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). This means

that even if you ask for forgiveness and believe that you have it, you will not have it unless you forgive the one who has something against you. This makes it clear that the promise is not as

sweeping as it sounds at first. There are limits. You cannot simply manipulate God by the power

of being confident in what you ask. There are moral guidelines. This is what Jesus is saying

with the condition, “If . . . my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done

for you” (John 15:7). The words of Jesus shape the attitude and content of our prayers.

110 Demand #13

with their excess. Other times they taste more like medicine than food

and will test our faith that this medicine is really what we need.

How? Not for the Praise of Others

In view of all this, it should be clear that the reward of prayer comes

from God, not man. But Jesus shows us that the human heart is capa-

ble of turning the most beautifully Godward act in a manward direc-

tion and ruining it. He warns us:

When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they

love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street cor-

ners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they

have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room

and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And

your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt. 6:5-6)

Jesus hates hypocrisy—like appearing to love God when what you

really love is the praise of man. His most disparaging language was

reserved for “hypocrites.” He called them children of hell, “blind

guides,” “full of greed and self-indulgence,” “whitewashed tombs”

(Matt. 23:15, 24, 25, 27). The demand is unmistakable: “Beware

of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). The

implication for prayer (and fasting and almsgiving, Matt. 6:1-4,

16-18) is: Treasure God, and all that he will be for you, in prayer; but

do not treasure the praise of man. And most of all do not turn a God-

treasuring act of prayer into a man-treasuring act of hypocrisy.

For Whom?

For whom does Jesus demand that we pray? Clearly ourselves. Not

because we are deserving. Prayer has nothing to do with deserving.

It’s all mercy. We pray for ourselves because we are weak. We are

so prone to sin and utterly dependent on preserving grace to sus-

tain our flawed obedience. “Pray then like this,” Jesus said, “lead

us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:9, 13).

That is a prayer for ourselves first, since we know our own frailty

Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart 111

and vulnerability better than anyone. Then it is a prayer for the other

followers of Jesus and the world.

No one is to be excluded from our prayers. When Jesus tells us

to pray, “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9), he means that we

should pray this for anyone who does not yet hallow God’s name.

And if our selfish hearts should think of some adversary that we do

not like, Jesus is unsparing—these too must be blessed in our

prayers. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”

(Matt. 5:44); “bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse

you” (Luke 6:28). None must be excluded from our love, and none

may be excluded from our prayers.

What?

Finally, what does Jesus demand that we pray? What are we to ask

the Father to do? Jesus’ summary answer is called the Lord’s Prayer

(Matt. 6:9-13).

Our Father in heaven,

1) hallowed be your name.

2) Your kingdom come,

3) your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

4) Give us this day our daily bread,

5) and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

6) And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

We pray for ourselves and for other followers of Jesus and for the

world (1) that we would reverence and cherish the name of God

above things. This is the first function of prayer—to pray that

people would pursue the glory of God. (2) We pray that God’s

saving, purifying, Jesus-exalting rule would hold sway in our lives

and would finally come in universal manifestation and extent. (3) We

pray that we would do the will of God the way the angels do it in

heaven—namely, without hesitation and full of zeal and thorough-

ness. (4) We pray for the practical provisions of body and mind

that make an earthly life of obedience possible. 5) We pray for for-

112 Demand #13

giveness for our daily failures to honor God as we ought. That is,

we ask God to apply to us each day the perfect redemption that Jesus

obtained once for all when he died on the cross. 6) We pray that God

would protect us from the evil one and from the temptations that

would bring us to ruin and weaken our witness for him.

The Lord’s Prayer shows us the astonishing nature of prayer. It

puts in the position of greatest importance the prayer for God’s name

to be glorified, God’s kingdom to advance and triumph, and God’s

will to be accomplished on the earth the way it’s happening in

heaven. This means that God intends to use human prayers to

accomplish his most ultimate and universal purposes. For example,

Jesus tells us to pray for the workers that will be required to spread

the gospel to all the nations. “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the har-

vest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38). Yet nothing

is more certain than that the kingdom of God will triumph. Jesus

said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail

against it . . . this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed through-

out the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end

will come” (Matt. 16:18; 24:14). There is no uncertainty about the

triumph of God. Nevertheless, in God’s providence it depends on

human prayer.

This implies that prayer is not only a duty of man but a gift of

God. Jesus will awaken in his people the spirit of prayer that asks for

everything it will take to accomplish God’s purposes in the world.

The prayers of Jesus’ followers and the purposes of God will not fail.

Demand #14

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS

ABOUT THE NECESSITIES

OF DAILY LIFE

Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what

you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is

not life more than food, and the body more than

clothing? —Matt. 6:25

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow

will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own

trouble. —Matt. 6:34

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give

you the kingdom. —Luke 12:32

There have been kings who find it very effective to keep their

subjects in constant anxiety. If the people are anxious about

their life and worry about where their next meal is coming from,

then perhaps they will be more willing to do the king’s bidding in

order to get the food they need from the king’s storehouse. Anxiety

keeps them in their place. Fear makes the monarchy firm.

Jesus Does Not Secure His Kingship by

Cultivating Anxiety

But one of the greatest things about Jesus is that he does not want his

people to be anxious. He does not secure his kingship by cultivat-

114 Demand #14

ing anxiety. On the contrary, the aim of Jesus’ kingship1 is to free us

from anxiety. He doesn’t need to keep us anxious in order to estab-

lish his power and superiority. They are untouchable and invinci-

ble. Instead, he exalts his power and superiority by working to take

away our anxiety.

When Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow,” he is

demanding the kind of life that everybody would want—no anxiety.

No fear of man or menacing circumstances. But how does Jesus

expect this demand to come true when we see things all around us

that make us anxious? Jesus gives us help in two extended treat-

ments about anxiety and fear, one having to do with anxiety over

the basics of life, like food, drink, clothing (Matt. 6:25-34), the

other having to do with anxiety over the hurt that men can do to

us (Matt. 10:24-31). In the first passage Jesus sustains our ability

to press on joyfully when we can’t see how all our needs will be met.

In the second passage, which I deal with in the next chapter, Jesus

motivates us to press on boldly in the cause of truth when people

threaten us.

The Anxieties of Daily Life

Everyone can see plainly Jesus’ main point in Matthew 6:25-34. “Do

not be anxious.” Verse 25: “Do not be anxious about your life.”

Verse 31: “Do not be anxious, saying , ‘What shall we eat?’” Verse

34: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” But that is the negative

way of stating the main point of this passage. There is a positive

way found in verse 33—namely, instead of being anxious, “Seek first

the kingdom of God.” In other words, when you think about your

life or your food or your clothes—or your spouse or your job or your

mission—don’t fret about them. Instead, make God the King in

that affair and in that moment. That is, hand over the situation to his

kingly power, and do his righteous will with the confidence that he

1 Jesus claims to be a king, though not the kind people expected. He says in John 18:36, “My

kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been

fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the

world.” See also Matthew 25:31, 34; John 12:14-15.

Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of Daily Life 115

will work for you and meet all your needs. If we believe in the king-

ship of our heavenly Father, we do not need to be anxious about any-

thing. Virtually everything else in this text is support for Jesus’

demand.

Life Is More Than Food, and the Body Is More

Than Clothing

I see at least eight reasons Jesus gives for his disciples not to be anx-

ious. The first is given in verse 25. “Do not be anxious about your

life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body,

what you shall put on.” Why? “Because life is more than food, and

the body is more than clothing.” What does this mean?

Why do we tend to get anxious about food and clothing?

Because there are three things that we would lose if we didn’t have

food and clothing. First, we would lose some pleasures. After all,

food tastes good. Second, we would lose some human praise and

admiring glances if we didn’t have nice clothes. Third, we would pos-

sibly lose our life if we had no food at all or weren’t protected from

the cold. So the reason we get anxious about food and clothing is

because we don’t want to lose physical pleasures or human praise

or life.

To this fear Jesus responds: If you are gripped by anxiety over

these things, you have lost sight of the greatness of life. Life was

not given primarily for physical pleasures, but for something

greater—the enjoyment of God (Luke 12:21). Life was not given pri-

marily for the approval of man but for something greater—the

approval of God (John 5:44). Life was not even given primarily for

extension on this earth, but for something greater—eternal life with

God in the age to come (John 3:16).

We ought not to be anxious about food and clothing because

food and clothing cannot provide the great things of life—the enjoy-

ment of God, the pursuit of his gracious favor, the hope of eternity

in his presence. We get anxious about food and clothing to the same

degree that we lose sight of the great purposes of a God-centered life.

116 Demand #14

Look at the Birds of the Air

The second reason Jesus gives for not being anxious is in Matthew

6:26: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor

gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are

you not of more value than they?” What we see when we look at

the birds is not a lesson in laziness. They dig their worms and snatch

their bugs and pad their nests with strings and leaves. But Jesus

says it is God who feeds them. Birds don’t anxiously hoard things

as though God will not do the same tomorrow. They go about their

work—and we should go about our work—as though, when the

sun comes up tomorrow, God will still be God.

You Cannot Add One Cubit to Your Span

of Life

The third reason not to be anxious is that it’s fruitless. “And which

of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?” (Matt.

6:27, RSV). The argument is very pragmatic: Anxiety doesn’t get

you anywhere. It doesn’t do you any good. Whatever problem is

causing you to feel anxious, you can be sure your anxiety will not

reduce the problem. It will only make you miserable while you try

to deal with it. So don’t be anxious. It’s useless.

Consider the Lilies of the Field

The fourth reason Jesus gives for not being anxious is based on the

lilies. “And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies

of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you,

even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But

if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and

tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe

you, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 6:28-30).

When you look at a lily, which has no will or instinct of its own

to labor and spin, yet is adorned with beautiful form and color, Jesus

says you should draw at least this one conclusion: God delights to

adorn things. But if his delight finds expression in adorning grass

Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of Daily Life 117

that’s here today and gone tomorrow, then surely his delight in

adornment will express itself in how he clothes his children!

But someone may protest, “God has not adorned me!” Or:

“God has not adorned the poor Christians in many destitute situa-

tions around the world.” That’s true. Very few followers of Jesus

are dressed like Solomon. But we couldn’t do our work if we were.

That’s the way Jesus spoke about John the Baptist: “Behold, those

who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in kings’

courts”—but not John the Baptist! He had prophetic work to do and

wore “a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist,

and his food was locusts and wild honey” (Luke 7:25; Matt. 3:4).

“Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than

John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:11). The adornment Jesus promised

does not mean that we will have exorbitant clothes, but that we

will have the clothes we need. Where have you ever seen a disciple

of Jesus who did not have the adornment he needed to do what

God had called him to do?

But let’s be careful. We must not measure the perfection of God’s

provision by some standard below his calling. He does not call us

to live in palaces, but to take up our crosses and love people no

matter the cost. And when we have finished carrying our crosses—

on torn shoulders, if God wills—there will be kingly robes for us

all. The promise to meet all our needs does not mean he will make

us rich. It does not even mean he will keep us alive (“some of you

they will put to death,” Luke 21:16). It means he will give us all

that we need to do the will of God (see below on Matt. 6:33).

Your Heavenly Father Knows That You

Need Them All

The fifth and sixth reasons why a follower of Jesus shouldn’t be anx-

ious are given in Matthew 6:32. We shouldn’t be anxious about what

we eat or drink or wear because “[fifth reason] the Gentiles seek after

all these things; and [sixth reason] your heavenly Father knows

that you need them all.” Anxiety about the things of this world

puts us on the same level with the world of unbelievers. It shows that

118 Demand #14

we are really very much like the world in what makes us happy.

And Jesus assumes that we will not want to be like that. It also shows

that we don’t think our Father in heaven knows our needs. Or per-

haps we don’t think he has the heart of a loving Father. Anxiety

shows that we are too close to the world and too far from God. So

don’t be anxious—the world has nothing eternal to offer, and your

loving heavenly Father knows your needs now and forever.

All These Things Will Be Added to You

The seventh reason not to be anxious is that when you seek the king-

dom of God first, he works for you and provides all your needs.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these

things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). “All these things” does

not mean everything we think we need, but everything we really

need. And real needs are determined by what God calls us to do,

not what we feel like doing. God will give us “all these things” that

we need to fulfill his calling on our lives.

Tomorrow Will Be Anxious for Itself

The last argument is, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for

tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be suf-

ficient for the day” (Matt. 6:34). In other words, God has appointed

to each day its portion of pleasure and pain, as the old Swedish hymn

says, especially in the last two lines of this verse.

Day by day, and with each passing moment,

Strength I find, to meet my trials here;

Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,

I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.

He Whose heart is kind beyond all measure

Gives unto each day what He deems best—

Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,

Mingling toil with peace and rest.2

2 Karolina Wilhelmina Sandell-Berg, Day by Day.

Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of Daily Life 119

So don’t misappropriate God’s allotted troubles for tomorrow.

That is, don’t bring them forward into today in the form of anxiety.

Believe that God will be God tomorrow. Tomorrow there will be

grace for tomorrow’s troubles. That grace is not given today.

The main point of all this is clear and unmistakable: Jesus does

not want his followers to be anxious. He does not secure his king-

dom by keeping his subjects in a state of worry. On the contrary,

according to Matthew 6:33, the more primary and central his king-

ship becomes in our lives, the less anxiety we will have.

Since Jesus believes that reasons delivered in words (we have

seen eight of them) help to overcome anxiety, it would make sense

that we keep these reasons before our minds and seek to make them

part of our mental and emotional life. I think this implies that it

would be wise to memorize Matthew 6:25-34. I know of no way to

weave these eight counter-anxiety realities into the fabric of our

minds and hearts that omits remembering them.

Demand #15

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS

ABOUT THE

THREATS OF MAN

You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear

witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do

not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what

you are to say will be given to you in that hour. —Matt. 10:18-19

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It

is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like

his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul,

how much more will they malign those of his household. So have

no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or

hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in

the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not

two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the

ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head

are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than

many sparrows. —Matt. 10:24-31

Even if we gain a measure of victory over the fear that all our

needs will not be met (dealt with in the previous chapter),

there remains the gut-wrenching fear of speaking the truth when it

may cost us our lives. That’s what Jesus deals with in Matthew

Do Not Be Anxious About the Threats of Man 121

10:24-31. It is especially relevant in our day as the likelihood

increases that tolerance will hold sway for everyone except the per-

son who claims that everyone must give absolute allegiance to Jesus.

The aim of Jesus in Matthew 10:24-31 is to give us the courage

to speak his truth with clarity and openness no matter what the

cost. As with Matthew 6:25-34, the main point of this text is plain

from the three repetitions of the command not to fear. Verse 26:

“So have no fear of them.” Verse 28: “Do not fear those who kill

the body.” Verse 31: “Fear not therefore; you are of much more

value than many sparrows.” Jesus’ aim is clear: Be fearlessly coura-

geous. But courageous to do what?

What You Hear Whispered, Proclaim Upon

the Housetops

Jesus has something very specific in mind that is threatened by fear

and advanced by courage. He says in Matthew 10:27-28, “What I

tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear whis-

pered, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear . . .” In other

words, the fear Jesus focuses on in this passage is the fear of speak-

ing clearly (in the light) and openly (on the housetops) when that

speaking might get you in trouble.

So here’s the demand: “Don’t be afraid to speak clearly and

openly what I have taught you, even if it costs you your life.” The

rest of Jesus’ words here are motivation—five reasons why we should

have courage in the cause of truth.

They Will Malign You Like They Did Jesus

First, notice the word “so” or “therefore” at the beginning of

Matthew 10:26: “So [therefore] have no fear of them.” In other

words, fearlessness flows from what Jesus just said—namely, “If they

have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will

they malign those of his household.” How does that help make us

fearless?

Jesus reasoning seems to go like this: “Your mistreatment for

122 Demand #15

speaking the truth is not some unexpected, random, meaningless

experience; instead it’s the same way they treated me, and so it’s a

sign that you belong to me. So don’t be afraid of the names they

call you when you speak out plainly. Those very names bind you and

me together.”

Nothing Is Covered That Will Not

Be Revealed

Second, notice the word “for” in the middle of that same verse 26.1

“So have no fear of them; for [here comes the second reason not to

be afraid] nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that

will not be known.” How does that help us overcome fear and be

courageous in the cause of truth?

It helps us by assuring us that the truth we are speaking will tri-

umph. It will be vindicated in the end. People may reject it now. They

may call it demonic. They may cast it out. They may try to bury it

and hide it from the world and pretend that it does not exist. But

Jesus says, “Take heart in the cause of truth, because in the end all

truth will be revealed. All reality will be uncovered. And those who

spoke it with clarity and openness will be vindicated.”

Fear Not, You Can Only Be Killed!

Third, Jesus says, fear not, you can only be killed! “And do not

fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matt. 10:28).

In other words, the worst thing your opponents can do to you when

you speak the truth is kill your body. And that leaves the soul

untouched and happy in God forever. But if you keep silent, if you

forsake the path of truth and fall in love with the praise of men,

you could lose your very soul. If you want to fear something, fear

that (see Demand #11). But don’t fear what man can do to you. All

he can do is dispatch your soul to paradise. Fear not.

1 Some English Bible translations drop these important words because they think it helps the flow

of thought. For example, the New International Version drops this crucial word “for” (gavr).

It is there in the Greek original, and it is important.

Do Not Be Anxious About the Threats of Man 123

Even the Hairs of Your Head Are

All Numbered

Fourth, don’t fear to speak the truth, but be courageous and speak

clearly and openly because God is giving close and intimate attention

to all you do. Matthew 10:30 means at least that much. Jesus says,

“Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” In other words,

the suffering you may undergo in speaking the truth is not because

God is disinterested in you or unfamiliar with your plight. He is close

enough to separate one hair from another and give each one a num-

ber. Fear not; he is close. He is interested; he cares. Be of good

courage, and speak the truth whatever the cost.

Not One of Them Will Fall to the Ground

Without Your Father’s Will

Finally, fear not because God will not let anything happen to you

apart from his gracious will. “You are of more value than many spar-

rows.” “Not one of them will fall to the ground without your

Father’s will” (Matt. 10:29 [RSV], 31). Jesus’ point is: God governs

the world right down to the smallest events like birds falling to the

ground. Therefore, no harm can befall you but what God wills.

This confidence has given great courage to the followers of Jesus

for centuries. Many have spoken in the words of missionary Henry

Martyn, “If [God] has work for me to do, I cannot die.”2 We are

immortal until the work God has for us is done.

So Do Not Fear the Face of Any Man

Therefore, the demand of Jesus stands, and there is sufficient rea-

son to obey it with joy and courage. Don’t be anxious about the ordi-

nary needs of life, and don’t fear the threats of man. Don’t yield to

the spirit of the age that woos us into peaceful silence when the

truth is being trampled. “Do not think that I have come to bring

2 Journal and Letters of Henry Martyn (New York: Protestant Episcopal Society for the

Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge, 1851), 460. The original English edition of 1837 was

published in London and edited by the Rev. S. Wilberforce, M. A., Rector of Brighstone.

124 Demand #15

peace to the earth,” Jesus said. “I have not come to bring peace,

but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). Not the sword of steel, but the sword of

truth that gives life to all who believe. Love the truth, therefore,

and what you learn from Jesus in the solitude speak from the house-

top. And do not fear the face of any man.

Demand #16

HUMBLE YOURSELF

BY MAKING WAR

ON PRIDE

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles him-

self will be exalted. —Matt. 23:12

The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes

to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a

sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house

justified. —Luke 18:13

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of

heaven. —Matt. 5:3

Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love

greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and

the places of honor at feasts. . . . They will receive the greater con-

demnation. —Luke 20:46-47

So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say,

“We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our

duty.” —Luke 17:10

One of the reasons Jesus reserved his most disparaging descrip-

tions for hypocrites (see Demand #13) was that the root of

hypocrisy is pride. And Jesus’ abomination of pride is evident in

the frequency and variety of his calls for humility.

126 Demand #16

Pride: Defiance, Desert, Delight

Pride is difficult to define because its manifestations are subtle and

often do not look like arrogance. We can see this if we compare

boasting and self-pity as two forms of pride.

Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response

of pride to suffering. Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because I

have achieved so much.” Self-pity says, “I deserve admiration because

I have sacrificed so much.” Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart

of the strong. Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.

Boasting sounds self-sufficient. Self-pity sounds self-sacrificing. The rea-

son self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy. But

the need arises from a wounded ego, and the desire is not really for

others to see them as helpless but as heroes. The need that self-pity

feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness but from a sense of

unrecognized worthiness. It is the response of unapplauded pride.1

Jesus dissects the depths of pride. He exposes its multiple layers

and manifestations. At the bottom of it is a complex disposition of

self-rule, merit, and pleasure in feeling superior to others. Or, to be

alliterative, there is a combination of defiance (against God as right-

ful ruler), desert (of better treatment than we get), and delight (in

feeling above others). None of these may be obvious.

A person can be passively defiant while avoiding blatant rebel-

lion, and yet deeply committed to ultimate self-determination. Or a

person can seem to feel unworthy by constantly deprecating him-

self in public, but all the while feel angry that others do not recog-

nize this as a virtue. Or a person can express delight in feeling

superior to others by boasting or by craving that others would praise

him for not boasting.

Pride: A Sense of Merit

Jesus focuses on the visible expressions of pride that he can point

to. Luke tells us why he told the parable of the boasting Pharisee

1 This paragraph comes from John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist

(Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003), 302.

Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride 127

and the broken tax collector (see Demand #20). “He told this para-

ble to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous,

and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). This is what I meant

by the disposition of merit—the sense that one deserves something

good from God.

This sense of merit goes hand in hand with boasting that we

are superior to others. So the merit-conscious Pharisee says in Luke

18:11-12, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extor-

tioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice

a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” The fact that he says he thanks

God does not obscure the pleasure that he gets in feeling superior.

There is a difference between a humble delight in becoming a better

person by God’s grace and a proud delight in being able to see your-

self as superior to others. Pride does not delight in growing holi-

ness, but in growing ability to feel superior.

Craving the Praise of Men

Even if we do not have a strong sense of merit, we may crave the

same result, namely, the praise of men. Jesus warns us not to give

to charity or pray or fast in order to be seen by others. “Beware of

practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be

seen by them” (Matt. 6:1). “When you pray, you must not be like

the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues

and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matt.

6:5). “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites,

for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by

others” (Matt. 6:16). Jesus calls them “hypocrites” because in their

praying and fasting they want to appear as if they treasure God,

but in fact they treasure the praise of men. That is one dimension

of pride.

Praise for piety is not the only kind of praise that pride craves.

It also craves praise for power and wealth. So Jesus says to his dis-

ciples, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and

those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with

you” (Luke 22:25-26). In other words, do not delight in having supe-

128 Demand #16

rior power or superior wealth. The pleasures of being “over” or

“above” others does not come from humble trust in the grace of

God. It comes from a heart of pride.

There are a hundred ways pride positions itself to get the praise

of man. It may involve where you sit at a meeting or how you carry

yourself in a market or what title you put in front of your name.

“[The scribes and Pharisees] love the place of honor at feasts and

the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces

and being called rabbi by others” (Matt. 23:6-7). The issue here is

not that being called rabbi is always wrong or that sitting in a place

of honor is always wrong. The issue here is what you love—what

you need and crave and treasure. Pride is driven by the desire to be

honored by men with places and titles.

Pride Is Loveless

Then Jesus shows how loveless pride is. Just before saying, “They do

all their deeds to be seen by others” (Matt. 23:5), Jesus says, “They

tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoul-

ders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their fin-

ger” (Matt. 23:4). In other words, they teach high moral standards

but do not have the mercy or the spiritual wisdom to help people

carry the load. They are loveless.

That’s no surprise for two reasons: One is that the proud do

not really want others to advance beyond them. That would mean

losing one of their reasons for feeling superior. The other reason is

that the proud do not understand the way that God’s grace really

works to help sinners make progress in holiness without getting

proud. They don’t lift a finger to show the repentant sinner how

Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt. 11:30), because they

do not experience it as easy and light. The moral duty that they strive

to fulfill is kept heavy so that there can be a sense of merit and boast-

ing in the achievement. If it were light and easy, where would be

the boasting?

Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride 129

We Are Unworthy Servants

So in Jesus’ teaching there is a very close connection between humil-

ity and servanthood. To be humble is to be a servant. They are not

the same. But humility leads to joyful readiness to do lowly service.

The disciple moves from poverty of spirit to childlike trust in God’s

grace to a heart of servanthood and acts of service.

In Jesus’ famous Beatitudes the very first one is, “Blessed are

the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3). That is, blessed are the people who

do not find a basis for merit or desert when they look within them-

selves. They are the opposite of those “who trusted in themselves

that they were righteous” (Luke 18:9). They know that they have

nothing in themselves to commend them to God.

They happily assume the place of unworthy servants whom

Jesus describes in Luke 17:10—“When you have done all that you

were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only

done what was our duty.’” This is a profound statement—and

utterly devastating to the last vestige of pride. Jesus says, no degree

of obedience, from the worst to the best, merits any absolute claim

on God. A perfectly obedient human should say—it would be part

of his obedience—“I am an unworthy servant.” That is, “I do not

put you in any absolute sense in debt to reward me.” This conviction

is the root of humility—that we deserve nothing good from God.

Or to put it positively like the brokenhearted tax collector, every-

thing good that we get from God is mercy. It is undeserved. “God, be

merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). “This man went down to his

house justified,” Jesus said (Luke 18:14). The joy of the humble does

not reside in being deserving, but in receiving mercy.

Demand #17

HUMBLE YOURSELF IN

CHILDLIKENESS,

SERVANTHOOD, AND

BROKENHEARTED BOLDNESS

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will

never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like

this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. —Matt. 18:3-4

Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader

as one who serves. —Luke 22:26

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his mas-

ter. . . . If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how

much more will they malign those of his household. So have no fear

of them. —Matt. 10:24-26

The key to humility is not merely feeling the absence of merit

(as we saw in the last chapter), but feeling the presence of free

grace. Humility is not only like the servant who says, “I am an

unworthy servant”; humility is also like a child at rest in his father’s

arms. Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become

like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever

humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of

heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4). We must humble ourselves in both ways:

like an unworthy servant and like a trusting child.

Humble Yourself in Childlikeness 131

What is the point of the comparison with a child? If we stay close

to the original context, the focus would fall mainly on three terms:

humility (or lowliness), little ones, and belief.

Humility

In Matthew 18:4 Jesus says, “Whoever humbles himself like this

child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” The Greek verb for

“humble” did not generally describe a positive virtue in Jesus’ day.

It meant generally to crush, bring down, afflict, humiliate, and

degrade.1 The word was chosen because Jesus’ demand was not a

romantic one, as though childlikeness were sweet and easy. For a

strong, self-confident, self-sufficient, intelligent, resourceful, con-

trolling person, Jesus’ demand was devastating. Jesus knew that chil-

dren were not models for imitation in his day. The reason he chose

them is because of “their powerlessness and their low social stand-

ing.”2 His demand is that we end our love affair with power and

status and self-sufficiency and rights and control.

Little Ones

This is confirmed by the term “little ones” that he uses to describe

childlike disciples. He says, “Whoever causes one of these little

ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a

great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the

depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). He describes believers as “little ones,”

and he describes little ones as those who “believe.” Both terms are

important. “Little ones” emphasizes that they are not great in the

eyes of the world. They are not strong. They are not self-sufficient.

Instead, what marks them is that they “believe in me.” That is, they

trust not in themselves but in Jesus.

1 See the article on tapeinov~ (tapeinos) in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed.

Gerhard Friedrich, Vol. VIII (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972), 4-9. “[In the Greek and

Hellenistic world] men ‘exploit,’ ‘oppress,’ . . . ‘humble,’ ‘put down’ . . . ‘humiliate others by

breaking their spirit.’. . . That man should humble himself is rejected” (4).

2 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, ed. Helmut Koester,

Hermenia (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 428.

132 Demand #17

Trust

This is probably the main focus in Jesus’ comparison between his dis-

ciples and children. Children may have all kinds of faults, but in a

normal, healthy family they trust their daddy to take care of them.

They do not lie awake wondering where the next meal is coming

from. They do not fret in the stroller that the sky is turning gray.

“The child is, by its very position, lowly . . . and lives by instinctive

confidence.”3 They are both lowly and non-great by the standards

of worldly acclaim. And they are happy, anxiety-free, and confident

that everything they need will be provided. The world does not give

honorary degrees to children. It does not write books about their

accomplishments. We do not put children in charge of anything.

But children are not the least bothered by any of that. They are

content to be cared for by their parents.

Of course, Jesus is not calling us to be as unproductive or as

immature as children. That’s not the point of the comparison. The

point is that we not love being stronger or more intelligent or richer

than others—that our joy does not reside in a feeling of superiority.

The point is that we not begrudge the absence of recognition if the

world does not value what Jesus calls us to do. We must not fret over

being thought lowly and even foolish by worldly standards. Instead

we must “believe” in Jesus the way a child believes. We must find our

security and meaning and joy in Jesus and all that our heavenly

Father is for us in him (see Demand #4).

Lowliness Leads to a Spirit of Servanthood

Jesus emphasizes that this poverty of spirit and this childlike lowli-

ness and trust lead to a spirit and life of servanthood. More than

once Jesus’ disciples were found to be arguing with each other about

which of them was the greatest, or would be the greatest, in the king-

dom of heaven. Jesus responded each time with more or less the same

demand: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and ser-

3 Alexander McClaren, The Gospel According to Matthew: Chapters XVII to XXVII (London:

Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), 3.

Humble Yourself in Childlikeness 133

vant of all” (Mark 9:35). Sometimes he illustrated his point by

putting a child in their midst and saying, “Whoever receives one such

child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives

not me but him who sent me” (Mark 9:37). In other words, if you

are willing to work in the nursery and happily take the children

onto your lap, you will be “first.”

Even at the Last Supper, when he was preparing to give his life

in the ultimate demonstration of servant-love, the disciples were

arguing about who was the greatest—so deeply engrained in us is

this craving. He said, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship

over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors.

But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as

the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the

greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the

one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who

serves” (Luke 22:25-27). Jesus cut straight from the desire to be

great among men to the alternative lifestyle, namely, lowly (youth-

like) service.

How Jesus Served and Will Serve

What does service mean? In Matthew 20:26-28, Jesus connects his

demand that we serve others with his own service of us and shows

us the kind of thing he has in mind. “Whoever would be great among

you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you

must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but

to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Service means

doing things out of love that are costly to ourselves but aim to bring

temporal and eternal benefit to others.

Astonishingly, the servant role of Jesus does not end with his

earthly life. He portrays his second coming not only as a demon-

stration of great power and glory (Mark 13:26), but also as a time

when he will again take the lowly (but beautiful) role of servant:

“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he

comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and

have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke

134 Demand #17

12:37). Jesus will never stop serving us. Does this not incline your

heart to serve others as you follow the one who loved you and

gave himself for you and never stops serving you? The heart of a

saved sinner who seeks to follow Jesus does not ask, “How can I

have maximum prestige or applause?” It asks, “How can I do the

greatest good for people who need my help, no matter what it costs

me?”

When Jesus said (repeatedly), “Whoever exalts himself will be

humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt.

23:12; Luke 14:11; 18:14), he was warning against the great service-

killer (self-exalting pride) and calling for the great service-maker

(Christ-dependent humility).

Brokenhearted Boldness in the Cause

of Truth

One of the crucial roles of servanthood needed in our day is bro-

kenhearted boldness in the proclamation of God’s truth. I mention

this because the spirit of relativism in our day has created an atmos-

phere in which speaking the truth with conviction and calling oth-

ers to believe it is not considered humble. The typical condemnation

of Jesus’ claim to be the only way to heaven (John 5:23; 14:6) is

that it is arrogant.

G. K. Chesterton saw this coming in 1908 when he wrote,

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.

Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has

settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant

to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but

undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly

the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is

exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. . . .

The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even

learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so

happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the

wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a

Humble Yourself in Childlikeness 135

man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work

harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his

aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on

the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to

believe in the multiplication table.4

If humility is not compliance with the relativism of our day, then

what is it? I hope what we have seen in this chapter sheds light on

this question and helps us see how, for the sake of Jesus and in the

service of others, we should boldly speak what Jesus taught us.

Here are at least five implications of what we have said in the last

two chapters.

Humility: Five Implications for Bold

Truth-telling

First, humility begins with a sense of subordination to God in Jesus.

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master”

(Matt. 10:24). Our conviction does not come from exalting ourselves

but from submitting ourselves to the one who reveals himself to us

in his word and commands us to speak it.

Second, humility does not feel a right to better treatment than

Jesus got. “If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how

much more will they malign the members of his household” (Matt.

10:25). Therefore, humility does not return evil for evil. It is not a life

based on perceived rights. It is a life of sacrifice.

Third, humility asserts truth not to bolster ego with control or

with triumphs in debate. It speaks truth as a service to Christ and

as love to the adversary. “What I [Jesus] tell you in the darkness,

speak in the light . . . do not fear” (Matt. 10:27-28).

Fourth, humility knows it is dependent on grace for all

knowing and believing and speaking. “Apart from me you can do

nothing” (John 15:5). This will create a demeanor that is neither

cocky nor timid.

4 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957), 31-32.

136 Demand #17

Fifth, humility knows it is fallible, and so considers criticism and

learns from it, but also knows that God has made provision for

human conviction and that he calls us to persuade others. Jesus

told us that the church should stand ready to correct the wayward

member (Matt. 18:15-17). And he told us that even though we are

fallible and may need correction, we should unashamedly go and

make disciples of all nations, telling them to do everything Jesus

commanded (Matt. 28:19-20).

Humility: The Gift to Receive All Things

as a Gift

When I contemplate closing this chapter with a section on how we

obey the command to humble ourselves, I see that the answer lies not

in a new technique but in the previous chapters on repenting

( Demand #2) and coming to Jesus ( Demand #3) and believing in

Jesus ( Demand #4) and loving Jesus (Demand #5) and abiding in

Jesus ( Demand #7) and taking up our cross with Jesus ( Demand #8).

In all of this, the answer emerges: Humility does not flow directly

from the performance of a self-renouncing will. The reason is that

as soon as we renounce our will, we are aware of the accomplish-

ment and are caught in the temptation to feel proud of this very act

of renouncing. How can we escape this trap?

At the bottom, true humility senses that humility is a gift beyond

our reach. If humility is the product of reaching, then we will instinc-

tively feel proud of it. Humility is the gift to receive all things as a gift

thankfully and unself-consciously. Perhaps I can end on a personal

note about how I (imperfectly) fight this battle. On December 6,

1988, I made the following entry in my journal. It’s my own con-

fession of need and my answer to the question of how we humble

ourselves.

Is not the most effective way of bridling my delight in being made

much of, to focus on making much of God? Self-denial and cruci-

fixion of the flesh are essential, but O how easy it is to be made

much of even for my self-denial! How shall this insidious motive

Humble Yourself in Childlikeness 137

of pleasure in being made much of be broken except through bend-

ing all my faculties to delight in the pleasure of making much of

God! Christian Hedonism5 is the final solution. It is deeper than

death to self. You have to go down deeper into the grave of the

flesh to find the truly freeing stream of miracle water that rav-

ishes you with the taste of God’s glory. Only in that speechless,

all-satisfying admiration is the end of self.

5 For what this term refers to more fully see John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003). The summary sentence of Christian Hedonism is:

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. And so a Christian Hedonist is

one who makes delighting in Jesus Christ the great pursuit of his life because he believes this pursuit is the best way to show that Jesus is the most glorious Reality in the universe.

Demand #18

DO NOT BE ANGRY—

TRUST GOD’S PROVIDENCE

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not mur-

der; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” But I say

to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to

judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the coun-

cil; and whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of

fire. —Matt. 5:21-22

Again and again we have seen that Jesus demands what we, by

ourselves, cannot do. Sometimes, as with the command to love

or to believe, we try to make his demands doable by defining them

as mere external acts or mere decisions of the will. We think these are

more in our control than our emotions are. Perhaps. But when it

comes to anger, Jesus explicitly does the opposite of what we try to

do in making his commands more external and more doable. He is

saying that the external act of murder is wrong and, more radically,

that the internal experience of anger behind it is wrong. So he

demands (along with the Law of Moses) that we not do the exter-

nal act of murder, but goes further and demands that we not feel

the internal emotion of anger that lies behind the act.

No One Decides to Get Angry

We can feel how radical this is if we stop to ponder that no one

decides to get angry. We don’t see an outrageous act of heartless

cruelty and injustice and then ponder whether anger would be a

Do Not Be Angry—Trust God’s Providence 139

good response and then, after consideration, choose to start feeling

the proper level of anger. Nobody lives that way. Anger happens.

It’s spontaneous. It is not a rational choice. It is an unpremeditated

experience.1 Something happens, and anger rises in our heart. What

makes it rise when it does, and with the strength and duration it rises,

is a combination of the evil we observe and the condition of our

mind and heart. Jesus’ demand, therefore, is not that we master the

expressions of our anger with self-control, though that is often

what duty requires. His demand is that there be a change in our

condition. He is calling for a deep inward transformation of mind

and heart that does not give rise to the anger we should not have.

He described this change in different ways: for example, new birth

( Demand #1) and repentance ( Demand #2) and faith ( Demand #4).

Therefore, what we say in this chapter about the command not

to be angry is rooted in the other teachings of Jesus. He is not inter-

ested in mere psychological and emotional changes. He is inter-

ested in newborn disciples who live by faith in his saving work and

present help. He shed his blood; we experience forgiveness (Matt.

26:28). He paid the ransom; we are freed from the condemnation

and bondage of sin (Mark 10:45; John 8:32). He brought the king-

dom of God; we experience God’s transforming rule (Luke 11:20).

He is the vine; we are the branches. Without him we can do noth-

ing (John 15:5). That includes obeying the command not to be angry.

What Is Anger?

As with all emotions, which exist before words and independently of

words, anger is hard to define with words. But we should try because

evidently there are different experiences called anger, some of which

are sinful and some of which are not. For example, in Mark 3:5 Jesus

himself is angered by religious leaders who do not want him to heal a

man on the Sabbath. “He looked around at them with anger, grieved

1 I don’t mean to imply that what we do with our wills has no effect on our anger. You can decide

to dwell on an offense and so intensify your anger. You can choose to focus your attention on

the mercy of Christ toward you and reduce your anger. But my point is that the actual experi-

ence is not controlled immediately by the will the way raising your right hand is.

140 Demand #18

at their hardness of heart.” And Jesus repeatedly referred to God’s

anger either directly as the wrath of God in judgment (John 3:36; Luke

21:23) or indirectly in parables (Matt. 18:34; 22:7; Luke 14:21).

A standard English dictionary defines anger as “a strong feeling

of displeasure and usually antagonism.” The reason the phrase “a

strong feeling of displeasure” can’t stand by itself is that we don’t

think of really bad tasting food as awakening anger, even though

there may be strong displeasure. That displeasure needs another

component before it is experienced as anger. If someone keeps feed-

ing us terrible food, and we sense that they are doing it intention-

ally, then we may get angry. Anger seems to be a more or less strong

displeasure about something that is happening willfully and, we feel,

should not be happening.

Of course, we do sometimes get angry when that is not the case.

If we trip over a root, we may turn around and kick the root in anger.

If we bump our head on the kitchen cabinet, we may smack the

cabinet door in anger. But in our best moments we look at those reac-

tions as foolish. We intuitively sense that we are imputing willfulness

to the root and the cabinet, as if they did something to us on purpose.

This is why the young Jonathan Edwards resolved not to get

angry at inanimate objects. His Resolution #15 said, “Resolved,

Never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational

beings.”2 Therefore, the difference between anger and other emo-

tions of displeasure is that anger involves strong displeasure with

something that is happening intentionally that we think should not

be happening.

Jesus’ Anger and Ours

If Jesus, as the ideal human being, could feel and express anger, we are

compelled to ask what he is prohibiting in Matthew 5:22 when he

said, “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judg-

ment.” In his human perfection he wove a whip and turned over the

2 Jonathan Edwards, Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards, A. M., in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), I:xxi.

Do Not Be Angry—Trust God’s Providence 141

tables of the money-changers in the temple (John 2:15; Matt. 21:12).

He felt anger and grief in the synagogue (Mark 3:5). He called the

scribes and Pharisees children of hell (Matt. 23:15) and “blind fools”

(Matt. 23:17) and “whitewashed tombs” (Matt. 23:27).

I do not assume that Jesus alone is permitted to experience anger

because he is the Son of God and that no other humans may. The

Bible that he read and affirmed (John 10:35; Matt. 5:18) described

the anger of holy men of old (Exod. 32:19; Num. 16:15; Neh. 5:6;

Ps. 4:4). I think the solution is found rather in trying to define what

makes anger good and what makes it bad. He helps us do this both

in the context of Matthew 5:22 and in the other things that he said.

Let’s look first at the other things he said, then come back to the con-

text of Matthew 5:22.

I see at least five factors in Jesus’ teaching that govern whether

an experience of anger is legitimate or not. They can be described

with five key words. In this chapter, we will deal with three of them:

love, proportion, and providence. In the next chapter we will deal

with mercy and servanthood as they relate to anger.

Love and Anger

For human anger to be good, it must be governed by love for those

who make us angry. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for

those who persecute you . . . do good to those who hate you, bless

those who curse you” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27-28). These commands

exert a controlling effect on the nature of our anger. They tell us

that legitimate anger may not delight in or desire the damnation of

the ones who make us angry. If our anger is going to be good, it

must be governed by our obedience to the command to bless and

pray for and do good to those who make us angry.

This shapes the very definition of anger. If we assume that anger

always involves feelings of vindictiveness and vengeance and hostil-

ity, then by definition good anger is impossible. But that is not the

only way godly people have experienced anger. Jesus’ own experi-

ence of anger tells us that good anger does exist. Therefore, we

should define it so that it may be governed by love. In other words,

142 Demand #18

we should assume that with Jesus’ help we can be angry with some-

one and at the same time pray for him, bless him, and do good to

him. This anger would be a strong displeasure with what they have

done—and even with the corrupt heart from which the deed came—

but at the same time we would desire their good and pray for it and

work for it. Such anger would not have to be evil.

Proportion and Anger

Jesus teaches that a holy response to evil should be proportion-

ate to its degrees of moral flagrancy. For example, he illustrates

God’s purpose to punish some people worse than others with

this parable:

That servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or

act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one

who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive

a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much

will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they

will demand the more. (Luke 12:47-48)

One implication from these words is that if punishment should vary

because of different degrees of evil, then so should the degrees of

anger in response to evil.

In other words, our anger should be governed not only by our

love for the one who makes us angry, but also by the seriousness of

his offense. If our anger is out of proportion to the offense, it is not

good anger. This is more obvious when we think of not being angrier

than the offense deserves. We have all experienced an anger that is

more intense than the offense calls for. A father raging against a

three-year-old son and hitting him uncontrollably would be a clear

example of anger that is out of proportion.

It is less obvious that too little anger might be a fault as well. The

absence of anger in the presence of evil is not necessarily a fault. Jesus

clearly tells us not to be angry with our brother (at least in some

circumstances), which implies that there must be situations in which

Do Not Be Angry—Trust God’s Providence 143

anger would seem to be natural, but we should not have it. How that

is possible we will see in a moment. But for now we must also say

that there are bad reasons for not getting angry as well as good

ones. A person may be undiscerning or insensible about the seri-

ousness of sin, the offense that it is to God, and the damage it can

do to people. The absence of anger in such a case is disproportion-

ate to the seriousness of evil and is not good.

Providence and Anger

One of the greatest truths that Jesus taught to help us be free from

sinful anger is the truth of God’s all-encompassing providence—

that is, his wise and sovereign control over all things for the good

of his children. The rise and strength of our anger should be gov-

erned by our trust in God’s providence—that he is ruling over the evil

that makes us angry and will not let anything befall us that is not ulti-

mately good for us.

The rage that could rise in our hearts when we are treated

unjustly and when we watch loved ones treated cruelly would be nat-

ural and strong. When dealing with these threats, Jesus spoke

directly to our fear, not our anger. But the implications for anger

are plain. He said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot

kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body

in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of

them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the

hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of

more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:28-31).

The point is, first, that the smallest details of life on earth are

governed by God—not a bird falls to the ground apart from him.

And the second point is that God is near, and his acquaintance with

our situation is total—even the hairs of your head are all numbered.

Conclusion: Nothing will befall you apart from his wise and loving

providence over your circumstances. Don’t fear. And, by implication,

don’t be angry in a way that contradicts your confidence in God’s

care over your life. God’s providence should change the way we

experience circumstances that would otherwise be totally infuriating.

144 Demand #18

When he was predicting what would befall his disciples in the

future Jesus said, “You will be delivered up even by parents and

brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to

death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair

of your head will perish” (Luke 21:16-18). Here again we are

assured in a shocking way that even if we are killed for Christ (“some

of you they will put to death”), nevertheless we will be totally safe—

“not a hair of your head will perish.” God’s providence will govern

all the evil that comes against us so that his good purposes are ful-

filled. This will have an effect on the way we experience anger. Evil

is being done, but it does not have the last say, and in the end even

serves God’s hidden designs. There may be anger, but the bitterness

and sting and hostility of it will be removed by this confidence.

Rejoice in Persecution

One of the clearest illustrations of how God’s providence over-

comes the controlling effect of anger is Jesus’ command that we

rejoice when we are persecuted unjustly. He says, “Blessed are you

when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil

against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your

reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who

were before you” (Matt. 5:11-12). Few things would ordinarily

make us angrier than such unjust treatment. Not only are we being

hurt by this reviling and persecution, but Jesus emphasizes that it is

“evil” and it is “false.” These factors tend to infuriate us.

But Jesus utterly transforms that ordinary, understandable emo-

tional experience of anger. Instead of saying, “Be legitimately angry,”

or “Try to control your anger,” he says the most incredible thing

imaginable: “Rejoice and be glad.” The language in Luke 6:23 is

even more extraordinary. He says, “Rejoice in that day, and leap

for joy.” Anger at being persecuted unjustly cannot be unaffected

by this command. Our rage at unjust treatment cannot remain

untransformed if we rejoice over the same treatment.

Rejoicing does not mean that we approve of the treatment. It

does not mean that we stop thinking it is unjust. It probably does not

Do Not Be Angry—Trust God’s Providence 145

mean there is no anger whatsoever. Some kind of holy anger—strong

emotional disapproval—may be emotionally compatible with joy.

The human soul in the image of God is that complex. And we know,

from all that Jesus taught us about God, that God experiences anger

and joy simultaneously because he sees and responds perfectly to

all evil and all good at the same time.3

Our joy in the presence of persecution is possible because of

God’s providence. Not a hair of your head will perish (when they kill

you). Not a bird (or a hateful blow to your head) falls without the

will of your Father. Providence governs your suffering. And in the

end, “Your reward is great in heaven.” This is Jesus’ argument why

joy and not anger can dominate our experience of persecution:

“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt.

5:12). Therefore, good anger is governed by faith in the all-wise,

all-powerful, merciful providence of God.

3 Jesus, for example, taught us that God feeds all the birds and clothes all the lilies in the world (Matt. 6:26-30), and that no bird falls to the ground apart from his attention (Matt. 10:29),

and that every hair of our head is known and numbered (Matt. 10:30), and that in all the hos-

tilities of life not a hair of our head perishes (Luke 21:18). In other words, God is perfectly aware of every micro-detail of what happens in the world, and his wrath (John 3:36) and joy (Luke

15:7) happen in perfect proportion to what he sees. Since there is unbelief and repentance hap-

pening simultaneously all the time, he is able to respond to both with different emotions simul-

taneously all the time.

Demand #19

DO NOT BE ANGRY—

EMBRACE MERCY AND

FORGIVENESS

“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?

As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven

times, but seventy times seven.” —Matt. 18:21-22

First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly

to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. —Matt. 7:5

Mercy and Anger

Anger is not only influenced by God’s providence assuring us of his

present care and future reward (as we saw in the previous chapter),

it is also governed by the heartfelt memory that the forgiveness of our

sins is owing to mammoth mercy. Jesus teaches that living with the

awareness that we are forgiven felons (because of assaults on God’s

honor) will break the power of unrighteous anger in our lives. He

illustrates this when his disciples ask about how often they should

forgive people.

Jesus’ disciples are aware of how maddening it can be when

someone sins against us not just once, but over and over. Few things

make us angrier. So Jesus’ disciple, Peter, said to him, “Lord, how

often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many

as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times,

but seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:21-22). The question cries out

to be asked, how in the world is that possible when someone has hurt

us for the hundredth time?

Do Not Be Angry—Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness 147

Jesus answers with a parable about the kingdom of heaven that

shows how closely the kingdom is tied to the power to forgive. He

says to Peter and the others who can hear, “Therefore the kingdom

of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts

with his servants” (Matt. 18:23). It is significant that he calls this

parable a comparison to the kingdom of heaven. That means that the

triumph over anger through forgiveness is a part of God’s rule (king-

dom) in the lives of his people. Forgiveness is not simply a psycho-

logical technique for managing human relationships—it is the work

of God and the fruit of the forgiveness that Jesus said he would

obtain with his own blood (Matt. 26:28).

How We Forgive Seventy Times Seven

The parable says that a king had a servant who owed him the stag-

gering amount of ten thousand talents (Matt. 18:24). “The giant size

of this amount is illuminated by the fact that King Herod had a

yearly income of about 900 talents, and that Galilee and Peraea

[the ‘land beyond the Jordan’], in the year 4 BC brought in 200 tal-

ents in taxes.”1 So it appears that either this amount is an inten-

tional exaggeration (as when we say “zillions” of dollars), or this

servant was a high-ranking official who had the connections to

embezzle huge amounts from the king’s treasury over many years.

In any case, Jesus describes his debt as virtually incalculable.

The king threatened to sell him and his family. But “the servant

fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will

pay you everything’ [an impossibility, it seems, in view of the

amount]. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released

him and forgave him the debt” (Matt. 18:26-27). This forgiveness

is as spectacular as the size of the debt. That is the point. Jesus

wants us to realize that sin is an incalculable debt to God. We could

never pay it back. We can never settle accounts with God. No

1 Walter Grundman, Das Evangelium Nach Matthäus (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt,

1968), 423.

148 Demand #19

amount of penance or good works or apologies can pay the debt of

dishonor we have heaped upon God by our sins.

But this servant did not receive this forgiveness for what it was—

stunning, undeserved, heart-humbling, mercy-awakening. Jesus

reports no word of gratitude and no word of amazement from this

servant. Incredible! He simply tells the incomprehensible events

that happened next: “When that same servant went out, he found

one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii [one

denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer], and seizing him, he began

to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell

down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will

pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should

pay the debt” (Matt. 18:28-30). In other words, this man’s experi-

ence of “forgiveness” from the king did not change his anger. He

seized and choked his fellow servant.

The king heard of it and was (legitimately!) angry (Matt. 18:34).

He said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt

because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy

on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” The king “deliv-

ered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt” (Matt. 18:32-

33). The conclusion to the parable goes straight to the heart of the

issue of anger and forgiveness. Jesus says, “So also my heavenly

Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother

from your heart” (Matt. 18:35).

The point of this parable is that God has no obligation to save

a person who claims to be his disciple if that professing disciple has

not received the gift of forgiveness for what it really is—infinitely

precious, amazing, undeserved, heart-humbling, mercy-awakening.

If we claim to be forgiven by Jesus, but there is no sweetness of for-

giveness in our hearts for other people, God’s forgiveness is not there

(cf. Matt. 6:14-15; Mark 11:25).2

2 The point of Jesus’ parable is not to address the larger issue of whether we can truly experi-

ence the forgiveness of God and then lose that forgiveness. We have seen in Demand #7 that Jesus teaches that he will not let any of his true disciples fall away. The point of this parable is that divinely offered forgiveness that does not transform our lives into forgiving people will

not save us.

Do Not Be Angry—Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness 149

Remember, this parable was told to help Peter deal with Jesus’

demand to forgive seventy times seven (Matt. 18:22). That is, it

was told to help us deal with the anger that naturally arises in our

hearts when someone hurts us for the hundredth time. The solu-

tion, Jesus says, is to live in the overwhelmingly amazed awareness

that we have been forgiven a debt larger than all the wrongs ever

done against us. Or to put it another way: We should live in the

astonished awareness that God’s anger against us has been removed,

though we have sinned against him far more than seventy times

seven. The effect of this awareness is a broken, contrite, tender-

hearted joy. And this brokenhearted joy governs our anger. The

only good anger is the kind that is shaped by this humble heart.

“First Take the Log Out of Your Own Eye”

One other saying of Jesus confirms how he designs mercy as a way

of governing our experience of anger. One of the ways that anger

expresses itself is in judging others. Jesus gave us a demand in this

regard:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you

pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will

be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your

brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out

of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite,

first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly

to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matt. 7:1-5)

The command not to judge sounds as absolute as the command not

to be angry. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” But what follows

the command shows us that there is a kind of judging that is bad

and a kind of judging that is necessary and good—just like there is

good and bad anger. When Jesus says, “First take the log out of

your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of

your brother’s eye,” he shows that it is necessary to make judg-

150 Demand #19

ments about the speck in a brother’s eye. What turns this kind, car-

ing, healing judgment into the judgmentalism that Jesus forbids is the

failure to see the log in our own eye.

It is the same as the unforgiving servant failing to live in the

awareness of the “log-debt” that he had been forgiven (ten thousand

talents), so that he could gladly forgive the “speck-debt” of his

brother (one hundred denarii). Jesus assumes that when we see the

log in our own eye, we know how to remove it—that is, we know

how to find forgiveness and help from Jesus. Otherwise the delicate

procedure of removing the speck from the eye of our brother would

not be possible. You can’t do delicate, loving eye surgery with a log

hanging out of your eye.

So the point of Jesus’ words about judging are to show us how

the anger of judgmentalism can be broken. It is broken by a broken

heart. We live in the consciousness of our own great sinfulness and

in the awareness that only the mercy of Jesus can take the log out

of our eye with forgiveness and healing. This awareness turns angry

judgment into patient and loving forbearance and delicate correc-

tion. Legitimate anger may remain because we are displeased that

eye-specks bedevil people we love. But that anger is not the anger

of judgmentalism. Good anger is governed by the experience of

mercy.

Servanthood and Anger

We are tempted to be angry not only when we are repeatedly hurt,

but when we are told what to do by others—especially if we don’t

want to do it. This anger is often rooted in the kind of pride that does

not feel any duty or joy in servanthood. But everything Jesus teaches

about serving others leads us to experience servanthood another way

(cf. Demand #17). Central to being a disciple of Jesus is the willing-

ness to embrace self-denial and cross-bearing: “If anyone would

come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and fol-

low me” (Matt. 16:24).

Jesus goes to the cross to die for others. He calls us to go with

him and, if necessary, die for others. This readiness to suffer as a part

Do Not Be Angry—Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness 151

of following Jesus gives rise to a spirit of servanthood that does not

get angry when demands are put upon us. Jesus used an amazing

phrase to express this: “slave of all.” He said, “Whoever would be

first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came

not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for

many” (Mark 10:44-45).

Jesus does not mean that following him is a begrudging, joyless

affair. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in

you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Martin Luther cap-

tured the joyful spirit of Christian “slavery” when he said in 1520,

“A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none;3

a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every

one.”4 We are not our own. We belong to Jesus. What he bids us

do, we do—lest we hear him say, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’

and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46).

This spirit of submission transforms the experience of anger. As

“slaves of all,” the emotional experience of being required to do

things we didn’t plan to do is not the same as it would be if we were

lords of all. For Jesus’ sake the slave rejoices to serve the good of oth-

ers. He says with his Master, “My food is to do the will of him who

sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). What we were

sent to do is serve. Good anger is governed by the contentment

Jesus gives in serving others, even those who do not deserve it.

What Kind of Anger Is Jesus Prohibiting?

We return now to Jesus’ prohibition of anger. “You have heard that

it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever

murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone

who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matt.

5:21-22). In view of all we have seen, I would make the observa-

3 This is what Jesus meant when he said to Simon Peter, “‘What do you think, Simon? From

whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?’ And when he

said, ‘From others,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free’” (Matt. 17:25-26). Then to

show that the free sons (disciples) are also servants, he told Peter to pay anyway (Matt. 17:27).

4 Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress,

1960), 277.

152 Demand #19

tion here that the anger Jesus is forbidding is the anger behind mur-

der. In other words, he is intensifying the command not to murder.

He is pointing out that it is not only the act of murder but the feel-

ing behind it that is worthy of condemnation. In other words, he is

not prohibiting all anger but the kind that leads toward murder.

This focus of his prohibition is confirmed by the two illustrations

he gives next: “Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the coun-

cil; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire”

(Matt. 5:22). These refer to external actions, not just internal anger.

Therefore, they reveal the kind of anger Jesus has in mind. In his

mind, as he condemns anger, anger is a strong feeling of displeasure

including feelings of contempt and hostility that seek expression in

murder or pejorative name-calling. All such anger he forbids. But I

do not assume from this that Jesus would condemn all anger, espe-

cially his own (Mark 3:5). All of his other teachings guide us in dis-

cerning whether our anger is justified, especially the teachings we

dealt with under the headings of love, proportion, providence,

mercy, and servanthood.

The Vine Is the Source for Stilling the

Force of Anger

Nevertheless, the demand not to be angry is radical and devastat-

ing. It puts us face to face with the impossibility of saving ourselves.

Jesus’ demand is not something we can do in our own power.

Becoming angry is not a choice we make. It is a fruit on the branch

of our lives. The question is: What vine are we a part of? And whose

fruit will we bear? The demand of Jesus not to be angry is, there-

fore, also a demand that we abide in him as our vine. “Whoever

abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart

from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Demand #20

DO THE WILL OF

MY FATHER WHO IS IN

HEAVEN—BE JUSTIFIED

BY TRUSTING JESUS

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom

of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in

heaven. —Matt. 7:21

If you would enter life, keep the commandments. —Matt. 19:17

The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to

heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sin-

ner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather

than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. —Luke 18:13-14

External Conformity to Laws Is Not Enough

A wealthy man asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to

inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). Jesus answered his question

in two steps. First, he said, “You know the commandments: ‘Do

not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear

false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother’”

(Mark 10:19). In other words, he connected eternal life with keep-

ing God’s law. “If you would enter life, keep the commandments”

(Matt. 19:17).

154 Demand #20

The man responded, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my

youth” (Mark 10:20). Was this true? Maybe at one level it was.

Perhaps there were no external behaviors that contradicted God’s

laws. But what about his heart? Jesus had said in another place,

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20; see

Demands #25-27). The problem with these rigorous law-keepers

was that they focused on externals alone: “Woe to you, scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the

plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matt.

23:25). Was that true of this wealthy man?

The second step in Jesus’ answer to the man’s question reveals

a serious problem in his heart. Jesus said, “You lack one thing: go,

sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have trea-

sure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). This is amaz-

ing. He says he only lacks “one thing.” Presumably if he had that one

thing, then he would be perfect. In fact, that’s the way Matthew

records Jesus words, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you pos-

sess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and

come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). So he is not perfect. He has not

kept God’s law perfectly. And therefore he will not inherit eternal life

unless this “one thing” happens that he is missing.

“You Lack One Thing”

What is this “one thing”? It sounds like three things: Sell what you

possess, give it to the poor, follow me. How are these three demands

really one? These demands may be summed up like this: “Your

attachment to your possessions needs to be replaced by an attach-

ment to me.” It is as though the man stood there with his hands

full of money and Jesus said, “You lack one thing; reach out and take

my hands.” To do this the man must open his fingers and let the

money fall. The “one thing” is not what falls out of his hands, but

what he takes into his hands.

When a person treasures Jesus above money, the poor are always

the beneficiaries. That’s why Jesus mentions the poor. But the main

Be Justified by Trusting Jesus 155

point concerns what is happening between this man and Jesus. “You

lack one thing. You lack me. Stop treasuring money, and start trea-

suring me. You want to inherit eternal life. You want to enter the

kingdom of heaven. I am the treasure of heaven. If you would have

treasure in heaven, you must have me. If you prefer money over me

now, you will not enter heaven where I am the treasure. But if you

treasure me now above your money, ‘you will have treasure in

heaven.’ I will be there. Only by your attachment to me will you

inherit eternal life. If you would be perfect—which is the only way

into God’s kingdom—follow me.”

Perfection Through Jesus

This is a critical lesson for us. Jesus does not scorn the law of God.

He does not say that keeping the commandments is unimportant. He

says, “If you depend on keeping the commandments alone, you

will not inherit eternal life. There will always be something lacking.”

The standards of the law are perfection. “You therefore must be

perfect,” Jesus said, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt.

5:48). He does not lower that standard. Instead, he demands it

from the whole world. And then he offers it through attachment with

himself. “If you would be perfect . . . come, follow me.” Jesus is the

only path to perfect obedience. And perfect obedience is required for

eternal life.

The crucial question is: How is Jesus the path to perfection? One

historic answer is that Jesus himself is our perfection. That is, when

we are connected with him by faith, God counts us to be perfect

because of Jesus, even though in ourselves we are not. Another his-

toric answer is that Jesus, by his presence and power within us, trans-

forms us so that we really begin to love like he does and move

toward perfection, which we finally obtain in heaven. It seems to

me that Jesus gives us good reason to believe that both of these

answers are true.

Jesus said that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”

(Mark 10:45) and that his blood would be “poured out for many for

the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28) and that believing in him as

156 Demand #20

he was lifted up on the cross would give eternal life to undeserving

sinners (John 3:14-15). All of this implies that Jesus’ life and death

are our only hope of escaping wrath (John 3:36) and obtaining

heaven. Jesus said concerning the most intentional law-keepers in

Israel, “None of you keeps the law” (John 7:19). And he very bluntly

called even his disciples “evil.” “If you then, who are evil, know how

to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father

who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt.

7:11). In other words, all humans are sinners under God’s holy wrath

with no hope of eternal life based on their own obedience. Jesus

came to solve that problem.

Jesus solves it by removing the wrath of God. He removes it by

enduring the punishment we deserved and paying the debt we could

never pay (see Demand #11). Therefore, because of Jesus’ shed

blood, all our sins are canceled and God does not see us as sinful or

imperfect anymore. This is owing to our attachment to Jesus by

faith.

“This Man Went Down to His House

Justified”

But Jesus teaches that there is more to our perfection than the

absence of guilt. He tells a parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector

who went up to the temple to pray. These two men represent the

groups that were popularly viewed as most righteous (the Pharisees)

and most sinful (the Jewish tax collectors, who compromised them-

selves by working for the Romans and fleeced their own people to

line their pockets).

The Pharisee highlighted his obedience to the law: “I am not

like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax

collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke

18:11-12). But the tax collector, Jesus says, “standing far off, would

not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God,

be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his

house justified, rather than the other” (Luke 18:13-14).

The word “justified” is crucial. It captures the very purpose of

Be Justified by Trusting Jesus 157

the parable. Luke introduced this parable by saying: “He also told

this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were right-

eous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). Therefore,

the parable is dealing with the question of how to be “righteous”

before God.

The word “justified” and the word “righteous” are built on the

same word in the original Greek. The verb means to “declare right-

eous” the way a judge does in a courtroom. He does not make a

defendant righteous. He recognizes and declares him as righteous.

This is the way the verb is used in Luke 7:29. “When all the people

heard this . . . they declared God just [literally, they justified God].”

Justifying God cannot mean making God just or righteous. It means

declaring him to be righteous. That is what God does to the tax

collector in Luke 18:14: “This man went down to his house justi-

fied”—that is, this man was declared by God to be righteous.

So the parable dramatically contrasts those who “trusted in

themselves that they were righteous” (because of their extensive law-

keeping) with those who despaired of their own righteousness and

looked away from themselves to the mercy of God to declare them

righteous even though they were not. Note carefully that in this para-

ble those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous”

were even willing to give God the credit for the ability to produce this

righteousness: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men”

(Luke 18:11). But that was to no avail. Our own righteousness,

even if produced by God’s grace, is not a sufficient foundation for

vindication in God’s holy presence.

The Rich Man Needs Jesus for His

Righteousness

Jesus does not go into detail about how his own obedience and death

provides the foundation for justification, but we have good reason to

think God’s declaration of righteousness is given to sinners who look

to Jesus as their only hope of acceptance with God. Jesus said to

the wealthy man, “Your law-keeping will not get you into the king-

dom. You are not perfect. ‘You lack one thing.’ Come to me.” Jesus

158 Demand #20

was what he lacked. If being declared righteous, though he was

not, was the man’s only hope (as the parable of the tax collector

shows1), then Jesus is the foundation of that declaration. That is why

the man must let go of his money and come to Jesus.

So in one sense the perfection that the rich man lacked is found

in Jesus. God will count the man as perfect if he stops depending

on his money and starts depending on Jesus. That is the first his-

toric answer to the question, how is Jesus the path to perfection? In

relationship to him we are counted as perfect, even though we are

still sinners. This is what it means to be justified. We will deal with

the second answer in the next chapter, namely, that Jesus, by his pres-

ence and power within us, transforms us so that we really begin to

love like he does and move toward perfection.

1 It is significant that Luke weaves together first the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collec-

tor (Luke 18:9-14), with a word about needing to receive the kingdom like a child (Luke

18:15-17), with the story of the rich ruler who lacks one thing, namely, Jesus, to complete his

obedience (Luke 18:18-23). It is as though the truth of the justification of the ungodly by faith

is being illustrated in the following stories.

Demand #21

DO THE WILL OF

MY FATHER WHO IS IN

HEAVEN—BE

TRANSFORMED BY

TRUSTING JESUS

Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and

mother. —Mark 3:35

Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep

it! —Luke 11:28

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom

of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in

heaven. —Matt. 7:21

We saw in the previous chapter that the rich man who was

seeking eternal life “lacked one thing.” If he “would be

perfect,” he needed Jesus (Matt. 19:21). Jesus is the path to per-

fection. But how is he the path to perfection? The last chapter

answered: by being the basis of our perfection before God as we

trust him. Now we turn to another answer, which is also true:

Jesus, by his presence and power within us, transforms us

so that we really begin to love like he does and move toward

perfection.

160 Demand #21

Some Measure of Real, Lived-out Obedience

Is Required

The answer of the last chapter by itself does not account fully for

Jesus speaking the way he does about doing the will of God. Jesus

says that doing the will of God really is necessary for our final entrance

into the kingdom of heaven. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord,

Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the

will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). He says that on the

day of judgment he really will reject people because they are “work-

ers of lawlessness.” “Then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you;

depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:23). He says

people will “go away into eternal punishment” because they really

failed to love their fellow believers: “As you did not do it to one of

the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25:45-46).

There is no doubt that Jesus saw some measure of real, lived-out

obedience to the will of God as necessary for final salvation. “Whoever

does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark

3:35). So the second historic answer to the question, how is Jesus the

path to perfection? has been that he enables us to change. He trans-

forms us so that we really begin to love like he does and thus move

toward perfection that we finally obtain in heaven.

I say it that way because Jesus does not give us any indication that

we can be perfected in this present age. He teaches us to pray the Lord’s

Prayer, and he puts right beside the petition “Give us this day our daily

bread,” the petition “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven

our debtors” (Matt. 6:11-12). In other words, just as we pray daily for

bread, we should pray daily for forgiveness. Therefore, Jesus does not

anticipate a time in this age when we will not need daily forgiveness.

That is why I say Jesus transforms us so that we really begin to

love like he does so that we move toward perfection that we finally

obtain in heaven. But though our lived-out perfection only comes

in heaven, Jesus really does transform us now, and this transforma-

tion is really necessary for final salvation. But the way our new

behavior is necessary is different from the way trusting Jesus for

our perfection is necessary. Trusting Jesus connects us with him.

Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus 161

Then, because of Jesus’ work alone, God counts us righteous, even

before our behavior is transformed. The tax collector who cried

out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13) would not

dare point to any righteous behavior in himself as the basis of his jus-

tification. He looked away from what he was and pled for mercy.

God declared him righteous before his behavior changed. Therefore,

trusting Jesus is necessary in order to be connected to Jesus who is

the foundation of our justification. But new, transformed behavior

is necessary as the fruit and evidence of this connection with Jesus.

Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit

We saw in Demand #7 that being connected with Jesus by faith

results in a new life of love. That’s the fruit Jesus produces as he

works within us: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever

abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart

from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). In another place he makes

it clear that being a “healthy tree”—that is, being a person who truly

believes in him—will bear good fruit: “Every healthy tree bears good

fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit” (Matt. 7:17).

The fruit does not make the tree good. The tree makes the fruit

good. Good deeds do not attach us to Jesus. They are not the ground

of our being declared righteous. Trusting Jesus connects us with

Jesus. This connection results in God’s declaration that we are per-

fect, and this same connection releases the power that produces fruit.

The reason Jesus can say, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit

is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 7:19) is not because

the fruit is the basis of our acceptance with God—the tax collector

had no fruit to offer—but because the absence of fruit shows we

are not connected to Jesus.1

1 Though it may cause confusion, it is possible to use the word “justify” to describe how the fruit of good behavior works in the day of judgment. The fruits can “justify” us in the sense of

proving that we are believers and belong to Jesus and have a right standing with God in him.

That is how I understand Matthew 12:37, “By your words you will be justified, and by your

words you will be condemned.” It is as though the Judge said, “The evidence is compelling: Your

words warrant the judgment that you are a true believer in my Son and have rested your case

with him and banked on his righteousness for acceptance in this court.” Or: “Your words jus-

tify [warrant, validate] the conclusion of this court that you have trusted in the righteousness

of Jesus Christ for your justification in this court.”

162 Demand #21

Therefore, when Jesus demands that we do the will of his Father

who is in heaven, he means two things. First, he means, “Believe in

me as your only hope for a perfect righteousness that is not your

own. This perfection is the foundation of your acceptance with

God and your inheritance of eternal life.” This is why, when people

asked him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” he

could simply answer, “This is the work of God, that you believe in

him whom he has sent” (John 6:28-29). Believing in Jesus is the

first and most essential aspect of God’s will for us. Second, he means,

“This same faith that attaches you to me for justification also

attaches you to me the way a branch relies on a vine, and in this

way you bear the fruit of love that fulfills the law of God in real,

lived-out behavior.”

Is God’s Will Today Expressed in the

Old Testament Law?

Looking back now to the wealthy man who came to Jesus and asked,

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark

10:17), how does the keeping of the law fit into Jesus’ answer? Jesus’

first answer to the man was, “If you would enter life, keep the com-

mandments” (Matt. 19:17). We have seen that even though com-

mandment-keeping will never provide a righteousness good enough

to gain acceptance with God, nevertheless, the effort to do God’s will

is essential. The question now is, is God’s will today expressed in

the Old Testament law? A simple yes would be misleading. And a

simple no would be misleading. Rather we must say something like:

Yes, provided the law is filtered through the sieve of all the changes

brought about by Jesus, who is the goal and fulfillment of the law.

Jesus said, “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses

and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24: 44).

The Law and the Prophets were all aiming toward Jesus. Not sur-

prisingly, when he came they would be fulfilled and changed. Jesus

spoke about this change carefully and respectfully: “Do not think

that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not

come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you,

Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus 163

until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass

from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18).

Abolition is not Jesus’ purpose. Fulfillment is. And when the

law is fulfilled in Jesus, its original use changes dramatically. A

new era has dawned, and Jesus’ followers will relate to the law

differently than Israel did. That’s why Jesus said, “The Law and

the Prophets were until John [the Baptist]; since then the good

news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his

way into it” (Luke 16:16).

How Our Experience of the Law Changes

with the Coming of Jesus

Here is a simple sketch of the changes that have happened in our

experience of the law since Jesus has come.

First, when Jesus taught that “whatever goes into a person from

outside cannot defile him” (Mark 7:18), he virtually nullified the Old

Testament ceremonial laws. Mark makes this simple comment,

“Thus he declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). “On his own

authority alone, Jesus set aside the principle of ceremonial purity

embodied in much of the Mosaic legislation.”2 From now on “the

sons are free” (Matt. 17:26), and we may eat or not eat according

to what love demands.

Second, I mention love as the central criterion of our behavior

because this is a second thing Jesus did in regard to changing how we

experience the law: He said that it was all summed up in love. “So

whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,

for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12). In saying this,

Jesus directed us away from a focus on the commandments per se

and toward a relationship with himself that bears the law-fulfilling

fruit of love (see Demand #32).

Third, Jesus told a parable about the owner of a vineyard whose

tenants would not give him his produce. He repeatedly sent them ser-

vants whom the tenants beat. Finally, he sent his son whom they

2 George Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 285.

164 Demand #21

killed. All this represented God’s relation to Israel as a people. The

great majority of them did not render the fruit of worship and obe-

dience, and finally they killed the Son of God (Matt. 21:33-41). Jesus

asked his listeners what the owner should do. They said, “He will

put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to

other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (Matt.

21:41). Jesus applied this correct answer to his Jewish listeners in a

cataclysmic way, signifying a huge change in the law.

He said, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken

away from you [Israel] and given to a people producing its fruits”

(Matt. 21:43). In other words, God is turning his primary redemp-

tive focus from Israel to the Gentile nations (see Demand #50). The

people of God would no longer be defined by ethnicity or by par-

ticipation in the theocratic system of kings and priests and judges

and all the ceremonial and civic laws that held that system together.

The people would be defined by faith in Jesus and the fruit of love.

The implications of this change were huge. No longer is it God’s

will that his people take vengeance in his name on the wicked, as in

the case of the conquest of Canaan (Deut. 9:3-6). No longer do

God’s people (the followers of Jesus) govern themselves by putting

to death blasphemers (Lev. 24:14) or adulterers (Lev. 20:10) or for-

nicators (Deut. 22:21) or Sabbath-breakers (Exod. 31:14) or sor-

ceresses (Exod. 22:18) or false witnesses (Deut. 19:16, 19) or those

who disobey their parents (Exod. 21:15, 17). Such commands of

the law were woven together with the theocratic, civic government

of an ethnic people that no longer applies to a people of God with no

ethnic or political identity but rather is scattered through all the

ethnic and political groups of the world (Matt. 28:19).

Fourth, the entire religious system involving priests and temple

and sacrifices reached its goal and end in Jesus. We saw in Demand

#12 that Jesus himself, by his death and resurrection, took the place

of the temple and the sacrifices for sin. Therefore, the laws govern-

ing how one was reconciled with God through that system are ful-

filled and ended with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus 165

Believe on His Son, and Bear the Fruit

of Love

I conclude therefore that Jesus’ demand that we do the will of his

Father and that we keep the commandments is a demand that we

do what Jesus required of the wealthy man who asked how to inherit

eternal life. Jesus’ most urgent demand is that we stop treasuring

money and start treasuring himself as our only hope of having the

“one thing” that we lack—perfect righteousness. Yes, we should

keep the commandments, but only as they come through the filter

of their fulfillment in Jesus. Practically, this means we should look

to Jesus himself, revealed in his life and death and teaching, for the

guidance we need. We must depend on Jesus’ power to do that the

way a branch depends on a vine. In this way Christ, not Moses,

gets all the glory for the purchase and the performance of the new

covenant.

But even with this divinely enabled transformation (Mark

10:27), our righteousness is not perfect in this life, and it will not suf-

fice for our right standing before God. Therefore, Jesus’ demand that

we do the will of his Father and that we keep his commandments is

also a demand that we despair of making our obedience the ground

of God’s acceptance. Our transformation is the fruit of our union

with Jesus. That union is where the ground of our acceptance lies.

And that union is established by believing in Jesus. The fruit demon-

strates the reality of the union and the authenticity of faith. This is

God’s will—that we believe on his Son, that we enjoy our union with

him, that we rest in God’s merciful declaration of our perfection

and acceptance, and that we bear the fruit of love.

Demand #22

STRIVE TO ENTER THROUGH

THE NARROW DOOR,

FOR ALL OF LIFE IS WAR

And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be

few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow

door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be

able.” —Luke 13:23-24

Jesus taught us that life is war. When he said, “Strive to enter

through the narrow door” (Luke 13:24), the Greek word behind

the English strive is recognizable in English transliteration:

agønizesthe (ajgwnivzesqe). You can see the word agonize in that

Greek word. The implication is that we must struggle, wrestle, and

exert ourselves. But the most important fact about the word “strive”

is that the one other place where we find it on Jesus’ lips is John

18:36, where he says his disciples would be “fighting” if his kingdom

were of this world. “My kingdom is not of this world. If my king-

dom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting [ ∑gøn-

izonto, hjgwn vizonto], that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.”

So here the phrase “strive to enter” means that entering is a battle.

Strive to Enter What?

Entering what? The kingdom of God. This is plain from the follow-

ing context. After saying that we should “strive to enter through the

narrow door,” he refers to a master of a house who rises and shuts the

All of Life Is War 167

door so that no one else can enter (Luke 13:25). Those outside knock

and say, “Lord, open to us,” but the master says, “I do not know

where you come from.” Then they say, “We ate and drank in your

presence, and you taught in our streets.” But he responds, “Depart

from me, all you workers of evil!” (Luke 13:25-27).

Then Jesus applies this picture to the real situation of some who

will be excluded from the kingdom of God while Gentiles from all

over the world will “recline at table in the kingdom of God.” “In

that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you

see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the king-

dom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come

from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table

in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:28-29).

So the “narrow door” through which we must “strive” to enter

is the door to the kingdom of God. Outside there is “weeping and

gnashing of teeth” (Luke 13:28). This is one of the ways Jesus refers

to hell: “Throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will

be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:50). The alternative to

entering by the narrow gate is destruction. “Enter by the narrow gate.

For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction”

(Matt. 7:13). In other words, what is at stake when Jesus demands

that we “strive to enter” is heaven and hell. It is an ultimate issue.

The Greatest Threat Is Our Own Sin Every Day

But what does Jesus want us to strive against so that we can enter

through the narrow door? What are the obstacles? If life is war,

who is the enemy? In our striving, the aim is not to hurt anyone.

Jesus is clear that we are to love our enemies and do good to those

who hate us (Luke 6:27). Saying that life is war does not mean that

we make war on people, but on sin, especially our own. In fact, it is

only our own sin that can keep us from entering the kingdom, not

anyone else’s. The sin of others can hurt us, even kill us. But that does

not keep us from entering the kingdom of God. Our own sin is the

greatest threat to entering the kingdom of God. But temptation to sin

comes from an amazing variety of sources.

168 Demand #22

Jesus is demanding serious personal vigilance. The command

to “watch” is one of his most frequent commands. The idea is that

we must be awake and alert and ready, lest the temptations of life

take us off guard and we be overcome and ruined. Jesus said to his

disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Watch and pray that you

may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the

flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). This command is relevant to all of

life. Temptations abound, and Jesus does not take them lightly. The

watchword of all of life is, watch, be alert.

I say all of life because Jesus warned that the days just before

his second coming would be in many ways very normal. It will be,

Jesus says, like the days of Noah before the flood came and swept

people away who were utterly unsuspecting. They were not watch-

ful. Life seemed too normal, so they were not vigilant. “As in those

days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and

giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark . . . so

will be the coming of the Son of Man. . . . Therefore, stay awake,

for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt.

24:38-39, 42). Nothing is more normal than eating and drinking and

marrying. The point is that we must be vigilant all the time, not

just when the times feel perilous. They are always perilous. Soul-

destroying temptations to unbelief and sin are present in everyday,

normal life. Striving to enter through the narrow door is a lifelong,

all-day, every-day calling.

Pain and Pleasure Can Keep Us from Entering

Through the Narrow Door

Jesus’ demand for vigilance is all-embracing. Both the pleasant parts

of life and the painful parts of life present dangers to the soul. In

the parable of the four soils he warns about both. The painful and

the pleasant threaten to destroy the faith-sustaining work of the

word in our lives. When the word falls on rocky ground it sprouts,

then dies. This represents those who hear the word, but then “tribu-

lation or persecution arises on account of the word” (Matt. 13:21),

and they fall away. They do not enter through the narrow door.

All of Life Is War 169

When the word falls on thorny ground it sprouts, then dies.

This represents those who hear the word, but then “they are

choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14).

They do not enter through the narrow door. One person falls

away because of pain (tribulation or persecution); the other person

falls away because of pleasure (riches and pleasures of life). The

call for vigilance is all-embracing. There is no unembattled place in

this life.

Surprising to us perhaps, Jesus’ demand for vigilance is directed

more often at the pleasures of life than the pain. Some people are dri-

ven away from God by their pain, but more are lured away by their

pleasures. Pleasures seldom awaken people to their need for God;

pain often does. So Jesus is more concerned to warn us about the

dangers of prosperity than the dangers of poverty.

The Perils of Praise and Physical Indulgence

One powerful lure away from the kingdom of God is the praise of

man. Therefore, Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to

walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces

and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at

feasts” (Luke 20:46). “Beware” means be alert, take care, pay close

attention to. This is a call for vigilance against the lure of following

those who live for the praises of man. “Beware of practicing your

righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them”

(Matt. 6:1). We feel good when people speak well of us. It may not

be wrong. But it is dangerous. It is a time for vigilance. “Woe to

you,” Jesus says, “when all people speak well of you, for so their

fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26).

Less subtle is the lure of physical indulgence. Jesus focuses on

alcohol and the dissipating effects it has on our minds and bodies.

He says, “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down

with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that

day come upon you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34). There are

drugs and foods and practices that “weigh down” the heart. They

make the heart sluggish. This is the opposite of vigilance. We will not

170 Demand #22

“strive to enter through the narrow door” if we are self-indulgent

and use drugs or food or drink in a way that dulls our spiritual

alertness and vigilance.

Money Is a Mortal Threat to Entering Through

the Narrow Door

The danger Jesus warns against most often is the danger of money.

It is a mortal danger. Heaven and hell hang in the balance in our

vigilance against the lure of money. Jesus made this as clear as pos-

sible with the words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye

of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”

(Mark 10:25). The issue is entering the kingdom. Striving for wealth

is not the striving that leads to the narrow door.

Over and over Jesus warns us to be vigilant against the lure of

riches. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth” (Matt.

6:19). “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24). “Do not be

anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or

‘What shall we wear?’” (Matt. 6:31). “The deceitfulness of riches

and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word” (Mark

4:19). “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:33).

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).

“Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my

disciple” (Luke 14:33). “But woe to you who are rich, for you have

received your consolation” (Luke 6:24). “Blessed are you who are

poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).1 “Take care,

and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does

not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

1 Even though he pronounces a woe on the rich (Luke 6:24) and pronounces blessedness on the

poor (Luke 6:20), he does not mean that mere finances make one blessed or damnable. We know

this, first, because he also says, “Woe to you who laugh now” (Luke 6:25) and “Blessed are

you who weep now” (Luke 6:21), and we know from this very context that disciples are to

rejoice now (Luke 6:23). So Jesus assumes that we are going to qualify his seemingly absolute

statements here. The rich and the poor who are blessed are those for whom Jesus is their supreme

treasure and therefore seek to use their wealth or poverty to magnify the worth of Jesus above

money and what it can buy. We also know Jesus did not pronounce damnation and blessed-

ness on mere financial condition because he told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had (Mark 10:21) but commended Zacchaeus for giving half of his money away (Luke 19:8-9). However,

having said all that, it is significant that Jesus considers wealth so dangerous and poverty so

auspicious; he simply says woe to the one and blessed be the other.

All of Life Is War 171

The “Healthy Eye” Will Help Us Strive to Enter

the Narrow Door

It appears, then, that striving to enter the kingdom of God through

the narrow door is largely a battle about how we relate to money. We

should linger here since Jesus did. He is jealous that we “guard

against all covetousness.” He is deeply concerned with our “eyes”

when it comes to the treasure of our lives. We see this in a puzzling

statement he made in Matthew 6:22-23, “The eye is the lamp of

the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of

light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” In

other words, if the eye is good (literally, “single”), the whole body

will be full of light. But if the eye is bad, the body will be full of

darkness. In other words, how you see reality determines whether

you are in the dark or not.

You will naturally ask, what does that have to do with money?

First of all, notice that these words of Jesus are sandwiched between

the command to lay up treasures in heaven (6:19-21) and the warn-

ing that you can’t serve God and money (6:24). Why is this saying

about the good and bad eye sandwiched between two teachings on

money? I think it’s because what makes the eye good is how it sees

God in relation to money. That’s the issue on either side of this say-

ing. In Matthew 6:19-21 the issue is: You should desire heaven-

reward, not earth-reward. Which, in short, means: Desire God, not

money. In Matthew 6:24, the question is whether you can serve

two masters. Answer: You cannot serve God and money.

This is a double description of light! If you are laying up trea-

sures in heaven, not earth, you are walking in the light. If you are

serving God, not money, you are walking in the light. Between these

two descriptions of the light Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of

the body and that a good eye produces a fullness of this light. So,

what is the good eye that gives so much light and the bad eye that

leaves us in the dark?

172 Demand #22

What Is the Good Eye?

One clue is found in Matthew 20:15. Jesus has just said that men

who worked one hour will be paid the same as those who worked all

day, because the master is merciful and generous. And besides, they

all agreed to their wage before they worked. Those who worked all

day grumbled that the men who worked one hour were paid too

much. Jesus responded with the same words found here in Matthew

6:23, “Is your eye bad because I am good?” (literal translation).

What is bad about their eye? What’s bad is that their eye does

not see the mercy of the master as beautiful. They see it as ugly.

They don’t see reality for what it is. They do not have an eye that can

see mercy as more precious than money.

Now bring that understanding of the “bad eye” back to

Matthew 6:23 and let it help us discern the meaning of the “good

eye.” What would the good eye be that fills us with light? It would

be an eye that sees the Master’s generosity as more precious than

money. Which means that the good eye sees God and his ways as

the great Treasure in life, not money. The good eye sees things as they

really are. God is really more valuable than all that money can buy.

You have a good eye if you look to God and love to maximize

the reward of his fellowship—that is, lay up treasure in heaven.

You have a good eye if you look at Master-money and Master-

God and see Master-God as infinitely more valuable. In other

words, a “good eye” is a wisely valuing eye, a discerning eye, an

astutely treasuring eye. It doesn’t just see facts about money and

God. It doesn’t just perceive what is true and false. It sees beauty

and ugliness; it senses value and worthlessness; it discerns what is

really desirable and what is undesirable. The seeing of the good eye

is not neutral. When it sees God, it sees God-as-beautiful. It sees

God-as-desirable.

That is why the good eye leads to the way of light: laying up

treasures in heaven and serving God, not money. The good eye is a

single eye. It has one Treasure: God. When that happens in your

life, you are full of light. And this is so important that Jesus adds in

Luke 11:35, “Therefore be careful lest the light in you be dark-

All of Life Is War 173

ness.” In other words, be vigilant. Don’t be casual or slack or

careless about this matter. Strive, wrestle, fight to keep your eye

good. That is, do what you must to see God, not money, as

supremely valuable and desirable.

In the next chapter we will continue to unfold the implications

of Jesus’ demand to strive to enter by the narrow door. We will see

how he calls for vigilance and watchfulness in regard to false

prophets and false christs and the suddenness of his second com-

ing. And then we will turn to the question, how does the demand

for vigilance fit with his demand that we rest in him? How does the

seriousness of watchfulness fit with the sweetness of Jesus’ care?

Demand #23

STRIVE TO ENTER

THROUGH THE

NARROW DOOR, FOR

JESUS FULFILLS THE

NEW COVENANT

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy

that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the

gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who

find it are few. —Matt. 7:13-14

This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my

blood. —Luke 22:20

Jesus’ demand for vigilance—“strive to enter through the narrow

door”—is owing to the many dangers that threaten our souls.

One of the most frequent imperatives on Jesus’ lips is, “Look out!”

“Watch!” “Be alert!” We have seen in the previous chapter the need

for striving against the perils of pain and pleasure: the deceit of

money, the praise of man, the lure of physical indulgence. We turn

now to the perils of false prophets and false christs and the danger

of nostalgia for the days when the cost of discipleship was not so

high. Then we turn to the crucial question: Is all this vigilance and all

this striving to enter through the narrow door consistent with the

sweet invitations of Jesus to come to him and find rest?

Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant 175

The Perils of False Prophets and False Christs

Jesus warns us that false prophets and even false christs will abound.

In fact, the first warning he gives us after saying, “The gate is narrow

and the way is hard that leads to life” is this: “Beware of false

prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are

ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt.

7:15-16). This is not a casual remark. It is a life-and-death warn-

ing: “False christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and

wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be on guard; I

have told you all things beforehand” (Mark 13:22-23). Be on guard!

Keep your eyes open! Watch! Be vigilant! Strive to enter by the nar-

row door.

Jesus underscores that the door is narrow that leads to life. Not

every claim will fit through the narrow door of the kingdom of

God. There are many false christs. In this context Christ means

Jewish Messiah—the one who fulfills all God’s promises and brings

in the kingdom and sits on the throne of David ruling over all the

world. There is only one Christ, and the rest are “false christs.” Jesus

is the only Messiah. Therefore, the door is as narrow as faith in Jesus,

the only true Messiah and King of kings.

I have sat in my office with followers of another “christ” and

pleaded with them to turn to the true and only Christ, Jesus. They

said that the Christ had come in our day and that he was gathering

a people now for himself. I read to them Luke 17:24 to show them

that Jesus said when he comes it would be globally unmistakable and

that anyone who says it has already happened is a pretender: “For as

the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other,

so will the Son of Man be in his day.” They said that in order to

understand the secret meaning of this verse I would need to read a

book written by their leader, the “christ” they believed in. As they

left I stood at my window watching them walk across the parking lot

and prayed for them. I gave thanks that God had helped me “be on

guard.” Jesus said this would happen and helped me watch as I sat

there in my office. This vigilance is part of what it means to “strive

to enter through the narrow door.”

176 Demand #23

You Do Not Know When Your Lord

Is Coming

What gives Jesus’ demand for vigilance and striving its unusual

urgency is the warning that the time of his second coming is

unknown to any of us. “Stay awake, for you do not know on what

day your Lord is coming. . . . Watch therefore, for you know nei-

ther the day nor the hour” (Matt. 24:42; 25:13). When Jesus tells

us to “watch” or “stay awake” because we do not know the time

of his second coming, he does not mean that we skip sleep and look

out our windows. We know this because the command to “watch”

is the climax of the parable of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise

and five of whom were foolish, but all of whom slept. The wise made

sure they had oil in their lamps so that when the bridegroom came

they might go out with their lamps to greet him. That was their

job. Jesus says that all ten of them “became drowsy and slept” (Matt.

25:5). He did not criticize the wise virgins for sleeping.

When the bridegroom came at midnight (representing the sec-

ond coming of Jesus to earth at an unexpected hour), Jesus said,

“Those who were ready [the five wise virgins] went in with him to

the marriage feast, and the door was shut” (Matt. 25:10). The fool-

ish virgins had to go get oil because they were unprepared. When

they returned they cried out, “Lord, lord, open to us” (Matt. 25:11).

But the bridegroom (representing Jesus) answered, “Truly, I say to

you, I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). The lesson Jesus draws out

of this parable is, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day

nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13). But all ten of the virgins were asleep,

including the five wise virgins. That’s how we know that when Jesus

says, “Watch!” he does not mean skipping sleep and looking out our

window.

He means, be watchful over your life. Be watchful over what

the Bridegroom has called you to do. The wise virgins had done the

will of the Master: Their lamps were fully prepared. Sleeping was

just fine because they had done their jobs. Therefore, one way to

describe “striving to enter through the narrow door” is: Fulfill your

calling. Be vigilant to do what God has called you to do. You will

Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant 177

be happy if Jesus comes and finds you heartily engaged in your

earthly calling for his glory. “Who then is the faithful and wise

manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them

their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant

whom his master will find so doing when he comes” (Luke

12:42-43). Striving to enter the kingdom by the narrow door

includes vigilant faithfulness in the work Jesus has left us to do. As

he said in one of his parables, “Engage in business until I come”

(Luke 19:13)—do with all your might what he has given you to do.

Perseverance and the Peril of Nostalgia

One of the great temptations to keep us from fulfilling what Jesus

calls us to do is that we grow weary in the battle and look back on

how easy life was before we started to follow him. Strive to enter

through the narrow door means, fight for perseverance. The zeal of

many would-be followers of Jesus grows cold, and they drift away.

Jesus said, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many

will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved”

(Matt. 24:12-13). In other words, one of the factors that makes the

door to the kingdom of God narrow is that striving to enter must last

to the end.

Therefore, Jesus warns us against nostalgia for the former days

of worldliness. He says that the stress of the last days of this age will

tempt people to look back. So with stark simplicity he warns,

“Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). This was a reference to a

woman in the Old Testament who was leaving her hometown of

Sodom because God was about to destroy the city for its sin.

Tragically, like so many would-be followers of Jesus who begin to

leave the old way of sin, she looked back. “Lot’s wife . . . looked

back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. 19:26). God saw an

idolatrous heart in her backward glance toward Sodom. This was

her true love, not God. Striving to enter through the narrow door

means taking heed to the warning of Jesus: “No one who puts his

hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”

(Luke 9:62).

178 Demand #23

How Does Striving to Enter by the Narrow Door

Relate to Resting in Jesus?

The question must now be asked: Is all this vigilance and all this

striving to enter through the narrow door consistent with the sweet

invitations of Jesus to come to him and find rest? If this striving

and vigilance sounds like a miserable and burdened way to live, keep

in mind that Jesus rebuked the lawyers who burdened people with

impossible laws without giving any help: “Woe to you lawyers also!

For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves

do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46).

And most of all, keep in mind how Jesus invited people into his fel-

lowship: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I

will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for

I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).

What makes the demands of Jesus to strive and to be vigilant

seem burdensome is the assumption that we are left to ourselves. Our

natural tendency is to think that if Jesus tells us to do something

and makes this a condition for entering the kingdom of God and

having eternal life, he will then stand back and merely watch to see

if we will do it. We do not naturally think that if he demands some-

thing, he will enable us to do it.

Jesus Came to Fulfill the New Covenant in

His Blood

But Jesus knew that he had come to fulfill the “new covenant”

promised by the prophet Jeremiah. At the end of his life at the Last

Supper, he took the cup that represented his blood and said, “This

cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”

(Luke 22:20).

What was new about the “new covenant” was that the com-

mands of God would not merely be written on stone (Exod. 24:12),

as in the covenant with Moses, but would now be written on the

heart of God’s people. God promised through Jeremiah, “Behold, the

Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant 179

days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new

covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the

covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took

them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. . . . But

this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after

those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and

I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:31-33).

Jesus came to inaugurate this new covenant through his life

and death and resurrection and by the sending of the Holy Spirit.

The prophet Ezekiel wrote that the way the new covenant would

secure the obedience of God’s people (the striving to enter through

the narrow door) was by God’s Spirit being given to them and by

their own spirit being made new. God said through Ezekiel, “I will

put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. . . .

A new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone

from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk

in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them” (Ezek. 36:27;

11:19-20). God’s intention was to give his commands and the abil-

ity to do them. That is the new covenant.

By his shed blood Jesus purchased this new covenant for all

who trust him. Then, on the basis of the forgiveness of sins that he

obtained for his people (Matt. 26:28), he gave them the promise of

the Holy Spirit. He said:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be

with you forever, even the Spirit of truth . . . he dwells with

you and will be in you. . . . When the Helper comes, whom I

will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who pro-

ceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. . . . He will

glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

(John 14:16; 15:26; 16:14)

Without Christ Our Striving Would Be Losing

Therefore, by his death and by the sending of the Spirit, Jesus obtains

the new-covenant promises for those who trust him. And the heart

180 Demand #23

of that covenant is that our sins are forgiven and the Spirit of God

is given to help us do what Jesus demands, namely, strive to enter

by the narrow door. In other words, Jesus’ demand that we “strive

to enter” does not mean he stands aloof and watches. As Martin

Luther wrote in his famous hymn:

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own

choosing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.1

We are not left to ourselves in our striving. The command to strive

is the command to experience the powerful striving of God on our

behalf in fulfillment of his new-covenant promise to cause us to walk

in his statutes (Ezek. 36:27). We will see this all the more clearly

and forcefully in the next chapter, which deals with the presence of

the kingdom of God and the presence of eternal life and the way to

maintain hope and joy and peace as we strive to enter through the

narrow door.

1 Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Demand #24

STRIVE TO ENTER

THROUGH THE NARROW

DOOR, FOR YOU ARE

ALREADY IN THE

KINGDOM’S POWER

Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like

a child shall not enter it. —Mark 10:15

The demand to strive to enter the kingdom of God through the

narrow door should be heard in connection with the truth

that God has already done something to make that striving full of

hope and confidence. We strive not with fretting that we will not

enter, but with assurance that not only will we enter, but in a decisive

sense we have already entered. This may sound paradoxical: Strive

to enter, for you have entered. But it is profoundly true for all who

trust in Jesus.

The Secret of the Kingdom of God: It Is Here

At the center of Jesus’ message is the claim that both the kingdom

of God and eternal life are present experiences as well as future

promises. In other words, when Jesus demands that we strive to enter

the kingdom through the narrow door, he is focusing on the future

experience of final joy and perfect fellowship with God when the

kingdom comes in fullest measure in the future. Strive to enter that.

182 Demand #24

But the “secret of the kingdom” (Mark 4:11) that Jesus revealed to

his disciples was that the kingdom had already arrived in his ministry

and that his followers enter it now and experience its power even

before its final consummation.1 For example, Jesus said, “If it is by

the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God

has come upon you . . . behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst

of you” (Luke 11:20; 17:21). In his ministry the kingdom of God,

which will be consummated in the future, has come near, and its

power is in delivering people from bondage to Satan and sin.

Which means, for the followers of Jesus, that our striving to

“enter through the narrow door” is done in the power of the king-

dom that we have received as a free gift. Recall how Jesus put it:

“Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God

like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15). We now receive it as a

gift by faith and experience its power. By this power of the king-

dom we will walk the “hard way” and enter the “narrow door.”

Paradoxically, we strive to enter the kingdom from inside the king-

dom. The present power of the kingdom is here, and we have entered

into that power by faith. The consummation of the kingdom, with

its victory over death and disease and all sin, is still future, and we

are not yet there.

Eternal Life Is Ours Now

The same interconnection between the future and the present is

true of eternal life, not just the kingdom of God. On the one hand,

Jesus speaks of eternal life as a future inheritance: “Everyone who

has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children

or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will

inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:29; cf. 25:46). But on the other hand,

he teaches that believing on him means having eternal life now:

1 “The mystery of the Kingdom is the coming of the Kingdom into history in advance of its apoc-

alyptic manifestation. It is, in short, ‘fulfillment without consummation.’ . . . The new truth, now given by revelation in the person and mission of Jesus, is that the Kingdom which is to come

finally in apocalyptic power, as foreseen in Daniel, has in fact entered into the world in advance in a hidden form to work secretly within and among men.” George Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 222.

You Are Already in the Kingdom’s Power 183

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes

him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment,

but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24; cf. 3:36). By trusting

Jesus we have eternal life now, but we will come into the fullest expe-

rience of it in the future.

The Presence of Life and Kingdom Does Not

Produce Presumption but Joy

Jesus’ teaching about this truth—that entering the kingdom of God

and entering eternal life are both present experience and future

hope—does not express itself in presumption and carelessness. It

does not produce the attitude that says, “I’m already saved; it does

not matter how I live. I do not need to be vigilant. I do not need to

strive to enter through the narrow door.” That is not the way a per-

son talks who has entered eternal life and has been grasped by the

power of God’s kingdom. Instead this truth expresses itself in joy-

ful striving.

To some people striving does not sound like a joyful way to

live. It sounds burdensome. But that is not the way followers of Jesus

experience it. Of course, taking up our cross and denying ourselves

and becoming the “slave of all” (Mark 10:44) is often painful. But

it is not oppressive. There is joy at every turn. This was the point of

Demand #10, “ Rejoice and Leap for Joy” (Luke 6:23). In fact, it is

the joy of having eternal life now and being in the kingdom of God

now and knowing our sins forgiven now and enjoying the fellowship

of Jesus now that sustains our ability to strive toward that future

entrance through the narrow door into the consummation of God’s

kingdom. That is the point of the little parable in Matthew 13:44:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a

man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all

that he has and buys that field.” Joy is the sustaining motive for

selling all—for striving to enter through the narrow door.

This is an illustration of how doing something difficult and

seemingly oppressive—selling all you have—is carried by joy. “In his

joy he goes and sells all that he has.” That is the banner flying over

184 Demand #24

all our striving as we follow Jesus: In our joy we fight off every temp-

tation that would destroy our soul with deceptive pleasures or decep-

tive pain. We fight as those who must fight and will win. The striving

is essential, and its outcome for Christ’s sheep is certain. “My sheep

hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them

eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them

out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).

Help for the Fainthearted

The demand of Jesus that we “strive to enter through the narrow

door” is overarching. It gives a sense of urgency to all his demands.

It does not refer to a class of commandments but to all of them. It

is a demand that we take all his word seriously. It calls for lifelong,

everyday, hour-by-hour vigilance over our thoughts and feelings

and actions. Therefore, it troubles some followers of Jesus who are

fainthearted. I have tried to help us all take heart. It may be practi-

cally useful to close this chapter with a summary list of ways to main-

tain hope and joy as we strive together to enter through the narrow

door.

The Fight Is to Cherish What We Have,

Not Earn What We Don’t

First, remember that the main battle is the battle to keep seeing

Jesus as the supreme treasure of your life. He does not call us to

fight for plastic jewels. Following Jesus is the result of finding a

treasure hidden in a field—an infinitely valuable treasure. Then in

our joy we gladly “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also”2

to enjoy that treasure to the full. Striving to enter through the nar-

row door is only as hard as treasuring Jesus above all things.

The battle is not to do what we don’t want, but to want what

is infinitely worthy of wanting. The fight is not the oppressive

struggle to earn God’s final rest, but the satisfying struggle to rest

in the peace that Jesus freely gives. “Come to me, all who labor and

2 Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

You Are Already in the Kingdom’s Power 185

are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,

and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you

will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden

is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). The demands of Jesus are only as hard

to obey as his promises are hard to cherish and his presence is

hard to treasure.

Jesus Promises to Help Us Do the Impossible

Second, remember that Jesus promises to help us obey his demand.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I

in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do

nothing” (John 15:5; cf. Demand #7, “Abide in Me”). He promised

to be with us to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). He promised not

to leave us like orphans when he returned to heaven, but to come

to us and help us (John 14:16-18). He acknowledges that what he

demands is impossible, but then promises omnipotent help: “With

man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible

with God” (Mark 10:27). Don’t think of striving to get his favor.

Think of striving with the favor of his help.

Forgiveness and Justification Are at the

Bottom of Our Striving

Third, remember that forgiveness of sins and justification by faith are

at the bottom of our striving (see Demand #20). We do not strive

for them. We strive because we have them. Jesus offers forgiveness in

Matthew 26:28 (“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured

out for many for the forgiveness of sins”), and he offers justifica-

tion in Luke 18:13-14 (“The tax collector, standing far off, would

not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God,

be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his

house justified”). Our standing with God as forgiven and righteous

is the ground of our striving, not the goal of our striving. We must

strive to enter because that is the mark of the one who belongs to

Christ. If we do not strive, we do not bear the mark of belonging to

186 Demand #24

Jesus. But the striving does not create the relationship. The secure

relationship produces the joyful striving.

Perfection Awaits the Age to Come

Fourth, keep in mind that perfection awaits the age to come. We do

wish that we could be free from all sinful feelings and thoughts and

actions now. That longing and that labor is part of our striving. But

we would despair if perfection in this life were a prerequisite for

entering through the narrow door. There is a perfection required. We

saw it in our treatment of Demand #20 (“If you would be perfect,

go, sell what you possess,” Matt. 19:21), but no human can achieve

it. Only Jesus fulfills all righteousness (Matt. 3:15). This is why he

teaches us to pray, not once, but every day, “Forgive us our debts”

(Matt. 6:12). Very bluntly Jesus calls his disciples (not would-be

disciples, but committed disciples) “evil”—“If you then, who are

evil, know how to give good gifts to your children . . .” (Matt.

7:11). Let us then take heart that the mark of a true follower of

Jesus is not yet perfection but rather unrelenting battle against sin.

We fail, but we do not fall away.3 We stumble, but we do not fall

headlong into apostasy.

Jesus Prays for Us That We Not Fail

Fifth, remember that the reason we do not fall away is that Jesus is

not only helping us by his presence and Spirit, but is also praying

for us. Jesus said to Peter who was about to deny him three times,

“I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you

have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). Jesus

knew Peter would sin, and he knew he would turn back from his sin-

ful denial. He said, “When you have turned,” not “If you turn.”

He did not use his sovereign power to prevent Peter’s sin, but he

3 The term “fall away” can refer to a temporary departure from Christ in fear followed by repen-

tance and restoration. For example, in Matthew 26:31, Jesus said to his disciples, “You will all

fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep

of the flock will be scattered.’” But I am using the term here in its more absolute sense. True

followers of Jesus will not fall away utterly and finally.

You Are Already in the Kingdom’s Power 187

did use it to prevent Peter’s falling away. There is no reason to think

Jesus has stopped praying like that for his loved ones. God will

answer his Son when he prays, “Holy Father, keep them in your

name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we

are one” (John 17:11).

We Are Striving to Enter Our Father’s House

Sixth, remember your position as a true child of God. Jesus taught

his disciples to know and trust God as their personal Father in

heaven. Before Jesus came, Israel as a people thought of God as the

Father of the nation, but relating to God individually as Father was

unusual. But Jesus made it central and referred to it again and again.

The implication was: God loves you personally as his child and will

take care of you. Bank on it.

This did not apply to everyone. For example, he said to some, “If

God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God

and I am here. . . . You are of your father the devil, and your will is

to do your father’s desires” (John 8:42, 44). This is very important

for Jesus’ followers: If God is our Father, we love Jesus. This means

that being a child of God involves having a new nature. The mark

of this new nature is a love for Jesus. Therefore, loving Jesus is a

sure sign that we are the children of God.

And if we are already children, we may have deep confidence

that our striving to enter the narrow door of our Father’s house

will succeed. He will see to it. He is our Father now. He is not

watching to see if we will strive hard enough to become his children.

He is actively helping us get home. For example, when we are tested

publicly to see if we will testify of Jesus as we ought, Jesus says

not to worry: “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father

speaking through you” (Matt. 10:20). Not a single sparrow falls

to the ground apart from “your Father,” Jesus says. “Fear not,

therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt.

10:29, 31). That’s the spirit of confidence that comes from being a

child of God.

188 Demand #24

Your Name Is Written in Heaven

Seventh, remember, as you strive to enter through the narrow door,

that your name is written in heaven. Jesus said, “Do not rejoice in

this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names

are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). If everybody’s name is written

in heaven, there is no reason to rejoice, but many are on the way to

destruction, not the narrow door: “The way is easy that leads to

destruction, and those who enter by it are many” (Matt. 7:13). Not

all names are written there. Having your name written in heaven

means that God will deliver you from evil and bring you to his king-

dom. Jesus had read about this book in a prophet he knew well,

Daniel 12:1: “There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been

since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people

shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the

book.”

You Were Chosen by God and Given to Jesus

Eighth, remember that Jesus is not collecting disciples whom God

has not known. God knew his own first and wrote them in his book.

Now the Father is drawing them to his Son for salvation. “All that

the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I

will never cast out” (John 6:37). The followers of Jesus belonged to

God first and then were given to Jesus (John 17:9). If someone comes

to Jesus, it is because the Father knew him and gave him to the Son.

That’s why Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless it is granted

him by the Father” (John 6:65). When they come, Jesus reveals the

Father to them, and the Father keeps them from falling away: “I have

manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the

world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me” (John 17:6). “My

Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is

able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:29). When

you remember and rejoice that you are a chosen child of God, your

striving will not be oppressive or slavish.

You Are Already in the Kingdom’s Power 189

Jesus Sustains Our Striving by His Joy

Ninth, remember that joy in God is the key way that Jesus enables us

to strive to enter through the narrow door. First, Jesus says, “I am

the vine; you are the branches . . . apart from me you can do noth-

ing” (John 15:5). Then he says, “These things I have spoken to you,

that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John

15:11). In other words, the way Jesus enables us to strive successfully

to enter through the narrow door is by imparting to us his joy. Then

later he adds, “No one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).

This joy in Jesus and all that God is for us in him sustains lifelong

striving to enter though the narrow door.

Our Striving Will Not Be in Vain

Vigilance is the mark of the followers of Jesus. They know that

“the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction”

(Matt. 7:13). They are serious about life. Heaven and hell are at

stake. Therefore, they are seriously joyful. The Son of God has res-

cued them from the guilt and power of sin. They are children of God.

Their names are written in heaven. They have received the Helper,

the Spirit of truth. They have the promise of Jesus to be with them

to the end of the age. They know that he is praying for them. They

rejoice that they stand righteous before God because of Jesus. They

have received the kingdom. They have eternal life as a present pos-

session. And they marvel that no one can snatch them out of God’s

hand. In this joy they are energized to strive to enter by the narrow

door. And they are confident their striving will not be in vain.

Demand #25

YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS

MUST EXCEED THAT

OF THE PHARISEES, FOR

IT WAS HYPOCRITICAL

AND UGLY

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the

scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of

heaven. —Matt. 5:20

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like

whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within

are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also out-

wardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of

hypocrisy and lawlessness. —Matt. 23:27-28

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sex-

ual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit,

sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things

come from within, and they defile a person. —Mark 7:21-23

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. —Matt. 5:8

Jesus said that we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven if our

righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees

(Matt. 5:20). Someone might take this to mean that we must

The Pharisees’ Righteousness Was Hypocritical 191

out-Pharisee the Pharisees. They were the most meticulous Jewish

students of the Mosaic law and the most rigorous enforcers of its

details. The tradition had grown up that there were 246 positive

commandments in the Law (the first five books of the Bible) and 365

prohibitions.1 Getting these right and keeping them meticulously was

the vocation of the Pharisees. So does Jesus mean that we are to be

even more meticulous in tallying up the laws and shaping our behav-

ior around them?

John Stott answers:

It is not so much, shall we say, that Christians succeed in keeping

some 240 commandments when the best Pharisees may only have

scored 230. No. Christian righteousness is greater than pharisaic

righteousness because it is deeper, being a righteousness of the

heart. . . . The righteousness which is pleasing to [God] is an

inward righteousness of mind and motive. For “the Lord looks

on the heart.”2

This is the right answer. But to see it clearly we need to take a look

at what Jesus saw when he looked at the righteousness of the scribes

and Pharisees. It is not a pretty picture.

Jesus and the Pharisees: Anger and Entreaty

No group awakened anger and aching in the heart of Jesus like the

Pharisees. Matthew 23 is the most severe chapter in all four Gospels.

It is unremitting criticism of the Pharisees. Yet it ends with an echo

of the aching in Jesus’ heart: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that

1 Maimonides (1135–1204) was a Spanish-born Jewish philosopher and physician, probably the

greatest medieval Jewish scholar. He published a definitive list of the laws of the Pentateuch

(the first five books of the Bible). He put the number at 613, two more than the traditional num-

ber because he treated, “I am the LORD your God” (Exod. 20:1) and “Hear, O Israel: The LORD

our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4) as positive commandments. “He reckoned that since

there were 248 distinct parts of the human body, one was to remember to obey God’s positive

commands with ‘all one’s self,’ and since there were 365 days of the year, one was to remem-

ber not to disobey God’s commands each day of the year. Since the time of Maimonides, his

count of 613 laws has been accepted as the traditional number.” John Sailhamer, The Pentateuch

as Narrative (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), 481. All 613 commandments are

listed in Sailhamer, 482-516.

2 John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1978), 75. The reference to God looking on the heart is from 1 Samuel 16:7; see also Luke 16:15.

192 Demand #25

kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often

would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her

brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37). And this

longing for the Pharisees is also expressed in the parable of the prodi-

gal son and the attitude of the elder brother of the prodigal. He

represents the Pharisees and scribes who criticized Jesus for eating

with sinners. “The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This

man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:2).

Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son in answer to this criti-

cism. The point of the parable was that Jesus’ eating with sinners

was not God’s complicity with sin but God’s pursuit of sinners. But

at the end of the parable Jesus reaches out to the Pharisees. He

describes the father (who represents God) as coming out and entreat-

ing the pharisaic older son to join the celebration of his lost brother’s

being back home. In other words, the parable is a merciful offer to the

Pharisees to join the celebration of grace in Jesus’ life and ministry.

But the elder son will not leave his angry position of self-right-

eous servant to join the joyful position of being a son: “Look, these

many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command,

yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my

friends” (Luke 15:29). He sees himself as a deserving servant, not a

freely loved son. The father’s last words to this elder brother are

full of the ache Jesus felt for the Pharisees: “Son, you are always with

me, and all that is mine is yours.3 It was fitting to celebrate and be

glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and

3 This does not mean that the Pharisees are saved. We know that Jesus expects that they will be

cast out of the kingdom if they do not repent. He said in Matthew 8:11-12, “I tell you, many

will come from east and west [that is, Gentiles] and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer

darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” What Jesus means is that

his kinsmen, the Jewish people (represented in their leaders by the Pharisees and the elder

brother), were in a position of extraordinary privilege. God had given them the law and the

covenant and the promises and had come in the flesh as the Jewish Messiah. The kingdom of

God belonged to the Jewish people, so to speak, as a natural inheritance. But the ministry of

Jesus revealed that many in Israel did not love the God of Israel and were proving themselves

unsuited to receive the inheritance. As long as the elder brother insists on being not a joyful

son but an angry servant, he will not be able to receive the blessing of what is happening in the

house. This is the meaning of the ominous words of Jesus in Matthew 21:43, “Therefore I tell

you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you [the Jewish leaders who oppose Jesus]

and given to a people producing its fruits [Jews and Gentiles who have faith in Jesus and fol-

low him on the Calvary road of love].”

The Pharisees’ Righteousness Was Hypocritical 193

is found” (Luke 15:31). The brother, it seems, will not do what is

fitting. He will not love mercy. He wants to be treated for his own

merit, not his father’s mercy. The parable is open-ended. The

Pharisees who are listening should hear an invitation to them. Jesus

will welcome them into the celebration of grace and salvation if

they will lay down their judgmental self-righteousness and delight

in mercy.

But very few of the Pharisees, as far as we know, made that

move. Apparently Nicodemus did. He was the Pharisee who came to

Jesus with questions at night and heard Jesus say, “Unless one is born

again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). We find

Nicodemus after the death of Jesus making an extremely risky move

for “a ruler of the Jews” (John 3:1). He brought seventy-five pounds

of spices to honor Jesus’ dead body (John 19:39) and joined with

Joseph of Arimathea to give Jesus a proper burial. The Bible does not

say he had become a disciple, though it calls Joseph one (Matt.

27:57). But it is hard to imagine a Pharisee taking such a risk if he

had not come to faith in Jesus. But that was rare. For the most part,

the Pharisees were entrenched in enmity toward Jesus to the end.

What the Pharisees Loved: Praise, Money, Sex

The picture Jesus paints of them is tragic and ugly. The root prob-

lem is that their hearts are far from God. He said to them in Matthew

15:7-8, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This peo-

ple honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.’” Their

hearts do not treasure God; they treasure money, praise, and sex.

After Jesus told a parable about the right use of money in Luke

16:1-9, the Pharisees ridiculed him. Luke says that the reason was

that they “were lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). Later Jesus said,

“Beware of the scribes . . . who devour widows’ houses” (Luke

20:46-47). That is, they create rules and preserve traditions that

make temple-giving a substitute for caring for the poor, even your

own parents (Mark 7:9-13). And when Jesus described what was in

the heart of the Pharisees he said they were “full of greed and self-

194 Demand #25

indulgence” (Matt. 23:25). In all their thoroughgoing religiosity,

they did not love God; they loved money.

And they loved the praise of man. The reward they sought for

what they did was not the enjoyment of God’s fellowship, but the

admiration of others. Jesus said, “They do all their deeds to be seen

by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes

long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in

the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called

rabbi by others” (Matt. 23:5-7). This love affair with the praise of

man made genuine faith in the self-sacrificing Christ impossible. So

Jesus said to them,4 “How can you believe, when you receive glory

from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only

God?” (John 5:44). Their hearts were not drawn to God as their

reward, but to the praise of man.

And as is usually the case with those who are driven by the love

of money and human praise, the Pharisees were also, it seems, often

involved in illicit sex. Jesus calls them a “wicked and adulterous gen-

eration.” “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him,

saying, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ But he answered

them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign’” (Matt.

12:38-39). I argued in Demand #9 that this refers at least in part to

the spiritual adultery of Israel’s not wanting to have Jesus as their

true husband. But it is natural to assume that the word “adulter-

ous” implies that the alternative “husbands” include not just money

and human praise, but also illicit sex. When the heart is not deeply

entranced by the glory of God, it is usually driven along by the piti-

ful powers of money and the praise of man.

Hypocrisy: The Cloak of Law-keeping Exactitude

What made this idolatry so ugly to Jesus was that it all came in

clean religious clothing. This was the essence of what he called

hypocrisy. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For

4 The Pharisees are not explicitly mentioned in John 5, but “the Jews” mentioned in John 5:10,

15, 16, 18 are probably the spokesmen for the people, namely, the scribes and Pharisees. The

role they play is identical to what the Pharisees play elsewhere.

The Pharisees’ Righteousness Was Hypocritical 195

you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are

full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matt. 23:25). Cleaning the

outside of the cup refers to using the law of God to conceal the

rejection of God. This made Jesus more angry than anything else.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like

whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within

are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also out-

wardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of

hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt. 23:27-28). These are strong

words to describe the hearts of the Pharisees: greed, self-

indulgence, dead bones, unclean, hypocrisy, and lawlessness. All of

that cloaked with law-keeping exactitude.

But it gets worse. In the next chapter we will see some of the

loveless behaviors this inner corruption produces. It should be clear

at this point that the righteousness of the Pharisees will not avail with

God. We must have a righteousness that exceeds what we see in the

Pharisees.

Demand #26

YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS

MUST EXCEED THAT OF

THE PHARISEES—CLEAN

THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and

Sadducees. —Matt. 16:6

You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a

camel! —Matt. 23:24

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the

outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed

and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside

of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be

clean. —Matt. 23:25-26

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s

shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with

their finger. —Matt. 23:4

Jesus’ description of the heart of the Pharisees, which we saw

in the previous chapter, is devastating: greed, self-indulgence,

dead bones, uncleanness, hypocrisy, lawlessness. Not surprisingly,

when this kind of heart protects and provides for itself by looking

“righteous” on the outside, it necessarily majors on the minors of

righteousness.

Clean the Inside of the Cup 197

Blind to Spiritual Proportion

It is easier to tithe than to love justice, mercy, and faithfulness. “Woe

to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill

and cumin,1 and have neglected the weightier matters of the law:

justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). They were blind to

any sense of spiritual proportion: “You blind guides, straining out a

gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matt. 23:24). And what makes mat-

ters worse, when the blind become guides, other people are hurt, even

destroyed. “They are blind guides,” Jesus said, “and if the blind

lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15:14).

Which means their spiritual blindness and deadness was both

suicidal and murderous. They were destroying themselves and oth-

ers. “Woe to you Pharisees!” Jesus warned. “For you are like

unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it”

(Luke 11:44). Coming in contact with the dead was viewed as defil-

ing. Ironically, in all their effort to remain ceremonially clean they

proved to be not only dead themselves but hurtful to others by their

deadness.

The Hellish Condition of Being Mercilessly

Demanding

Nor did they care. As is regularly the case with self-righteous hyp-

ocrites, their attitude to others is mercilessly demanding. “They tie

up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoul-

ders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their fin-

ger” (Matt. 23:4). In other words, their use of the law is merciless.

Unlike Jesus, whose yoke is easy and burden is light (Matt. 11:28-

30) because he grants what he demands,2 they only demand and do

not lift a finger to help. In this way they not only perish themselves

but drag people down with them. “Woe to you, scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in

1 Mint, dill, and cumin are spices and represent the minutiae of their external obedience in con-

trast to the magnitude of their internal corruption.

2 See Demands #7, 21, 23, 24.

198 Demand #26

people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those

who would enter to go in” (Matt. 23:13).

Strictly speaking, this is hellish. Hell-bound hypocrites labor to

take others with them. With profound love for lost and vulnerable

people, Jesus unleashed his fury against the agents of hell: “Woe to

you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea

and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a prose-

lyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves”

(Matt. 23:15). Jesus is not speaking in vague metaphors here. They

are children of hell because the devil is their father, not God. Jesus

said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I

came from God and . . . he sent me. . . . You are of your father the

devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:42-44).

In other words, their heart is shaped in its affections and choices by

the will of Satan. Their disposition is formed by the fashions of

hell.

The Pharisees try to deflect this assessment of themselves by turn-

ing the tables and accusing Jesus of working for Satan. They say, “It

is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out

demons” (Matt. 12:24). But Jesus points out that his Satan-defeating

ministry cannot be explained by complicity with Satan: “If Satan

casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his king-

dom stand?” (Matt. 12:26). No, the fact remains: It is the Pharisees

who are the “brood of vipers” who cannot speak good because they

are evil. “How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of

the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34).

Clean the Inside So That the Outside Also

May Be Clean

This is the essence of their problem: Their heart is evil and “hard”

(Mark 3:5; 10:5). All their religious and moral effort is spent clean-

ing the outside and guarding what goes into their mouths, not what

comes out of their heart. It was absolutely crucial for his disciples

that Jesus make plain to them that the Pharisees have this back-

wards. So he explains to them in private, “Do you not see that

Clean the Inside of the Cup 199

whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is

expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart,

and this defiles a person. . . . But to eat with unwashed hands does

not defile anyone” (Matt. 15:17-20).

The Pharisees were acting like fools—as though the God who

made the outside did not care about the inside even more. “You

fools!” Jesus cried out, “Did not he who made the outside make

the inside also?” (Luke 11:40). Then he told them as plainly and as

straightforwardly as possible what they needed to do: “You blind

Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the

outside also may be clean” (Matt. 23:26). Or in another place he

expressed it more indirectly and provocatively. He said, “But give

as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean

for you” (Luke 11:41).

Contrary to this counsel, the Pharisees gave alms to be seen by

men (Matt. 23:5). In other words, their heart was not in it. When

they gave to the poor, they did not give their heart. That is, they did

not give love. They did not care whether the poor became children

of hell or children of heaven. They simply wanted to be admired

for their deed. Jesus’ remedy for this is: “Clean the inside of the cup

and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” First comes the

transformation of the inside. Then, as a result (“so that,” i[na), the

outside will be clean. Jesus cares about behavior, but not by itself.

This is why a merely social gospel will never find an advocate

in Jesus. “Do good things” is not Jesus’ main message. Absolutely

indispensable to any God-pleasing, Jesus-obeying deeds is, “First

clean the inside of the cup.” And the “so that” shows that the only

external behavior that counts with Jesus is what grows out of a

transformed heart. “First clean the inside of the cup and the plate,

that [i[na] the outside also may be clean.” The outside matters, but

only as the fruit of the inside.

Stott Was Right

Now we are in a position to see how right John Stott was in the

quote at the beginning of the previous chapter. What does Jesus

200 Demand #26

mean when he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the

scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”

(Matt. 5:20)? Stott answered, “Christian righteousness is greater

than pharisaic righteousness because it is deeper, being a righteous-

ness of the heart. . . . The righteousness which is pleasing to [God]

is an inward righteousness of mind and motive. For ‘the Lord looks

on the heart.’”3 Of course, Stott believes that this true righteous-

ness will have external, visible expression in life. But the decisive

thing is the righteousness of the heart.

An Ugly “Righteousness” Is Easy to Exceed—

and Hard

In view of what we have seen, this is exactly what Jesus meant.

Jesus’ portrayal of the Pharisees’ “righteousness” is so ugly, our

response may be, that is easy to exceed. That would be true in one

sense and false in another. The true part is that Jesus said, “My yoke

is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). He does not want

to be in the category of those who “load people with burdens hard

to bear” but do not “not touch the burdens with one of [their]

fingers” (Luke 11:46). Therefore, it is right to think that in one sense

the righteousness that Jesus demands is “easy” and his burden is

“light.”

But in another sense, as we saw in Demand #18, it is hard. In

fact, it is not just hard but impossible. When the rich man turned

away from Jesus and went the way of the Pharisees, in love with his

money, Jesus commented about how hard it is to “cleanse the inside

of the cup” and stop loving money: “With man it is impossible, but

not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).

He meant that, left to himself, this man cannot change his heart.

He treasures money more than he treasures Jesus. That is what

must be changed. That is the righteousness that the Pharisees do

not have.

The righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees’ righteousness is the

3 Cf. 1 Sam. 16:7; Luke 16:15.

Clean the Inside of the Cup 201

new heart that trusts Jesus and treasures him above money, praise,

sex, and everything else in the world. Treasuring what is infinitely

valuable is, in one sense, the easiest thing in the world—like being

commanded to enjoy your favorite food. But when our hearts do not

treasure Jesus in this way, changing on our own is beyond us.

Six Antitheses Show the Righteousness That

Exceeds That of the Pharisees

After saying in Matthew 5:20 that our righteousness must exceed that

of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus goes on in the rest of that chapter

of the Sermon on the Mount to show that while true righteousness

includes loving deeds, it is decisively and essentially internal.

Decisively because what is on the inside decides whether the exter-

nal behavior has value before God. And essentially because the

essence of the behavior’s goodness is its inward motive, not the move-

ments of muscles or the effects on externals. All that Jesus said about

the hypocrisy of the Pharisees leads us to this conclusion.

Jesus confirms this in the rest of Matthew 5. He gives six exam-

ples of how an external reading of the law must be driven inwardly

until the demand of God penetrates the heart and lays claim on the

heart’s deepest affections. Sometimes these six commands are called

antitheses because Jesus puts his command in contrast (antithesis)

to what the Pharisees were making of the Old Testament law and the

temporary accommodations of the law itself.4

4 Jesus so strongly affirmed the Mosaic law in Matthew 5:17-18 and elsewhere that it is hard

to imagine that his commands in Matthew 5:21-48 should be understood as antithetical to the

true meaning of the law itself. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the

Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”

(Matt. 5:17-18). This is why I say that Jesus puts his command in antithesis to what the Pharisees

were making of the Old Testament law. They were treating the law narrowly and as mainly

external. Jesus shows that something far deeper is called for, and far more extensive. I do not

mean to imply that Jesus did not ever raise some of the standards that were in the Mosaic law.

There were parts of the law that were temporary accommodations to the hardness of man’s

heart. For example, Jesus said, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce

your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). With the appearing of the

Messiah and the arrival of the power of God’s kingdom and the inauguration of the new

covenant (see Demand #23) and the giving of the Holy Spirit, Jesus commanded his disciples

to pursue a higher standard than Moses did in permitting actions because of the hardness of

the human heart.

202 Demand #26

From No Murder to No Anger

First, Jesus refers to the commandment not to murder. Over against

the mere external application of it, he gives the commandment not

to be angry and says that anger, even without the external act, is

like murder (Matt. 5:21-26). So we see that the righteousness that

exceeds that of the Pharisees is essentially the internal change that

does not get angry when wronged (see Demands #18-19).

From No Adultery to No Lust

Second, Jesus refers to the command not to commit adultery, and

over against its merely external application he puts the command not

to lust: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with

lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart”

(Matt. 5:28). So he shows that the righteousness that exceeds that

of the Pharisees is essentially the inner change that overcomes the

heart’s bondage to illicit sexual desire. The righteousness Jesus

demands is not just the act, but the purity of heart behind the exter-

nal chastity.

From Divorce to Faithfulness

Third, he refers to the provision for divorce in the Old Testament and

puts over against it the higher ideal of not divorcing our wives.

“But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on

the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And

whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:32).

The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is the

new ability to find an answer to marriage problems not in the exter-

nal solution of divorce but in the transformation of the heart.5

From Oath-keeping to Simple Honesty

Fourth, Jesus refers to the commandment that we “perform to the

Lord what you have sworn” (Matt. 5:33). Over against it he calls for

5 For more on Jesus’ view of divorce and remarriage see Demands #40, 41, 42.

Clean the Inside of the Cup 203

something more radical and more inward. He demands that our

heart be so transparently honest that there is no need for external

confirmations (like oaths) to buttress our simple yes and no. The

righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is the

inward commitment to total truthfulness that makes “I swear”

superfluous.

From Retaliation to Loving Contentment

Fifth, Jesus quotes the law, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a

tooth.” Then in contrast, he gives six demands: “But I say to you,

[1] Do not resist the one who is evil. [2] But if anyone slaps you on

the right cheek, turn to him the other also. [3] And if anyone would

sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

[4] And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two

miles. [5] Give to the one who begs from you, and [6] do not refuse

the one who would borrow from you” (Matt. 5:39-42). All of these

are behaviors, not just inward dispositions.

Therefore, we should not say that the righteousness that exceeds

that of the scribes and Pharisees is merely internal. It clearly involves

acts of remarkable patience and self-denial and love. But neither

can we miss the fact that these six commands are so radically con-

trary to natural, human (pharisaic!) selfishness that they are impos-

sible to do without an inner change that puts our contentment and

security in something other than what this world offers, namely, in

Jesus.

From Limited Love to Loving Our Enemies

Finally, Jesus quotes the distortion of the Old Testament law (Lev.

19:18): “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neigh-

bor and hate your enemy’” (Matt. 5:43). Then he contradicts the dis-

tortion: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who

persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). Love becomes visible in sacrificial deeds

of service. But love is not first visible. It is first a change in the heart.

This is plain from the command that we “pray for those who

204 Demand #26

persecute” us. Prayer means that we really do wish them well.6 We

are praying for their salvation and their everlasting joy and that

God’s merciful saving will be done in their lives. This will not hap-

pen if there is only a raw commitment to act with external courtesy

toward our enemies. If we are going to pray for them truly, our

hearts will have to be dramatically changed from selfishness to secu-

rity in Jesus. This change, together with the deeds that flow from it,

is the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

In the next chapter we turn to the battle for this inner purity

and love that the Pharisees lacked. It is as radical as cutting off your

hand and tearing out your eye. But we will also see that the security

we enjoy rests not merely on the demonstration of a different heart

than the Pharisees had, but also on our location in the forgiveness,

acceptance, love, and eternal life of God.

6 For reflections on the imprecatory psalms that express a will for the enemy’s destruction, see

the “Excursus on Hating the Wicked” in Demand #29.

Demand #27

YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS

MUST EXCEED THAT OF

THE PHARISEES, FOR EVERY

HEALTHY TREE BEARS

GOOD FRUIT

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. —Matt. 5:8

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful

intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your

right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is

better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body

be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it

off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your mem-

bers than that your whole body go into hell. —Matt. 5:28-30

Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad

fruit. —Matt. 7:17

The failure of the Pharisees was that they focused their moral

efforts on cleaning the “outside of the cup” and neglected the

purity of the heart. In this chapter we focus on the battle for that

purity that goes beyond the Pharisees. As with all battles, the ques-

tion of triumph looms. Will we win this battle? Therefore, at the

end we will turn our attention to the ground of our assurance in

God’s forgiveness, acceptance, love, and life.

206 Demand #27

Purity of Heart: To Treasure One Thing

When Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure [kaqaroi;]

in heart, for they shall see God,” he is describing the righteousness

that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. He uses the same word

“pure” (kaqaro~v) in describing what the Pharisees need: “You blind

Pharisee! First clean [kaqavrison] the inside of the cup and the plate,

that the outside also may be clean [kaqarovn]” (Matt. 23:26). The

impurity that Jesus cares about most is our failure to trust and love

God. The heart is made for God—to trust him and love him. The

meaning of impure is anything that takes God’s place or lessens the

degree of our faith in and our love for God.

Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book entitled Purity of Heart Is to

Will One Thing.1 That title comes close to the essence of purity. I

would only change the word “will” to “treasure.” Willing can be

taken too easily to mean an act of the soul against our true desires.

But willing to have God that way would not be purity of heart.

Purity rises to the degree that God is treasured supremely in Jesus.

This is what the Pharisees failed to do, and what the superior right-

eousness does.

The change of heart that creates a new treasuring of Jesus is a gift

of God that we experience when the eyes of our hearts are opened

to see Jesus as more to be desired than any other reality. Jesus refers

to that change as new birth (see Demand #1) or repentance (see

Demand #2). It is the assumed summons of Jesus behind all his other

demands. Get a new heart. Be born again. That is what we are see-

ing implicitly here in the demand for a righteousness or a purity

that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. This demand is a

call most deeply for the new birth.

This internal change is a gift. God demands it, and God gives

it. Jesus says, “You must be born again” (John 3:7), but also says,

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you

do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with

1 Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing (San Francisco: Harper Perennial, 1956).

Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit 207

everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Jesus gives the com-

mand. The free and unpredictable Spirit gives the gift. Our respon-

sibility is to see the Jesus who is really there and trust him for all

that he is.

The Life-and-Death Battle for Purity of Heart

What is clear from Jesus’ teaching is that keeping and growing the

gift of purity and the righteousness that surpasses that of the

Pharisees is a life-and-death battle. We are not passive. Jesus gives the

decisive power, as John 15:5 says, “Apart from me you can do noth-

ing.” But we experience that power in the willingness to engage in

radical and persistent attacks on our own sinfulness. Jesus pro-

nounced a blessing on “those who hunger and thirst for righteous-

ness.” They are the ones who “shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6). Hunger

and thirst are relentless. They never stop. They are signs of life. We

will do almost anything in our power to satisfy hunger and thirst.

That is how Jesus teaches us to pursue purity.

For example, when dealing with the impurity of inward sexual

lust, Jesus demands whatever it takes to defeat it because our souls

are at stake.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your

whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes

you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you

lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

(Matt. 5:29-30)

This may be what Jesus is referring to when he says, “From the

days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suf-

fered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12).2

Taking the kingdom by force may be a way of repeating what Jesus

says about the fight against lust: Tear out your eye or cut off your

2 See George Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 163-164.

208 Demand #27

hand—do whatever it takes—to inherit the kingdom and not go to

hell. Take the kingdom by force—force against your sin, not force

against God. The battle for righteousness in our hearts is fierce.

The Radical Point of Tearing Out the Right Eye

Notice three things about this battle. One is that the eye is the first

organ to be attacked. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out.”

Even though the issue is sexual sin, he does not say, “Cut off your

sexual organ to avoid the deed.” He says, “Tear out your eye to avoid

the desire.” The battle is for purity of heart before the purity of the bed.

Without the purity of heart, everything in the bed is impure.

Second, notice that he says to tear out your right eye. The sig-

nificance of this is that it leaves the left one intact to awaken just as

much lust as before. Therefore, Jesus’ point is not that literally tear-

ing out the right eye is going to solve anything. The point is not

that inward desires can be controlled by external maiming. The point

is how enormous the stakes are. They are so great, we must do what

we have to do to defeat the bondage of sinful desire. It is astonish-

ing how many people deal with their sin casually. Jesus demands oth-

erwise. Fight for a pure heart with the same urgency as tearing out

an eye and cutting off a hand.

Third, notice what is at stake: hell. “It is better that you lose

one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into

hell.” Many Christians who love the truth of justification by grace

alone through faith alone—which I love, and which I believe Jesus

teaches (see Demand #20)—find it difficult to take these threats of

Jesus at face value. But there is no way to avoid them. They are

strewn throughout the Gospels, and they clearly imply that if we for-

sake the battle for purity, we will perish.

The Experience of Assurance Rests on Our

Location and Demonstration

If we do not have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes

and Pharisees, Jesus says, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven

Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit 209

(Matt. 5:20). Everything we have seen in this chapter shows that

Jesus is not thinking here mainly of his own righteousness that is

imputed to us.3 He is thinking of the kind of internal transforma-

tion and external application revealed in the following six antithe-

ses of Matthew 5:21-48.

How then do we enjoy security in Jesus when what he requires

is real change of heart and real righteous behavior? I tried to answer

this question especially in Demand #24. Indeed I am trying to give

an answer to it throughout the book. So I close this chapter with

another summary statement. Think of our sense of security—our

assurance that we are going to enter the final manifestation of the

kingdom of God at the end of the age—resting most decisively on

our location in God’s invincible favor, but also on our behavioral

demonstration that we are truly in that location.

What I mean by location in God’s invincible favor is at least six

glorious truths about those who have trusted in Jesus. (1) We

belonged to God before we belonged to Jesus (John 17:6), that is, we

were in God’s favor before we ever had any righteousness at all.

(2) Our names are written in heaven among the citizens whom God

intends to bring there (Luke 10:20). (3) We are justified—declared

righteous—by faith in God’s free mercy because of Christ (Luke

18:14). Jesus assured us that we need not, and dare not, trust in

any righteousness of our own as the basis for our location in his

favor. Luke tells us that Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax col-

lector was addressed “to some who trusted in themselves that they

were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9).

(4) We are ransomed from every enemy that would destroy our souls

(Mark 10:45). (5) We are forgiven all our sins through the blood of

Christ (Matt. 26:28). (6) We possess now the new life of the Spirit

which is eternal (John 5:24).

That is our location. It is complete and perfect: We cannot be any

more chosen, written, justified, ransomed, forgiven, or eternal than

3 For Jesus’ understanding of justification by faith and the imputation of righteousness, see

Demand #20.

210 Demand #27

we are. That is the decisive rock of our security and assurance. It is

objective, outside of us, and unchanging.

The Demonstration of Our Location

What I mean by the demonstration is that the way we live shows

our location. It does not create the location. God establishes our

location through faith alone. But he has ordained that it be fitting for

the location to have a demonstration in the world. This is the right-

eousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. It is necessary,

not optional. That is, Jesus assumes that if there is no demonstra-

tion of our location in God’s favor, then the location does not exist.

Jesus says this demonstration is necessary for final salvation (as we

say, going to heaven), because God wills to be glorified both for the

grace of establishing our location in his eternal favor once for all and

for the grace of supplying the help we need to demonstrate this

location by our conduct. None who is located by faith in God’s

invincible favor will fail to have all that is necessary to demonstrate

this in life.

The assurance that our demonstration will be infallibly

enabled by God rests on numerous realities. For example, (1) Jesus

promises that nothing can snatch us out of his hand (John 10:28-

29). (2) He promises that a Helper will come and not leave us to

ourselves in this battle (John 14:16, 26; 15:26). (3) Jesus himself

promises to be with us to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). (4) Jesus

prays that our faith will not fail and that the Father will keep us

(Luke 22:32; John 17:11, 15). (5) Jesus assumes imperfection and

makes provision for it (Matt. 6:12). (6) Jesus taught that what is

required of us, even when it is impossible from our side, is not

impossible with God (Matt. 19:26). (7) What is required in our

demonstration is that there be evidence of God-given life, not

flawlessness. These and other truths give us assurance that God’s

work in our lives will bring about the grace-exalting demonstration

required in the last day.

Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit 211

Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit

The picture Jesus used to illustrate the necessity of demonstration is

the picture of a tree and its fruit. “Every healthy tree bears good fruit,

but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear

bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does

not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt.

7:17-19). When he says that “a healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit,”

he does not mean that no follower of his ever sins. The natural way

of thinking about the present tense of a Greek verb like “bear” is “go

on bearing.” So Jesus would be saying, “A healthy tree cannot go

on bearing bad fruit.” In other words, a tree is cut down not for

bad fruit here and there. It is cut down for producing so much bad

fruit that there is no evidence that the tree is good. What God will

require at the judgment is not our perfection, but sufficient fruit to

show that the tree had life—in our case, divine life.

“I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes

and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.

5:20). May God grant us to trust Christ alone for the security of

our location in God’s invincible favor and for the help that he

promises to change our hearts and lead us in demonstrable acts of

love.

Demand #28

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES—

LEAD THEM TO

THE TRUTH

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who perse-

cute you. —Matt. 5:44

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who

curse you, pray for those who abuse you. —Luke 6:27-28

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even

sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who

do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the

same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive,

what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back

the same amount. —Luke 6:32-34

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. —John 17:17

Jesus’ demand that we love our enemies, be merciful, make

peace, and forgive assumes that there are people who are hard

to love. The demand is expressed in different ways because peo-

ple are hard to love in different ways. Jesus calls some people our

“enemies,” which means they are against us. They want to see us

fail. Love them, Jesus says (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27, 35). Others may

not be our personal enemies in this way, but simply people whose

character or personality or condition makes them unattractive or

even repulsive. Be merciful to them, Jesus says (Matt. 5:7; 18:33;

Love Your Enemies—Lead Them to the Truth 213

Luke 10:37). Don’t base your treatment of them on what they

attract or deserve, but on mercy. Others may be our relatives or

friends who have taken offense at something we have done—

rightly or wrongly—and the relationship is cold or non-existent.

Strive to be reconciled to them, Jesus says (Matt. 5:23-26). Others

may or may not have anything against you, but you do against

them. Forgive them, Jesus says (Matt. 6:14-15). Don’t let laziness

or pride or anger keep you from the humble work of forgiving,

peacemaking, and reconciliation.

Having Enemies May Mean You Are in Step

with Jesus

Jesus’ demand also assumes that we will have enemies and that not

all will be reconciled to us, no matter what we do. He shows us

that having enemies is not necessarily a bad thing but may mean

we are keeping in step with him. For example, he pronounced a

blessing on those who are persecuted on account of their allegiance

to him. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you

and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matt.

5:11). In other words, having enemies is to be expected: “If they have

called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they

malign those of his household. . . . If they persecuted me, they will

also persecute you” (Matt. 10:25; John 15:20).

In fact, Jesus warned that if there were no persecution, it may

be a sign of being more like a false prophet than like Jesus: “Woe to

you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to

the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). Enmity between the world and the

followers of Jesus is rooted in the truth that the world rejects him

(John 18:37) and in the deep difference Jesus makes when he changes

a person: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as

its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out

of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19; cf. 17:14).

Therefore, we should not assume that if we have enemies we must

have done something wrong. That may be true, and we should

214 Demand #28

search our hearts for unnecessary offenses and repent, but Jesus

said very plainly that faithful disciples will have enemies. Expect it.

Love Those Who Kill and Those Who Snub

It is remarkable that Jesus draws attention to both severe persecution

and mere snubbing as the kinds of enmity we must deal with. We

might think that he would deal only with the worst kind of enmity

and assume the other would take care of itself. But evidently he

thinks we need to be told not only to love when our life is threatened,

but also to love when our ego is threatened by a mere slight.

Consider the range of enmity he mentions.

We are to love those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44), hate us

(Luke 6:27), curse us, abuse us (Luke 6:28), strike us on the cheek,

take our cloak (Luke 6:29). Those are all behaviors that would typ-

ically hurt us deeply, either physically or emotionally or both, and

might kill us (Matt. 10:21; Luke 11:49). To all this we are to respond

with love. But besides these very painful kinds of enmity, little things

can bother us as well. Jesus said, for example, “If you greet only your

brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the

Gentiles do the same? . . . And if you do good to those who do good

to you, what benefit is that to you?” (Matt. 5:47; Luke 6:33). Here

Jesus is dealing with simple acts like greeting and doing acts of

kindness, and the issue is: How readily do we greet someone or do

a kindness to someone who is a mere stranger or who has done noth-

ing for us? They have not hurt us. They show us no enmity. They

are just going about their business showing us no attention. We

may feel it as a snub. Or we may not feel anything. Jesus says, love

them. Don’t love just the ones who recognize you and do good things

for you. Love the persecutor, and love the person who simply acts

as if you are not alive.

All this raises two basic questions. First, what is this love? What

does it look like? How much of us does it involve? Second, where

does it come from? How does it arise in our hearts, and how is it sus-

tained over time and drawn out of us when all that is natural would

Love Your Enemies—Lead Them to the Truth 215

seem to say, “No love is required here, or even possible”? Let’s take

first the question about what this love is.

Love Preserves the Truth of the Bible

The first answer to the question of what this love involves is so

obvious we may not see it. In commanding us to love our enemies,

Jesus is confronting and correcting a bad use of the Bible. “You

have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate

your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those

who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44). In the very act of command-

ing love, he loves us by correcting a false and harmful interpreta-

tion of Scripture.

The Jewish Scriptures that Jesus shared with his contempo-

raries did not say, “You shall hate your enemy.” They said, “You

shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your

own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev.

19:18). Some had taken these references to “your own people” and

to “neighbor” and concluded that the command to love applies

only to neighbors—our own kind. The first act of love Jesus calls

for in his command is by his own example of how he gives the com-

mand: He shows us that love rejects the bad interpretation of God’s

word and sets forth the truth.

Truth Is the Root of Love

I mention Jesus’ example of love first not only because it is the first

and most immediately present act of love in Jesus’ words, but also

because in our time in history, love is often contrasted with the

defense of truth. That is not what Jesus demonstrates. Not here or

anywhere. If someone had said to Jesus the words, “Love unites;

doctrine divides,” I think Jesus would have looked deep into that

person’s soul and said, “True doctrine is the root of love. Therefore,

whoever opposes it, destroys the root of unity.”

Jesus never opposed truth to love. He did the opposite. He said

that he himself is the embodiment and sum of truth: “I am the way,

216 Demand #28

and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Referring to himself he

said, “The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true,

and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7:18). At the end of his

life, what prompted Pilate’s cynical question, “What is truth?” (John

18:38) was Jesus’ comprehensive assertion about why he had come

into the world: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I

have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John

18:37). Even his adversaries saw how indifferent Jesus was to

people’s opinions and how devoted he seemed to be to truth.

“Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about any-

one’s opinion” (Mark 12:14). And when Jesus leaves the world and

returns to the Father in heaven, the Spirit he would send in his place

would be called “the Spirit of truth.” “But when the Helper comes,

whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who pro-

ceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26).

Therefore, unlike so many who compromise the truth to win a fol-

lowing, Jesus did the opposite. Unbelief in his hearers confirmed that

a deep change was needed in them, not in the truth. “Everyone who

is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:38). “Whoever is of God

hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is

that you are not of God” (John 8:47). “Because I tell the truth, you

do not believe me” (John 8:45). In other words, when the truth does

not produce the response you want—when it does not “work”—you

don’t abandon the truth. Jesus is not a pragmatist when it comes to

loving people with the truth. You speak it, and if it does not win

belief, you do not consider changing the truth. You pray that your

hearers will be awakened and changed by the truth. “You will know

the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). “Sanctify them

in the truth,” Jesus prayed; “your word is truth” (John 17:17).

When Jesus prays that people be “sanctified in the truth,” he

reveals the roots of love. Sanctification, or holiness, as Jesus under-

stands it, includes being a loving person. He is praying that we would

become loving people and would be merciful and peaceable and for-

giving. That is all included in the prayer, “Sanctify them.” And all this

happens in and by the truth, not separate from the truth. The effort to

Love Your Enemies—Lead Them to the Truth 217

pit love against truth is like pitting fruit against root. Or like pitting kin-

dling against fire. Or like pitting the foundation of a house against the

second-floor bedroom. The house will fall down, and the marriage

bed with it, if the foundation crumbles. Love lives by truth and burns

by truth and stands on truth. This is why Jesus’ first act of love in

commanding love is to correct a false interpretation of Scripture.

The Unloving Use of Truth

Of course, it is possible to use truth unlovingly. For example, when

a village of Samaria would not receive Jesus “because his face was

set toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:53), James and John knew this was

a truth-insulting response. It was an assault on the truth of Jesus.

So they said to Jesus, in defense of the truth, “Lord, do you want

us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke

9:54). The answer was swift and blunt: “He turned and rebuked

them” (Luke 9:55).

But the solution to that unloving response was not to stay in the

village and alter the truth to get a better response. He did not say to the

Samaritans, “Doctrine divides, love unites, so let’s put our doctrinal

differences aside and have relational unity.” No, the solution was,

“And they went on to another village” (Luke 9:56). There are many

people yet to be loved with our truth. We will keep offering the sav-

ing truth in love wherever we can, and we will not be violent with

those who reject us. But the truth will not be changed. It is the root

of love’s life, and the kindling of love’s fire, and the foundation of love’s

strength. When Jesus demanded that we love our enemies by con-

trasting this with the interpretation that said, “Love your neighbor and

hate your enemy,” he was lovingly showing us that correcting false

interpretations of the Bible is one crucial way to love our enemy.

Challenging the Absoluteness of the Beloved

The next obvious implication of Jesus’ words for the meaning of love

is that it is not unloving to call someone an enemy. We live in an emo-

tionally fragile age. People are easily offended and describe their

218 Demand #28

response to being criticized as being hurt. In fact, we live in a time

when emotional offense, or woundedness, often becomes a crite-

rion for deciding if love has been shown. If a person can claim to

have been hurt by what you say, it is assumed by many that you did

not act in love. In other words, love is not defined by the quality of

the act and its motives, but by the subjective response of others. In

this way of relating, the wounded one has absolute authority. If he

says you hurt him, then you cannot have acted lovingly. You are

guilty. Jesus will not allow this way of relating to go unchallenged.

Love is not defined by the response of the loved. A person can

be genuinely loved and feel hurt or offended or angered or retalia-

tory or numb without in any way diminishing the beauty and value

of the act of love that hurt him. We know this most clearly from

the death of Jesus, the greatest act of love ever performed, because

the responses to it covered the range from affection (John 19:27) to

fury (Matt. 27:41-42). That people were broken, wounded, angered,

enraged, and cynical in response to Jesus’ death did not alter the

fact that what he did was a great act of love.

This truth is shown by the way Jesus lived his life. He loved in

a way that was often not felt as love. No one I have ever known in

person or in history was as blunt as Jesus in the way he dealt with

people. Evidently his love was so authentic it needed few cushions.

It is owing to my living with the Jesus of the Gospels for fifty years

that makes me so aware of how emotionally fragile and brittle we are

today. If Jesus were to speak to us the way he typically spoke in his

1 To his own disciples he spoke bluntly calling them “evil” (Matt. 7:11) and “of little faith”

(Matt. 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20) and a “faithless . . . generation” (Matt. 17:17) and

telling a would-be disciple who wanted to go to a funeral to let the dead bury their dead (Luke

9:60). He was blunt with his hosts who invited him to dinner: “You gave me no kiss, but from

the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but

she has anointed my feet with ointment” (Luke 7:45-46). “He said also to the man who had

invited him, ‘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’” (Luke 14:12-13). He

said he was glad that God had hidden truth from the “wise and understanding”: “I thank you,

Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and under-

standing and revealed them to little children” (Matt. 11:25). He would not answer those who

played word games with the crowds (Matt. 21:23-27). He called Herod a “fox” (Luke 13:32)

and excoriated the Pharisees with “brood of vipers” (Matt. 23:33) and “whitewashed

tombs” (Matt. 23:27) and “blind guides” (Matt. 23:16) and “hypocrites” (Matt. 23:13) and

“fools” (Matt. 23:17). And of course, he made a whip and drove out the money-changers

from the temple (Matt. 21:12). All this, and so much more, would simply put Jesus so far

Love Your Enemies—Lead Them to the Truth 219

own day, we would be continually offended and hurt. This is true

of the way he spoke to his disciples and the way he spoke to his

adversaries.1 People were offended in his day as well. “Do you

know,” his disciples asked him, “that the Pharisees were offended

when they heard this saying?” (Matt. 15:12). His response to that

information was brief and pointed: “Every plant that my heavenly

Father has not planted will be rooted up.2 Let them alone; they are

blind guides” (Matt. 15:13-14). In other words, “They are plants

that do not produce the fruit of faith because God has not planted

them. They don’t see my behavior as love because they are blind,

not because I am unloving.” These and dozens of other things he said

to both friend and foe in ways that would rock us back on our emo-

tional heels and make many of us retreat in self-pity.

The point of this is that the genuineness of an act of love is not

determined by the subjective feelings of the one being loved. Jesus

uses the word “enemies.” That would be offensive to some, espe-

cially since he goes on to unpack his point with words like, “And if

you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?”

(Matt. 5:47). He does not fret over the possible criticism that he is

not being careful enough to distinguish real enemies from annoying

brothers. Jesus seems to expect us to handle tough words like

“enemy” mingled with tender family words like “brother.”

Love Is Not Oblivious or Uncaring About

Its Effects

I do not mean to say that love is oblivious to the words it uses or

the effects they may have on others. Love does care about blessing

the loved one. It desires to bring the loved one out of pain and sor-

outside the range of emotional tolerance in our day that his behavior would simply not feel

loving. All of which goes to show that the criterion of what love is does not reside in the sub-

jective response of the one being loved.

2 “Those plants his Father had planted were those who had received the revelation of Jesus’ char-

acter from the Father—a revelation he had concealed from the ‘wise and prudent’ (11:25-27;

13:11-17; 16:16-17; cf. 14:33).” Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), 413. The saying is parallel with John 10:26, “You

do not believe because you are not part of my flock.” Or John 18:37, “Everyone who is of the

truth listens to my voice.” Or John 8:47, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The

reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

220 Demand #28

row and into a deeper experience of joy in God—now and forever.

But I am stressing another side of the problem that seems unusually

prevalent in our psychologized world. I am simply drawing attention

to the fact that feeling unloved is not the same as being unloved.

Jesus is modeling for us in his life the objectivity of love. It has real

motives and real actions. And when they are loving, the response of

the loved one does not change that fact.

This is good news for the lover, because it means that God is

God and the loved one is not God. The judgment of the wounded

loved one is not absolute: It may be right, or it may be wrong. But

it is not absolute. God is absolute. We give an account to him. And

he alone knows our hearts. The decisive thing about our love when

we stand before God is not what others thought of it, but whether

it was real. That some people may not like the way we love is not

decisive. Most people did not recognize Jesus’ love in the end—and

still do not today. What matters is not that we are justified before

men, but that God knows our hearts as truly (though not perfectly)

loving. And he alone can make that final judgment (Luke 16:15).

Demand #29

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES—

PRAY FOR THOSE

WHO ABUSE YOU

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. —Matt. 5:44

Pray for those who abuse you. —Luke 6:28

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. —Luke 23:34

Before turning to the demand that we pray for those who perse-

cute us and abuse us, we need to draw out one more clarifica-

tion of Jesus’ command, namely, that love hates the evil that destroys

the ones we love.

Love Hates the Evil That Destroys Persons

We cannot claim to desire the good of the beloved and be indiffer-

ent to what destroys him. Jesus’ demand to love our enemy implies

that love must hate the evil that destroys the beloved. If there were

a universe in which there was no evil that hurt people or dishon-

ored Jesus, there would be only love and no hate. There would be

nothing to hate. But in a world like ours it is necessary not only

that we love and hate, but that our love include hate.

Excursus on Hating the Wicked

This is perhaps the best place to insert some thoughts on the kind

of hatred that Jesus read about in the Psalms that are sometimes

222 Demand #29

called the imprecatory psalms— that is, psalms that express hatred

for God’s enemies and call down divine curses on them. These

would include Psalm 5:10; 10:15; 28:4; 31:17-18; 35:4-6; 40:14-

15; 58:6-11; 69:22-28; 109:6-15; 139:19-22; 140:9-10. Psalm

139:19-22 says, “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O

men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with mali-

cious intent; your enemies take your name in vain! Do I not hate

those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise

up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my

enemies.”

We know that Jesus was aware of these psalms and that he

did not criticize them but quoted them as authoritative Scripture.

At least one of the most severe of them (Psalm 69) seems to have

been a favorite from which Jesus, in his human nature, drew guid-

ance and encouragement and self-understanding (John

15:25=Psalm 69:4, “They hated me without a cause.” John

2:17=Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Matt.

27:34=Psalm 69:21, “They offered him wine to drink, mixed with

gall”). This psalm prays, “Pour out your indignation on them,

and let your burning anger overtake them” (69:24).

Consider in some of these psalms that love for the enemy has

been pursued for a long time. “They repay me evil for good . . .

when they were sick—I wore sackcloth” (35:12-13). “In return for

my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer. So they reward

me evil for good, and hatred for my love” (109:4-5). Though unex-

pressed, this may be the case for all the psalms. The wickedness

in view has resisted love.

Consider also that hatred may refer at times (not always) to

moral repugnance, not personal vengeance. This is not the same as

saying, “Hate the sin and love the sinner” (which can be good coun-

sel, but not all there is to say). There is a kind of hate for the sin-

ner (viewed as morally corrupt and hostile to God) that may coexist

with pity and even a desire for his salvation. The hate is moral

repugnance, not desire for destruction. The analogy with food

may help. You may hate spinach (because of its taste) while affirm-

ing its worth and desiring that it have its beneficial effect. So it is

possible to hate a person in the sense of finding his character loath-

some (say, a cannibalistic murderer and child-abuser) while being

Love Your Enemies—Pray for Those Who Abuse You 223

willing to lay down your life for his salvation. The hate that Jesus

forbids to us is the hate that wills a person’s destruction.

However, there may come a point when wickedness is so per-

sistent and high-handed and God-despising that the time of redemp-

tion is past and there only remain irremediable wickedness and

judgment. For example, Jesus speaks of unforgivable sin (Matt.

12:32). He says of the Pharisees who have evidently crossed the

line of no return, “Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if

the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15:14). That

is an ominous “Let them alone.” Craig Keener compares it to

Matthew 7:6, “Do not waste your pearls on swine.”1 It seems that

Jesus continues what the Psalms affirm, namely, that there comes

a point of such extended, hardened, high-handed lovelessness

toward God that it may be appropriate to give a person up to

destruction and call down anathema on him. Jesus makes it plain

that this will happen at the end of the age. He says that the King

“will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into

the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matt. 25:41).

From all this, and from the fact that Jesus affirms the divine

inspiration of the Psalms (Matt. 22:43; John 10:35), I conclude

that he saw the psalmist speaking under the guidance of the Holy

Spirit and foreshadowing the Messiah and Judge, who has the

ultimate right to call down judgment on the enemies of God. This

is not personal vindictiveness. It is a prophetic execution of what

will happen at the last day when God casts all his unrepentant

enemies into hell (Luke 12:5; Matt. 22:13; 25:30). We would do

well to leave such final assessments to God and realize our own

corrupt inability to hate as we ought. While there is unforgivable

sin, we are told to love our enemies and pray for those who per-

secute us and return good for evil (as David did in Psalm 35:12-13;

109:4-5). This is our vocation by faith. Let us tremble and trust

God, lest we fail, and find ourselves on the other side of the curse.

To illustrate the truth that in a world like ours it is necessary

that our love include hate, consider what Jesus says in John 5:29

1 Craig Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1999), p. 413.

224 Demand #29

that in the last day when the dead are raised, all people will rise,

“those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those

who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” This means

that there is evil in the world that leads to the final destruction of

people we love. How does love feel about that evil? My point is that

love hates that evil. We do not hate God’s judgment. That is just and

wise. But we do hate the evil that leads a person to oppose God

and incur his judgment.

There Is No Evil That Hurts Only You

One might be tempted to say at this point that the evil I must hate

is only the evil that hurts another person but not the evil that hurts

me. In other words, it would not be unloving to you if I engage in evil

behavior that only involves me. Jesus would say, there is no such

behavior. Why not? Because everything I do affects my delight in

Jesus and my ability to display him as valuable. That is what we were

made for (Matt. 5:16; 10:32). We were made to display the worth

of Jesus to others, that they might increasingly awaken to it and

enjoy it and reflect it forever. That is the greatest good we can do

for them. That is what it means to love them. But if we do things to

ourselves that damage our delight in Jesus and damage our display

of his worth to others (and that is the very essence of evil—it dam-

ages our delight in Jesus and our ability to display his worth), then

we rob them of what God made us to give them—a display of his

worth. That is the opposite of love. Therefore, love must hate evil,

whether it is evil the loved one is doing to his own peril, or the evil

I am doing to my own and his peril.

I point out the relationship between love and hate simply to

waken us from the sentimental slumbers of much love-talk. There

are people, especially in our day, whose worldview is so relativistic

and whose personality so morally flaccid that they do not even have

a category for evil, lest they find themselves offending the demand

for tolerance of all views. Jesus would say: Tolerance of all views is

the opposite of love. It condones what destroys. We cannot read

the words of Jesus with an honest heart and conclude that he denies

Love Your Enemies—Pray for Those Who Abuse You 225

the existence of evil that destroys and good that leads to everlasting

joy. Therefore, to minimize or deny the existence of evil, rather

than hating it, makes one partner to the destruction of human per-

sons. This is not the love that Jesus demands.

“Pray for Those Who Persecute You”

Jesus gives numerous examples of the kinds of behaviors involved

in loving our enemies. The first mentioned in the Sermon on the

Mount after the command to love is prayer. “Love your enemies

and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). And “Pray

for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:28). This is enormously important

in telling us how Jesus thinks about what love is. First, it tells us

that love really wants the good of the enemy. This is confirmed by the

supplementary command, “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28).

To bless is to desire someone’s well-being and turn it into an

expressed longing directed to God. For example, Jesus knew the

famous blessing from Numbers 6:24-26, “The LORD bless you and

keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious

to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you

peace.” Do this, he says, for your enemy. He needs the light of God’s

countenance to shine on him and melt his heart.

Therefore, it is clear from this specific command that love is

not merely behavior. To be sure, it is doing good for the enemy, but

not merely that. It is also a heart desire. I base this on the assumption

that when we pray for our enemies, we ask for God’s blessing from

our heart. Jesus is not commending hypocritical prayer. He is not

calling for show-prayer. He is calling for real prayer, that is, real

Godward desire for the good of our enemy. Love really wants the

enemy to experience God’s best. Doing good things is not enough.

The heart must aim at the best we can hope for the enemy.

What to Pray for Our Enemies

Not only that, the demand to pray for our enemy tells us what that

best is that we should want for our enemy. Fourteen verses after

226 Demand #29

this command in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us what he

expects us to pray. He tells us to pray like this:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,

your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Matt. 6:9-13

It would be unwarranted to think that the loving prayer for our

enemy should ask for less important things than we are told to pray

for ourselves. So I assume this prayer is what we should pray for

our enemies.

• This means that we should ask God that our enemy first and

foremost come to hallow God’s name, that he value God above all

and reverence him and admire him in proportion to God’s worth.

• We should pray that our enemy come under the saving sway

of God’s kingly rule and that God would exert his kingly power to

make our enemy his own loyal subject.

• We should pray that our enemy would love to do the will of

God the way the angels do it in heaven with all their might and

without reservation and with purest motives and supreme joy.

• We should pray that God would supply our enemy with all

the physical resources of food and clothing and shelter and educa-

tion and health care and transportation, etc. that he needs to fulfill

God’s calling on his life. We should want this for him the way we

want it for ourselves.

• We should pray that his sins would be forgiven and that he

would be a forgiving person.

• And finally we should pray that God protect him from temp-

tation and from the destructive powers of the devil.

This is what love prays.

It is pathetic to see love stripped of God. Even some Christians

Love Your Enemies—Pray for Those Who Abuse You 227

are misled into thinking you can love someone without longing for

and praying for and aiming at the exaltation of God in the heart

of their enemy. What is so sad about this is that it not only betrays

the diminished place of God in the heart of the Christian, but also

implies that there can be real love where we don’t care if someone

perishes eternally, as long as they prospered here on earth. It is

true that our love and prayer may not succeed in wakening our

enemy to faith in Jesus and to the hallowing of God’s name. Love

is the aim of our sacrifice, not its success. We may or may not suc-

ceed in the Jesus-exalting, God-hallowing transformation we aim

at. But a heart that does not aim at our enemy’s eternal joy in Jesus

is not the full-orbed, robust love that Jesus demands. It is a nar-

row and pathetic substitute, no matter how creative and sacrificial

and media-admired the labor is for our enemy’s earthly welfare.

Love prays for our enemy with all the aims and longings of the

Lord’s Prayer.

“Father, Forgive Them, for They Know Not

What They Do”

The most compelling example of praying for one’s enemy was the

prayer of Jesus on the cross. After the simple, understated fact in

Luke 23:33, “There they crucified him,” Jesus prayed, “Father, for-

give them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). This

prayer draws together three acts of the heart involved in loving our

enemies: prayer, forgiveness, and mercy. Jesus is unremitting in

demanding that his disciples be forgiving people.

When Peter asked him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin

against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus

answered, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven”

(Matt. 18:21-22). In other words, “Don’t set limits, Peter. Let the

mercy in your heart be as bottomless as mine toward you.” “Be mer-

ciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Mercy and for-

giveness are needed when there is real guilt, real offense. The

“enemy” has really wronged you, and you “deserve” suitable rec-

ompense. That is when mercy and forgiveness become relevant and

228 Demand #29

urgent. Mercy says, “I will treat you better than you deserve.” And

forgiveness says, “I am willing not to count your offense against you.

I want the relationship to be restored.”

Why Do They Need Forgiveness If They Don’t

Know What They’re Doing?

Jesus’ prayer illustrates this, even though at first it seems not to. He

says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

“Forgive those who murder me because they don’t know what they

are doing.” This raises the question: Why forgive a person for what

he does not know he is doing? Wouldn’t we say: “Father, since they

don’t know what they are doing, they are not guilty and don’t need

to be forgiven”? Isn’t it either-or? Either you know what you are

doing and need to be forgiven, or you don’t know what you are

doing and you don’t need to be forgiven? Why does Jesus draw

attention to their ignorance of what they are doing and ask God to

forgive them?

The answer is that they are guilty for not knowing what they

are doing. Forgiveness is only needed for the guilty. Nobody can

forgive an innocent person. So when Jesus says, “Father, forgive

them,” he means they are guilty. Then when he says, “For they

don’t know what they are doing,” he must mean, “And they should

know what they are doing. And they are guilty for not knowing what

they are doing.” In other words, they have so much evidence of the

truth that the only explanation for their ignorance is they don’t want

to see it. They are hard and resistant and have a guilty blindness.

That is why they need to be forgiven.

So here are Gentiles and Jews killing the Son of God, the

Messiah of Israel, the most innocent and loving man who ever

existed. But they did not know whom they were killing. For this

ignorance they were guilty and in need of forgiveness. And amaz-

ingly, Jesus is praying for them that his Father would open their

eyes and help them to see their sin, repent, and be forgiven. That is

the beautiful thing about this prayer of Jesus: It declares guilt and

offers forgiveness at the same time. It helps us love our enemies by

Love Your Enemies—Pray for Those Who Abuse You 229

reminding us that our enemies are really guilty and that this must not

stop our love and mercy and forgiveness. Most of all it helps us

because we know that Jesus was suffering for us and praying for

us. We are called to love and forgive our enemies because we have

been loved and forgiven when we were the enemies of God.

Demand #30

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES—

DO GOOD TO THOSE WHO

HATE YOU, GIVE TO THE

ONE WHO ASKS

Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother

sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus

said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times

seven.” —Matt. 18:21-22

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who

hate you. —Luke 6:27

And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than

others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? —Matt. 5:47

We closed the previous chapter by dealing with prayer as a

form of love for our enemies. That was clear from Jesus’

demand to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute

you” (Matt. 5:44). We took Jesus’ prayer for his enemies as one

example. His focus was forgiveness: “Father, forgive them” (Luke

23:34). Forgiveness and reconciliation are clearly near the heart of

Jesus’ life and message. Hence we need to dig into these demands

more deeply here, then turn to several other forms of enemy love

(greeting those outside our group, doing good to those who hate

us, turning the other cheek, and giving to the one who asks). Finally,

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 231

we will wrestle with the question whether all of these commands,

like giving to the one who asks, are absolutely the only way that

love responds.

The Opposite of Forgiveness Is Not Alienation

Forgiveness from the heart—not just the mouth—is demanded by

Jesus from his disciples: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every

one of you [referring to God’s punishment in the parable of the

unforgiving servant], if you do not forgive your brother from your

heart” (Matt. 18:35). The opposite of forgiveness is not alienation.

The opposite is holding a grudge. The reason for this clarification is

that you may have a forgiving heart and be ready to let a painful

wrong go, but the one who wronged you may not be willing to

repent or even recognize that a wrong was done. Therefore, even

though you offer forgiveness, the relationship may not be healed. We

know this because Jesus offered forgiveness continually, but not all

were reconciled to him. So the opposite of forgiveness is holding a

grudge, not removing alienation. We are responsible for what we do,

not for what others do. We are responsible for our hearts, not theirs.

But Jesus makes clear that the effort to be reconciled is crucial.

We should make all reasonable efforts to be reconciled to those

who have taken offense at our words or actions. I say all reason-

able efforts because not every offense people take is warranted. Jesus

would have done nothing else with his life if he had to seek out

every individual scribe and Pharisee personally who was angry with

him. We must keep this in mind when we read Jesus’ demand for rec-

onciliation. He said, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and

there remember that your brother has something against you, leave

your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your

brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23-24). I take

the words, “if . . . your brother has something against you” to

mean: “if . . . your brother has something legitimate against you.”

Someone always had something against Jesus. There was never

a moment of his public ministry when someone was not offended

at him. If he had not been allowed to worship before approaching

232 Demand #30

all these people individually to be reconciled, he never would have

worshiped. So it is with most of his representatives throughout

history. They have always had irreconcilable adversaries. In fact,

Jesus warned us that we are probably not being his faithful fol-

lowers if “all people speak well of you” (Luke 6:26). Rather,

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude

you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the

Son of Man!” (Luke 6:22).

Resisting Reconciliation Imperils the Soul

So the point of Matthew 5:23-24 is that if a brother has a true rea-

son to be hurt or offended by something we did, we should move

quickly to be reconciled. We can see how crucial this is from the

use of the word “so” or “therefore” (oun\) at the beginning of verse

23: “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remem-

ber that your brother has something against you . . .” This connect-

ing word means that Jesus had just said something that makes the

command of verses 23-24 urgent. Here’s what he had said:

“Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment

. . . and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire”

(Matt. 5:22). In a word, this means: Despising your brother imper-

ils your soul.

“Therefore . . .” verses 23 and 24 follow. If contempt for a

brother or sister imperils our soul—if it threatens to cut us off from

God forever, as verse 22 says (by referring to hell)—then we can’t

go happily on our way to worship with something like that in our

heart. It must be dealt with, Jesus said, and quickly! Since despising

a brother brings us into peril with God, it is unlikely that God

would receive our worship while we are despising a brother in our

heart.

But that is not quite what Jesus says in verses 23-24. He does

not explicitly focus on our anger, but on the relationship that has been

damaged by our sin. The focus of Matthew 5:21-22 was indeed on

our anger and contempt. And the word “so” at the beginning of verse

23 shows that this anger is still behind what Jesus is about to say.

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 233

But what he, in fact, does say moves away from our subjective feel-

ings of anger or contempt to the relationship that has been wrecked

by our anger. The demand is, “Leave your gift there before the altar

and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer

your gift” (Matt. 5:24). Jesus assumes that this will involve putting

your anger aside. But the focus is on the concrete steps you should

take to talk to the offended brother. This will involve confessing

your sin and asking for forgiveness. It is one of the hardest things

that a proud, fallen human being can do. But when it happens, the

doors of heaven are open for the sweetest experience of worship.

Love Greets People Outside Our Group

Loving our enemy includes those who are hard to love, whether a

hostile stranger or bad-tempered spouse. And therefore the ways of

love that Jesus demands are as varied as self-sacrifice at the one end

of the spectrum and a simple greeting at the other end. It is remark-

able that in the context of enemy-love Jesus says something as ordi-

nary as, “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing

than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matt. 5:47).

People concerned with global suffering and international injustices

might think this is ridiculously individualistic and insignificant.

Greetings? Does it really matter in a world like ours whom we say

hello to on the street? Jesus knows that the true condition of our

heart is revealed not just by the global causes we espouse, but by

the daily acts of courtesy we show. Relentlessly he pursues the trans-

formation of our hearts, not just the alteration of our social agendas.

“Do Good to Those Who Hate You”

But the change of our hearts will result in radically altered social

agendas. One of the examples of loving our enemies that Jesus gives

is God’s daily mercy on this rebellious world: “He makes his sun

rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on

the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). Sun and rain are two essential things

beyond our human control that are needed for crops to grow. So

234 Demand #30

Jesus is saying that God reaches down to his enemies and helps

meet their needs for food and water. He does not wait for them to

repent. He shows mercy. Therefore, loving our enemy means prac-

tical acts of helpfulness in the ordinary things of life. God gives his

enemies sunshine and rain. You give your enemies food and water.

This and many other practical things are included in the simple lit-

tle phrase “do good.” “Do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27,

cf. vv. 33, 35).

Doing Good Through Healing

One of the commands to do good to others that was prominent in

the ministry of the twelve apostles during Jesus’ ministry was the

command to heal. Behind this command was Jesus’ own authority to

heal. The ministry of healing was a large and essential part of Jesus’

ministry. It was a manifestation of the arrival of the kingdom of God.

So preaching the kingdom and healing went hand in hand: “He went

throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming

the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every afflic-

tion among the people” (Matt. 4:23).

The ministry of healing was also one of the primary attesta-

tions of Jesus’ messiahship. When John the Baptist, sitting in Herod’s

prison, began to doubt that Jesus was the Messiah, he sent word to

Jesus and asked, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look

for another?” Jesus answered by pointing to his healing ministry:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight

and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the

dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by me” (Matt. 11:3-6; see

also Matt. 9:6).

The miracles of healing that Jesus did were meant to be a witness

to his unique role as the Messiah and Son of God. “The works that

I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me” (John 10:25).

Therefore, Jesus called people to believe in him because of his works:

“Believe the works, that you may know and understand that the

Father is in me and I am in the Father. . . . Believe me that I am in

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 235

the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the

works themselves” (John 10:38; 14:11).

The Authority of Jesus and the Command

to Heal

Nevertheless, though the miracles of Jesus bore special witness to his

unique relation to God and his unique authority, he bestowed a mea-

sure of this authority on his disciples. This became the foundation

of his command to heal. “He called to him his twelve disciples and

gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to

heal every disease and every affliction” (Matt. 10:1). Having given

them this authority, he commanded them to extend his own pattern

of ministry: “Proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven

is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out

demons” (Matt. 10:7).

This was true not only of the Twelve, but also of a wider group

of seventy-two. “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others

and sent them on ahead of him” (Luke 10:1). His command to them

was, “Heal the sick . . . and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has

come near to you’” (Luke 10:9).

How Shall We Obey the Command to Heal?

From this, the question rises about our responsibility today to con-

tinue the healing ministry of Jesus as a witness to the arrival of the

kingdom in his life and work. There are those who say that we

should indeed continue the ministry of Jesus today, preaching and

performing miraculous healings in the same way he did. Others

argue that such miraculous gifts and authority ceased with the dis-

appearance of the apostles and the first generation of believers.

My own view lies between these two positions. I think the first

group needs to come to terms with the role that miraculous heal-

ings had in bearing witness to the unique person and work of Jesus.

In other words, it does seem that the astonishing ministry of mirac-

ulous healing that Jesus and some of his first followers had was

236 Demand #30

part of the extraordinary events surrounding the incarnation of

God’s Son. The consistency and completeness with which Jesus

healed was unparalleled in human history. Every ministry of mirac-

ulous healing after the events of those first days falls far short of what

Jesus actually did. I don’t think this is owing to unbelief but to the

intended uniqueness of Jesus and those foundational days. What

Jesus did in healing and raising the dead was to reveal and antici-

pate the kind of thing that would happen fully in the age to come.

On the other hand, I do not see any reason to deny that some

measure of miraculous healing should accompany the ministry of the

gospel today. I suspect there will always be differing judgments as

to how prominent that ministry should be. The best way forward,

it seems to me, is to have an appreciation both for the reality of

miraculous healing as a witness to God’s compassion and power and

for the centrality of the word of God in saving sinners and the sov-

ereignty of God in healing as he pleases. Therefore, obedience to

Jesus today will for some groups mean a return to the centrality of

the word, and for other groups a discovery of the freedom and mer-

ciful power of God in healing.

Doing Good When Hated

The miracles of Jesus did not always result in saving faith. Some were

more impressed with his power than his person. At one point Jesus’

own brothers were more enamored by the public acclaim Jesus was

getting than by the spiritual beauty revealed through his miracles.

They tried to get him to be more public with his miracles in

Jerusalem: “No one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly.

If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” To which John

adds, “For not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:4-5).

And one must ponder with grief the stunning fact that Judas proba-

bly did miracles of healing along with the other apostles, but in the

end he betrayed Jesus.

Therefore, even the ministry of healing can fall within the com-

mand, “Do good to those who hate you.” We should pause and let

this sink in. Hate is a very strong word. Think of what it might

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 237

look like and feel like to be hated. And then ponder the marvel of

doing good for the one who hates you. Jesus certainly knew what it

was like to be hated (Luke 19:14; John 7:7; 15:18, 24-25), and he

laid his life down for all of his enemies who would receive his love.

When Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone

lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), he was not measur-

ing the greatness of his love by the fact that he was dying for his

friends, but by the fact that he was dying—and doing it freely. By

referring to his friends he meant that the purpose of his death to

remove the wrath of God (John 3:14-15, 36) and forgive sins (Matt.

26:28) would only be experienced by those who are now enemies but

lay down their enmity and become his friends.

And Jesus made it clear that just as he was hated, we certainly

will be hated if we follow him. “You will be hated by all for my

name’s sake” (Matt. 10:22). And this will be all the more painful

because the hate will sometimes come from former friends: “Many

will fall away and betray one another and hate one another” (Matt.

24:10). Think of the kinds of emotions that naturally rise in your

heart when someone really hates you and lies about you and wants

to hurt you. Most of us have such a strong sense of rights that we feel

immediately justified in getting even. Jesus demands that our hearts

change. There may be legitimate indignation over the evil, but the

heart must want the hater’s good and “do good.” Our love may

bring contrition to the hater’s heart, or it may be trampled in the

dirt (like the love of Jesus). But that is not our business. Jesus says,

“Do good to those who hate you.”

Turn the Other Cheek, and Give to the One

Who Asks

He becomes graphic in his illustrations of this demand to return

good for evil. “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other

also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your

tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who

takes away your goods do not demand them back” (Luke 6:29-30).

The challenge I feel as I face these radical demands is how to let them

238 Demand #30

have their full impact on my heart and life and yet not take them

more absolutely than Jesus intended. My fear is that if I make any

qualification I will minimize their intended force. On the other hand,

they will also lose their force if they seem so unrealistic that people

just pass over them as irrelevant to real life. So I will try to find the

middle way of showing that Jesus does not absolutize these illustra-

tions of love, but does not water them down to the irrelevance of

mere middle-class morality either.

“The Laborer Deserves His Wages”

There are several overlapping reasons why I believe Jesus means for

us to take these commands as illustrative of the kind of thing love

often does, rather than the exact thing love always does. First, the

requirement that we always comply with someone’s demand, and

even give more than what is demanded, would undermine, it seems,

the principle of justice in the economic order that Jesus himself

approves. On the one hand, Jesus says, “Give to everyone who asks

from you [the word is general rather than a technical term for

“beg”], and from one who takes away your goods do not demand

them back” (Luke 6:30). But on the other hand, Jesus approved of

giving laborers what was a fair wage, not simply what they wanted

their employer to give them (Matt. 20:9-14).

Jesus embraced the economic principle, “The laborer deserves

his wages” (Luke 10:7), which seems to imply that the laborer is

not bound to give labor without wages, and the employer is not

bound to give wages without labor. The economic order, which Jesus

supports, would collapse if either labor or management used Jesus’

command, “Give to him who asks” as a warrant to demand that

the other (in obedience to Jesus!) give without any recompense.

Nevertheless, Jesus says to his disciples that in their ministry, “You

received without paying; give without pay” (Matt. 10:8). So on the

one hand we have the statements that call for radical freedom from

the need for recompense (“Give to everyone who asks from you”),

and on the other hand we have the statements that affirm the eco-

nomic order that is built on the principle of a just recompense—

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 239

even in ministry: “The laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7). It

seems to me, therefore, that Jesus’ demand to “Give to everyone who

asks from you” is not a universal or absolute command for all cir-

cumstances, but is one frequent way that love acts.1

When Doing Good Does Not Give

Another pointer that these demands are not absolute for every situ-

ation is that the two commands—“do good” to those who hate us

and “give to everyone who asks”—may not always lead us to the

same behavior. We may have a very good plan for what would “do

good” for a person that would involve not giving him what he asks

for. And giving him what he asks for may not do him good. This is

easily seen in recovery programs where the plan involves no alco-

hol during the six months of residency. If the patient demands money

for a drink, we will say to him in love, that is not the way we can “do

good” to him right now.

Jesus did not always give to the one who asked from him. One

example is when the chief priests and the elders asked Jesus, “By

what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this

authority?” Jesus tested their authenticity. They failed the test, and

he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things”

(Matt. 21:23, 27). What this means is that “doing good” is not

always identical with giving to those who ask.

When Candidates for Love Compete

A third pointer that these demands are not absolute for every situa-

tion is that we almost always have competing candidates for our

1 We could pose the same question about three other aspects of the social order besides the

economic order: the family, education, and government. In the family, would Jesus support

discipline that turns the other cheek to the child who strikes his parent? Would Jesus support

education in which the teacher gives grades according to what the students demand? Would

Jesus oppose a state use of police force in subduing criminals rather than telling the police to

turn the other cheek? I suspect we would find that the principle holds: Jesus endorses the legit-

imate use of the law of recompense in these spheres of the social order. This would mean that

the radical commands we are looking at are not meant to be the only way love acts. Rather,

they are valid for believers as one frequent way of loving radically within the generally supported economic order as a witness to the truth that the order of this world is not absolute or ultimate; Jesus is.

240 Demand #30

love. In other words, what love seems to demand for one person is

a behavior that will not be loving to another person. Very simply,

what if two people demand from you the same thing at the same

time? Or what if the money you have set aside to pay the rent for a

poor person is demanded by a beggar? Or what if a thief demands

to have the keys to your car when your child is in the backseat? Most

of the time, any choice to give our time or money to one person

means it cannot go to another person. Therefore, we have no choice

but to apply principles other than simply the command to give, in

order to decide the most loving way to give. So I conclude that

Jesus’ commands to give to those who ask and lend expecting noth-

ing in return are not ultimate or absolute for every situation. The

very command of love that he is illustrating functions to guide how

they are applied.2

Typically commentators will say that these commands are hyper-

bole—rhetorical overstatements.3 I would ask them to clarify

whether they mean: hyperbole in the kind of action that Jesus calls

for, or hyperbole in the frequency it is required. My own sense is that

the latter is correct. In other words, I don’t want to deny that any

of these commands should be fulfilled literally at times. Rather, I

think what is hyperbolic is the impression that these behaviors are

the only way love acts in response to the situations described. I

2 This point about competing claimants to our love is part of the foundation for why followers

of Jesus may at times support very tough measures against people who are hurting or about to

hurt others. The use of force by police and by the military is defended on these grounds in

part. If force is not used against one person or group of persons, then they will hurt or kill or

enslave others. So, even though using force does not look like “turning the other cheek” (Matt.

5:39; Luke 6:29), it is in fact an effort to love one person or group better than if we simply let

aggressive people run over them. In such situations Jesus’ demand is that we seek extraordi-

nary wisdom—“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as

serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16; cf. Luke 12:42). And besides wisdom he is call-

ing for a radical freedom from the need for earthly riches and security and honor. See more on

this below.

3 Craig Keener, in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, gives wise and measured com-

ments in regard to most of these commandments in Matthew 5:38-48. For example, he recog-

nizes that Matthew 5:40 (“And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have

your cloak as well”) “if followed literally, would leave most disciples stark naked. . . . To deny that Jesus here literally advocates nudity (an offense to Jewish culture that would surely have

called for comment in the other sources!) and living on the street—that is to affirm that Jesus

is speaking the language of rhetorical overstatement (5:18-19, 29-32; 6:3)—is not to tone

down the seriousness of his demand. Jesus produced hyperbole precisely to challenge his hear-

ers, to force them to think about what they valued. Jesus’ words in this case strike at the very

core of human selfishness, summoning his disciples to value others above themselves in con-

crete and consistent ways” (195).

Do Good to Those Who Hate You 241

think Jesus himself gives us ample indications that he does not mean

that. There are times when “doing good” for someone will not

include giving whatever he asks.

What then do these radical commands mean? What shall we

do in response to them? If they are not absolutely the way to act in

every situation, what are they? To that we turn in the next chapter,

as well as to the question, how is it possible to love like this?

Demand #31

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES TO

SHOW THAT YOU ARE

CHILDREN OF GOD

To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from

one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away

your goods do not demand them back. —Luke 6:29-30

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that

you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. —Matt. 5:44-45

Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. —Luke 6:36

Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in

return, and your reward will be great. —Luke 6:35

At the end of the previous chapter we were wrestling with

Jesus’ radical demand, “To one who strikes you on the

cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your

cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who

begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do

not demand them back” (Luke 6:29-30). We argued that Jesus

does not mean that these responses are the only way love acts.

In this chapter we turn to a more positive statement of what is

required of us, and then to the question, how are we able to love

like this?

Show That You Are Children of God 243

Jesus Is Our Treasure, Our Security, and

Our Honor

What then is Jesus demanding in the radical commands like those

of Luke 6:29-30? I cannot escape the implication that behind and

within these commands is the demand to be radically free from the

love of money and from the need for earthly security and honor.

Turning the other cheek even though the backhanded slap is an

infuriating public dishonor, and lending without expecting repay-

ment, and taking the time out of your schedule to carry a soldier’s

burden twice as far as he demanded1—all of these things imply that

your treasure and your security and your honor are in heaven and

not on the earth. Jesus has become for you radically satisfying. If this

were not the case one can only imagine that the heart would be

seething with rage while doing good and suffering the indignity.

Therefore, I infer that in all these commands, Jesus is calling for a

change of heart that looks to Jesus and his reward rather than what

this world can give.

But it would be a mistake to stress only that Jesus is calling for a

change of heart that treasures Jesus more than money and security

and honor. He is also calling for real good to be done for our enemy

and that we should really want this good to be done. We have seen

this most clearly in the demand that we bless and pray for our ene-

mies (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:28). The real good that we must aim at, if

we love our enemies, is that all the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer come

true for them. To desire these things from our heart for our enemies,

and to lay down our lives to bring them about, that is love.

Dealing with a Skilled Liar

I would add one more description of what this love looks like. It

seems to me that in all the complexity of life that can easily help us

1 Matthew 5:41, “And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” “Because

tax revenues did not cover all the Roman army’s needs, soldiers could requisition what they

required . . . and legally demand local inhabitants to provide forced labor (Matt. 27:32).”

Craig S. Keener, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1999), 199.

244 Demand #31

rationalize disobedience to these commands, we should default to lit-

eral obedience when we are unsure of what love calls for. For exam-

ple, should I give to those who ask for money on the street in my

context in urban America? How do I “do good” to those who ask?

Jesus did not seem to be as concerned about being taken advantage

of as I am (Matt. 5:40, 42). I am often angered by the lies I am

being told. This anger makes me feel justified in giving nothing. But

I do not think this is the spirit of Jesus.

I think the spirit of Jesus would first feel compassion even for a

skilled liar. Then it would desire to move into the life of that liar with

the good news that Jesus came into the world to save liars. Then it

would try, if the other demands of love allow, to engage the person

more deeply and, if possible, take him somewhere to eat together and

talk. If that is not possible, then love may give freely even knowing

the person is probably a con artist. And at times love may say no—

for example, if the person has been back many times and has proven

to be a liar and consistently refused a relationship of love. But my

point is, when these things are less clear, the spirit of Jesus seems to

me to call for freehanded giving.

How Can We Love Like This?

The final question I ask now about Jesus’ demand to love our enemies

is: How we can do this? Where does power to love like this come

from? Think how astonishing this is when it appears in the real world!

It is an amazing thing when a person loves like this. To see it in a high

degree in anyone is rare. This should make us sober and strip us of all

presumption and set us seeking the power to be like this. If we limit

our answer to what we see in the immediate contexts of Matthew

5:38-48 and Luke 6:27-36, there are three interwoven answers.

In the Security and Help of Our

Heavenly Father

The first is found in the promise that if we love our enemies we will

be sons of God: “Love your enemies and pray for those who perse-

Show That You Are Children of God 245

cute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven”

(Matt. 5:44-45). Someone may take this to mean that you must

first become a person who loves his enemies before you can be a child

of God. But it may also mean—as I think it does—love your ene-

mies and so prove yourself to be what you are—a child of God. That

is, show that you are a child of God by acting the way your Father

acts. If you are his, then his character is in you, and you will be

inclined to do what he does. God loves his enemies—the evil and

the unjust—in sending rain and sunshine on them instead of imme-

diate judgment (Matt. 5:45).

There are several reasons for thinking that Jesus is not saying,

you are not a child of God until you prove you can love your enemy,

but rather is saying, you show you are a child of God by loving

your enemy. The first comes from the immediate paragraph and its

parallel in Luke. In Matthew 5:48 Jesus says, “You therefore must

be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And in Luke 6:36

he says, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Both these

statements assume that the disciples are being called to love (per-

fectly) because they are children of God, not in order to become

children of God.

Confirming this understanding of Matthew 5:45 (“so that you

may be sons of your Father” = “so that you may prove to be sons

of your Father”), there are other parallels that use similar words. For

example, in John 15:8 Jesus says, “By this my Father is glorified, that

you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” The words

“prove to be” translate the same verb (gevnhsqe) that is used in

Matthew 5:45. Jesus says fruit-bearing is possible because they are

already disciples—that is, they are branches in the vine who is Jesus

(John 15:5)—and now they will prove themselves to be so by doing

what branches do, namely, bear fruit (see also John 8:31).

Another argument that our sonship is proved rather than created

by loving our enemies is from the earlier part of Matthew 5, where

Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see

your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”

(5:16). Notice two things: one is that Jesus speaks to his disciples and

246 Demand #31

calls God their Father. He does not say, “He may become your

Father.” He says, “He is your Father.” Second, notice that when peo-

ple see the good works of the disciples (like loving their enemies),

they give glory to their Father. Why? Because their Father is in them

helping them and enabling them to do the good works. If they did

the good works on their own, so that they could then become chil-

dren of their Father, the world would see their good works and give

them the glory. So Jesus not only says that God is already the Father

of the disciples before they do the good works, but also, by impli-

cation, that this is the very reason they can do the loving works

they do. The light that shines through them is the light of their

Father’s love within them.

So when Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who

persecute you, in order that you may be sons of your Father who is

in heaven,” he does not mean that loving our enemies earns us the

right to be children of God. You can’t earn the status of a child.

You can be born into it. You can be adopted into it. You can’t work

your way into it. Jesus means that loving our enemies shows that

God has already become our Father, and that the only reason we

are able to love our enemies is because he loves us and has met our

needs first.

Therefore, the first answer to how we can love our enemies is

that being children of God has set us free from anxiety. We do not

fear that our treasure or security or honor can be lost by the ill-

treatment of our enemy or by the loss of earthly possessions. This

is the point of Matthew 6:31-32, “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What

shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For

the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father

knows that you need them all.” Similarly, that’s the point of

Matthew 10:29-31, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And

not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. . . .

Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” The

intimate knowledge and tender, sovereign care of our omnipotent,

all-wise, heavenly Father frees us for the radical kind of risks and

losses that enemy-love demands.

Show That You Are Children of God 247

“Your Reward Will Be Great”

Interwoven with this empowerment is another one in the immedi-

ate context of the commands. Jesus promises “great reward” if we

love our enemies—not in this life, but in heaven. “Love your ene-

mies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your

reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High” (Luke

6:35). I say the two sources of power are interwoven because the

“great reward” is connected to “you will be sons of the Most High.”

In other words, when you prove yourselves to be sons of God by lov-

ing your enemy, your inheritance as sons is secured. Sons are heirs,

and heirs of God are heirs of everything. “Blessed are the meek, for

they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5).

The reason I say that the reward is in heaven and not on the

earth is, first, that loving our enemy may cost us our lives (Luke

21:16). Jesus said our joy in the midst of persecution is based on

our reward in heaven: “Blessed are you when others revile you and

persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my

account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven”

(Matt. 5:11-12). The joy that sustains us in the midst of persecu-

tion, as we endeavor to love our enemies, is not based mainly on

what this world can offer, but on what God will be for us as our

Father, and what Jesus will be for us as our King, in the age to come

(see Luke 14:14).

As You Have Received Mercy Freely,

Give It Freely

A third truth that enables us to love our enemy is interwoven with

the other two in Luke 6:36, “Be merciful, even as your Father is mer-

ciful.” The implication here is not only that God is already our

Father, and that his inheritance is our joy-sustaining reward in suf-

fering, but also that the mercy of God has already been shown to

us through his Son Jesus. This means that the mercy we are called

to show is not just modeled on God’s mercy but is rooted in the

248 Demand #31

saving experience of God’s mercy. Jesus put it like this, “You received

without paying; give without pay” (Matt. 10:8).

In other words, God has forgiven our sins freely because of Jesus.

“Your sins are forgiven . . . your faith has saved you; go in peace”

(Luke 7:48, 50). This forgiveness, Jesus says, is purchased for us by

his own blood (Matt. 26:28). We did not deserve it or earn it. We

received it by faith. He came “to give his life as a ransom for many”

(Mark 10:45). He did not come to call the righteous but sinners

(Luke 5:32). Therefore, the stunning news is: Tax collectors and

the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before scribes and elders

(Matt. 21:31). Which means that we came into the position of a

forgiven disciple of Jesus, a citizen of his kingdom, and a child of

God by faith, not by loving our enemy first.

Now that we have received all this “without pay”—without

buying it or earning it or deserving it—now we are called: Freely you

received love when you were enemies of God; now freely give love to

your enemies.

Demand #32

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

AS YOURSELF, FOR THIS

IS THE LAW AND

THE PROPHETS

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said

to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and

with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first

commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor

as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the

Prophets.” —Matt. 22:36-40

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,

for this is the Law and the Prophets. —Matt. 7:12

The focus of the “second” commandment—“You shall love

your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39)—is not on whether

the receiver of love is an enemy or a friend, but on whether the one

who loves desires the neighbor’s good as he desires his own. Its

importance is seen by the two stupendous things that lie on either

side of it. On one side is the greatest commandment in the Word of

God—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and

with all your soul and with all your mind.” On the other side is the

assertion that everything1 written in the Law and the Prophets hangs

1 Matthew 22:40, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

250 Demand #32

on these two commandments. We are in the company of incompa-

rable superlatives—the two greatest commandments in the entire

Word of God, and all of that Word hanging on them. We should take

off our shoes in reverence here. There are few texts of Scripture

greater than this.

An Overwhelming and Staggering Command

The second commandment seems to me to be an overwhelming com-

mandment. It seems to demand that I tear the skin off my body and

wrap it around another person so that I feel that I am that other

person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health

and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though

he were me. It is an absolutely staggering commandment. If this is

what it means, then something unbelievably powerful and earth-

shaking and reconstructing and overturning and upending will have

to happen in our souls. Something supernatural. Something well

beyond what self-preserving, self-enhancing, self-exalting, self-

esteeming, self-advancing, fallen human beings like me can do on

their own.

Underlining the greatness of this commandment is the fact that

it is surpassed only by the command to love God with our whole

being. I have devoted a chapter to that commandment ( Demand #9).

But also underlining the importance of the second commandment

is the sweeping statement that all the Law and the Prophets hang

on it when it is linked with the first commandment. “On these two

commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt.

22:40). This phrase, “Law and Prophets” refers to the whole Old

Testament, as we can see in Luke 24:27, “Beginning with Moses

and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the

things concerning himself.”

This is an amazing statement. Here we have the authority of

the Son of God telling us something utterly crucial about the origin

and design of the entire plan and Word of God. First, consider the

sheer fact that Jesus said this. He didn’t have to say it. The lawyer

who drew him into this discussion didn’t ask about this (Matt.

This Is the Law and the Prophets 251

22:36). Jesus went beyond what he asked (“Which is the great com-

mandment in the Law?”) and said more. He seems to want to push

the importance and centrality of these commandments as much as he

can. He said that the commandment to love God is the great and

foremost commandment. He said the commandment to love your

neighbor as you love yourself is “like it” (Matt. 22:39). That’s

enough to raise the stakes here almost as high as they can be raised.

We have the greatest commandment in all of God’s revelation to

humanity (love God); and we have the second greatest, which is

like the greatest (love your neighbor as yourself).

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He wants us to be stunned at how

important these two commandments are. He wants us to stop and

wonder. So he adds, “On these two commandments depend all the

Law and the Prophets.” They are also the two commandments from

which everything else in the Scriptures flows.

On These Two Commandments Hang the

Whole Law and the Prophets

What does this mean? Answering this question opens a window

into heaven. We will see this if we start by contrasting what Jesus

says here in Matthew 22:40 with what he says in Matthew 7:12.

This verse is better known as the Golden Rule. One way to see it is

as a good commentary on “Love your neighbor as you love your-

self.” In that context, Jesus has just said that God will give us good

things if we ask and seek and knock, because he is a loving Father.

Then in Matthew 7:12 he says, “So whatever you wish that others

would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the

Prophets.”

Notice that Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets as he did

in Matthew 22:40. He says, if you do to others what you would have

them do to you, then “this is the Law and the Prophets.” In Matthew

22:40 he said, “On these two commandments hang the whole Law

and the Prophets.” Note that the first commandment—loving God

with all your being—is not mentioned in Matthew 7:12. Instead,

252 Demand #32

Jesus simply says that treating others the way we would like to be

treated “is the Law and the Prophets.”

Does Jesus Sum Up the Old Testament

Without God?

We must be careful here. Some people over the centuries have tried

to take sentences like the Golden Rule and say that Jesus was mainly

a profound teacher of human ethics and that what he taught is not

dependent on God or any relationship with God. They say, “See,

he can sum up the whole Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets,

in practical human relationships that don’t even mention God.”

I say we must be careful here, because thinking like that not only

ignores the great things Jesus said about God elsewhere and the

amazing things he said about himself coming from God to give his

life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), it also ignores the immedi-

ate context. Verse 12 begins with the word “so,” or in some versions,

“therefore.” “So whatever you wish that others would do to you,

do also to them.” What this shows is that the Golden Rule depends

on what went before—on our relationship to God as our Father who

loves us and answers our prayers and gives us good things when we

ask him (Matt. 7:7-11).

The immediately preceding verse (Matt. 7:11) says, “If you then,

who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how

much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to

those who ask him! Therefore . . . [keep the Golden Rule].” This log-

ical connection means God is upholding the Golden Rule by his

fatherly provision. His love for us—and our trusting, prayerful love

back to him—is the source of power for living the Golden Rule. So

you can’t turn Jesus into a mere teacher of ethics. He is here and

always God-saturated.

Loving God Becomes Visible in Loving Others

But still, Jesus does say that treating others as you want to be treated

“is the Law and the Prophets.” He does not say here that two com-

This Is the Law and the Prophets 253

mandments are the Law and the Prophets, but only one. This seems

significantly different from Matthew 22:40 where the Law and the

Prophets depend on both commandments.

Why does he say it in this way? I think what he means is that

when you see people love like that (fulfill the Golden Rule), what you

are seeing is the visible expression of the aim of the Law and the

Prophets. This behavior among people manifests openly and publicly

and practically what the Old Testament is about. It fulfills the Law

and the Prophets by making the aim visible. Loving God, however,

is invisible. It is an internal passion of the soul. But it comes to

expression when you love others. So loving others is the outward

manifestation, the visible expression, the practical demonstration,

and therefore the fulfillment of loving God and therefore of what the

Old Testament is about.

So there is a sense in which the second commandment (to love

your neighbor) is the visible goal of the whole Word of God. It’s

not as though loving God is not here, or that loving God is less

important; rather, loving God is made visible and manifest and full

in our visibly, practically, sacrificially loving others. I think that is

why the second commandment stands by itself here as an expres-

sion of what the Law and the Prophets are—“. . . for this is the

Law and the Prophets.” Loving our neighbor is not the Law and

the Prophets independently of loving God. Rather, loving our neigh-

bor is based on our love for God and, as the overflow of it, is what

the Law and the Prophets were aiming at.

How Do the Law and Prophets Hang on Love?

Now let’s return to Matthew 22:37-40. Here Jesus does mention

both love for God and love for neighbor; and he explicitly says in

verse 40, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and

the Prophets.” Why? I want to suggest that he is saying something

different from, but not contradictory to, Matthew 7:12. Here he

does not say that these two commandments “are” the Law and the

Prophets. He says that the Law and the Prophets depend on these

254 Demand #32

two commandments. “On these two commandments depend all

the Law and the Prophets.”

Here we are facing the window into heaven that I mentioned ear-

lier. Jesus says here that the Law and the Prophets literally hang

like a stone around the neck (Matt. 18:6) or a man on a cross (Luke

23:39). What do they hang on? They hang on love. This is the reverse

of what Matthew 7:12 says. There Jesus said that the Law and

Prophets lead to and find expression in love. But here in Matthew

22:40 Jesus is saying the reverse: Love leads to and finds expression

in the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets are hang-

ing on—depending on—something before them, namely, God’s pas-

sion that this world, this history of humankind, be a world of love

to God and radical, other-oriented love to each other.

Let me try to put this in a picture, so we can see it more plainly.

Picture the God-inspired history of redemption from creation to con-

summation as a scroll. This is the Law and the Prophets (and the

New Testament). The story of God’s acts and purposes in history

are told in this scroll, along with God’s commandments and

promises. Matthew 7:12 tells us that when the people of God love

their neighbor as they love themselves, the purpose of this scroll is

being fulfilled. Its aim is being expressed visibly and manifested prac-

tically so “that [people] may see your good works and give glory to

your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). So the scroll is leading

to love. Love is flowing from the scroll.

The Window into Heaven

But then Jesus gives us an incomparable perspective. He opens a win-

dow into heaven, so to speak. He lifts us out of history and out of the

world for a moment and shows us the scroll from a distance. Now

we can see it whole—the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament,

the story of redemption, the purposes and acts of God in history. And

what we see is that the scroll is hanging by two golden chains, one

fastened to each end of the scroll handles. Then Jesus lifts our eyes

to heaven, and we see the chains run up and disappear into heaven.

Then he takes us into heaven, and he shows us the upper ends of

This Is the Law and the Prophets 255

the chains. They are fastened to the throne of God. One chain is

fastened to the right arm of the throne where the words are

inscribed: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and

with all your soul and with all your mind.” And the other chain is

fastened to the left arm of the throne where the words are inscribed,

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus turns to us and says, “The whole scroll, the whole Law and

the Prophets, the whole history of redemption and all my Father’s

plans and acts, hang on these two great sovereign purposes of God:

that he be loved by his creation, and that they love each other as they

love themselves.” I believe it would not be too much to say that all

of creation and all the work of redemption, including the work of

Christ as our suffering, dying, and rising Redeemer, and all of his-

tory, hang on these two great purposes: that humans love God with

all their heart, and that from the overflow of that love we love each

other.

Which means that love is the origin (Matt. 22:40) and the goal

(Matt. 7:12) of the Law and the Prophets. It is the beginning and

the end of why God inspired the Bible. It’s the fountainhead and

spring at the one end and the shoreless ocean at the other end of

the river of redemptive history—remembered and promised in the

Word of God. Surely God’s purpose is that we take this command-

ment with tremendous seriousness. It would be wise in this majestic

context that we not assume we yet have seen the fullness of what love

is or that it already has the centrality in our lives that it should.

Jesus is saying: All of Scripture, all of his plans for history, hang on

these two great purposes: that he be loved with all our heart, and

that we love each other as we love ourselves.2

2 Though I have not handled in detail a closely related command of Jesus that he gave in the

context of controversy over the law, it should at least be mentioned in this chapter: “Go and

learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:13; cf. 12:7). In sum, it

seems that Jesus is saying that there are clues in the Old Testament, like this quote from Hosea

6:6, that, if we truly understood them, would enable us to see that all the law was pointing

beyond the ceremonial and the external to the heartfelt love commanded by Jesus.

Demand #33

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

WITH THE SAME

COMMITMENT YOU HAVE

TO YOUR OWN WELL-BEING

. . . as yourself. —Matt. 22:39

In this chapter we turn to look more closely into the command

itself, especially the devastating phrase “as yourself.” “Love your

neighbor1 as yourself” is a very radical command. What I mean by

“radical” is that it cuts to the root of our sinfulness and exposes it

and by God’s grace severs it.

The Root of Sin: The Desire to Be Happy

Apart from God

The root of our sinfulness is the desire for our own happiness apart

from God and apart from the happiness of others in God. I mean

that to be read carefully. Let me say it again: The root of our sinful-

ness is the desire to be happy apart from God and apart from

whether others find their eternal happiness in God. All sin comes

from a desire to be happy cut off from the glory of God and cut off

1 We will see in the following chapter how Jesus defines the scope of the word neighbor, but suffice it to say here that any attempt to narrow it along ethnic or family or associational lines

would fly into the face of Jesus’ intention. The one in need along your path, the one whom

you can help, is your neighbor.

. . . with the Same Commitment to Your Own Well-Being 257

from the good of others. The command of Jesus cuts to this root,

exposes it, and severs it.

Another name for this root of sinfulness is pride. Pride is the pre-

sumption that we can be happy without depending on God as the

source of our happiness and without caring if others find their hap-

piness in God. Pride is the contaminated and corrupted passion to be

happy. It is corrupted by two things: (1) the unwillingness to see God

as the only fountain of true and lasting joy, and (2) the unwilling-

ness to see other people as designed by God to share our joy in him.

If you take the desire to be happy and strip away from it God as

the fountain of your happiness and strip from it people as the ones

you hope will share your happiness in God, what you have left is

the engine of pride. Pride is the pursuit of happiness anywhere but

in the glory of God and the good of other people for God’s sake. This

is the root of all sin.

What Does “As Yourself” Mean?

Now Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And with that

commandment he cuts to the root of our sinfulness. How so? Jesus

says in effect: “I start with your inborn, deep, defining human trait—

your love for yourself. My command is, ‘You shall love your neigh-

bor as yourself.’ You love yourselves. This is a given. I don’t

command it; I assume it.2 All of you have a powerful instinct of

self-preservation and self-fulfillment. You all want to be happy. You

all want to live, and to live with satisfaction. You want food for

yourself. You want clothes for yourself. You want a place to live

for yourself. You want protection from violence against yourself.

You want meaningful or pleasant activity to fill your days. You want

some friends to like you and spend some time with you. You want

your life to count in some way. All this is self-love. Self-love is the

deep longing to diminish pain and to increase happiness.” That’s

what Jesus starts with when he says “as yourself.”

2 I think the modern effort to see “self-love” here as “positive self-image” and to see a com-

mand that we seek this positive image so that we can then love others is profoundly mistaken.

See John Piper, “Is Self-Love Biblical?” Christianity Today 21 (August 12, 1977): 6-9.

258 Demand #33

Everyone, without exception, has this human trait. This is what

moves us to do this or that. Even suicide is pursued out of this prin-

ciple of self-love.3 In the midst of a feeling of utter meaningless and

hopelessness and numbness of depression, the soul says, “It can’t

get any worse than this. So even if I don’t know what I will gain

through death, I do know what I will escape.” And so suicide is an

attempt to escape the intolerable. It is a misguided act of self-love.

Jesus Starts with the Given and the Goodness

of Self-love

Now Jesus says, “I start with this self-love. This is what I know

about you. This is common to all people. You don’t have to learn

it. It comes with your humanity. My Father created it. In and of

itself it is good.” To hunger for food is not evil. To want to be warm

in the winter is not evil. To want to be safe in a crisis is not evil. To

want to be healthy during a plague is not evil. To want to be liked

by others is not evil. To want your life to count in some significant

way is not evil. This was a defining human trait before the fall of man

into sin, and it is not evil in itself.

Whether it has become evil in your life will be exposed as you

hear and respond to Jesus’ commandment. He commands, “As you

love yourself, so love your neighbor.” Which means: As you long

for food when you are hungry, so long to feed your neighbor when

he is hungry. As you long for nice clothes for yourself, so long for

nice clothes for your neighbor. As you work for a comfortable place

to live, so desire a comfortable place to live for your neighbor. As you

seek to be safe and secure from calamity and violence, so seek com-

fort and security for your neighbor. As you seek friends for your-

self, so be a friend to your neighbor. As you want your life to count

and be significant, so desire that same significance for your neighbor.

3 Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher, wrote, “All men seek happiness. This

is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The

cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with

different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” Pensées (New York: E. P. Dutton,

1958), 113, Thought #425.

. . . with the Same Commitment to Your Own Well-Being 259

As you work to make good grades yourself, so work to help your

neighbor be able to make good grades. As you like to feel welcome

in a new company of people, so seek to make others feel welcome.

As you would that men would do to you, do so to them.

Your Self-seeking Becomes the Measure of

Your Self-giving

In other words, make your self-seeking the measure of your self-

giving. When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the word

“as” is very radical: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s a big

word: “as!” It means: If you are energetic in pursing your own hap-

piness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor. If

you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in

pursuing the happiness of your neighbor. If you are persevering in

pursuing your own happiness, then persevere in pursuing the hap-

piness of your neighbor.

In other words, Jesus is not just saying, seek for your neighbor

the same things you seek for yourself, but also seek them in the

same way—with the same zeal and energy and creativity and perse-

verance. And with the same life and death commitment when you

are in danger. Make your own self-seeking the measure of your self-

giving. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others, and what

it should be, by the pursuit of your own. How do you pursue your

own well-being? Pursue your neighbor’s well-being that way too.

Now this is very threatening and almost overwhelming, because

we feel immediately that if we take Jesus seriously, we will not just

have to love others “as we love ourselves,” but we will have to love

them instead of loving ourselves. That’s what it seems like. We fear

that if we follow Jesus in this and really devote ourselves to pursu-

ing the happiness of others, then our own desire for happiness will

always be preempted. The neighbor’s claim on my time and energy

and creativity will always take priority. So the command to love my

neighbor as I love myself really feels like a threat to my own self-love.

How is this even possible? If there is born in us a natural desire for

our own happiness, and if this is not in itself evil but good, how

260 Demand #33

can we give it up and begin only to seek the happiness of others at

the expense of our own?

How the First Commandment Sustains

the Second

I think that is exactly the threat that Jesus wants us to feel, until we

realize that this—exactly this—is why the first commandment is the

first commandment. It’s the first commandment that makes the sec-

ond commandment doable and takes away the threat that the second

commandment is really the suicide of our own happiness. The first

commandment is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your mind.” The first com-

mandment is the basis of the second commandment. The second

commandment is a visible expression of the first. Which means this:

Before you make your own self-seeking the measure of your self-

giving, make God the focus of your self-seeking. This is the point

of the first commandment.

“Love God with all your heart” means: Find in God a satisfac-

tion so profound that it fills up all your heart. “Love God with all your

soul” means: Find in God a meaning so rich and so deep that it fills

up all the aching corners of your soul. “Love God with all your mind”

means: Find in God the riches of knowledge and insight and wisdom

that guide and satisfy all that the human mind was meant to be.

In other words, take all your self-love—all your longing for joy

and hope and love and security and fulfillment and significance—and

focus it on God, until he satisfies your heart and soul and mind.

You will find that this is not a canceling out of self-love. This is a

fulfillment and transformation of self-love. Self-love is the desire

for life and satisfaction rather than frustration and death. God says,

“Come to me, and I will give you fullness of joy. I will satisfy your

heart and soul and mind with my glory.” This is the first and great

commandment.

And with that great discovery—that God is the never-ending

fountain of our joy—the way we love others is forever changed.

When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we don’t

. . . with the Same Commitment to Your Own Well-Being 261

respond by saying, “Oh, this is threatening. This means my love for

myself is made impossible by all the claims of my neighbor. I could

never do this.” Instead we say, “Oh, yes, I love myself. I have long-

ings for joy and satisfaction and fulfillment and significance and

security. But God has called me—indeed he has commanded me—

to come to him first for all these things. He commands that my love

for him be the form of my love for me.” That’s not a misprint. My

love for him is the form of my self-love. That is, all the longings

that would satisfy me (self-love) I direct to him and find satisfied in

him. That is what my self-love now is. It is my love for God. They

have become one. My quest for happiness is now nothing other

than a quest for God. And he has been found in Jesus.

Self-love, Fulfilled in God-love, Becomes the

Measure of Neighbor-love

So what then is Jesus commanding in the second commandment

(that we love our neighbor as ourselves)? He is commanding that our

self-love, which has now discovered its fulfillment in God-love, be

the measure and the content of our neighbor-love. Or to put it

another way, he is commanding that our inborn self-seeking, which

has now been transposed into God-seeking, overflow and extend

itself to our neighbor. So, for example:

• If you are longing to see more of God’s bounty and liberality

through the supply of food and rent and clothing, then seek to show

others the greatness of this divine bounty by the generosity you have

found in him. Let the fulfillment of your own self-love in God-love

overflow into neighbor-love. Or better: Seek that God, who is the ful-

fillment of your self-love, will overflow through your neighbor-love

and become the fulfillment of your neighbor’s self-love.

• If you want to enjoy more of God’s compassion through the con-

solations he gives you in sorrow, then seek to show others more of God’s

compassion through the consolations you extend to them in sorrow.

• If you long to savor more of God’s wisdom through the coun-

sel he gives in stressful relationships, then seek to extend more of

God’s wisdom to others in their stressful relationships.

262 Demand #33

• If you delight in seeing God’s goodness in relaxed times of

leisure, then extend that goodness to others by helping them have

relaxed, healthy times of leisure.

• If you want to see more of God’s saving grace powerfully

manifested in your life, then stretch out that grace into the lives of

others who need that saving grace.

• If you want to enjoy more of the riches of God’s personal

friendship through thick and thin, then extend that friendship to

the lonely through thick and thin.

In all these ways neighbor-love does not threaten self-love because

self-love has become God-love, and God-love is not threatened,

diminished, or exhausted by being poured into the lives of others.

Demand #34

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS

YOURSELF AND AS JESUS

LOVED US

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my

neighbor?” —Luke 10:29

Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,

for this is the Law and the Prophets. —Matt. 7:12

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just

as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all peo-

ple will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one

another. —John 13:34-35

Idon’t presume in the previous chapters to have solved all per-

plexities in the life of love. There are competing claims on our

limited time and resources. There are hard choices about what to

give up and what to keep. There are different interpretations of

what is good for another person. I don’t mean that all of that

becomes simple.

Radical Command and Radical Provision

What I do mean is this: Loving God sustains us through all the joy

and pain and perplexity and uncertainty of what loving our neigh-

bor should be. When the sacrifice is great, we remember that God’s

grace is sufficient. When the fork in the road of love is unmarked,

264 Demand #34

we remember with joy and love that his grace is sufficient. When we

are distracted by the world and our hearts give way temporarily to

selfishness and we are off the path, we remember that God alone

can satisfy, and we repent and love his mercy and patience all the

more.

It is a very radical command. It cuts to the root of sin called

pride—the passion to be happy (self-love) contaminated and

corrupted by two things: 1) the unwillingness to see God as the

only fountain of true and lasting joy, and 2) the unwillingness

to see other people as designed by God to receive our joy in him.

But that is exactly the corruption of self-love that Jesus counter-

acts in these two commandments. In the first commandment, he

focuses the passion to be happy firmly on God and God alone.

In the second commandment he opens a whole world of expand-

ing joy in God and says, human beings, everywhere you find

them, are designed to receive and enlarge your joy in God. Love

them the way you love yourself. Give them—through every

practical means available—what you have found for yourself in

God.

Warning: Don’t Narrow the Meaning of

“Neighbor”

Before we leave the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves,

we need to hear a warning that Jesus sounded. He warned us that

when we hear the command, “Love your neighbor as yourself” we

should not try to justify our lovelessness by narrowing down who the

neighbor is. He sounded this warning with the parable of the Good

Samaritan.

Once “a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher,

what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’” Jesus answered him, “What

is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The lawyer responded

with the two great commandments: “You shall love the Lord your

God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your

strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus said, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will

Love Your Neighbor as Jesus Loved Us 265

live.”1 Then the lawyer said something that Jesus did not like. Luke

describes the motive behind the man’s next words: “But he, desir-

ing to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”

(Luke 10:25-29).

Of all the many issues that could be taken up from the parable

of the Good Samaritan, I focus only on one. Jesus responds to the

lawyer’s self-justifying question with a parable that does not answer

his question but changes it. He changes the question from What kind

of person is my neighbor? to What kind of person am I? He changes

the question from What status of people are worthy of my love? to

How can I become the kind of person whose compassion disre-

gards status?

Jesus exposes the lawyer’s duplicity by showing him that he

already knew the answer to his question and was only trying to

trap Jesus (Luke 10:25). Now the lawyer knows that his motives

have been exposed and that he needs to confess or cover his

hypocrisy. He chooses to cover it—or to give it another name; he

chooses to “justify himself” (Luke 10:29). He does so by saying

something like, “Well, you know, Jesus, it’s not so easy to figure

out who our neighbor is. Life is complicated. Which kind of people

do we have to love? Who qualifies for being a neighbor in this com-

mand, ‘Love your neighbor’? Every race? Every class? Both sexes?

All ages? Outcasts? Sinners?”

A Question Jesus Will Not Answer

How does Jesus answer? He does not like this question—carving

humanity up into groups some of whom are worthy of our love

and others of whom are not. Jesus does not answer the question,

“Who is my neighbor?” He tells a parable that changes the question.

Between Jerusalem and Jericho a man falls among robbers. Luke

10:30 says they “stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving

him half dead.” The first two people to pass by are a priest and a

1 See Demand #20 for reflections on how this relates to Jesus’ understanding of justification by faith alone.

266 Demand #34

Levite2—the most religious folks—and they both pass by on the

other side of the road (Luke 10:31, 32). Then came a Samaritan,

not even a Jew, and the key phrase about this man is at the end of

Luke 10:33, “He had compassion.”

You see how the focus has shifted. The question about what kind

of man is dying is not even in the story anymore. The whole focus

is now on the kind of people who are walking by. The first two felt

no compassion. The Samaritan was a different kind of person. So

when you get to the end, what’s the question that Jesus asks? Was

it, “So was the wounded man a neighbor?” No. That is not the ques-

tion. Jesus asked the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think

proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the rob-

bers?”(Luke 10:36). The lawyer answered, “The one who showed

him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke

10:37). Jesus does not give an answer to his question, “Who is my

neighbor?” Instead, he says in effect, go become a new kind of per-

son. Go get a compassionate heart.

The Death of Jesus: Purchase and Pattern

This is exactly what Jesus died for. This is the promise of the new

covenant in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart, and a new

spirit I will put within you.” And Jesus said at the Last Supper,

“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my

blood” (Luke 22:20). Those who follow Jesus all the way to the cross

will see him there paying for their new heart with his own blood.

Which brings us to one final point in this chapter: the relation-

ship between Jesus’ command that we love our neighbor as our-

selves and his command that we love each other as he has loved

us. Jesus’ death is both guilt-bearing and guidance-giving. It is a

death that forgives sin and a death that models love. It is the pur-

chase of our life from perishing and the pattern for a life of love. I

close with this focus because of the seeming tension between the

2 The Levites were descendants of the tribe of Israel named after Levi (Exod. 6:25; Lev. 25:32;

Num. 35:2). The name is, however, generally used as the part of the tribe that assisted the priests in the service of the temple (1 Kings 8:4; Ezra 2:70).

Love Your Neighbor as Jesus Loved Us 267

two commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself” and the

“new commandment.”

In John 13:34-35 Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to

you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also

are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are

my disciples, if you have love for one another” (see also John 15:12).

Jesus makes the connection between his love and his death when he

says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his

life for his friends” (John 15:13). So it is important that we see the

connection between the death of Jesus and our fulfillment of the

commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” On the one hand,

the death of Jesus models how we should love, and on the other hand

the death of Jesus purchases for us the very transformation that

enables us to love.3 We have discussed the purchasing work of Jesus

in previous chapters (see Demands #10, 23). Here we need to pon-

der how the pattern of Jesus’ love relates to the command “Love

your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus called the commandment to love as he loved “a new com-

mandment” (John 13:34). But the commandment “Love your neigh-

bor as yourself” is an old commandment from Leviticus 19:18. Does

that mean that the command to love our neighbor as we love our-

selves is now passé and we have a new one—to love as Jesus loved?

I don’t think so.

What’s new is that we had never seen the old commandment of

love lived out for us perfectly by the Son of God. Before Jesus, no one

had ever been able to say without qualification, “Love as I have

loved.” Not only that, the newness seems to relate to the purpose

of Jesus to have a new people whose mark in the world would be

allegiance to him (and his Father) and to each other in love. So he

says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you

3 See Demands #20, 21, 27 for the relationship between the transformation that Jesus’ death purchases and the location or justification that it purchases. The point there is that Jesus is the

basis of a new “location” in God’s favor that becomes the basis and hope of the demonstra-

tion of that favor through a transformed heart and life.

268 Demand #34

have love for one another” (John 13:35). “Love like mine is the

badge of belonging to the new people that I am gathering.”

Jesus Loved Us Perfectly in Loving Himself

Perfectly

But the essence of what love is—what we have unfolded earlier in

this chapter—is not different from what Jesus demands here. When

Jesus died for us, he loved us as he loved himself. He perfectly ful-

filled the command, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus loved

himself perfectly in that he desired his happiness with perfectly holy

desire. That is, he found his happiness from all eternity in his fel-

lowship with his Father and in being one with the Father (John

10:30). When he laid down his life for us, he did not deny or dis-

card that desire for his own infinite happiness in God; he expressed

it. He pursued it.

When Jesus died he purchased for sinners like us everything

needed for us to find our joy in God. Since our joy in God magni-

fies the worth of God, this is exactly what Jesus has delighted in for

all eternity. Therefore, in dying for our joy in God he is dying to

display and preserve his fullest joy in God’s glory. That glory is

reflected in our blood-bought joy in God. Therefore, Jesus’ love is a

perfect expression and fulfillment of the command to “Love your

neighbor as yourself.”

So whether he says to us, “Love God and love your neighbor as

yourself, because on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets,”

or whether he says, “Love one another as I have loved you so that

all will know you are my disciples,” he is commanding essentially the

same thing. It is a radical command. We must make our own passion

for happiness the measure of our passion for the good of others. And

we must make the measure of Jesus’ suffering and the perfection of

his happiness in God the standard of our sacrifice and the focus of

the joy we pursue for ourselves and others.

Demand #35

LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES

TREASURES IN HEAVEN

BY GIVING SACRIFICIALLY

AND GENEROUSLY

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust

destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for your-

selves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys

and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your trea-

sure is, there your heart will be also. —Matt. 6:19-21

You received without paying; give without pay. —Matt. 10:8

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one

who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then

you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will

entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in

that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your

own? —Luke 16:10-12

The more sacrificially generous you are on earth, the greater will

be your enjoyment of heaven. Therefore, since Jesus loves us

and summons us to maximize our eternal joy in heaven, he demands

radical freedom from the love of money and radical generosity,

especially toward the poor.

270 Demand #35

Sacrifice Is the Measure of a Gift’s Size

The reason I say, “the more sacrificially generous you are” is because

of what Jesus said about the widow’s offering. Here’s the story:

[Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people

putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large

sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins,

which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to

them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than

all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all con-

tributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put

in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44)

The point here is that the value of a gift is not measured by its size but

by its sacrifice. She put in “more” than all, Jesus said. Not more in

quantity, but more in sacrifice. The reason for this is that sacrifice is a

better measure of where your heart is. If you are rich and give much,

you have so much left over that your heart may easily rest in the remain-

der. But if you sacrifice for Jesus and have little left, then the heart has

less to rest in. The heart is more likely to be resting in the hope of

heaven. It is more likely to be depending on Jesus than on money.

Why Such a Huge Concern with Our Money

and Possessions?

It is astonishing how much Jesus deals with money and what we do

with it. Randy Alcorn reckons that “15 percent of everything Christ

said relates to this topic—more than his teachings on heaven and hell

combined.”1 Consider just a sampling of the kinds of things Jesus

says about money and related lifestyle issues:

You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor,

and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

(Mark 10:21)

1 Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2001), 8. I highly recom-

mend this small book as a way to help people live out the radical call of Jesus concerning money.

Giving Sacrificially and Generously 271

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of

heaven. . . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have received

your consolation. (Luke 6:20)

Any of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my

disciple. (Luke 14:33)

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a

rich person to enter the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:25)

One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

(Luke 12:15)

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these

things will be added to you. (Matt. 6:33)

Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with

moneybags that do not grow old. (Luke 12:33)

Zacchaeus . . . said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my

goods I give to the poor.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salva-

tion has come to this house.” (Luke 19:8-9)

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a

man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that

he has and buys that field. (Matt. 13:44)

Jesus . . . saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And

he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than

all of them.” (Luke 21:1)

But God said to [the man who built even bigger barns], “Fool! This

night your soul is required of you, and the things you have pre-

pared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure

for himself and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20-21)

272 Demand #35

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of

Man has nowhere to lay his head. . . . Follow me. (Luke 9:58-59)

Why does Jesus express such a remarkable concern with what we

do with our money? The reason for this, it seems, is the basic prin-

ciple that Jesus laid down: “Where your treasure is, there your heart

will be also” (Matt. 6:21; Luke 12:34). In other words, the reason

money is so crucial is that what we do with it signals where our heart

is. “Where our heart is” means where our worship is. When the heart

is set on something, it values it, cherishes it, treasures it. That is what

worship means.

You Cannot Serve Two Masters: God

and Money

You can see this in Jesus’ warning that “No one can serve two mas-

ters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be

devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God

and money” (Matt. 6:24). The idea of “serving” here is peculiar. It

relates more to worshiping than to providing a service. Jesus said,

“You cannot serve God and money.” How do we serve money?

The answer is not: Provide a service for money. Or, provide

help to money, or meet money’s needs. Just the opposite: Serving

money means looking to money to provide you a service and to

provide your help and meet your needs. Serving money means plan-

ning and dreaming and strategizing and maneuvering to be in a posi-

tion to maximize our wealth and what money can provide for us.

Money is the giver and the benefactor in this servant-master rela-

tionship. You don’t do any good for money. You look to money to

do good for you.

Now Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and money.” The mean-

ing of “serve” would, presumably, be the same in these two rela-

tionships. So what Jesus is saying is that we should serve God not

in the sense of providing a service or giving him help, but the oppo-

site: We look to God to be our helper, our benefactor and treasure.

To serve him would be to plan and dream and strategize and maneu-

Giving Sacrificially and Generously 273

ver to be in a position to maximize our enjoyment of God and what

he alone promises to be for us. God then, not money, becomes the

giver and the benefactor in this servant-master relationship. You

don’t meet God’s needs (he has none!). You look to God to meet

yours.

So the reason money is so crucial for Jesus is that across all cul-

tures and all ages it represents the alternative to God as the treasure

of our hearts, and therefore the object of our worship. It becomes the

great threat to our obedience to the first and last of the Ten

Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod.

20:3), and “You shall not covet” (Exod. 20:17). Money represents

all the other material things and securities and pleasures that it can

buy. Therefore, it represents the great alternative to God in our

hearts. This is why what we do with our money is so crucial to

Jesus.

Selfishness Separates from Heaven, and Sacrifice

Heightens Joy in It

Let’s return to the main point I made in the first paragraph of this

chapter: The more sacrificially generous you are on earth, the greater

will be your enjoyment of heaven. There are two things being said

here. One is that a selfish spirit will keep us out of heaven. And the

other is that there are degrees of reward, or degrees of joy, in heaven,

depending on how sacrificially generous we were on earth. Both of

these claims are controversial. But in view of what we have seen in

the previous chapters, they should not come as a complete surprise.

In the next chapter I will take them one at a time and give some

evidence from the words of Jesus.

Demand #36

LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES

TREASURES IN HEAVEN

AND INCREASE YOUR JOY

IN JESUS

How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom

of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle

than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.—Luke 18:24-25

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one

who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then

you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will

entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in

that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your

own?—Luke 16:10-12

Emerging in the previous chapter were two controversial claims

that I will try to support from Jesus’ teaching in this chapter.

First, the claim that a selfish spirit will keep us out of heaven. Second,

the claim that there are degrees of reward, or degrees of joy, in

heaven, depending on how sacrificially generous we were on earth.

First, Jesus implies, again and again, that a selfish spirit will keep

us out of heaven. Here are five examples to show this truth.

The Rich Ruler and Eternal life

First, when the rich ruler asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eter-

nal life, Jesus responded, “Sell all that you have and distribute to

Increase Your Joy in Jesus 275

the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow

me” (Luke 18:18, 22). This seems to make eternal life dependent

on being free from the love of money and being generous to the poor.

This is indeed what Jesus is saying, as we can see from the fact that

when the man who was “extremely rich” (Luke 18:23) turns away,

Jesus says, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the

kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye

of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”

(Luke 18:24-25).

As we can imagine, the disciples are surprised by this statement

and ask, “Then who can be saved?” (Luke 18:26). They see that

“inheriting eternal life” and “entering the kingdom of God” are

terms that refer to “being saved.” Jesus’ answer is not to say,

“Salvation is not at stake in this man’s selfishness.” Rather he says,

“What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27).

In other words, only God can change the selfishness that keeps a man

out of heaven. But it is clear that this man’s love for his money kept

him out of heaven: “He went away sorrowful, for he had great pos-

sessions” (Mark 10:22). (For how this relates to justification by faith

alone see Demand #20.)

The Rich Man, the Beggar, and

Two Destinies

A second example is the story of the rich man and the beggar at his

gate. Jesus said, “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple

and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his

gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores” (Luke

16:19-20). The poor man wanted just a crumb from the rich man’s

table, but the picture we get is that the rich man was oblivious or dis-

dainful to the poor at his very door. So Jesus describes the death

and afterlife of both men: “The poor man died and was carried by

the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried,

and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw

Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side” (Luke 16:22-23). In other

276 Demand #36

words, Jesus is saying that the selfish indifference of the rich has

landed him in hell.1

Failure to Love and Final Judgment

Third, similarly, in Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus warns that a profess-

ing follower of Jesus who is indifferent to the needs of the poor will

endure “eternal punishment.” When the king (representing Jesus in

the story) pronounces this dreadful sentence over the selfish “disci-

ples,” they say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a

stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

And the king answers, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to

one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And Jesus gives the

final word: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the

righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:44-46). In other words, a self-

ish spirit will keep us out of heaven.

The Rich Fool Who Loses His Soul

Fourth, again Jesus tells a parable of a rich fool. The man’s fields pros-

per, and he has more than he can use. Instead of thinking generously

he says, “I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I

will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul,

you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be

merry” (Luke 12:18-19). To this selfish decision Jesus says that God

responds with these words: “Fool! This night your soul is required of

you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke

12:20). In other words, his selfish spirit led to the loss of his soul.

How to Lose True and Lasting Riches

Fifth, here is one last illustration of how a selfish spirit keeps us out

of heaven. After the parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1-9),

Jesus draws out these conclusions:

1 The point is not that poverty lands someone in heaven. The spiritual condition of the poor man

is not the focus of the parable. It goes unmentioned. There is no reason to assume he was not

a genuine believer. But the focus is on the rich man who perished. The parable is a warning of

the danger of riches.

Increase Your Joy in Jesus 277

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and

one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If

then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will

entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful

in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your

own? (Luke 16:10-12)

It is fairly clear that “true riches” and “that which is your own” refer

to the treasures of heaven—the pleasures of the age to come when we

enjoy unbroken fellowship with Jesus. Therefore, Jesus is saying that

we will not get these true riches if we have not been faithful with

what we were given to use in this fallen world. He is referring to

our money—that is, the material resources at our disposal here. If we

have been stingy rather than using our money to lead people to

faith (Luke 16:9), we will not enter heaven with its true riches of

fellowship with Jesus.

The Ground of Our Acceptance with God

That is one implication of what I said in the first sentence of this

chapter: A selfish spirit will keep us out of heaven entirely. I hope it

is plain by now in this book that I do not believe a sacrificially gen-

erous spirit is the ground of our acceptance with God. When Jesus

says that a selfish spirit keeps us out of heaven, he does not mean that

God watches to see if we show ourselves to be generous before he

accepts us into his everlasting favor. Before we can be generous,

God receives us into his favor through faith in Jesus (John 3:16).

He takes us into his family as his children (John 1:12). He counts

us righteous (Luke 18:14); he forgives our sins (Matt. 26:28); he

gives us eternal life (John 5:24). None of these is obtained in this

life by first overcoming our selfish spirit. It is the other way around.

We recognize our selfish spirit and despair of overcoming it on our

own and turn to Jesus as our only hope. In this turning to Jesus, we

are justified, forgiven, adopted, secured in his care forever (John

10:28-30). On that basis we now make progress in overcoming our

selfish spirit.

278 Demand #36

Greater Sacrifices of Love Lead to Greater Joy

in Heaven

The other controversial claim emerging in the previous chapter and

mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter is that the degree to

which we overcome our selfishness determines, in some measure, the

degree of our reward—our joy—in heaven. The more sacrificially

generous you are on earth, the greater will be your enjoyment of

heaven. The first indication that Jesus means this is found in his

Parable of the Ten Minas.2 Jesus compares his departure from this

earth to a nobleman who goes to a far country to receive a king-

dom and gives his ten servants (representing the followers of Jesus)

one mina each, saying, “Engage in business until I come” (Luke

19:13). I take this “business” to include the kind of loving generos-

ity that Jesus repeatedly commanded.

When the king returns, he calls his servants to give an account of

how they used their mina. The first came and said he had made ten

more minas with his mina. The second said he had made five more.

The third made none. To the first Jesus said, “Well done, good ser-

vant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have

authority over ten cities.” To the second he said, “And you are to

be over five cities” (Luke 19:17, 19). I take these two different

rewards to represent diversity of rewards in heaven. My point is

not how literally to take the promise of cities. My point is simply that

this is an indication that in the kingdom there will be different

rewards.

The Measure You Use Will Be Used to

Measure You

Another indication that Jesus thinks this way about heaven is the

way he speaks in Luke 6:37-38: “Judge not, and you will not be

judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and

you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure,

pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your

2 A mina is an amount of money, namely, about three months’ wages for a laborer.

Increase Your Joy in Jesus 279

lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

What does Jesus mean, “With the measure you use it will be mea-

sured back to you”?

First, he confirms what we saw before, that a selfish spirit will

rob us of all blessing: “Give, and it will be given to you.” He is not

speaking of mere human relations here. He is speaking of the final

reckoning with God. That is the context of judgment and condem-

nation and forgiveness. It is also implied in the gracious promise that

our reward will be “pressed down, shaken together, running over.”

This is a picture of God’s overflowing grace. If we give, God will

super-reward. If we do not, we will be condemned for our selfish,

unbroken, unredeemed heart.

But what about “the measure” that we use in giving? “With

the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” This is where

I get the idea that there will be varying rewards in heaven for dif-

ferent measures of sacrificial generosity on earth. R. C. H. Lenski

seems to me to be especially insightful on this text. He says:

Jesus explains this return measure by stating the principle on which

it is given: “for with what measure you go on measuring it shall

be measured to you in return: ajnt vi in the verb ( anti metr∑th∑setai)

means in turn or back. In other words, by our giving we build the

measure that will be used for giving back to us. Our own mea-

sure is used to measure back to us. By using it ourselves we declare

that we want God to use it for us at the end. . . . It is the measure

we bring to God, and all he can do is to fill it. And fill it overflow-

ing he will (“pressed down, shaken together, running over”). . . .

Thus they who give nothing will receive even less, and they who

give much their lifelong will receive vastly more. This is both jus-

tice and grace.3

I assume that by “justice” he does not speak strictly, since even our

best generosity is imperfect and deserves nothing from God. I take

3 R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1946),

374-375.

280 Demand #36

him to mean that it is fitting and proper and just that there be a

correspondence between our giving and God’s giving to us—not an

exact one, but a real one. So he uses the same measure, but he fills

it more overflowingly than we ever did for anyone here.

The point I am stressing here is that there are differences in the

fullness of delight that each of us enjoys in heaven. Each will be full

in heaven, for there are no frustrations there. But the fullness of

each will not be the same since the measure that we used to bless oth-

ers on earth, and that God will use to bless us in heaven, are differ-

ent for different people. Therefore I say again, the more sacrificially

generous we are on earth, the greater will be our enjoyment of

heaven.

“Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven”

Because of this, I take Jesus’ command, “Lay up for yourselves trea-

sures in heaven” (Matt. 6:20), to mean: Strive to make the measure

of your generosity as large as you can. This is clearly the way Jesus

means it in Luke 12:33, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy.

Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a

treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches

and no moth destroys.” In other words, the way you provide your-

selves with “moneybags that do not grow old” and with “treasure in

the heavens” is to “give to the needy.” Ageless moneybags and trea-

sure in heaven are metaphors for heavenly reward—the fullness of

the measure of joy we will be given in heaven. Their measure is deter-

mined by the positive command, “Give to the needy.” We lay up

treasure in heaven by not hoarding here on earth, but by using our

possessions sacrificially and generously—that is, lovingly.

We will see in the next chapter that this kind of sacrificial gen-

erosity is grounded in the goodness of God to us before and while we

are generous to others. We are able to love and give because he has

already given freely to us and promises to meet every need we have

in a lifetime of generosity (Matt. 6:33; 7:7-12; Luke 12:32).

Demand #37

LAY UP FOR YOURSELVES

TREASURES IN HEAVEN—

“IT IS YOUR FATHER’S

GOOD PLEASURE TO GIVE

YOU THE KINGDOM”

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give

you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy.

Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a trea-

sure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches

and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your

heart be also. —Luke 12:32-34

Before looking at the ground of our giving in the goodness of

God, there is a pressing question that rises whenever the moti-

vation of rewards is mentioned. I turn first to that question and

then to the goodness of God beneath all our giving.

Why Is This Not Prudential Self-regard?

Why would this motivation for giving—to enlarge the measure of

our joy in heaven—not turn our giving from an act of love into an

act of prudential self-regard? The reason is that in all our giving

our aim is that the beneficiaries—whether enemies or brothers—

will be helped, by our giving, to see more of the beauty of Jesus so

282 Demand #37

that they are drawn with us into the heavenly reward. No genuine

follower of Jesus wants to enjoy Jesus alone. That is not the kind of

Jesus who exists. He cannot be enjoyed alone. He lived and died to

be “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The joy that we want to

increase for ourselves is a shared joy. Giving sacrificially and gener-

ously enlarges the measure of our joy in heaven not only by the size

of our heart toward others, but—to shift the emphasis—by the size

of our heart toward others. We aim that they share our joy and

that we share theirs, so that both joys are larger because of being

shared.

Or to turn the problem around: What sort of love would it be

if in giving generously to others we did not want to share in the joy

we want for them? Disinterested giving would send the signal that

the gift I am giving you is not worth having. If I have no passion to

enjoy what I offer you, then how can my offer be seen as valuable?

I think some people entangle themselves in a contradiction here

because they think it is loving to give to the needy without regard

to the eternal joy of the needy. They think that simply giving to the

poor without aiming at their conversion, so that Jesus becomes

their treasure, is a loving thing to do. It is not. If we are indifferent

to whether our generosity leads the beneficiary to love Christ, we are

not acting in love. I do not mean we must succeed in order for our

generosity to be love. Our aim may not be attained. They may reject

Jesus while accepting our generosity. We will not stop loving them

for that—as long as they live. But not to aim at their eternal joy in

Jesus is not a loving way to give.

Giving Sacrificially Shows Our Freedom from

Bondage to Things

The giving that Jesus has in mind is as diverse as the possible ways

to bless others with what we have and do and say. His demand is

that we use what we have to bless others. It may be money (Matt.

19:21) or healing (Matt. 10:8) or a cup of cold water (Mark 9:41)

or time and effort like the Good Samaritan’s (Luke 10:34-35) or

your home and hospitality (Luke 14:13-14). The point of Jesus’

“It Is Your Father’s Pleasure to Give You the Kingdom” 283

demand is that we be radically free from the love of money and

what it can buy, and from the fear of losing the security and com-

forts it affords.

Money enslaves either by greed or fear. We are greedy for more

of it and fearful of losing what we have. Jesus wants us free.

Sacrificial giving is one evidence that we have been liberated from the

idols that money provides. It is also evidence that we have begun to

love other people the way we should—that is, we are focusing out-

wardly on the joy of making others glad, not just the private plea-

sures that putrefy in the small world of selfishness.

We can see how Jesus thinks about our liberation by the way

he links the promise of God’s provision with the demand for sacri-

ficial generosity. Here’s the link: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your

Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your posses-

sions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:32-33). Surely Jesus intends

for us to understand a “therefore” between the promise and the com-

mand: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to

give you the kingdom. Therefore, sell your possessions, and give to

the needy.”1

Luke 12:32 is the key to being liberated from our fearful

slavery to possessions. It is the dynamite that can demolish the

house of materialism that we live in. Luke 12:32 is a powerful

word from Jesus about the nature of God. It’s about what kind of

heart God has—what makes God glad, not merely what he has or

does. Indeed, it is about what God delights to do, what he loves to

do and takes pleasure in doing. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your

Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” These are the

words that set us free to sell our possessions and give sacrificially

and generously.

1 The same logic is found in numerous places in the teachings of Jesus. For example, Jesus says,

“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 14:13-14). And: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So

whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matt. 7:11-12). And:

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What

shall we wear?’ For . . . your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matt. 6:31-32).

284 Demand #37

The Goodness of God Is the Ground of

Our Giving

Notice every amazing part of this extravagantly gracious verse: “It is

your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In other

words, God is not acting in this generous way in order to cloak and

hide some malicious motive. The words “good pleasure” utterly rule

that out. He is not saying inside, “I will have to be generous for a

while even though I don’t want to be, because what I really want to

do is bring judgment on sinners.”

Jesus’ meaning is inescapable: God is acting here in freedom.

He is not under constraint to do what he doesn’t really want to do.

At this very point, when he gives his flock the kingdom, he is acting

out of his deepest delight. This is what the word means: God’s joy,

his desire, his want and wish and hope and pleasure and gladness

and delight, is to give the kingdom to his flock.

Then consider the phrase “your Father’s.” “Fear not, little flock,

it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Jesus

does not say, “It is your employer’s good pleasure to pay you your

salary.” He does not say, “It is your slavemaster’s good pleasure to

provide your lodging.” He does not even say, “It is your king’s good

pleasure to bestow the kingdom.” He chooses every word in this sen-

tence to help us get rid of the fear that God is ill-disposed to us. So

he calls God our “Father.”

God Is the Best of Fathers—Far Better Than the

One You Had!

Now, not all of us have had fathers who patterned their lives after

God. And so the word father may not be full of peace and security

the way Jesus means it to be. So let me try to fill the word father with

two of the meanings Jesus intended it to carry.

First, if the King is our Father, then we are heirs of his king-

dom. There is something natural about our receiving it—it’s our

inheritance. Matthew 25:34 says that in the last day King Jesus will

say, “Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit [note the

“It Is Your Father’s Pleasure to Give You the Kingdom” 285

word!] the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the

world.” Before the beginning of the world God prepared a king-

dom for his children. It is theirs by the right of inheritance. And

God does not begrudge his children coming into their inheritance.

It is his good pleasure to give them the kingdom.

Second, if the King is our Father, then we are free from being

taxed. In Matthew 17:25, Peter wondered if the disciples had to

pay the temple tax. Jesus says, “What do you think, Simon? From

whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or

from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him,

“Then the sons are free.” God does not levy taxes against his chil-

dren. It is those outside the palace who feel the burden of law, not

the children within. The children are free! The fatherhood of God

means freedom.

The list of implications of what it means to have God as our

Father could go on—and all of them would serve to overcome the

fear that God is begrudging in his kindness to us. He is not begrudg-

ing. He is eager. He delights to give to his children. He is our Father,

and if we who are evil know how to give good things to our children,

how much more will our Father in heaven give the kingdom to

those who ask him (Matt. 7:7-11).

The Lavish and Tender Generosity and

Care of God

Then consider the word “give.” “It is your Father’s good pleasure

to give you the kingdom.” Jesus does not say sell you the kingdom.

He does not say trade you the kingdom. He says it is the Father’s

good pleasure to give you the kingdom. God is a mountain spring

and not a watering trough. He wells up self-replenishingly. He

delights to overflow. It is the nature of an eternal fountain of life to

give, give, give. The good news is that God does not need a bucket

brigade or sweaty pumpers. He demands water drinkers, not water

haulers. Following Jesus means getting down on our faces and sat-

isfying our soul-thirst with his perfect love.

He gives the kingdom! It cannot be bought or bartered for or

286 Demand #37

earned in any way. There is only one way to have it, and it is the

easiest way of all—the way of Luke 18:17: “Truly, I say to you, who-

ever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter

it.” It is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. (See Luke 8:10.)

Then consider the word “flock.” “Fear not, little flock, for it is

your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Jesus is pil-

ing up the metaphors. God is our Father. And since he gives us a

kingdom, he must be a King. And since we are his flock, he must

be a Shepherd. Jesus is at pains to choose every word he can to make

his point clear: God is not the kind of God who begrudges his

blessings.

Calling us his “flock” or his “sheep” reminds us that Jesus said

that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Does he do

it begrudgingly or under constraint? No. “No one takes [my life]

from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). The

Father did not begrudge the gift of his Son, and the Son did not

begrudge the gift of his life. It is the Shepherd’s good pleasure to

give the kingdom to his flock.

Then ponder the word “little.” “Fear not, little flock, for it is

your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Why does

he say “little flock”? I think this has two effects. First, it’s a term of

affection and care. If I say to my family when they are in danger,

“Don’t be afraid, little family,” what I mean is, I know you are in

danger and that you are small and weak, but I will use all my power

to take care of you because you are precious to me. So “little flock”

carries the connotation of affection and care.

It also implies that God’s goodness to us is not dependent on

our greatness. We are a little flock—little in size, little in strength,

little in wisdom, little in righteousness, little in love. If God’s good-

ness to us depended on our greatness, we would be in big trouble.

But that’s the point. It doesn’t. So we aren’t. “Fear not, little flock,

it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.”

“It Is Your Father’s Pleasure to Give You the Kingdom” 287

The Gift of God’s Sovereign Rule on

Our Behalf

Finally, consider the word “kingdom.” There might be one little

foothold left for the feeling that God is begrudging and ill-disposed

toward us. Someone might say, “OK, God is our Father and not

our slavemaster; he enjoys giving instead of selling; he treats us the

way a good shepherd treats his flock; he has an affection and pity

toward us in our littleness. But what, after all, does he promise to

give?”

He doesn’t promise to give money. In fact, he says, “It is easier

for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to

enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25). He doesn’t promise pop-

ularity or fame or admiration among men. In fact, he says, “Blessed

are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile

you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!”

(Luke 6:22). He doesn’t even promise security in this life. Instead,

he says, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers

and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death.

You will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:16).

What does he promise to give to his little flock—to prove once

and for all that it is not only his good pleasure to give, but that it is

his good pleasure to give big? He promises to give them the kingdom

of God. And what does it mean to be given the sovereign reign and

rule of God?

It means simply and staggeringly and unspeakably that the

omnipotent rule and authority of the King of the universe will be

engaged forever and ever on behalf of the little flock of God. Who

can describe what it will be like when that saying comes to pass

that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, “I assign to you as my Father has

assigned to me a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table

in my kingdom” (Luke 22:29-30)?

Jesus knows that the flock of God struggles with fear about

selling what we don’t need and giving sacrificially and generously

to the poor. He knows that one of those fears is that God is the

kind of God who is basically angry and delights most of all to judge

288 Demand #37

sinners and only does good out of a sense of constraint and duty,

not delight. Therefore, the Lord is at pains in Luke 12:32 to free us

from this fear by telling us the truth about God. He has chosen

every word to help liberate us from the love of money and satisfy

us with all that God promises to be for us in Jesus. Every word

counts. Always read it slowly.

Fear not,

little

flock,

for it is your Father’s

good pleasure

to give you

the kingdom!

The Simplicity and Generosity of

William Carey

What kind of life will this promise produce for those who really

believe it? I close this chapter with one illustration from the life of the

missionary to India, William Carey. In October 1795, Carey received

a packet of letters in India from his homeland, England. One of the

letters criticized him for “engaging in affairs of trade,” instead of

devoting himself full-time to his missionary work (which would go

on to last for over thirty years of amazing fruitfulness, without a

furlough). Carey was hurt and angered by the accusation. If he had

not worked, he and his family would probably have starved, since

the support from England was so slow and small and sporadic in

arriving. He wrote back these words that describe the kind of life

that I pray you and I will live:

It is a constant maxim with me that, if my conduct will not vindi-

cate itself, it is not worth vindicating. . . . I only say that, after my

family’s obtaining a bare allowance, my whole income, and some

months, much more, goes for the purposes of the gospel, in sup-

porting persons to assist in the translation of the Bible, write

“It Is Your Father’s Pleasure to Give You the Kingdom” 289

copies, teach school, and the like. . . . I mention . . . [this] to show

that the love of money has not prompted me to pursue the plan

that I have engaged in. I am indeed poor, and shall always be so

till the Bible is published in Bengali and Hindosthani, and the

people [lack] no further instruction.2

That is the kind of sacrificial, generous devotion to the cause of his

kingdom that Jesus meant when he demanded, “Lay up for your-

selves treasures in heaven.”

2 Mary Drewery, William Carey: A Biography (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984), 91.

Demand #38

DO NOT TAKE AN OATH—

CHERISH THE TRUTH

AND SPEAK IT SIMPLY

Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not

swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.”

But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it

is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by

Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an

oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything more than this

comes from evil. —Matt. 5:33-37

Jesus teaches that truth is precious. All of us agree with this when

we are being lied about. The most relativistic professor in the uni-

versity, who scoffs at the concept of truth in the classroom, will be

indignant if his electricity bill is false to his disadvantage. He will call

the utility company and complain that there is some mistake. He will

not think it funny if the voice on the other end says, “It’s a mistake

in your view, but not in our view.”

For Ordinary People Truth Is Precious

Truth is precious. Did the baby swallow the missing needle or didn’t

she? Is this water drinkable or isn’t it? Are you a friend or a spy?

Will you keep your marriage vows to love and cherish me, or are

you only interested in money and sex? Do we have enough fuel on this

Cherish the Truth and Speak It Simply 291

airplane to reach our destination or should we turn back? Will this

surgery leave me worse or better than I was before? Did the desper-

ate 911 caller say 11th Avenue or 11th Street?

Those who mock the concept of truth are people with power

who do not (at the moment) need to appeal to truth for their lives.

Totalitarian despots do not care about truth, because they have

power to create the reality they want—for a fleeting moment in his-

tory. Tenured professors may not care about truth in the classroom

because they have the power and security to entertain their stu-

dents with academic games without being forced to apply their

foolishness to their own real lives after they go home at night. But for

most of the world, truth matters. And they know it. It matters ulti-

mately. Their lives depend on it.

“I Have Come to Bear Witness to the Truth”

Jesus loved truth and hated deceit. He confirmed the ninth com-

mandment, “Do not bear false witness” (Mark 10:19). He warned

that “deceit” comes out of the heart and defiles a person (Mark

7:21-22). He considered religious hypocrisy a hellish form of lying

(Matt. 23:15). He said that those who use their piety to cloak their

evil are sons of the devil. “You are of your father the devil, and

your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the

beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is

no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for

he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Lying originates with

the devil, and those who turn away from speaking truth join forces

with Satan.

Over against this, Jesus came into the world to reveal the truth

about God and man and salvation and what is right and wrong. At

the end of his ministry, when he was on trial for his life, he said to

Pontius Pilate, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I

have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth. Everyone

who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Like many

modern cynics, Pilate responded, “What is truth?” and turned to

go without waiting for an answer.

292 Demand #38

“I Am the Truth”

But we know the answer he would have received. Jesus would have

said what he had already said, “I am . . . the truth” (John 14:6). Jesus

himself—in all that he is and all that he does and all that he says—

is the criterion of what is real and true and right and beautiful. When

he speaks, there is no error or falsehood. He said of himself, “The

one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there

is no falsehood” (John 7:18). Therefore, when others did not believe

what he said, he did not consider changing the message to win a

better hearing. If truth was met with unbelief, the problem lay with

the unbelieving heart, not the truth. “Because I tell the truth, you

do not believe me” (John 8:45). Jesus said that people turn away

from the light not because they think it’s false, but because they

love darkness (John 3:19).

When Jesus left the earth he promised to send a Helper. He called

him “the Spirit of truth.” “When the Helper comes, whom I will

send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from

the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26). This Spirit

of truth will help us know the truth and be changed by the truth.

So Jesus prays before he leaves and asks the Father to make the

truth effective in our lives: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word

is truth” (John 17:17). So we can see how supremely important truth

is to Jesus, and how destructively evil is the impulse to deceive and

mislead and speak in devious ways.

The Folly of Crossing Your Fingers and

Crossing Your Heart

Therefore, it is not surprising that in the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus overturned one of the subtle practices of his day to avoid truth-

telling and promise-keeping. When a promise is not kept, it becomes

a lie. And when a promise made with a public oath is not kept, we

call it perjury. When I was growing up we joked that if you had

your fingers crossed when you made a promise, you didn’t have to

keep it. We also had our own youthful ways of reinforcing our dis-

Cherish the Truth and Speak It Simply 293

trusted word: We said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.” What we

meant was: I am speaking from my heart, not just my lips, and if

what I say is not true let me die.

Jesus was not happy about either of these devices—the crossing

of the fingers to escape a promise and the crossing of the heart to

reinforce a promise. Here is what he said:

Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall

not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have

sworn.” But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by

heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his foot-

stool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do

not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white

or black. Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No” ;1 anything

more than this comes from evil. (Matt. 5:33-37)

Jesus is demanding two things here: First, he demands that we not

use verbal evasions to escape promise-keeping; second, he demands

that we be so truthful that oaths are superfluous.

Technical Evasions of Promise-keeping

The verbal evasions Jesus cites are in reference to heaven and earth

and Jerusalem and the head. Evidently some people assumed that

as long as their oath did not directly call upon God as witness, it

was not binding. So if they said, “I swear by heaven” or “I swear

by earth” or “I swear by Jerusalem” or “I swear by my head,” then

they could break their word because they had not said, “I swear by

God.” This devious logic says something like this: “Heaven and

earth and Jerusalem and my head cannot really take vengeance on

me if I break my word—only God can. But I did not call God to

witness my words and to hold me accountable, so I am not really in

trouble.”

Jesus rejects that kind of evasion. He points out that everything

1 Or more literally: “Let your word be yes, yes/no, no; and what is more than these is from evil

(or the evil one).”

294 Demand #38

you swear by has God behind it one way or the other. Heaven is his

throne. Earth is his footstool. Jerusalem is his city. And your head

is under his control, not yours, because only under his providence

does our hair change color. Therefore, your problem is your small

view of God and truth. You think truth is insignificant and can be

manipulated to your liking. And you think God is off in a corner

with little concern for your truthfulness until his name is mentioned.

In these two things you are wrong. Truth is precious beyond your

ability to imagine, and God is behind every molecule in the uni-

verse and is always concerned that his creatures be truthful.

Truth Evasion by Belittling God

Jesus encountered this evasive strategy in the Pharisees in Matthew

23:16-22. His indignation is unmistakable:

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “If anyone swears by the tem-

ple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple,

he is bound by his oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater,

the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you

say, “If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone

swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.” You

blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes

the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and

by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by

it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven

swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

It is almost incredible that the Pharisees not only use evasions like

this, but teach them. Jesus says that the blind guides “say [that is,

they teach others], ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing.’”

Perhaps it is not a direct quote but rather the upshot of what they

say. In either case, Jesus is furious at the way truth and God are belit-

tled here. Gold is esteemed above God’s temple. Sacrifices are

esteemed above God’s altar. Heaven is esteemed above God who

dwells there. All this evasiveness ignores the fact that the holiness

Cherish the Truth and Speak It Simply 295

of heaven, altar, and temple come from their connection with God.

But this means little to those who are bent on finding ways to make

peace with falsehood.

What alternative did Jesus demand to these manifold ways of

evading the binding claims of truth on our lives? To that we turn in

the next chapter.

Demand #39

DO NOT TAKE AN OATH—

LET WHAT YOU SAY BE

SIMPLY “YES” OR “NO”

And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair

white or black. Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything

more than this comes from evil. —Matt. 5:36-37

But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure

you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

Jesus said to him, “You have said so.” —Matt. 26:63-64

A New Standard of Truthfulness

Over against the creative and corrupt ways people find to evade

telling the truth (which we saw in the previous chapter), Jesus says,

“But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all. . . . Let what you say

be simply ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything more than this comes

from evil” (Matt. 5:34, 37, literal translation). In other words, Jesus

now goes beyond the Old Testament standard of keeping our oaths

to not using any. His reason seems to be that with the arrival of the

kingdom of God in his ministry (Luke 11:20; 17:21) and the pres-

ence of the King himself (Matt. 21:15-16) and the sending of the

Spirit of truth (John 15:26) and the inauguration of the new

covenant (Luke 22:20; see Demand #23), the standards of truthful-

ness should rise and the measure of compromise with evil in this

world should decrease.

He argues, “Do not take an oath at all . . . anything more

Let What You Say Be Simply “Yes” or “No” 297

than [yes, yes, and no, no] comes from evil.” Evil in the human

heart has created lying and deceit. Jesus said it originated with

the “father of lies” (John 8:44) and gains strength from the on-

going evil of the human heart. Therefore, truth is in jeopardy all

the time. But life in community cannot survive without truth.

There must be some measure of trust in marriages and businesses

and schools and governments and in the vast realm of contractual

agreements, not to mention the precious fabric of personal friend-

ships. Therefore, the evil of lying and falsehood and deceit that

pervades the human heart and society has been restrained by

devices called oaths.

We Look to Oaths to Do What Love

Does Not Do

The evil that ruined trust is essentially selfishness and ill-will. We dis-

tort the truth to get what we want, even if it hurts others. Which

implies that, for truth to hold sway, love must hold sway. If we

were not selfish or unloving to others, we would not break our

word or tell lies or act hypocritically. Truth would hold sway.

But love does not hold sway in the world, and so oaths have

arisen to compensate for what love should do. Oaths are born out

of the necessities created by lovelessness. Since we do not love, and

so secure the reliability of our word, we take oaths to assure people

we mean what we say. We put ourselves under the threat of deity

for breaking our word. Which means we make our own self-regard

the measure of our truthfulness. We do not want to be struck down

by God. This self-regard we share with all people (even if they don’t

believe in God). Therefore, this kind of oath carries weight in guar-

anteeing our truthfulness.

Jesus says in effect, “I am calling you to a different level of

truthfulness. I am calling you to witness to the inbreaking of my

kingdom and the kind of integrity I have brought into the world. Yes,

you still live in a fallen world. There is lying and deceit. Oaths may

be necessary among those who do not know my saving power. They

298 Demand #39

may still help fallen society hang together. They are a kind of dam

against the river of human falsehood.”1

Jesus Simply Said, “You Have Said So”

Jesus was saying, “But for you—you who know me and follow me

and are forgiven and transformed by me—let your yes and no be as

good as an oath. Let your integrity be unimpeachable. Look the court

clerk in the eye when she asks you, ‘Do you swear to tell the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God,’ and say, ‘I

will tell the truth.’” When Jesus was adjured by the high priest at his

court appearance the night before he died, the priest said, “I adjure

you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God”

(Matt. 26:63). In other words, he demanded that Jesus call God to

witness with an oath as he made his claim to messiahship.

Jesus would not yield. He answered, in accord with his own

command in Matthew 5:37, “You have said so.” This is Jesus’ sim-

ple yes: “You have said it, and you are right” (Matt. 26:64; see Mark

14:62). There was no need for an oath. His yes is as good as an

oath. The high priest felt the full force of it and did not need to

press for an oath. He tore his robe and said, “He has uttered blas-

phemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard

his blasphemy” (Matt. 26:65).

Should the Followers of Jesus Ever Take

an Oath?

Even though Jesus’ main point in his radical demand concerning

oaths is that we be people of utter integrity and complete truthful-

ness, we must still ask the question, should the followers of Jesus,

then, ever use an oath? To answer this it may be helpful to note

that the question can be asked another way. Not only did Jesus say,

“Do not take an oath at all” (Matt. 5:34), he also said the positive

1 I borrowed this image from Adolf Schlatter, Erläuterungen zum Neuen Testament, Das

Evangelium nach Matthäus, Erster Band (Stuttgart: Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1928), 76.

“Against this flood of sins we seek with the oath to erect a dam; but it does not reach its goal,

because it only enlarges the power of the lie” (my translation).

Let What You Say Be Simply “Yes” or “No” 299

counterpart, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’”—or liter-

ally, “Let your word be ‘yes, yes,’ ‘no, no’” (Matt. 5:37). So the ques-

tion of application can also be put this way: Should the followers

of Jesus ever make a promise or answer a question or make an

assertion with any other words than “yes” and “no”?

The reason it may be helpful to consider this second question is

that there are exceptions in Jesus’ ministry that would warn us

against saying followers of Jesus may not add any words to “yes”

and “no” to emphasize the speaker’s truthfulness. The most preva-

lent is Jesus’ use of the phrase, “Truly” or “Truly, truly.” Over fifty

times in the Gospels Jesus says something like, “Truly, I say to you,”

or “Truly, I tell you.” And over twenty-five times he uses the even

stronger phrase “Truly, truly I say to you.”

D. A. Carson says of the phrase, “Jesus uses it before an utter-

ance to confirm and emphasize its trustworthiness and importance.”2

If anyone in the world ever existed whose integrity did not demand

added words to emphasize his truthfulness, it was Jesus. Yet he did

so. Evidently the use of reinforcing words do not have to flow from

the speaker’s lack of integrity, but from an impulse of love that the

listeners need to be awakened to the absolute trustworthiness of

what is being said because they might not know how reliable the

speaker is.

This gives me pause, therefore, that I should be slow to say that

a follower of Jesus may have such integrity that there is no situa-

tion in which love may not demand some reinforcing expression

for the sake of the listeners. Add to this that Jesus knew that God

himself, who is the essence of integrity, confirmed his word at times

with oaths. This was not to make up for untrustworthiness on his

part, but to give multiple encouragements to help us believe him

(see Luke 1:73; Gen. 22:16). It seems, then, that Jesus’ argument

aims at absolute integrity and truthfulness but does not intend to

stipulate absolutely the wording that expresses this truthfulness.

2 D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 162.

300 Demand #39

Some Oaths May Be Permitted

Returning then to the seemingly absolute prohibition, “Do not take an

oath at all,” should we infer from these thoughts that there are excep-

tions to the prohibition? I am inclined to think we should be open to

the possibility that the wording of an oath (like, “I call God to wit-

ness that what I say is true”) could be one way that we show love to

someone who does not know us (and whether we are trustworthy) and

whose cultural situation would give credit to our account if we used

this form of speech. In other words, Jesus’ absolute prohibition relates

to the abuses of oaths referred to in Matthew 5:35-36 and 23:16-22,

and the principle that is absolute across all time and culture is the

demand that we be people of absolute truthfulness and honesty.

But Beware of Taking the Edge Off of Jesus’

Radical Demand for Truth

This would imply that we use an oath or some other formula not to

make up for lack of trustworthiness in us, but only to help others

embrace the unvarnished truth that we speak. But even as I write this

I feel some of the edge being taken off of what Jesus said. He really was

lifting us to a higher level than “You shall not swear falsely, but shall

perform to the Lord what you have sworn” (Matt. 5:33). His aim

was greater than, keep your promises. There is a call away from oaths.

Our new inclination should be, my oath is not necessary. I should

be slow to use an oath. An oath will very likely (if not necessarily)

communicate something about the weakness of my trustworthiness

that may dishonor Jesus. One of the glories of Jesus is that he frees me

from the need to lie and from the need to prove that I don’t lie.

The followers of Jesus are not just honest, they are moving

toward a condition in which protections against being thought dis-

honest will not be necessary. Therefore, they will find countercultural

ways of declaring the lordship of Christ over their minds and

mouths. In the end Jesus aims to be known as the way, the truth,

and the life. He demands that we live and speak in a way that will

make that glory known.

Demand #40

WHAT GOD HAS JOINED

TOGETHER LET NO MAN

SEPARATE, FOR MARRIAGE

MIRRORS GOD’S

COVENANT WITH US

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made

them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his

father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become

one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore

God has joined together, let not man separate. —Matt. 19:4-6

Your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name. —Isa. 54:5

Jesus demands that husbands and wives be faithful to their mar-

riages. He does not assume this is easy. But he teaches that it is a

great thing because marriage is the work of God himself whereby

he creates a new reality of “one flesh” that surpasses human com-

prehension and portrays to the world in human form the covenant

union between God and his people. Marriage is sacred beyond what

most people imagine, because it is a unique creation of God, a dra-

matic portrayal of God’s relation to his people, and a display of

God’s glory. Against all the diminished attitudes about marriage in

our day, Jesus’ message is that marriage is a great work of God and

a sacred covenant breakable only by death.

302 Demand #40

Marriage: The Mirror of God’s Covenant with

His People

Jesus knew his Jewish Scriptures and saw them as coming to fulfill-

ment in himself and his work (Matt. 5:17-18). This includes his

awareness of what God had said about his relationship with his

people when he portrayed it as marriage. For example, God said,

“Your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isa.

54:5). And “In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My

Husband.’ . . . And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you

to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the

LORD” (Hos. 2:16, 19-20). And “When I passed by you again and

saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the cor-

ner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made

my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the

Lord GOD, and you became mine” (Ezek. 16:8). And “Surely, as a

treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous

to me, O house of Israel, declares the LORD” (Jer. 3:20).

With these Scriptures as the backdrop, it is inevitable that Jesus

would see God’s creation of marriage in the beginning as a means

of portraying his relationship with his people. So Jesus read in

Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother

and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” When

God said this—and Jesus explicitly says that God said this, not just

Moses, the writer of Genesis (Matt. 19:4-5)—he had in view (as he

has all things in view) that he would call his people his wife and

himself her husband. Therefore, the union between a man and a

woman is uniquely God’s creation with a view to portraying the rela-

tionship between himself and his people.

God Creates the Union of Each Marriage for

His Glory

Jesus is explicit about marriage as God’s creation. He does not leave

us to figure this out from the Scriptures, and he does not limit the cre-

Marriage Mirrors God’s Covenant with Us 303

ation to the first marriage between Adam and Eve. He says, “What

therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt.

19:6). God, not man, is the decisive creator of the marriage union.

And the point is that each marriage is “joined” this way by God,

because he tells us not to “separate,” and the only marriage we can

decisively separate is the one we are in. So this marriage—this par-

ticular marriage, not just the concept of marriage or the general ordi-

nance of marriage or the first marriage—is God’s work. God has

acted in the union of this husband and this wife. These two are one

flesh by God’s work, not just by their choice.

And as a God-created union of “one flesh” this man and this

woman are in a covenant analogous with God’s covenant with Israel.

Their marriage portrays God’s relationship with his people. Through

marriage God fills the earth with (mostly unwitting) witnesses to

the relationship between him and his covenant people. This is one

of the main reasons that divorce and remarriage are so serious.

They tell a lie about God’s relationship to his people. God never

divorced his wife and married another. There were separations and

much pain, but he always took her back. The prophet Hosea is a

testimony to God’s radical love for his wayward spouse. God never

abandons his wife. And when he has to put her away for her adul-

terous idolatry, he goes after her in due time. This is what marriage

is meant to portray: God’s invincible and gracious commitment to

his covenant people—his wife.

In this way marriage is meant to glorify God. In Jeremiah 13:11

God says, “As the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the

whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me,

declares the LORD, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise,

and a glory.” God freely chose and married Israel so that they would

display his glory. Therefore, marriage is the work of God’s creation,

the portrayal of his covenant love, and the display of his glory.

But What about Moses’ Permission of Divorce?

This gives some sense of why Jesus’ demand for marital faithfulness

astonishes the Pharisees. They can hardly believe he would raise the

304 Demand #40

bar so high. They had come to him with a question: “Is it lawful to

divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (Matt. 19:3). Jesus answers them

not by reference to the Mosaic law but by reference to the Mosaic

creation account. In other words, he intends to root the meaning of

marriage in its original design, not in the way marriage is managed

by the law in view of sin.

Jesus says, “Have you not read that he who created them from

the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a

man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife,

and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but

one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man sep-

arate” (Matt. 19:4-6). So the answer to their question is: God made

marriage to last, so don’t treat it as breakable.

Now the Pharisees think they have Jesus trapped. He seems to

have just taken a position contrary to the Law of Moses. So they ask,

“Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce

and to send her away?” (Matt. 19:7). In other words, they hear

correctly in Jesus’ answer the implication that one should never

break the marriage covenant. But that is not the way they understand

Moses. So they ask, why did Moses make a provision for divorce

if, you say, the covenant is not to be broken?

Jesus responds, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses

allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not

so” (Matt. 19:8). So Jesus takes his stand with Moses in the cre-

ation account and says that just as in the beginning the marriage

covenant was not meant to be breakable, so now in the kingdom that

he was bringing on earth, this original intention is to be rediscovered

and reasserted. In other words, Jesus is raising the standard of his

disciples above what Moses allowed. He puts it like this: “And I

say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immoral-

ity, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9).

The Devastation of Divorce

We are now at a point where we need to tackle the question, did

Jesus make provision for his disciples to divorce and remarry? Are

Marriage Mirrors God’s Covenant with Us 305

there situations in which he would sanction this? There is no con-

sensus on the answer to this question today among his followers. I

want to say clearly from the beginning that I am aware that men

more godly than I have taken different views than the one I will

give here. I do not claim to have seen or said the last word on this

issue, nor am I, I pray, above correction should I prove to be wrong.

What follows is an attempt to show why I believe Jesus considered

the marriage covenant breakable only by death and therefore for-

bade remarriage while a spouse is living.

I realize that simply saying this will feel devastating to some,

adding more misery to the injury of what they did not want to hap-

pen. Divorce is painful. It is often more emotionally wrenching

than the death of a spouse. It is often long years in coming and long

years in the settlement and in the adjustment. The upheaval of life

is immeasurable. The sense of failure and guilt and fear can torture

the soul. Like the psalmist, night after night a spouse falls asleep with

tears (Ps. 6:6). Work performance is hindered. People draw near or

withdraw with uncertain feelings. Loneliness can be overwhelming.

A sense of a devastated future can be all-consuming. Courtroom con-

troversy compounds the personal misery.

And then there is often the agonizing place of children. Parents

hope against hope that the scars will not cripple them or ruin their

own marriages someday. Tensions over custody and financial sup-

port deepen the wounds. And then the awkward and artificial visi-

tation rights can lengthen the tragedy over decades.

Because of these and many other factors, people with sensitive

hearts weep with those who weep. They try not to increase the pain.

And sometimes this care is confused with compromise. People think

that loving care is incompatible with confrontation—that the ten-

derness of Jesus and the toughness of his demands cannot both be

love. But surely this is not right.

The Challenge to Love Biblically

Jesus was an extraordinarily caring person. His teaching on divorce

and remarriage was also firm: “What . . . God has joined together, let

306 Demand #40

not man separate.” In fact, firm and loving confrontation with the

demands of Christ is a form of caring, because a sinful decision is just

as harmful to a person as the emotional pain. This is true individu-

ally, and it is true for the church and society. Compassionate com-

promises on the sanctity of marriage that weaken the solidity of the

covenant of marriage look loving in the short run but wreak havoc

over decades. Preserving the solid framework of the marriage

covenant with high standards feels tough in the short run but pro-

duces ten thousand blessings the future generations take for granted.

The great challenge to Jesus’ followers in the face of divorce

and remarriage is to love biblically. The great challenge is to mingle

the tears of compassion with the tough love of obedience. This

alone will honor Christ and preserve the spiritual health and power

of the marriage and the church Jesus founded.

In Matthew 19:3-9 and Mark 10:2-12 Jesus rejected the

Pharisees’ justification of divorce from Deuteronomy 24 and

reasserted the purpose of God in creation that no human being sep-

arate what God has joined together. He said that Moses’ handling

of divorce was owing to the hardness of the human heart and then

implied that he had come to do something about that. His aim was

that the standard of his followers would be higher than what the

Law allowed.

How high? That’s the question I try to answer in the next

chapter.

Demand #41

WHAT GOD HAS JOINED

TOGETHER LET NO MAN

SEPARATE, FOR WHOEVER

DIVORCES AND MARRIES

ANOTHER COMMITS ADULTERY

Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery

against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she

commits adultery. —Mark 10:11-12

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adul-

tery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband com-

mits adultery. —Luke 16:18

It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a cer-

tificate of divorce.” But I say to you that everyone who divorces his

wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit

adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits

adultery. —Matt. 5:31-32

And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual

immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. —Matt. 19:9

Jesus set a higher standard for marital faithfulness than Moses or

the Jewish teachers of his day. He did not affirm the permission

for divorce found in Deuteronomy 24. He said it was owing to the

308 Demand #41

hardness of the human heart (Matt. 19:8) and implied that he was

here to change that. In this chapter we will try to discern just how

high Jesus’ standard of marital faithfulness is.

Clues in Moses That Divorce Did Not Destroy

God’s Union

I suspect that Jesus saw a higher standard for marriage implied not

only in the creation account of Genesis 2:24 but also in the very

wording of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which shows that the one-flesh

relationship established by marriage is not completely nullified by

divorce or even by remarriage. Consider what Moses wrote:

When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor

in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he

writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends

her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she

goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her

and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and

sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her

to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may

not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that

is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin

upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inher-

itance. (Deut. 24:1-4)

The remarkable thing about these four verses is that while divorce

is taken for granted, nevertheless the woman who is divorced

becomes “defiled” by her remarriage (v. 4). Therefore, it may well be

that when the Pharisees asked Jesus if divorce was legitimate, he

based his negative answer not only on God’s original intention

expressed in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, but also on the implication of

Deuteronomy 24:4, that remarriage after divorce, while permitted,

nevertheless defiles a person. In other words, there were clues in the

writings of Moses that the divorce concession was on the basis of the

hardness of man’s heart and did not make divorce and remarriage

the most God-honoring path.

Whoever Divorces and Marries Another Commits Adultery 309

Moses’ prohibition of a wife returning to her first husband even

after her second husband dies (because it is an “abomination,” v. 4)

suggests that today no second marriage should be broken in order

to restore a first one. I will return to this issue later on. But for now

I would say that even a disobedient second or third marriage should

not be broken, but confessed as less than ideal and yet sanctified by

God’s mercy. It is better in God’s eyes than more broken covenants.

The Prohibitions Without Exception

Twice in the Gospels Jesus expresses with no exceptions his prohi-

bition of divorce followed by remarriage. In Luke 16:18 he says,

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adul-

tery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband com-

mits adultery.” Here Jesus seems to call all remarriage after divorce

adultery. These are strong words. Evidently the reason a second mar-

riage is called adultery is because the first one is considered to still

be valid. So Jesus is taking a stand against the Jewish culture at the

time in which all divorce was considered to carry with it the right

of remarriage.1

Luke 16:18 carries another implication: The second half of the

1 It puzzles me that so many commentators take the opposite approach. They observe that

since “any Jewish reader would have taken for granted” that divorce opened the door to

remarriage, therefore Jesus agrees with this assumption and does not need to say it in Mark

10:11-12 and Luke 16:18. Hence Andreas Köstenberger, for example, writes, “Rather than con-

cluding that Jesus did not allow for any divorce in sexually consummated marriages, it is

much more likely that he did not elaborate on points at which he agreed with the commonly

held view in his day.” God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation

(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004), 242. I am inclined to say that Jesus’ explicit, unquali-

fied rejection of remarriage in Mark 10 and Luke 16 is a direct repudiation of this cultural

assumption as a compromise with the hardness of man’s heart. How could he have more

clearly addressed and rejected the cultural assumption of the legitimacy of remarriage after

divorce? David Instone-Brewer’s arguments that (1) the short form of Jesus’ saying in Luke

16:18 is a reference to Herod Antipas’ marriage of his brother’s wife (160-161), and (2) that

the omission of any exception clause is explained on the analogy of rabbinic abbreviations (161-

167), and (3) that the exception clause, “except for porneia,” should be “except for inde-

cency,” referring to the phrase “some indecency” in Deuteronomy 24:1 and expressing the more

conservative Rabbi Shammai’s position all seem unlikely to me. David Instone-Brewer, Divorce

and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002). If one objects that Jesus did not endorse or forbid remarriage after the death of a

spouse because he shared the commonly accepted view, my response would be: 1) None of Jesus’

discussions of remarriage are aimed at answering the question about what is legitimate in the

death of a spouse, but only what is legitimate in the divorce of a spouse. 2) In one place where

Jesus comes close to the issue of the death of a spouse (in the question of the Sadducees about

the wife who was widowed seven times, Matt. 22:23-32), Jesus finds no fault in her remar-

riage after a spouse’s death.

310 Demand #41

verse (“he who marries a woman divorced from her husband com-

mits adultery”) shows that not only the divorcing man is guilty of

adultery when he remarries, but also any man who marries a

divorced woman commits adultery. This is all the more remarkable

because the woman in view here is presumably the innocent party

in the divorce, because when her husband divorces her he commits

adultery in marrying another. Apparently this is because he had no

right to divorce his wife. That is, she has done nothing to make his

divorce legitimate. Nevertheless, any man who marries this aban-

doned woman, Jesus says, “commits adultery.”

This is a hard saying. The woman who is forsaken by a man who

leaves to marry another is called by Jesus to display the holiness of

her marriage vows and the nature of the marriage covenant by not

marrying another. Since there are no exceptions mentioned in the

verse, and since Jesus is evidently rejecting the common cultural con-

ception of divorce as including the right of remarriage, the first

readers of Luke’s Gospel would have been hard-put to see any excep-

tions on the basis that Jesus shared the cultural acceptance of

divorce.

The other instance of Jesus’ unqualified rejection of remarriage

after divorce is found in Mark 10:11-12. He said, “Whoever

divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,

and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits

adultery.” These two verses repeat the first half of Luke 16:18 but go

further and say that not only the man who divorces, but also a

woman who divorces and then remarries is committing adultery.

And as in Luke 16:18, there are no exceptions mentioned to this rule.

What we have so far is two seemingly absolute prohibitions of

remarriage after divorce in Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12 since

Jesus sees marrying a second time as adultery, even if you are the

innocent party in the divorce. And we have a strong statement in

Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9 that God has joined married couples

together and therefore no man should separate them.

Whoever Divorces and Marries Another Commits Adultery 311

Is There a Permission for Divorce in

Matthew 5:32?

But what makes the matter more controversial is that in Matthew

5:32 and 19:9 there seems to be an exception to the rule of no remar-

riage after divorce. In Matthew 5:32 Jesus says, “Everyone who

divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes

her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman com-

mits adultery.” Again in Matthew 19:9 he says, “Whoever divorces

his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits

adultery.” Both these verses are generally interpreted to say that

Jesus allowed divorce and remarriage where there has been “sexual

immorality” by one of the partners. Is that what the “exception

clauses” mean?

According to the wording of Matthew 5:32 (“. . . makes her

commit adultery”), Jesus assumes that in most situations in that

culture a wife who has been put away by a husband will be drawn

into a second marriage. Nevertheless, in spite of these pressures on

the divorced woman to remarry, Jesus still forbids this second mar-

riage. His words imply that the remarriage of an innocent wife who

has been put away is nevertheless adultery: “Everyone who divorces

his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her [the

innocent wife who has not committed sexual immorality] commit

adultery.” This would mean that remarriage is wrong not merely

when a person is guilty in the process of divorce, but also when a per-

son is innocent. In other words, Jesus’ opposition to remarriage

seems to be based on the unbreakableness of the marriage bond,

not on the conditions of the divorce.

So Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in

some cases. Rather, it reaffirms that to remarry after divorce is to

commit adultery, even for those who have been divorced innocently,

and that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of the adultery of

her second marriage, and that a man who marries a woman who

is put away by her husband, even innocently, commits adultery.

Hence the final clause of the verse: “And whoever marries a

divorced woman commits adultery.” Before we tackle what the

312 Demand #41

exception clause means, let’s put the similar text from Matthew

19:9 before us.

The Exception Clause in Matthew 19:9

The other place where Jesus seems to express an “exception clause”

to the prohibition of divorce and remarriage is Matthew 19:9, “And

I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immoral-

ity, and marries another, commits adultery.” Does this exception

mean that there are situations in which a married person may be free

to remarry after divorce? That is what most commentators see and

what most followers of Jesus think. In my understanding of Jesus’

demand this is not what it means. It may help if I describe my pil-

grimage to another understanding.

All of my adult life I assumed that adultery and desertion were

two legitimate grounds for divorce and remarriage. This was the

air I breathed, and I saw a confirmation of this in the exception

clause in Matthew 19:9, even though, as I see it now, the rest of the

New Testament pointed in the other direction.2 But there came a

point when this assumption began to crumble.

I was initially troubled that the absolute form of Jesus’ denunci-

ation of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:11-12 and Luke 16:18

is not expressed by Matthew, if in fact his exception clause is an open-

ing for divorce and remarriage. I was bothered by the assumption so

2 A fuller statement of my understanding of the rest of the New Testament may be found

under the topic “Divorce and Remarriage” at the Desiring God website, specifically,

http://www.desiringgod.org/resourcelibrary/articles/bydate/1986/1488/. A survey of three views is offered in Remarriage After Divorce in Today’s Church, ed. Mark L. Strauss (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006), in which Gordon Wenham represents the position of no marriage

after divorce, William A. Heth (who no longer holds his view represented in his book coau-

thored with Wenham, Jesus and Divorce, updated ed. [Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1997; orig.

ed. 1984] represents the position of two grounds for divorce and remarriage, and Craig S.

Keener represents the position that various other grounds are allowed for divorce and remar-

riage. In addition, see Craig S. Keener, And Marries Another: Divorce and Remarriage in the

Teaching of the New Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1991); and Carl Laney, The

Divorce Myth: A Biblical Examination of Divorce and Remarriage (Minneapolis: Bethany,

1981), who argues for no divorce after remarriage. David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and

Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

2002) and Divorce and Remarriage in the Church (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 2003) argues

for a range of grounds for divorce and remarriage including abuse and neglect. Geoffrey W.

Bromiley, God and Marriage (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980) and Andreas

Köstenberger with David W. Jones, God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical

Foundation (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004), offer good overviews of the wider biblical vision of marriage and defend a limited divorce and remarriage position.

Whoever Divorces and Marries Another Commits Adultery 313

many writers make, namely, that Matthew is simply making explicit

something that would have been implicitly understood by the hear-

ers of Jesus or the readers of Mark 10 and Luke 16 (see footnote 1).

Would they really have assumed that the absolute statements

included exceptions? I began to have serious doubts. Therefore, my

inclination was to inquire whether or not, in fact, Matthew’s excep-

tion clause conforms to the absoluteness of Mark and Luke, not

the other way around.

The second thing that began to disturb me was the question, why

does Matthew use the Greek word porneiva ( porneia, “sexual

immorality”) instead of the word moiceiva ( moicheia) which means

adultery? Sexual immorality in marriage would naturally be adul-

tery. But the word Matthew uses to express Jesus’ meaning is one

that usually means fornication or sexual immorality without refer-

ence to marital unfaithfulness. Almost all commentators seem to

make the assumption again that porneia refers to adultery in this

context. The question nagged at me why Matthew would not use the

word for adultery ( moicheia), if that is in fact what he meant.

Then I noticed something very interesting. The only other place

besides Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 where Matthew uses the word porneia

is in Matthew 15:19 where it is used alongside moicheia. Therefore,

the primary contextual evidence for Matthew’s usage is that he con-

ceives of porneia as, in some sense, different than adultery. Could

this mean, then, that in Matthew’s record of Jesus’ teaching he is think-

ing of porneia in its more usual sense of fornication or incest or pros-

titution that does not denote marital unfaithfulness, that is, adultery?3

3 Abel Isaksson agrees with this view of porneiva and sums up his research as follows:

Thus we cannot get away from the fact that the distinction between what was to

be regarded as porneia and what was to be regarded as moicheia was very strictly

maintained in pre-Christian Jewish literature and in the N.T. porneia may, of course,

denote different forms of forbidden sexual relations, but we can find no unequivo-

cal examples of the use of this word to denote a wife’s adultery. [Giving Isaksson

the benefit of the doubt here in what may be a technical overstatement, he may mean

this (which is what I would say): If a wife sells herself into a life of prostitution, the

way Israel did in Jeremiah 3:6 and Hosea 2:2, her acts may be called both porneia

or moicheia. But the fact that the same act may be described in these two ways

does not make the words interchangeable. Moicheia still denotes the covenant-

breaking of marital unfaithfulness, while porneia denotes illicit sexual immorality

that does not denote marital unfaithfulness, but may involve married people.] Under

these circumstances we can hardly assume that this word means adultery in the

314 Demand #41

The next clue in my search for an explanation came when I

noticed the use of porneia in John 8:41 where Jewish leaders indi-

rectly accuse Jesus of being born of porneia. In other words, since

they don’t accept the virgin birth, they assume that his mother Mary

had committed fornication and that Jesus was the result of this act.

On the basis of that clue I went back to study Matthew’s record of

Jesus’ birth in Matthew 1:18-20.

The Relevance of the Exception Clauses for

Joseph’s Betrothal to Mary

In these verses Joseph and Mary are referred to as husband (ajn vhr)

and wife (gunhv). Yet they are described as only being betrothed to

each other. This is probably owing to the fact that the words for

husband and wife are simply man and woman in the Greek, and to

the fact that betrothal was a more significant commitment at that

time than engagement is today. In Matthew 1:19 Joseph resolves to

“divorce” Mary though they were only betrothed and not yet mar-

ried. The word for divorce (ajpolùsai) is the same as the word in

Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. But most important of all, Matthew says

that Joseph was “just” in making the decision to divorce Mary,

presumably on account of her assumed porneia, fornication. In other

words, this “divorce” was permitted according to Matthew.

Only Matthew has told that story of the crisis Joseph faced in

whether to marry his betrothed even though she, as far as he knew

at first, had committed fornication (porneiav). In handling this crisis

he called Joseph “just” in the plan to “divorce” her. That means

that Matthew, as a follower of Jesus, would not consider this kind

of “divorce” wrong. It would not have prevented Joseph (or Mary)

from marrying another.

clauses in Matthew. The logia on divorce are worded as a paragraph of the law,

intended to be obeyed by the members of the Church. Under these circumstances it

is inconceivable that in a text of this nature the writer would not have maintained

a clear distinction between what was unchastity and what was adultery: moicheia

and not porneia was used to describe the wife’s adultery. From the philological

point of view there are accordingly very strong arguments against this interpreta-

tion of the clauses as permitting divorce in the case in which the wife was guilty of

adultery. (Abel Isaksson, Marriage and Ministry in the New Temple, trans. Neil

Tomkinson and Jean Gray [Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1965], 134-135)

Whoever Divorces and Marries Another Commits Adultery 315

Since only Matthew had told this story and raised this ques-

tion, he was the only Gospel writer who would feel any need to make

clear that Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce followed by remar-

riage did not include a situation like Joseph and Mary’s. That is what

I think he does with the exception clauses. He records Jesus saying,

“Whoever divorces his wife—not including, of course, the case of

fornication [porneiva] between betrothed couples—and marries

another, commits adultery.”4

A common objection to this interpretation is that both in

Matthew 19:3-9 and in Matthew 5:31-32 the issue Jesus is

responding to is marriage, not betrothal. The point is pressed that

“except for fornication” is irrelevant to the context of marriage.

My answer is that this irrelevancy is precisely the point of the

exception clause. Whether it sounds irrelevant in the context

depends on how you hear it. I don’t think it sounds pointless if

you hear it the way I just suggested or if Matthew 5:32 goes like

this: “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife—

excluding, of course, the case of fornication [porneiva] during

betrothal—makes her commit adultery.” In this way Jesus makes

clear that the action his earthly father almost took—to “divorce”

Mary because of porneiva—would not have been unjust. It would

have been right. That is the kind of situation the exception clause

is meant to exclude.5

This interpretation of the exception clause has several

advantages:

• It does not force Matthew’s Gospel to disagree with the seem-

ingly plain, absolute meaning of Mark and Luke.

• It provides an explanation for why the word porneia is used

in Matthew’s exception clause instead of moicheia.

4 I do not know all the words Jesus may have used to express this prohibition over the time of

his ministry. Therefore, I am slow to say that Matthew created this exception clause and put it

in Jesus’ mouth. It is likely that Jesus taught in Aramaic, and so in one sense Matthew and the

other Gospel writers, who were writing in Greek, decided what exact wording to use in our

Gospels. My own conviction is that these Gospel writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit and

that what they wrote in Greek accurately represented what Jesus taught.

5 Andreas Köstenberger arrays seven arguments against this view in God, Marriage, and Family:

Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, pp. 241-243. Though I don’t find them compelling, I have tried to take them into account in my thinking and conclusions.

316 Demand #41

• It squares with Matthew’s own use of porneia (for fornica-

tion) in distinction from moicheia (for adultery) in Matthew 15:19.

• It fits Matthew’s wider context concerning Joseph’s contem-

plated “divorce” from Mary (Matt. 1:19).

What are the implications of this high standard of marriage?

To this we turn in the next chapter.

Demand #42

WHAT GOD HAS JOINED

TOGETHER LET NO MAN

SEPARATE—ONE MAN,

ONE WOMAN, BY GRACE,

TILL DEATH

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife,

it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can

receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are

eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who

have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have

made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let

the one who is able to receive this receive it. —Matt. 19:10-12

If Such Is the Case, Better Not to Marry?

Not surprisingly, when Jesus had finished teaching on marriage and

divorce in Matthew 19:3-9, his disciples were bewildered by how

strict Jesus’ standards were. So they said, “If such is the case of a man

with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matt. 19:10). This response

confirms that we are on the right track when we hear Jesus setting

the bar very high. The disciples assume that this standard is so high

it is better not to marry. In other words, if there is no back door to

marriage, it is better not to walk through the front door. This

response would not make as much sense if Jesus had just prescribed

a back door as large as infidelity.

318 Demand #42

Jesus’ response is not to lower the bar so that marriage

becomes less risky. Instead, he says, in essence, that the ability to

remain single if necessary and the ability to stay in a hard

marriage if necessary are both a gift of God. In other words, flour-

ishing in singleness and flourishing in marriage are a work of

divine grace. “Not everyone can receive this saying [the saying that

marriage is permanent], but only those to whom it is given” (Matt.

19:11). The point is not that some disciples are given the grace

and some are not. The point is that this grace (or faithfulness in

singleness and marriage) is the mark of a disciple. “Those to whom

it is given” are followers of Jesus.1 God gives the grace for what

he demands.

Eunuchs for the Kingdom

Then Jesus illustrates that such grace has actually been given to those

who for various reasons have not been permitted to marry. “For

there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are

eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are

eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the king-

dom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it”

(Matt. 19:12). The point here is that if you do not marry or if you

are divorced and must remain single, you are not alone but are in

the company of some who have had singleness forced on them and

some who have chosen it for the sake of the kingdom. In all cases

God gives grace.

The words “Let the one who is able to receive this receive it”

are like the words “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matt. 13:9, 43;

11:15). That is, whether you have ears to hear—or whether you have

grace to receive this call to radical respect for marriage—is the mark

of being a follower of Jesus. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know

them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

1 Compare the parallel wording between Matthew 19:11 and 13:11, the parallels between

Matthew 19:12 and 13:9, 43; 11:15, and the parallel between Matthew 19:11 and 19:26.

One Man, One Woman, by Grace, Till Death 319

The Folly of Homosexuality

Marriage is a great work of God. It is a great gift to the world. It is

worthy of books and songs and poetry and life and sacrifice, not just

a little chapter like this. Jesus would grieve over the cavalier way that

marriage is treated in our day. He would be appalled at any thought

of two men or two women calling their homosexual union marriage.

He would not call it marriage. As much pity as he may feel for the

sexual brokenness, he would call the practice of homosexuality sin and

the attempt to sanctify it with the word marriage folly.

He would respond to this folly the same way he responded to

the Pharisees’ justification of divorce with Moses’ teaching. He

would go back to the beginning. Only this time he would under-

line the words male and female. “Have you not read that he who

created them from the beginning made them male and female,

and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother

and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’?” (Matt.

19:4-5). Jesus would root heterosexual marriage in the creation of

man as male and female and in the original union of man and

woman into one flesh. He would count it a great sadness that the

glory of marriage and all that it stands for is so debased as to make

it a covering for the sin of homosexuality.

Are Divorce and Remarriage the

Unforgivable Sins?

But as great as marriage is, divorce followed by remarriage is not

the unforgivable sin. Sometimes I am asked whether my under-

standing of Jesus implies that divorce is the unforgivable sin. The

answer is no. Jesus said that his blood will be the basis of forgive-

ness for all sins (Matt. 26:28). Therefore he is able to say, “Truly, I

say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and what-

ever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the

Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”

(Mark 3:28-29).

From these wonderful promises we learn that forgiveness for sins

320 Demand #42

is available on the basis of the shed blood of Jesus. Forgiveness is

available for all sins, without exception. Forgiveness is received

freely through trusting Jesus to forgive our sins. This implies that

we see sin as sin and hate it as a dishonor to Jesus. The only unfor-

givable sin is the sin that we refuse to confess and forsake. We com-

mit unforgivable sin when we cleave to a sin so long and so

tenaciously that we can no longer confess it as sin and turn from it.

What Jesus calls “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (in

Matthew 12:31-32) and “eternal sin” (in Mark 3:29) is the resis-

tance against the Holy Spirit’s convicting work to the point where

he withdraws, leaving the sinner in helpless hardness of heart, unable

to repent.

Neither divorce nor remarriage is in itself the unforgivable sin

any more than is murder, stealing, lying, coveting, adultery, or homo-

sexual behavior. “All sins will be forgiven the children of man”

(Mark 3:28). God is faithful and just to forgive—he will honor the

worth of his Son’s sacrifice for all who confess their sin and bank

their hope on the saving work of Jesus.

Marital sin is in the same category as lying and killing and steal-

ing. If someone has lied, killed, stolen, or illegitimately left a mar-

riage, the issue is not, can they be forgiven? The issue is, do they

admit that what they did was sin? Do they renounce it? And do

they do what they can in order to make it right if possible?

What usually causes the conflict is not whether divorce and

remarriage are unforgivable sins, but whether they are sins at all—

to be confessed (from the past) and to be avoided (in the future). If

a person has stolen things in his past, no one would say that we are

treating stealing as the unforgivable sin if we insist that this person

confess his sin and begin to make amends to those he defrauded. A

sin is not unforgivable because it must be confessed as sin, renounced

as an option, and its effects made right (as far as possible).

So it is with divorce or remarriage. It should not keep anyone out

of fellowship with the followers of Jesus any more than a past life

of robbery. But there should be a heartfelt confession of the sin

One Man, One Woman, by Grace, Till Death 321

committed and a renouncing of it and an affirming of what is right,

just as with all other sins of the past.

What Does a Follower of Jesus Do Who Has

Divorced and Remarried?

What then would Jesus expect from one of his followers who has

sinned and is divorced and remarried? He would expect us to

acknowledge that the choice to remarry and the act of entering a sec-

ond marriage was sin and to confess it as such and seek forgive-

ness. He would also expect that we not separate from our present

spouse. I base this on at least five observations.

First, Jesus seemed to regard multiple marriages as wrong but

real. He said to the woman at the well in John 4:18, “You have had

five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.”

She is living with a man now, but there has been no marriage—no

covenant-making. The others he calls “husbands,” but the one she

is with now is not her husband.

Second, Jesus knew that Deuteronomy 24:4 spoke against going

back to a first husband after marrying a second. He did not go out

of his way to qualify this provision.

Third, covenant-keeping is crucial to Jesus as we saw in the

previous chapter (also see Demand #23). Therefore, even though the

current covenant is adulterous in the making, it is real and should

be kept. Its beginning in sin does not have to mean that it is contin-

uously sinful and without hope of purification.

Fourth, there are illustrations of God taking acts of disobedience

and turning the result into God-ordained plans. One example is the

fact that it was sin for the people of Israel to ask for a king to be

like the nations (1 Sam. 12:19-22). Nevertheless, God turned the sin-

fully instituted kingship into the origin of the Messiah and the king-

ship of Jesus. Another example would be the sinful marriage of

David to Bathsheba. The adultery with her, the murder of her hus-

band, and the marriage “displeased the LORD” (2 Sam. 11:27). So

the Lord took the life of the first child of this union (2 Sam. 12:15,

322 Demand #42

18). But the second child, Solomon, “the LORD loved” and chose

him as ruler over his people (2 Sam. 12:24).

Fifth, through repentance and forgiveness on the basis of the

blood of Jesus and through the sanctifying work of the promised

Holy Spirit, a marriage that was entered sinfully can be consecrated

to God, purified from sin, and become a means of grace. It remains

less than ideal, but it is not a curse. It may become a great blessing.

Marriage: Great and Precious, but Not

Ultimate or Permanent

There is no doubt that Jesus’ demand for faithfulness in marriage is

a radical word to our modern culture. Here is a test for his lordship

over our lives. His standards are high. They do not assume that this

earth is our final home. He makes it very clear that marriage is an

ordinance for this age only. “For in the resurrection they neither

marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven”

(Matt. 22:30). Therefore, marriage is a brief blessing. A great one,

but not an ultimate one. A precious one, but not a permanent one.

This eternal perspective explains why Jesus can be so radical.

Never to have married is not a tragedy. Otherwise Jesus’ life is a

tragedy. Tragedy is craving the perfect marriage so much that we

make a god out of being married. Jesus’ standards are high because

marriage does not and should not meet all our needs. It should not

be an idol. It should not and cannot take the place of Jesus himself.

Marriage is but for a moment. Jesus is for eternity. How we live in

our marriages and our singleness will show if Jesus is our supreme

treasure.

Demand #43

RENDER TO CAESAR THE

THINGS THAT ARE

CAESAR’S AND TO GOD THE

THINGS THAT ARE GOD’S

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle [ Jesus] in his

talk. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians,

saying . . . “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes

to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why

put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.”

And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose

likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said

to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,

and to God the things that are God’s.” —Matt. 22:15-21

Jesus was Jewish. He was part of a people who lived in their home-

land under the totalitarian rule of Rome. The Caesar was

absolute and claimed even divine status as emperor of Rome. Caesar

Augustus was the emperor when Jesus was born (Luke 2:1), and

his son, Tiberius Caesar, ruled from A.D. 13-37 during the rest of

Jesus’ life (Luke 3:1). So when Jesus asked the Pharisees for a coin

with Caesar’s picture on it, the coin very likely pictured Tiberius. 1

1 “The silver denarius of Tiberius, including a portrait of his head and minted especially at the

Lyon, circulated there in this period; although an earlier coin might be in view, this imperial

denarius is most likely. . . . The coin related directly to pagan Roman religion and to the impe-

rial cult in the east: the side bearing his image also included a superscription, namely, ‘TI.

CAESAR DIVI AVG.F.AVGVSTVS”—“Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus”; the

other side bore a feminine image (perhaps of the Empress Livia personified as a goddess Roma)

and read “PONTIF. MAXIM,” referring to the high priest of Roman religion. The Empire

actively used such coins to promote the worship of the emperor.” Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), 525.

324 Demand #43

The Trap

When the Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to

Caesar, they were trying to hang him on the horns of a politically

supercharged dilemma. The Jews were oppressed and were indignant

that the promised land where they lived was ruled by pagan Romans.

Paying taxes to Rome was a religious offense. But not to pay them

would be suicidal. The Pharisees were manifestly making an effort to

entangle Jesus in a trap. “Either he will support taxes to Rome,

undercutting his popular, messianic support, or he will challenge

taxes. . . . [Then] the Herodians could charge him with being a rev-

olutionary—hence that he should be executed, and executed

quickly.” 2

So they ask him, “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to

pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Jesus exposes their hypocrisy and

then gives an answer that penetrates deep into the meaning of how

his followers should live as dual citizens of his kingdom and the king-

dom of this world. He says, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?

Show me the coin for the tax.” So they brought him a denarius.

And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”

They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to

Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are

God’s” (Matt. 22:17-21).

I don’t think Jesus dodged the question. I think he answered it

in a way that forces us to think; and in the end the answer demands

radical allegiance to God’s supreme authority over all things. The

first command, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”

gets its meaning from the second one, “Render to God the things that

are God’s.” It’s the juxtaposition of these two commands that gives

the first one its proper scope.

The Unexpected, Penetrating Answer

One can picture his hearers holding their breath as he says, “Render

to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Perhaps a smile of devious

2 Ibid., 524.

Render to God the Things That Are God’s 325

success began to come over the faces of his adversaries. This sounds

very much like a capitulation to the supremacy of Rome. I wonder

how long Jesus paused between the two commands. Perhaps long

enough to let the words work their way into the mind: “Caesar has

a scope of ownership and authority. Comply with that.” As that

begins to sink in, Jesus adds one short but massive qualification:

“Render to God the things that are God’s.” The smiles that were

forming on the adversaries’ faces pause. This is not what they were

expecting. It is not what anybody was expecting. Jesus has called

for a kind of allegiance in two directions: to Caesar according to

his ownership and authority, and to God according to his owner-

ship and authority.

Jesus wisely left the scope of these two ownerships and author-

ities for the listener to answer. Whether this is a compromise with

Rome will depend on how a person understands the scope and

nature of God’s ownership and authority in relation to Caesar’s

scope of ownership and authority. That is what he forces us to think

about.

The starting point for this thinking is the unmistakable assump-

tion of the second command, “Render to God the things that are

God’s.” That assumption is: Everything is God’s. If a person does not

hear that in Jesus’ command, he would say, “Hearing they do not

hear. They have ears, but they do not hear.” In other words, the all-

important fact is unspoken and obvious to all who are willing to hear

the obvious. By being unspoken, it accomplishes more than getting

Jesus out of a trap; it leads to an answer to the question that is far

deeper and more far-reaching than what his adversaries were asking.

Rendering to Caesar Is Rendering to Jesus, or

It Is Treason

The fact that God owns everything and has all authority in the uni-

verse puts the first command under the second: “Render to Caesar the

things that are Caesar’s” becomes a subcategory of “Render to God

the things that are God’s.” All is God’s. Therefore what is Caesar’s is

God’s. Therefore rendering to Caesar what is his must be seen as an

326 Demand #43

expression of rendering to God what is God’s. This is all-important in

understanding how one can be utterly devoted to Jesus as Lord and

live in a world with Caesar—or any other authority.

Even though the power of Caesar stood behind the crucifixion

of Jesus, Jesus is the supreme Lord over Caesar. Jesus knows this.

He is consciously abstaining during his earthly life from exercising

the right and power to subdue his enemies. He is choosing to lay

down his life. “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one

takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have author-

ity to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John

10:17-18). Therefore, when he had risen from the dead he said,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt.

28:18). That means that he is above all of Caesar’s authority.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” means, therefore:

In all your rendering to Caesar, render to Jesus the full honor of the

absolute authority that he has over Caesar.

It was fitting during Jesus’ earthly ministry that he not draw

excessive attention to his universal ownership and authority. He was

here to suffer and die. He knew that the day would come when he

would rule openly over the nations. That’s why he said, “When the

Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he

will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the

nations” (Matt. 25:31-32). But during his earthly ministry Jesus

did not exert this kind of open power. Hence when it came time to

express how his followers should relate to Caesar, he called attention

to God, not explicitly to himself. He did not say, “Render to Caesar

the things that are Caesar’s, and to me the things that are mine.”

But that is, in fact, what he does call for. He and the Father are

one (John 10:30). “The Father judges no one, but has given all judg-

ment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the

Father” (John 5:22-23). At his weakest hour the high priest asked

him if he was the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed. Jesus answered,

“I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of

Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). In

other words, “Even though I am weak and despised in your eyes

Render to God the Things That Are God’s 327

now, very shortly I will sit in the place of absolute authority over you

and Pilate and Herod and Caesar.” Therefore, “Render to God the

things that are God’s” means also, render to Jesus the honor of

absolute ownership and authority over everything, including all

that is Caesar’s.

There Is No Authority Except What Is Given

from Above

Therefore, Jesus is demanding absolute allegiance to himself and

his ownership and authority. All other allegiances are relativized by

this supreme allegiance. All other allegiances are warranted and

limited and shaped by this first allegiance.

They are warranted because the subordinate authorities in the

world, like Caesar, are owing to God’s authority. Jesus said to Pilate,

who seemed to have authority over Jesus at his trial, “You would

have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from

above” (John 19:11). Pilate has authority because God has given it

to him. Therefore, such human authority is warranted because it is

indirectly God’s. When Jesus said, “Render to God the things that

are God’s,” the term “the things that are God’s” included Pilate’s

authority, because it was, indirectly, God’s. God had given it to

him. He would not have it without God. Therefore, Jesus acknowl-

edges the legitimacy of human authority. It is legitimate, but not

absolute. It is from God, but it is not God.

It is risky for Jesus to say, “Render to Caesar the things that are

Caesar’s.” That puts a high premium on obedience to the demands

of Caesar. One of the realities that warrants this risk is that the

heart of rebellion is more dangerous in us than the demands of

Caesar outside of us. Jesus wants us to see that the danger to our soul

from unjust, secular governments is nowhere near as great as the

danger to our soul from the pride that kicks against submission.

No mistreatment from Caesar or unjust law from Rome has ever

sent anyone to hell. But pride and rebellion is what sends everyone

to hell who doesn’t have a Savior. Therefore, the subordinate author-

ities of the world are warranted by God’s will in two senses. On the

328 Demand #43

one hand, he wills that we recognize that these authorities are indeed

subordinate and that we glorify him as the only supreme sovereign.

On the other hand, he wills that we recognize these authorities as

God-ordained and that we not proudly kick against what he has

put in place.

All our earthly allegiances are not only warranted by the

supreme authority of God, but also limited and shaped by that

authority. For these functions of God’s authority we pass now to

the next chapter.

Demand #44

RENDER TO CAESAR THE

THINGS THAT ARE

CAESAR’S AS AN ACT OF

RENDERING TO GOD

WHAT IS GOD’S

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle [ Jesus] in his

talk. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians,

saying . . . “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes

to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why

put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.”

And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose

likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said

to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,

and to God the things that are God’s.” —Matt. 22:15-21

Isaid in the previous chapter that Jesus demands absolute alle-

giance to himself and his ownership and authority. All other

allegiances are warranted and limited and shaped by this supreme

allegiance to Jesus as the King of kings. We have seen how they are

warranted. Now we turn to see how they are limited and shaped.

When Caesar Demands What God Forbids

All our earthly allegiances are limited by what God’s supreme

authority accomplished through Jesus (see John 5:27; Matt. 28:18).

330 Demand #44

We should do what Caesar says since he has his authority by God’s

design. But we should not do all that he says. If Caesar says, “Caesar

is Lord!” we do not imitate him. If he commands us to bow under

his lordship, we do not do it. Jesus is Lord. His followers bow to him

as supreme and to no one else. Even though human authority is

ultimately from God, it does not act according to God’s word.

Therefore, it may demand what God forbids.

This is why Jesus warns of impending conflict. He tells his dis-

ciples they will have to choose between allegiance to him and alle-

giance to Caesar’s state. This will cost some of them their lives.

“They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering

you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought

before kings and governors for my name’s sake . . . some of you

they will put to death” (Luke 21:12, 16). The only way this warn-

ing makes sense is if Jesus is telling us not to render to Caesar every-

thing that Caesar thinks is Caesar’s. Rendering to Caesar the things

that are Caesar’s does not include rendering obedience to Caesar’s

demand that we not render supreme allegiance to God. God’s

supreme authority limits the authority of Caesar and the allegiance

we owe to him.

We Submit to Caesar to Acknowledge the

Supreme Lordship of Jesus

All our earthly allegiances are not only warranted and limited by

the supreme authority of God but are also shaped by that author-

ity. In other words, even the duty we properly render to Caesar is

rendered differently because Caesar is not absolute. We render obe-

dience to Caesar where we can, not because he is Lord, but because

our Lord Jesus bids us to. In other words, all our obedience to Caesar

dethrones Caesar by expressing the lordship of Jesus. We view all our

serving of Caesar as serving his owner and Lord, Jesus. There is,

therefore, no whiff of worship toward Caesar. He is stripped of his

claim to divinity in the very act of submitting to his laws. Even our

submission is therefore seditious toward rulers with pretensions of

deity.

Rendering to God What Is God’s 331

Jesus illustrates this shaping of submission by the supremacy of

God’s authority in Matthew 17:24-27.

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the half-shekel

tax went up to Peter and said, “Does your teacher not pay the

tax?” He said, “Yes.” And when he came into the house, Jesus

spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From

whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or

from others?” And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him,

“Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go

to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and

when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give

it to them for me and for yourself.”

This “half-shekel tax” probably refers to a temple tax that the

Jewish people paid annually for the upkeep of the temple. The

exact identity of the tax is not crucial for the point that is rele-

vant here. The question was, will Jesus and his disciples pay it? The

answer is yes. But the way Jesus justifies the payment is what is cru-

cial for us.

He compares the payment to the way a secular king taxes his

empire: Does he demand taxes from his children? No. So the children

are free. “Now,” Jesus says, “that’s the way it is with me and my

disciples; we are the children of God who has all authority and

owns everything, and therefore we do not have to pay this temple

tax. But will we? Yes. Why? Not to give an offense.”

The principle is this: There are at times reasons to submit to

an authority that arise not from the intrinsic right of the author-

ity, but from a principle of freedom and what would be for the

greater good. So, applying this to Caesar, the principle would go

like this: God owns Caesar. God has absolute authority over

Caesar. This all-authoritative God is our Father. We are his chil-

dren. Therefore, the demands of Caesar to fund his government are

not absolutely binding on us. Our Father owns the government. We

are free. In fact, the whole earth is ours as heirs of our Father, and

we will one day inherit it completely (Matt. 5:5). Nevertheless, in

332 Demand #44

this freedom, should we pay Caesar’s taxes? Yes, because that

would lead to the greatest good for now and because our Father

bids us, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” In this

way we can see how God’s supreme ownership over all things not

only warrants and limits but also shapes the way we express our

earthly allegiances.

How Jesus’ Authority Shapes Our Disobedience

to Caesar

That shaping effect of Jesus’ supreme authority extends even to the

way we disobey Caesar. That is, even our disobedience, when it must

be, is not indifferent to the proper authority of Caesar. Even our

disobedience will be shaped by Jesus’ supremacy over, and endorse-

ment of, the perverted authority of Caesar. We saw above that Jesus’

authority limits Caesar’s authority. We saw this in Jesus’ demand

that we should die rather than submit to Caesar’s demand that we

deny Jesus. Jesus himself did not comply with Herod’s demands

(Luke 23:9) or Pilate’s demands (Mark 15:5) or the demands of the

high priest (Matt. 26:62-63). Jesus modeled and demanded some

civil disobedience. And it is his life and teaching and authority that

shape what that disobedience looks like.

We have already devoted whole chapters to Jesus’ demands for

servanthood ( Demand #17) and love of our enemies ( Demands

#28, 29, 32, 33, 34) and care of our neighbors ( Demand #21). These

and other demands will profoundly shape the way Jesus’ followers

engage in civil disobedience. It may be helpful here to apply these

demands again to this situation and give some direction.

Shaping Civil Disobedience by the Demands

of Jesus

Matthew 5:38-48 contains strong words about non-resistance and

active love for your enemy (see Demand #30). What we saw, and

now see again, is that non-resistance and active love are not always

the same. On the non-resistance side, Jesus said,

Rendering to God What Is God’s 333

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth

for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if

anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . .

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

Give to the one who asks from you, and do not refuse the one

who would borrow from you. (Matt. 5:38-42)

All of those demands call for compliance to one who mistreats you

or asks you for something. This looks like the opposite of resis-

tance. But then, in the flow of Jesus’ sermon, comes something a lit-

tle different in verses 43-48, namely, more active love rather than

non-resistance.

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and

hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray

for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your

Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and

on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. . . .

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Here a different note is struck. The emphasis falls on seeking the

good of the enemy. Love your enemy. Pray for your enemy—pre-

sumably that he would be saved and find hope and life in Jesus. Do

good to your enemy the way God does with rain and sunshine. So

in verses 38-42 the note of compliance is struck (don’t resist, turn the

other cheek, go the extra mile). But in verses 43-48 Jesus strikes the

note of positive actions for the good of our enemies with a view to

their blessing.

Now this raises the question of whether the non-resistance and

compliance of verses 38-42 is always the best way to love others

and do them good as prescribed in verses 43-48. One focuses on pas-

sivity—don’t retaliate, be willing to suffer unjustly. The other focuses

on activity—seek to do good for your enemy. Is passivity always

the best way to do good?

334 Demand #44

When Love for One Demands Resistance to

Another

The answer becomes clearer when we realize that in most situa-

tions of injustice or persecution we are not the only person being

hurt. For example, how do you love two people if one is the crimi-

nal and the other is the victim—if one is hurting and the other is

being hurt? Is love passive when it is not only your cheek that is being

smacked but someone else’s—and repeatedly?

Or what about the command to give to the one who asks? Is it

love to give your coat to a person who will use it to strangle an

infant? And how do you go the extra mile (lovingly!) with a person

who is taking you along to support his bloodshed? Do you go the

extra mile with a person who is making you an active accomplice

to his evil?

The point of these questions is this: In these verses Jesus is giv-

ing us a description of love that cuts to the depth of our selfishness

and fear. If selfishness and fear keep us from giving and going the

extra mile, then we need to be broken by these words. But Jesus is

not saying that passive compliance in situations of injustice is the

only form of love. It can be a form of cowardice. When love weighs

the claims of justice and mercy among all the people involved, there

can come a moment, a flash point, when love may go beyond pas-

sive, compliant non-resistance and drive the money-changers from

the temple (Mark 11:15).

The Greatest Battle Is to Be Brokenhearted in

Our Resistance

What guidelines are there, then, for how a follower of Jesus will

perform civil disobedience? The words of Jesus rule out all vindic-

tiveness and all action based on the mere expediency of personal

safety. The Lord cuts away our love for possessions and our love

for convenience. That’s the point of Matthew 5:38-42. Don’t act

merely out of concern for your own private benefit, your clothes,

your convenience, your possessions, your safety.

Rendering to God What Is God’s 335

Instead, by trusting Jesus, become the kind of person who is

utterly free from these things to live for others (both the oppressed

and the oppressors; both the persecuted and the persecutors; both

the dying children and the killing abortionists; both the racists and

the races). The tone and demeanor of this civil disobedience will be

the opposite of strident, belligerent, rock-throwing, screaming,

swearing, violent demonstrations.

We are people of the cross. Our Lord submitted to crucifixion

willingly to save his enemies. We owe our eternal life to him. We

are forgiven sinners. This takes the swagger out of our protest. It

takes the arrogance out of our resistance. And if, after every other

means has failed, we must disobey for the sake of love and justice,

we will first remove the log from our own eye, which will cause

enough pain and tears to soften our indignation into a humble, quiet,

but unshakable no. The greatest battle we face is not overcoming

unjust laws, but becoming this kind of people.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the

things that are God’s.” Let this demand exalt the supremacy of God

and his Son Jesus over all earthly powers. Let it bind our hearts in

absolute allegiance to the kingship of Jesus. Let it warrant and limit

and shape the way we render allegiance to “Caesar.” And let it free

us to live in this world as citizens of another kingdom—not escap-

ing, not conforming, but living out the radical difference that King

Jesus makes in every relationship, including our relationship with the

state.

Demand #45

DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE

OF ME, FOR I WILL BUILD

MY CHURCH

[ Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter

replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus

answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and

blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,

and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. —Matt. 16:15-18

Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. —Matt. 28:19

And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay

in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. —Luke 24:49

The demand of Jesus, “Do this in remembrance of me” comes

from the institution of the Lord’s Supper in Luke 22:19. But

it assumes something, namely, that there would be a church wor-

shiping Jesus when he was gone. Did Jesus plan for that and pro-

vide for the church? That is what this chapter addresses. It is

foundational for the next.

“I Will Build My Church”

Jesus promised to build his church. By “church” he did not mean a

building. That is never the meaning of church (ejkklhs via) in Greek. He

I Will Build My Church 337

means he will build a people. He will gather a people who trust him

as their Lord (John 13:13; 20:28) and Savior (John 3:17; 10:9) and

who love each other (John 13:34-35) and their enemies (Matt. 5:44).

Jesus describes himself as “the good shepherd” who gathers his sheep

into a flock. “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own

know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I

lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of

this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So

there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:14-16).

The words “I must bring them also” and “they will listen to my

voice” carry the same authority as the words “I will build my church”

(Matt. 16:18). “I must bring them.” “They will hear my voice.” “I

will build my church.” This is what the power of the kingdom does.

Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a net that was cast into the sea

of humanity and “gathered fish of every kind” (Matt. 13:47). The

kingdom of God, as Jesus presents it, is not a realm or a people, but

a rule or a reign. Therefore, it brings a people into being the way a net

gathers fish. Some skeptics have tried to find a contradiction between

Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God and the subsequent rise of the

church. But there is no contradiction. The kingdom creates the

church. Or, to say it another way, the King, Jesus, builds his church.

Jesus knew and taught that between his first and second com-

ing to earth there would be a lapse of time. For example, Jesus’

parable of the wicked tenants is a story of what will happen between

his first and second coming. It begins, “A man planted a vineyard

and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long

while” (Luke 20:9). This is one of the clearest statements indicating

that Jesus expected the time before his second coming to be sub-

stantial. He knew that he would be away from his “flock,” and

therefore he made provision for them while he is gone.

Jesus Took Care to Provide for the Church

Though the Holy Spirit

This provision includes the sending of the Holy Spirit, the preserva-

tion of inspired truth in the writings of his apostles and their close

338 Demand #45

associates, guidelines for how to handle sin in the flock, and the ordi-

nances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus was keenly aware of what it would mean to leave his “lit-

tle flock” (Luke 12:32) in a hostile world and return to the Father.

How were they to live without his physical presence? He had been the

literal center of their lives for three years, and now he was going to

leave. Who would teach them? Who would guide and protect them?

How were they to live in his absence? These and many other ques-

tions would come when Jesus was gone. Therefore he assured them,

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).

What he meant by this promise was that he would send the Holy

Spirit and that this Spirit of God would be his own presence among

them. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to

be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world can-

not receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know

him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).

“He dwells with you, and will be in you.” Jesus is saying that he him-

self is now with his disciples—physically present—and when the

Spirit comes he himself will be in them. Jesus comforts his follow-

ers with the truth that he himself will be present in the church by

the Spirit whom he sends in his place.1

“Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled”

Jesus intends for these promises to give strong encouragement to

his followers when he leaves. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give

to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts

be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). Therefore,

even though the church is destined for trouble in a hostile world of

unbelief (John 15:20), they should be encouraged because Jesus

promises to send the Holy Spirit who will help them and will, in fact,

prove to be a manifestation of the presence of Jesus himself.

1 I should make explicit that in describing the coming of the Spirit this way I do not mean to

imply that the Person of the Spirit and the Person of the Son are not distinct persons. They are.

That the Spirit can manifest the Son and mediate an experience of the presence of the Son is

part of the mysterious unity that they have, not a contradiction of their distinct persons.

I Will Build My Church 339

Jesus promised at the end of his earthly life, “Behold, I am with

you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Jesus himself

promises to be with his followers even after he is gone from them.

This can be true because of the Holy Spirit, who also is the Spirit of

Jesus. Therefore, because of Jesus’ past work on the cross (Matt.

20:28) and his present work by the Spirit (John 10:16; 12:32) and his

future work in coming again in triumph (Matt. 16:27), his church

may be confident in a hostile world. “In the world you will have

tribulation,” Jesus says. “But take heart; I have overcome the world”

(John 16:33). “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall

not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

Therefore, in view of this crucial role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’

absence, Jesus demands that his followers wait for the Spirit and

not blunder ahead into ministry without this gift. Just before his

ascension into heaven, Jesus said, “Behold, I am sending the promise

of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with

power from on high” (Luke 24:49). All subsequent generations of

the followers of Jesus are to receive this Spirit and in this way enjoy

the power and presence of the risen King.

Jesus Provides a New Testament for

His Church

Not only does Jesus provide for his flock after his departure by

sending them the Holy Spirit, but also by preparing for the preser-

vation of inspired truth in the writings of his apostles. Jesus does

not refer to the writings of the apostles but puts in place both apos-

tles and the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of their teaching for the

foundation of his church.

At a crucial juncture in his earthly ministry Jesus chose twelve

apostles from all the disciples who were following him. He did not

make these choices lightly. He prayed all night. “In these days he

went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in

prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose

from them twelve, whom he named apostles” (Luke 6:12). The word

“apostle” means “someone who is ‘sent’ (ajpostevllein) and who

340 Demand #45

shares the authority of the one who sends, as his representative.”2

Not all whom Jesus sent were appointed as apostles. For example,

he sent out seventy-two ahead of him and said to them, “I am send-

ing you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. . . . Heal the sick . . .

and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke

10:3, 9). But these were not called apostles.

The fact that there were twelve apostles—just as there were

twelve tribes of Israel—and that the word apostle carries the impli-

cation of special authority to represent him suggests that Jesus

intended for the apostles to be the foundation for the true Israel,

the church. He had said concerning the old Israel that, at least tem-

porarily, they were being replaced. “I tell you, the kingdom of God

will be taken away from you [Israel] and given to a people produc-

ing its fruits [Jesus’ followers, the church]” (Matt. 21:43; see also

Demand #28). This new “Israel” would have its foundation in the

twelve apostles. They will represent Jesus’ authority as they lay the

foundation for this new people.

To secure the future truthfulness of the teaching of the Twelve,

Jesus promised to send the Spirit of truth to preserve his teaching and

lead them into crucial truth that he had not yet given them. Speaking

to the eleven apostles, after Judas had left them on the night before

he was crucified, Jesus said:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them

now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all

the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but what-

ever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things

that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine

and declare it to you. (John 16:12-14)

He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that

I have said to you. (John 14:26)

2 Donald Hagner, Matthew 1–13, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 33a (Dallas: Word, 1993), 265. Norval Geldenhuys defines an apostle as “one chosen and sent with a special commission

as the fully authorized representative of the sender.” Geldenhuys, Supreme Authority: The

Authority of the Lord, His Apostles and the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1953), 53-54.

I Will Build My Church 341

This is Jesus’ way of caring for his flock after he is gone. He pro-

vides an authoritative band of representatives and then gives them

the assurance that in their teaching office they will have divine assis-

tance to provide the church with the truth it needs for all of life and

godliness. He intends that the teaching of these authoritative spokes-

men be preserved for later generations.

We know this because Jesus says to his Father in prayer at the

end of his life, “I do not ask for these [twelve] only, but also for those

who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be

one” (John 17:20-21). All subsequent generations of the church

will come to faith in Jesus “through their word.” This implies that

their word should be preserved. This is the origin of what we call

the New Testament. The foundation of the church today is the Spirit-

guided teaching of the apostles, preserved for us in the writings of the

New Testament.3

3 There is a controversial passage from Jesus’ teaching about the place of Peter in relationship

to the foundation of the church. Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon

Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responded, “Blessed are you,

Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in

heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of

hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and what-

ever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed

in heaven” (Matt. 16:15-19).

Some take this passage to teach that Peter and his successors (such as the bishops of Rome

and the popes), have a unique authority and administrative role in the church throughout his-

tory. The “keys of the kingdom” would be in their hands and would refer to the unique role of

decision-making for what the church believes and does. The direction of my own understand-

ing is given by George Ladd in the following interpretation:

Another interpretation lies nearer at hand. Jesus condemned the scribes and the

Pharisees because they had taken away the key of knowledge, refusing either to enter

into the Kingdom of God themselves or to permit others to enter (Luke 11:52).

The same thought appears in the first Gospel. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,

hypocrites! Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither

enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in” (Matt. 23:13). In bibli-

cal idiom, knowledge is more than intellectual perception. It is “a spiritual posses-

sion due to revelation.” The authority entrusted to Peter is grounded upon

revelation, that is, spiritual knowledge, which he shared with the twelve. The keys

of the Kingdom are therefore “the spiritual insight which will enable Peter to lead

others in through the door of revelation through which he has passed himself”

[Anthony Flew, Jesus and His Church, 1943, p. 95]. The authority to bind and

loose involves the admission or exclusion of men from the realm of the Kingdom

of God. Christ will build his ekklesia [i.e., church] upon Peter and upon those who

share the divine revelation of Jesus’ messiahship. To them also is committed by virtue

of this same revelation the means of permitting men to enter the realm of the bless-

ings of the Kingdom or of excluding men from such participation. (George Ladd,

The Presence of the Future [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974], 274-275).

This view fits with what I have said about Jesus providing a foundation for the

church in the teaching of the apostles. Peter had a prominent role to play in that,

but his founding authority was shared by the others and is found today in the New

Testament, not in the office of the Pope.

342 Demand #45

The Spirit and the Word Are Inseparable

In this way Jesus has provided for his church both the Spirit and

the word. His Spirit and his teaching are inseparable. He would be

critical of any who try to separate the word and the Spirit. The objec-

tive teachings of Jesus, brought to memory by the Spirit and recorded

for following generations, are the standard for the church. Any

attempt to abandon or distort this objective, historical, once-for-all

deposit of teaching will go astray from what Jesus demands and

teaches and promises.

But it is also true that without the Spirit, no one will receive, or

properly grasp, these historical teachings. By nature we are all sim-

ply human with no spiritual life. But without spiritual life we do

not have eyes to see truly what Jesus taught. The remedy for this

blindness and spiritual deadness is to be born again by the Spirit.

“Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John

3:3). This new birth is the work of the Spirit. “That which is born

of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John

3:6). If we are going to have the spiritual life and sight that enables

us to see what Jesus really teaches, we must be born of the Spirit.

(To see more on this important work of the Spirit see Demand #1.)

Jesus also made three other noteworthy provisions for his

church. In the next chapter we take up Jesus’ demand for church dis-

cipline and the two ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Demand #46

DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE

OF ME—BAPTIZE DISCIPLES

AND EAT THE LORD’S SUPPER

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between

you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that

every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three wit-

nesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he

refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and

a tax collector. —Matt. 18:15-17

And [ Jesus] said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover

with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is ful-

filled in the kingdom of God.” And he took a cup, and when he had

given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For

I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine

until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, and when he

had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my

body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And

likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured

out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” —Luke 22:15-20

How Jesus Demands That We Handle Sin in

the Church

In addition to providing his church with the Spirit and the word

(which we saw in the previous chapter), Jesus also provided guidelines

344 Demand #46

for how to handle sin in the flock. In one sense, all of his teachings

do this. They are the charter for how his followers are to live in the

church and in the world. But he gave more specific guidelines for what

has come to be called church discipline in Matthew 18:15-17.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between

you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your

brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with

you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two

or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the

church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be

to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

The word “church” signals the fact that Jesus is preparing his fol-

lowers for the ongoing fellowship of his band of followers in his

absence. The implication of the teaching is that persistent, unre-

pented sin—a refusal to take sin seriously and make war against it

in our own lives—will mean we are not really followers of Jesus. In

other words, even though Jesus knew that the church would always

have false believers in it (Matt. 13:30, 48), nevertheless he made pro-

vision for a kind of careful, loving, patient discipline that would

not tolerate blatant unwillingness to repent.

Treating an unrepentant “brother” like a “Gentile and tax col-

lector” did not mean treating him with hostility. Jesus had said

plainly that such people are to be loved: “And if you greet only

your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even

the Gentiles do the same?” (Matt. 5:47). What it means to “let him

be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” is to no longer share the

unique fellowship of Jesus with him—not to relate with him as if

there is no barrier in the fellowship. This would include not shar-

ing, for example, in the Lord’s Supper together.

Go, Make Disciples, Baptizing Them

Which brings us now to the ordinances that Jesus prepared for his

church before he left, namely, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Just

Baptize Disciples and Eat the Lord’s Supper 345

before he departed into heaven, Jesus gave the command that we

should “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name

of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).

In other words, part of becoming a disciple or a follower of Jesus is

being baptized. This is the outward mark of the inward change that

has happened to bring one under the lordship of Jesus as a forgiven

sinner.

John the Baptist had baptized people as a call to repentance in

preparation for the coming of the Messiah (Mark 1:4). This was in

one sense amazing. He was calling on Jewish people to undergo a

special sign of repentance as a sign of being part of Messiah’s people.

But some of the leaders were indignant at this and protested that they

were already the people of the Messiah. They were Abraham’s off-

spring. To this John replied, “Do not presume to say to yourselves,

‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from

these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). In other

words, “The baptism I demand is a sign that a true people of Israel

is being formed. It is not coextensive with the physical offspring of

Abraham. It is made up of those who repent and who will very

soon meet and believe in the Messiah, Jesus. Do not think,” he says

to the Jewish leaders, “that if you are rejected for unbelief, God

will be unable to fulfill his covenant promises; he can raise up from

stones beneficiaries of his promises.”

Therefore, already in John’s baptism we see how it functioned to

distinguish true believers from mere descendants of believers. Now

Jesus chooses this sign as the mark of his own followers in his

absence. When they are converted from unbelief to belief, they are to

be baptized. That is, they are to demonstrate in their obedience to

this command that they are truly his.1 My simple point here is that

this act, practiced by almost all Christian churches today, was not

invented by the churches. Jesus put this in place before he left and

1 I don’t intend to go into the controversial issues surrounding infant baptism vs. believer’s baptism.

I would recommend Paul K. Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace: An Appraisal of

the Argument That as Infants Were Once Circumcised, So They Should Now Be Baptized (Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), which defends the truth of believer’s baptism. For my own

more extended treatment see http://www.desiringgod.org/resourcelibrary/topicindex/23/

346 Demand #46

demanded that we do it. Therefore a follower of Jesus should be bap-

tized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as

Jesus said. This is part of becoming his disciple and becoming a

part of his church.

“Do This in Remembrance of Me”

The other ordinance that Jesus provided for his church is the Lord’s

Supper. I am calling baptism and the Lord’s Supper ordinances to

signify that Jesus ordained them. That is, he established the pat-

tern of their observance. This is clear with regard to baptism

because he commanded it as a more or less formal act in the name

of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is also clear in regard to the

Lord’s Supper because, in the context of a very solemn declaration

about the bread and the cup, Jesus commands us to “do this.”

“‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance

of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This

cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’”

(Luke 22:19-20).

Jesus did not give this ordinance a name. He called the entire

meal that he was eating with his disciples that last night the

Passover and described it in relationship to his own sacrifice. “I

have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suf-

fer” (Luke 22:15). The Passover marked the event in Egypt when

God spared the Jewish sons from the angel of death because their

doorposts and lintel were marked with blood from a sacrificial lamb

(Exod. 12:13, 23). Since everything about Jesus’ last evening and

the following trial and crucifixion was planned by God and fol-

lowed obediently by Jesus, it would be folly to think his last sup-

per was only coincidentally a Passover meal. “The Son of Man

goes as it is written of him” (Matt. 26:24).

Therefore, it is not surprising that the earliest Christian docu-

ment that refers to this ordinance not only calls it “the Lord’s

Supper” (kuriako;n

`

deipnon; 1 Cor. 11:20), but also refers to Jesus

as “our Passover lamb” (to; pavsca hJmw`n; 1 Cor. 5:7). That was

surely what Jesus meant to say: “I am instituting a sacred supper

Baptize Disciples and Eat the Lord’s Supper 347

for my people when I am gone, and in it they should see a sacred sign

of the Passover sacrifice that I will perform tomorrow morning when

I die for their sins.”

How Is the Cup and Bread the Blood and Body

of Jesus?

Of course using the word sign in that last sentence is controversial.

There have been several different understandings of what Jesus

meant by taking the bread and saying, “This is my body, which is

given for you” (Luke 22:19) and by taking the cup and saying, “This

is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the

forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). Was he saying that the cup and

the bread were signs of his body and blood, or that they somehow

were transformed into the very body and blood of Jesus?

It was natural then, and it is natural today, to point to a repre-

sentation of something and say that the representation is the thing.

For example, I look at a photograph of our house and say, “This is

our house.” It would not enter anyone’s mind to think I mean that

the photograph was transformed into my house. If Jesus stooped

down and drew a camel in the sand, He would say, “This is a camel.”

The drawing doesn’t become a camel. It represents a camel.

We know he used language this way because in the parable of the

four soils, he interprets the images of four kinds of people with

these words: “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one

who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy” (Matt.

13:20). He means the rocky ground represents a kind of person.

There is nothing modern or strange about this way of thinking, and

it is the most natural way to understand Jesus’ words. The cup and

the body represent his blood and body.

Moreover, if we insist on saying that “this is my body” and

“this is my blood” must refer to the physical body and blood of

Jesus, what becomes of the statement, “This cup . . . is the new

covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20)? Are we to say that the cup is

the new covenant in the same way that the cup is the blood? Surely,

“this cup . . . is the new covenant” means “this cup represents the

348 Demand #46

new covenant that will be purchased and inaugurated by my blood-

shedding tomorrow morning.” Therefore, it seems wise to under-

stand the words “this is my body” and “this is my blood” to mean:

“The cup and bread represent my physical body and blood offered

up for you in death as a sacrifice for your sins.”

“The Words That I Have Spoken to You Are

Spirit and Life”

Sometimes another saying of Jesus is used as a support for seeing

the cup and bread as literally transformed into the blood and body

of Jesus. In John 6:53-54 Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless

you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have

no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has

eternal life.” But Jesus wants us to see this language as a vivid expres-

sion of spiritual feeding, not physical feeding. He tells us this ten

verses later when he makes sure that we understand that the life

promised in verses 53-54 is not mediated through flesh but through

the Spirit: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The

words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63).

This verse is a warning against taking the words “this is my body”

and “this is my blood” in a way that makes eternal life flow through

physical eating and drinking.

Therefore, Jesus commands that his followers celebrate the

Lord’s Supper as a commemoration of his death and an antici-

pation of his coming again in the glory of his kingdom (Luke

22:18). Knowing that this cup and bread represent the most won-

derful act of love in history and that it accomplished the purchase

and inauguration of the new covenant—that is, the purchase of

forgiveness and a new heart (Jer. 31:31-34)—makes the Lord’s

Supper a matchless act of communion with the risen Jesus. He

draws near by his Spirit and his word and makes himself known

to us for our enjoyment in a way that is uniquely shaped by this

solemn act.

Baptize Disciples and Eat the Lord’s Supper 349

The Demand of Jesus: Be the Church

What we have seen in this chapter is that the church is not an after-

thought created by the followers of Jesus because his message of

the coming kingdom did not materialize. No, the church did not

replace the kingdom. The church is created and sustained by the

kingdom. The church was planned by Jesus, and he provided for

her in every way.

“I will build my church” is the banner that flies over the gath-

erings of Jesus’ followers today. He is building his people. He is gath-

ering his flock. He is fulfilling his promise to be with her to the end

of the age. He is teaching her by his Spirit and through his word. And

he is marking her off from the world through the sign of baptism and

by making himself remembered and known and enjoyed in the

Lord’s Supper. “Do this” is a demand of the Lord that calls us today

to be not just individual followers but a flock, a gathering, a com-

munity, and a church.

Demand #47

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

BEFORE OTHERS

THAT THEY MAY GLORIFY

YOUR FATHER WHO

IS IN HEAVEN

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall

its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be

thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of

the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light

a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light

to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before oth-

ers, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

Father who is in heaven. —Matt. 5:13-16

Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make

it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one

another. —Mark 9:50

The demand that we let our light shine before the world has a

goal: that people might give glory to our Father who is in

heaven. So ultimately, the demand is that we seek to glorify God by

letting our light shine. It is fitting then that we devote this chapter

to the importance of this goal: the glorifying of God. Then in the

following chapter we will turn to what it means to let our light shine.

That They May Glorify Your Father 351

Jesus’ First Passion and Supreme Value

The first thing that Jesus demands that we pray is that our Father’s

name be hallowed. “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hal-

lowed be your name’” (Matt. 6:9). In saying this, Jesus signals that

his first passion is—and our first passion should be—the manifest

holiness of God. I choose the phrase “manifest holiness of God”

for three reasons. First, the Greek word behind “hallowed be”

(aJgiasq vhtw) is built on the word for “holy” ( {agio~). Second, when

you turn the word “holy” into a verb like this, it means to “show

yourself holy”—hence the idea of manifest holiness. Third, another

way to speak of the manifest holiness of God is to speak of his glory.1

The reason it is important to see the connection between the hal-

lowing of God’s name and the glory of God is that numerous sayings

of Jesus (as we will see in a moment) show that the glory of his Father

and his own glory are supremely important. Nothing in the uni-

verse is more valuable than the glory of God. Seeing the connection

between the hallowing of God’s name as the first passion of Jesus and

the glory of God as the supreme value in the universe shows that

there is no conflict between these two. Hallowing God’s name and

glorifying God are largely the same act.

What Is the Glory of God?

God’s glory is the radiance of his manifold perfections. Those are

poor words for the richest reality of all. But though words are inad-

equate, we must try. God’s glory is the outshining of the infinite value

of all that God is. It is his moral beauty. It is visible to the physical

eye only as the glorious created world points to its invisible but more

glorious Maker. “Consider the lilies of the field. . . . Even Solomon

1 One way to think of the holiness of God in relation to his glory is that his holiness is the infinite worth of his intrinsic perfection and purity, and his glory is the manifestation or the radi-

ance of that worth. One textual pointer toward this relationship is Leviticus 10:1-3, “Now Nadab

and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and

offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came

out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses

said to Aaron, ‘This is what the LORD has said, “Among those who are near me I will be sanc-

tified [aJgiasq vhsomai], and before all the people I will be glorified [doxasq vhsomai].”’” The priests must treat God as holy in their sacrifices, and the result will be that God will be manifested as

holy to the people—that is, he will be glorified.

352 Demand #47

in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . . God so clothes

the grass of the field” (Matt. 6:28-30). The glory of the lilies is the

work of God. It is meant to get our attention and waken us to a glory

of which lily-glory is only a likeness.

We love to look at glory. We were made to enjoy seeing it. This

is why Jesus came into the world. He came to reveal the glory of God

more fully than nature ever had (John 1:14) and to die in our place

so that we could be saved from God’s wrath in order to enjoy forever

the glory of God’s grace (John 3:14-15, 36; 17:24) and to awaken

in us a desire for that glory so that we do not perish in our blind

love affair with the glory of sin (John 3:19). Jesus consciously aimed

to reveal the glory of God. His actions and words were designed to

fulfill prophecies like this: “The people dwelling in darkness have

seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow

of death, on them a light has dawned” (Matt. 4:16). He said, “As

long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5;

cf. 8:12). That is, he revealed the brightness of God’s glory as never

before and by this light put everything in truthful perspective.

How Jesus Glorified God

Jesus displayed the glory of God in accomplishing what God had

given him to do. So he prayed to his Father at the end of his life, “I

glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave

me to do” (John 17:4). That work included many miracles during his

life and the great final work of redemption when he died and rose

again.

For example, when Jesus did his first public miracle by turning

water into wine, John says, he “manifested his glory” (John 2:11).

When Jesus healed a paralytic and forgave his sins, “the crowds

saw it [and] were afraid, and they glorified God” (Matt. 9:8). When

the people saw “the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame

walking, and the blind seeing . . . they glorified the God of Israel”

(Matt. 15:31). When ten lepers were cleansed, one grateful man

“turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice” (Luke 17:15, NASB).

When a woman who was bent over for eighteen years was touched

That They May Glorify Your Father 353

and straightened, “she glorified God” (Luke 13:13). And when Jesus

was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, he said to his sister, “Did

I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

(John 11:40). Everything Jesus did was done with a view to making

God look great. His work was to display the greatness and the

beauty of the full range of God’s perfections.

But the greatest miracle of all was Jesus’ death and resurrection

so that we might be redeemed from the guilt and power of sin (Mark

10:45) and have forgiveness (Matt. 26:28) and eternal life (John

3:14-15). In this great act of substitution—the guiltless for the

guilty—Jesus displayed the glory of the wrath of God and the glory

of the love of God. God’s wrath is a glorious wrath (Luke 21:23;

John 3:36). He could have no other kind. And God’s love is a glori-

ous love. When Jesus came to die, as the climax of his earthly work,

there was a huge sense that this was the moment of greatest groan-

ing and greatest glory.

In those last hours he said, “The hour has come for the Son of

Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of

wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it

bears much fruit” (John 12:23). The glory of Jesus was manifested

both in the suffering and in the triumphal resurrection afterward.

Jesus said, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these

things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). The sufferings were

the pathway to glory.

The Father and the Son Glorify Each Other

But they were not just the path. They were an essential part of his

glory. “Now [in this very hour of suffering] is the Son of Man glo-

rified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once” (John 13:31).

God is shown to be gloriously worthy in Jesus’ willingness to die so

that God would be just to remove the wrath that rightly falls on

sinners. And when the Father is thus glorified in the Son, he then

undertakes to glorify the Son with a mighty display of approval in

the resurrection.

354 Demand #47

Back and forth goes the work of the Father and the Son in glo-

rifying each other in the act of salvation. If we have seen that the

Son glorifies the Father, and the Father responds by glorifying the

Son, the reverse is also true. “Father,” Jesus says, “the hour has

come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1;

12:27-28). When Jesus is glorifying the Father in his death, it is the

Father at work glorifying the Son as well; and when the Father glo-

rifies the Son in his resurrection and exaltation, it leads to the Son

glorifying the Father as well. This mutual display of the glory of God

in the work of the Father and of the Son is the supreme passion of

their hearts.

No Greater Love Than God’s Glorifying Himself

in Jesus for Us

And the good news is that this is the very essence of their love for

us. They are displaying their glory not only to make it visible for

the enjoyment of soul-hungry creatures like us who were made to

find ultimate satisfaction in it, but also in a way that pays for our fail-

ures to treasure God’s glory so that we can escape judgment (John

5:29). In other words, God’s passion to glorify himself and his Son

is an act of love because of the preciousness of what he gives and

the price that he pays to give it. He gives us his glory, and he pays

for it with his Son’s life. There is no greater gift than God himself in

all his glory. There is no greater price than the death of God’s Son.

Therefore, there is no greater love than God’s glorifying himself in

the death and resurrection of Jesus.2

When that great work of redemption is done in the crucifixion

and resurrection, Jesus sets about, over the centuries, to gather a

people for himself by sending the Holy Spirit whose central work is

to glorify Jesus and draw people to him in faith. So he promised,

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the

truth. . . . He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and

2 To see this point unfolded in greater detail and with more texts, see John Piper, God Is the

Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books,

2005).

That They May Glorify Your Father 355

declare it to you” (John 16:13-14). The central work of the Spirit is

to continue the great work of glorifying the Father and the Son. He

does that by opening our spiritual eyes to see the truth and beauty

of who Jesus is and what he has already done in his life and death

and resurrection (John 3:3, 8; Matt. 16:17). When we see him for

who he is, we are drawn to receive him and trust him and worship

him and obey him.

Now, in view of the passion for God’s glory, what does it mean

to “let your light shine” for the glory of God? That’s the focus of

the next chapter.

Demand #48

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

BEFORE OTHERS—THE

JOYFUL SACRIFICE OF LOVE

IN SUFFERING

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter

all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be

glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the

prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth, but if

salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no

longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled

under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a

hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under

a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In

the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may

see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in

heaven. —Matt. 5:11-16

In the previous chapter we focused on the supreme passion of

Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit—namely, that they be glo-

rified in the work of our salvation. Which brings us now to the

demand, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see

your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”

(Matt. 5:16). After seeing that Jesus’ and the Father’s and the Spirit’s

supreme passion is to display the glory of God, it should not be

The Joyful Sacrifice of Love in Suffering 357

surprising that the followers of Jesus should be drawn into this pas-

sion. Live in such a way that people look at your life and make

much of your God. That is what Jesus demands.

Shine with the Light That You Are

The light that we let shine is the light that we are. Jesus said, “You

are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). So there is a movement from

the inside to the outside. What people see from the outside is our

“good works.” But that is not who we are. The good works have a

light source from inside. The key to understanding what the light is

that shines out through good works is the aim of the works, namely,

that people see and give glory to God. Why do they give glory to God

and not to us? Because the light that is shining out is the light of God,

or the light of Jesus who is the revelation of the glory of God.

What Actually Is the Light That People See?

So what does it mean then that we are the light of the world? How

do good deeds grow from who we are in such a way that they make

God look glorious? Here it would be wise to stay close to the con-

text of Jesus’ words. He has just spoken the Beatitudes: Blessed are

the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger

and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the

peacemakers, and those who suffer for righteousness’ sake (Matt.

5:3-10). Here is a kind of identity that is very unusual in the world.

It is like savory salt when things are tasteless and flat,1 and it is like

hope-filled light when people are stumbling around in the dark.

But the closest beatitude to the demand to let your light shine for

the glory of God is that you are blessed when you are reviled.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and

utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice

1 W. D. Davies and Dale Allison give eleven possible meanings for “you are the salt of the

earth” (Matt. 5:13), and then conclude that perhaps that’s the point: the many uses of salt. A

Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 472-473. But I follow those who think that the savor of salt is the most natural thing referred to. There is a kind of radical

life rooted in the promises of the Beatitudes that has a rare and wonderful taste in a world

gone flat with an excess of superficial titillation.

358 Demand #48

and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they perse-

cuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11-12).

Immediately following this demand to rejoice in persecution comes

the statement: “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light

of the world” (Matt. 5:13-14). Therefore, I conclude that what is

most salty and bright in this insipid and dark world is the almost

incomprehensible joy of Jesus’ followers in the midst of persecution

and the hardships of life.

It is a joy that is meek and merciful and pure and peaceable,

but these things alone do not awaken people to the glory of God.

In order to waken people to consider God as an explanation for

our good works there generally must be an obstacle of suffering

that would ordinarily cause them to be angry or despairing, but does

not have that effect on us. Rather they see us “rejoice” in hardship.

They see that this hardship does not make us self-centered and self-

pitying and mean-spirited. Instead they see our joy and wonder what

we are hoping in when ordinary props for hope have been knocked

away. The answer, Jesus says, is that we have great reward in heaven

(Matt. 5:12). That is, Jesus has become a treasure for us that is

more precious than what the world offers. Therefore, when perse-

cution or calamity take natural pleasures away, we still have Jesus,

and we still have joy.

Now when our good works get their flavor from this salt and

glow with this light, the world may well be awakened to taste some-

thing they have never tasted before and to see something they have

never seen before, namely, the glory of God in Jesus. If we give a

word of testimony concerning the truth and beauty of Jesus,2 and if

the Spirit mercifully blows on the hearts of those who see the evi-

dence of that beauty in our lives, then people will “give glory to [our]

Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

2 Jesus would consider it a great mistake if we took his words to mean that a person could

come to a saving sight of the glory of God in our deeds without some verbal testimony as to who

Jesus is and what he has done for us and promised to us. This is why Jesus sent his disciples

out to preach and to do good works (Matt. 10:7-8; Luke 9:2; 10:9). Not either-or, but both-and.

The great saving task of the followers of Jesus is to speak the gospel along with a life of salt-

like, light-like love: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole

world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).

The Joyful Sacrifice of Love in Suffering 359

Is the Glory of God an “Ulterior Motive”

for Love?

The supremacy of the value of the glory of God is seen in the way

Jesus makes the demand of Matthew 5:16—“Let your light shine

before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory

to your Father who is in heaven.” He explicitly says that our aim in

doing good works for others is that they might glorify God.

Sometimes people who talk much of love but are not God-centered

the way Jesus is say things like, “If you do good to people to get them

to glorify your God, you are not loving them, for you have ulterior

motives.”

This kind of criticism results from a failure to experience the

glory of God as the greatest gift and highest joy imaginable. How

could it not be love to lay down your life for someone (in doing

good for them) specifically with a view to satisfying them with the

glory of God forever? This motive is not ulterior; it is open and

front and center. It is the very essence of love: Followers of Jesus

are not do-gooders with no eternal aims for those they love. They

know exactly what the greatest and highest and most joyful good is:

seeing and savoring God in Jesus forever. This is their aim and

they are unashamed of it. They think any lesser aim is a failure of

love.

Jesus Loved Us by Obtaining for Us at the

Cost of His Life God’s Glory

We have seen it already, but it is so important we should see it again

from different texts: Jesus loved like this. In his darkest hour he let

his light shine most brightly in a “good work.” As he did the great-

est “good work” that has ever been done, he pondered out loud,

“And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” His answer

is no. Instead he described the ultimate reason why he came to the

hour of his death: “But for this purpose I have come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27-28). D. A. Carson rightly

calls this “nothing other than an articulation of the principle that has

360 Demand #48

controlled his life and ministry (John 7:18; 8:29, 50).”3 From begin-

ning (John 2:11) to end (John 12:28) Jesus let his light shine—did his

good works—to vindicate and display the glory of God.

The way he thought of this as the supreme act of love was not

only that it cost him his life (John 15:13), but that it obtained freely

for sinners the greatest gift possible. He prayed for it in John 17:24,

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be

with me where I am, to see my glory.” This was the final, greatest,

and most satisfying gift obtained by Jesus in the “good work” that

he did on the cross.

This will make no sense at all to a person who does not see and

savor the glory of God above all other gifts. But for those who have

renounced all that this world offers (Luke 14:33) and set their heart

on the “great reward” in heaven, namely, the enjoyment of the

glory of Jesus, Jesus’ purchase of this reward at the cost of his life will

be the greatest act of love imaginable.

Letting Our Light Shine, Like Jesus, in the Way

We Die

When Jesus calls us to let our light shine that others may see our

good deeds and glorify God, he is calling us to join him in the work

he came to do. And just as he pursued the glory of his Father through

his final act of dying, he expects that we will do the same. Therefore,

he said to Peter, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young,

you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but

when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another

will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.’ (This

he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God)” (John

21:18). Jesus simply takes it for granted that his disciples will make

God look good in the way they die.

The only question is, how will we die? That decision lies in the

hands of God, as Jesus makes clear with the words, “Are not two

sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the

3 D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1991), 440.

The Joyful Sacrifice of Love in Suffering 361

ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head

are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than

many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31). In other words, if God rules

over how the birds die, how much more surely will he govern your

death.

Jesus’ Light and Ours at His Second Coming

The final great historical display of Jesus’ shining light—and ours—

happens at his second coming. He tells us how it will be both for him

and for us. For him, he says, “The Son of Man is going to come

with his angels in the glory of his Father . . . all the tribes of the

earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the

clouds of heaven with power and great glory. . . . Then shall he sit

upon the throne of his glory” (Matt. 16:27; 24:30; 25:31, KJV). He

came the first time to display the glory of his Father. He will come the

second time to complete that revelation and “gather out of his king-

dom all causes of sin and all law-breakers” (Matt. 13:41).

What about for us? What will his second coming mean for us?

It turns out that letting our light shine will be our eternal vocation.

We will never cease to have this calling. This is why we were cre-

ated: to be so satisfied with our great reward, the glory of God in

Jesus, that we reflect his infinite worth in acts of love that cause

others to see and savor and show more of the glory of God. We can

see our eternal shining in Matthew 13:43 where Jesus describes what

becomes of his followers at his second coming: “The righteous will

shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

This is our final destiny. Beholding the glory of Jesus (John

17:24), we will shine with the beauty and the love that he has. The

church that he promised to build (Matt. 16:18, see Demand #45)

will find its final destiny in reflecting to one another the glory of

Jesus, so that our enjoyment of him will be all the greater because

of the manifold manifestations of it in the shining members.

362 Demand #48

The Bright Demand

Jesus’ demand to the world is that all human beings find in him the

all-satisfying glory for which we were made. Then he demands that

we turn from trusting in anything else and bank our hope on the

great reward of everlasting joy in him. And then, in that hope and

joy, he demands that we let that light shine in sacrificial good deeds

of love, so that others will see and savor and spread the glory of God.

Demand #49

MAKE DISCIPLES OF

ALL NATIONS, FOR

ALL AUTHORITY

BELONGS TO JESUS

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go there-

fore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name

of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to

observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you

always, to the end of the age. —Matt. 28:18-20

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray

earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his

harvest. —Matt. 9:37-38

Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in,

that my house may be filled. —Luke 14:23

I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who

repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repen-

tance. —Luke 15:7

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. —John 20:21

Before Jesus demanded that his followers go make disciples of all

nations, he gave the justification for this seemingly presump-

tuous mission. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has

364 Demand #49

been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). The basis today of any follower

of Jesus telling a follower of another lord to repent and turn and

follow Jesus is that Jesus has all authority in the universe.

What Is Authority?

Authority refers to the right and the power to hold sway in a given

relationship. So a father has authority over his children, but not

necessarily over his neighbor. An army lieutenant has authority

over his platoon, but not over the company commander. A teacher

has authority over the students in the classroom, but not over their

parents. An office manager has authority over the secretaries, but not

over the CEO.

We see a picture of the meaning of authority in the story of Jesus’

encounter with the Roman centurion. This officer wanted Jesus to

heal his servant but did not feel worthy to have Jesus come into his

home. So he said to Jesus, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you

come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be

healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under

me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’

and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (Matt.

8:8-9). In other words, authority is the right and power to have

your subordinates do what you choose for them to do.

That is the authority Jesus has over everyone and everything.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The

phrase “heaven and earth” is meant to include everything.

Therefore, everyone and everything is subordinate to Jesus. Every

human. Every angel. Every demon. The devil himself. And all the

natural world and what happens in it.

The Total Authority of Jesus

We see this illustrated even during Jesus’ earthly ministry. He has

authority to forgive sins, which only God can do; and so he was

accused of blasphemy (Mark 2:7-12). We see it in the way he taught

the people and the way he handled the Jewish Scriptures: “They were

All Authority Belongs to Jesus 365

astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had

authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22; Matt. 5:17-18). We

see it in the way he rebuked the devil (Matt. 4:10) and commanded

unclean spirits: “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they

obey him” (Mark 1:27). We see it in the way he commanded the

forces of nature by healing all kinds of diseases (Matt. 4:23) and

turning water into wine (John 2:9; 4:46) and calming the storm: “He

awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).

We see Jesus’ authority in the matter of life and death, both his

own and other’s—and ultimately in the matter of eternal life. He

raised people from the dead (Mark 5:41-42; Luke 7:14-15; John

11:43-44) and ruled over his own death and resurrection: “No one

takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have

authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again”

(John 10:18). And he holds full sway in the final judgment. He said

that God the Father “has given him authority to execute judgment,

because he is the Son of Man” (John 5:27). And God has “given

him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom [God has]

given him” (John 17:2).

How Jesus Lays Claim on the World

There is nothing outside the authority of Jesus. He has the right

and the power to demand allegiance from every soul that exists. As

the Lord of the universe, Jesus demands that everyone from every

nation and every religion become his disciple. The way Jesus pursues

this universal claim on every soul is by sending his followers to

make disciples from all the nations. After saying that all authority

in heaven and earth is his, he says, “therefore . . .” This word shows

not only that his universal authority is the basis of his universal claim

on every person, but also that the way he lays claim to those per-

sons follows in the next verse.

What follows is a commission that his followers go and make

disciples. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt.

28:19). In other words, Jesus does not lay claim on a person directly

366 Demand #49

from heaven. He lays claim on people through his followers. He

laid down the principle while he was still here: “Truly, truly, I say

to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever

receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20; Matt.

10:40). It is true that he said, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18),

and “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them

also, and they will listen to my voice” (John 10:16). Yes, he is doing

it himself. But he did not mean that he would do it directly from

heaven without emissaries. We know this because when he prayed

for the future church in John 17:20, he described them as “those who

will believe in me through their word.”

The Mission Lasts as Long as This Age Lasts

In other words, Jesus builds his church and gathers his flock from the

nations of the world through the word of those he sends. So the

universal authority of Jesus issues in a mission that lasts as long as

history and extends as far as humanity: “Go therefore and make

disciples of all nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, to

the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20). The words “to the end of the

age” show that the mission should last till Jesus comes back. The

demand is not given only to the first generation of disciples. The mis-

sion lasts as long as the mission-sustaining promise lasts. And that

promise is: The all-authoritative Jesus will be with us “to the end of

the age.” As long as there is time, and as long as there are nations

to reach, Jesus’ demand to go make disciples is valid.

The Followers of Jesus Speak on His Behalf

This implies several things. First, it implies that Jesus’ exclusive claim

will be made not just by him, but by his followers. He claimed that

he is the one and only Lord of the universe and that every person

from every nation and every religion or non-religion should be his

disciple. This claim is now given to his emissaries to make disciples

among all the nations and all the religions of the world. Jesus sends

his followers to go make disciples of all nations, no matter what their

All Authority Belongs to Jesus 367

religion is—Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, animists, atheists,

agnostics. He sends his followers, backed by his universal author-

ity, to go and call all people in every nation and every religion to turn

to become the disciples of Jesus.

This means that in times of relativism (like our own), when

people do not cherish objective, unchanging truth, followers of

Jesus will be accused of arrogance. They will proclaim that Jesus has

all authority—because it is true—and that everyone should repent

and believe in him and become his disciple. They will warn every-

one that to reject Jesus as the eternal Son of God who came into

the world to redeem sinners by his death and who rose again as

Lord of the universe is to forfeit eternal life. Jesus said, “Whoever

believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son

shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. . . . Whoever

does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him”

(John 3:36; 5:23; cf. 15:23).

This is the mandate and promise that sustain Jesus’ emissaries:

“The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects

me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke

10:16). The followers of Jesus will be scorned for saying that all

authority belongs to Jesus and that everyone must become his disci-

ple or forfeit eternal life. But Jesus knew that would happen: “If the

world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John

15:18). That is why he enclosed this radical demand to make disciples

between the double assurance (1) that all authority really is his and

(2) that he will be with his emissaries till the end of the age.

Jesus Demands That We Pursue Ethnic Diversity

in His Kingdom

A second implication of Jesus’ universal mission is that Jesus cares for

all ethnic groups and intends to have disciples from every “nation.”

When he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” the

meaning of the word “nations” is not political states. “Nations”—

or its synonym, “peoples” (Luke 2:31; Ps. 117:1)—in the Bible does

not refer to political states like America, Spain, Brazil, China, etc., but

368 Demand #49

to ethnic or language or cultural groupings within these political

states. For example, within the political state of China there are

dozens of “nations”—Dulong, Li, Lisu, Shui, Salar, Yao, etc. And in

the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus knew, we read about “the Jebusites,

the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites,

the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites” (Gen. 10:16-18).

So in our day the demand of Jesus to make disciples of all nations

would mean, for example, to make disciples among the Baloch of

Pakistan, the Maninka of Guinea, the Bugis of Indonesia, the Wa

of China, the Somali and Dakota of Minneapolis. These are the

kinds of groups Jesus was referring to when he said, “Go therefore

and make disciples of all nations.” Wherever there is a distinct peo-

ple group1 that has no disciples of Jesus, the demand of Jesus is

resoundingly clear: “Go as my emissaries with my authority and

my word and my love and my power and make disciples there.”

There is no partiality with Jesus in this mission. He is not western,

and he is not eastern. He is utterly committed to ethnic diversity

and unity in the truth of his supremacy. In fact, the word from which

we get “ethnic” is the word for “nations” in Matthew 28:19, e[qno~.

It has not always seemed as though God were pursuing all the

nations. At times he seemed to be committed to his people Israel,

but not the nations. His way has been indirect and at times

inscrutable. How shall we understand this roundabout way toward

a global church of worshipers from all the nations? That is what

we turn to in the final chapter.

1 For a more complete defense and explanation of what “all nations” means in a biblical and mis-

siological perspective, see John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in

Missions, revised and expanded edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), 155-200.

Demand #50

MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL

NATIONS, FOR THE

MISSION CANNOT FAIL

I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table

with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the

sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that

place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. —Matt. 8:11-12

But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute

you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will

be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will

be our opportunity to bear witness. —Luke 21:12-13

They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all

nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles,

until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. —Luke 21:24

God’s Roundabout Way of Pursuing the Nations:

Focusing on Israel

We must not stumble over God’s unusual way of pursuing the

nations for the glory of his Son. It is true that Jesus taught that God

chose to work in a unique way with the people of Israel instead of

the nations. Jesus called the Jews of his day “the sons of the king-

dom” (Matt. 8:12), that is, those to whom God gave a unique first

privilege to be the focus of his saving deeds in history—like the deliv-

erance from Egypt at the Red Sea, and miracles of provision in the

370 Demand #50

wilderness, and the gift of the promised land, and many victories in

battle (see Psalm 105 for a narrative of these blessings).

And it is also true that when Jesus came, he came as the Jewish

Messiah, announcing the coming of the long-expected kingdom of

triumph over the enemies of Israel. But he did not intend to bring

the kingdom the way they thought. His intention was to suffer and

die for their sins before he would reign as their king. This was their

only hope of eternal life. Jesus focused his mission on the Jews, giv-

ing them every opportunity to know him and believe in him. He even

said to the twelve apostles as he sent them out during his lifetime,

“Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the

Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”

(Matt. 10:5-6). And at one point he said, “I was sent only to the

lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). We may think this

a roundabout way to reach the nations. But God has his reasons.

Jesus’ Focus Was Rejected, and He Turned to

the Nations

There are lessons the nations must learn from the failure of Israel

to trust God and welcome a suffering Messiah. During his lifetime

on earth most Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah (Matt.

21:39; Mark 15:11-13; John 5:47; 6:36; 8:45; 12:37). They did not

expect a suffering servant. Jesus upbraided this failure: “O foolish

ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spo-

ken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things

and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25-26).

Not only did God intend for his Son, the Messiah, to suffer

before he enters his glory, but God also intended all along that this

would be the way the door of salvation would be opened to the

nations. In the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus knew and loved, the

prophecy was clear: The Son of God would one day inherit the

nations. God said in Psalm 2 that he would establish his Royal Son

in Jerusalem, and then this Son speaks: “I will tell of the decree:

The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.

The Mission Cannot Fail 371

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends

of the earth your possession’” (Ps. 2:7-8).

Again and again in these Scriptures we read the promise that

all the nations would one day bow down and worship the true God,

and that his Servant-Son would be a light to the nations. “All the

ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the

families of the nations shall worship before you. . . . I will make

you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the

end of the earth” (Ps. 22:27; Isa. 49:6; cf. Gen. 49:10; Deut. 32:43;

Ps. 66:4; 67:3-4; 68:32; 72:8; 86:9; 97:1; 138:4-5; Isa. 11:10; 42:10-

12; 45:22; 49:12; Jer. 16:19; Dan. 7:14; Mic. 4:1-4).

When Jesus came as the light of the world, though his focus

was on Israel, he began to make it clear that the kingdom he was

bringing through suffering would bless the nations and that Israel

herself would be, for a season, left to the side. For example, when a

Gentile centurion believed in him and the Jewish leaders didn’t, Jesus

said, “I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at

table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,

while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer dark-

ness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”

(Matt. 8:11-12). The meaning is clear: The natural heirs of the king-

dom (Israel) are not going to inherit its blessings because of unbe-

lief, but the Gentile nations, that is, those who come from east and

west, will enter the kingdom.

The mystery is opening. Gentiles—the nations—are going to

inherit the blessings of Israel. Jesus had signaled this in his very first

sermon in his hometown of Nazareth. He said that “there were

many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were

shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over

all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to

Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a [Gentile!] woman who was a

widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the

prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman

the [Gentile!] Syrian” (Luke 4:25-27). What was the response among

372 Demand #50

the Jewish hometown people? “When they heard these things, all

in the synagogue were filled with wrath” (Luke 4:28).

The Times of the Gentiles

More and more it became clear, for those who had ears to hear,

that Jesus had come to save all the nations as well as Jews. For exam-

ple, he told his disciples, “You will be dragged before governors

and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles

[i.e., the nations]” (Matt. 10:18). When he drove the money-

changers out of the temple he said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall

be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?” (Mark 11:17). He

said that in the last judgment “before him will be gathered all the

nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shep-

herd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:32), and the

criterion of judgment will not be Jewishness, but how people have

related to him in the ministry of his messengers. He said that the

judgment of God was going to fall on Jerusalem and that “Jerusalem

will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the

Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). In other words, there is an

appointed time for the mission to the Gentiles when Israel is passed

over, until the day comes when Israel will say, “blessed is he who

comes in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23:39).

During this time—the times of the Gentiles—the sovereign

promise of Jesus stands firm: “And this gospel of the kingdom will

be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all

nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). There is no

maybe here. The mission that he gives to his followers to go and

make disciples of all nations will come to pass. “I will build my

church” (Matt. 16:18). “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.

I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice” (John

10:16). “Thus it is written [and cannot be broken!], that the Christ

should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repen-

tance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to

all nations” (Luke 24:46). The mission to make disciples of all

nations will succeed.

The Mission Cannot Fail 373

The Blessings of Abraham Are for the Nations

So even though God focused his redeeming work on Israel for many

centuries, everything was preparation for the global mission to the

nations. This was there from the first promise to Abraham: “Now

the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred

and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. . . . I will

bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse,

and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen.

12:1-3). This is the promise that is coming true in Jesus’ command,

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” When the nations

become disciples of Jesus, they receive the Messiah of Israel. And

when they receive the Messiah of Israel, they receive the God of

Abraham. And when they receive the God of Abraham, they become

heirs of all the promises God made to Israel. This is what Jesus meant

in Matthew 21:43 when he said, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom

of God will be taken away from you [Israel] and given to a people

producing its fruits.” That new “people” is the church gathered from

all the nations.

His Final Demand: “Make a Global Claim on

My Behalf”

Jesus’ final demand is that we never lose sight of the global scope of

his claim on the human race. He is not a tribal deity. He is the Lord

of the universe. Every knee will one day bow either willingly or

unwillingly (Matt. 25:31-32). All judgment is given to him (John

5:22). The demand is that his followers reach the nations with “all

that he has commanded.” “Go therefore and make disciples of all

nations1 . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded

you” (Matt. 28:19-20). The mandate is that everything I have tried

to set forth in this book (and it is not exhaustive) be taken to the

nations. This is what it means to make disciples—not just that they

1 I omit the command to baptize here (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptiz-

ing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”) not because it is an unimportant part of becoming a disciple of Jesus, but because I have dealt with this command

in Demand #46.

374 Demand #50

make a profession of faith, but that they “observe all that I have

commanded you.”

By Prayer, Word, and Suffering

The certainty of success is guaranteed (Matt. 24:14). Jesus will see

that it gets done. But it is in our hands to do it. We do it by prayer

and by the word and by suffering for others. Jesus said, “The harvest

is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the

Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke

10:2). We must earnestly pray that God will do what he promised

he would do. Promises do not make prayer superfluous; they make

the answer certain.

Then we must open our mouths and speak the truth of Jesus to

all nations. “What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what

you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops” (Matt. 10:27). “Go

out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that

my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23). “I tell you, there will be

more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-

nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). And

don’t be ashamed, Jesus says, because “Everyone who acknowledges

me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in

heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before

my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33).

Finally, in all our praying and speaking we must be ready to

suffer. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John

20:21). Jesus was sent to suffer. We will not be able to make disciples

of all nations without taking up our cross and following Jesus on

the Calvary road of sacrificial love (Mark 8:34). This is the light of

Jesus that the world can most clearly see ( Demand #48).

He Is Worth It

Jesus does not call us to an easy life or an easy mission. “They will

lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the

synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and

The Mission Cannot Fail 375

governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to

bear witness” (Luke 21:12-13). There will be no wasted suffering. In

the short run, it will always be an occasion to speak and show the

reality of Jesus. In the long run, it will lead to eternal life. “For

whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life

for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). Therefore,

in all your suffering for the advance of Jesus’ mission you are increas-

ingly rewarded. “Blessed are you when others revile you and perse-

cute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt.

5:11-12). That reward is the enjoyment of the inexhaustibly glorious

Jesus forever and ever.

SCRIPTURE INDEX

Genesis

9:3-6

164

1:27

308

19:16

164

2:24

302, 308

19:19

164

10:16-18

368

22:21

164

12:1-3

373

24

306, 307

19:26

177

24:1

309

22:16

299

24:1-4

308

49:10

371

24:4

309, 321

30:6

77

Exodus

32:43

371

6:25

266

1 Samuel

12:13

346

12:23

346

12:19-22

321

20:1

191

16:7

191, 200

20:3

273

20:17

273

2 Samuel

21:15

164

11:27

321

21:17

164

12:15

321-322

22:18

164

12:18

321-322

24:12

178

12:24

322

31:14

164

32:19

141

1 Kings

8:4

266

Leviticus

10:1-3

351

Ezra

19:18

203, 215, 267

2:70

266

20:10

164

24:14

164

Nehemiah

25:32

266

5:6

141

Numbers

Psalms

6:24-26

225

2:7-8

370-371

16:15

141

4:4

141

35:2

266

5:10

222

6:6

305

Deuteronomy

10:15

222

6:4

191

16:2

82

6:5

80-81

16:3

82

380 Scripture Index

22:27

371

13:11

303

28:4

222

16:19

371

31:17-18

222

31:31-33

178-179

35:4-6

222

31:31-34

22, 348

35:12-13

222, 223

40:14-15

222

Ezekiel

43:4

82

11:19-20

179

50:15

106

16:8

79, 302

58:6-11

222

36:25-27

37-38

66:4

371

36:26

266

67:3-4

371

36:27

179, 180

68:32

371

69:4

222

Daniel

69:9

222

7:13-14

20

69:21

222

7:14

371

69:22-28

222

12:1

188

69:24

222

72:8

371

Hosea

73:25

82

2:2

313

86:9

371

2:16

302

97:1

371

2:19-20

302

105

370

6:6

255

109:4-5

222, 223

109:6-15

222

Micah

117:1

367

4:1-4

371

138:4-5

371

139:19-22

222

Matthew

140:9-10

222

1–13

340

Song of Solomon

1:18-20

314

1:19

316

1:4

80

3:4

117

5:1

90-91

3:9

345

Isaiah

3:15

186

4:10

99-104, 365

11:10

371

4:16

352

42:10-12

371

4:17

40-43

45:22

371

4:23

234, 365

49:6

371

5:3

125-129

49:12

371

5:3-10

357

53

49

5:5

247, 331

53:4-6

49-50

5:6

207

53:12

49

5:7

212

54:5

301-306

5:7-48

201-204

5:8

190-195, 205-211

Jeremiah

5:11

213

3:6

313

5:11-12

27, 144, 247, 375

3:20

302

5:11-16

356-362

Scripture Index 381

5:12

52, 71, 83, 145

6:7-8

105-112

5:13-16

350-355

6:9

105-112, 351

5:16

18, 224, 245, 254

6:9-13

111-112, 226

5:17

81

6:11-12

160

5:17-18

162-163, 302, 365

6:12

186, 210

5:18

141

6:13

18, 66, 110

5:18-19

240

6:14-15

148, 213

5:20

154, 190-195, 200, 201,

6:16

127

208-209, 211

6:16-18

110

5:21-22

138-145, 151, 232

6:19

170

5:21-48

209

6:19-20

71

5:22

93, 152, 232

6:19-21

171, 269-273

5:23-24

231, 232

6:20

280

5:23-26

213

6:21

170, 272

5:24

233

6:22-23

171

5:28-30

205-211

6:23

172

5:29

84

6:24

79, 99-104, 170, 171,

5:29-30

45, 207

272

5:29-32

240

6:25

113-119

5:30

87

6:25-34

114-115, 119, 121

5:31-32

307-316

6:26

95, 116

5:32

202

6:26-30

65, 145

5:33

202, 300

6:27

116

5:33-37

290-295

6:28-30

116, 351-352

5:34

296, 298

6:30

76, 218

5:35-36

300

6:31

170

5:36-37

296-300

6:31-32

95, 246, 283

5:38-42

334

6:32

117

5:38-48

240, 244, 332-333

6:33

76, 117, 118, 119, 271,

5:39

240

280

5:39-42

203

6:34

113-119

5:40

244

7:1-5

149

5:41

243

7:5

146-152

5:42

244

7:6

223

5:43

203

7:7-11

107, 252, 285

5:43-44

215

7:7-12

280

5:44

105-112, 141, 203, 221-

7:11

24, 156, 186, 218, 252

229, 230, 337

7:11-12

283

5:44-45

242-248

7:12

163, 249-255, 263-268

5:45

233

7:13

167, 188, 189

5:47

214, 219, 230-241, 344

7:13-14

174-180

5:48

155, 245

7:14

45

6:1

127, 169

7:15-16

175

6:1-4

110

7:17

161, 205-211

6:3

240

7:17-19

211

6:5

127

7:19

161

6:5-6

110

7:21

153-158, 159-165

6:6

105-112

7:23

97, 160

382 Scripture Index

7:28-29

57

11:25

218

8:3

57

11:25-27

219

8:8

65

11:27

54, 77, 82

8:8-9

364

11:28

44-47

8:11-12

192, 369-375

11:28-30

45, 178, 184-185, 197

8:12

92

11:30

128, 200

8:22

68-74

12:6

101

8:26

218

12:7

255

9:6

234

12:24

198

9:8

352

12:26

198

9:13

255

12:31-32

320

9:15

50

12:32

223

9:28-30

57

12:34

198

9:37-39

363-368

12:37

161

9:38

105-112

12:38-39

194

10:1

235

12:39

79

10:5-6

370

12:41

40-43

10:7

235

13:9

318

10:7-8

358

13:11

318

10:8

238, 248, 269-273, 282

13:11-17

219

10:16

240

13:13

59

10:18

372

13:20

347

10:18-19

120-124

13:21

168

10:20

187

13:30

344

10:21

214

13:41

361

10:22

237

13:41-42

93

10:24-26

130-137

13:43

318, 361

10:24-31

114, 120-124

13:44

50, 71, 83-91, 183, 271

10:25

27, 86, 213

13:47

337

10:27

374

13:48

344

10:27-28

135

13:50

167

10:28

65, 80, 92-98

14:12-13

218

10:28-31

143

14:23

106

10:29

76, 145, 187

14:31

218

10:29-31

94-95, 246, 360-361

14:33

102, 219

10:30

145

15:7-8

193

10:31

187

15:8-9

99-104

10:32

224

15:12

219

10:32-33

374

15:13-14

219

10:34

124

15:14

197, 223

10:37

52-55

15:17-20

198-199

10:38-39

87

15:19

313, 316

10:40

51, 366

15:24

370

11:3-6

22, 234

15:31

352

11:11

117

16:6

196-204

11:12

207

16:8

218

11:15

318

16:15-18

336-342

11:21

43

16:15-19

341

Scripture Index 383

16:16-17

20, 219

21:15-16

296

16:17

355

21:22

108

16:18

112, 361, 366, 372

21:23

239

16:24

150

21:23-27

218

16:24-25

68-74

21:27

239

16:27

339, 361

21:31

248

17:5

61

21:33-41

164

17:17

218

21:39

370

17:20

218

21:43

23, 164, 192, 340, 373

17:24-27

331

22:7

140

17:25

285

22:13

223

17:25-26

151

22:15-21

323-328, 329-335

17:26

163

22:23-32

309

17:27

151

22:29

76

18:3-4

130-137

22:30

322

18:6

50, 131, 254

22:36

250-251

18:14

134

22:36-40

249-255

18:15-17

136, 343-349

22:37

81

18:21-22

146-152, 227, 230-241

22:37-39

78

18:23

147

22:39

256

18:24

147

22:43

223

18:26-27

147

23

191

18:28-30

148

23:4

128, 196-204

18:32-33

148

23:5

128, 199

18:33

212

23:5-7

194

18:34

140, 148

23:6

80

18:35

52, 148, 231

23:6-7

128

19:3

304

23:12

125-129, 134

19:3-9

306, 315, 317

23:13

197-198, 218, 341

19:4

75

23:15

24, 110, 141, 198, 291

19:4-5

319

23:16

24, 218

19:4-6

301-306

23:16-22

294, 300

19:6

310

23:17

24, 141, 218

19:7

304

23:23

197

19:8

201, 304, 308

23:24

24, 110, 196-204

19:9

304, 307-316

23:25

110, 154, 193-195

19:10-12

317-322

23:25-26

196-204

19:17

153-158, 162

23:26

199, 206

19:21

68-74, 154, 159, 186,

23:27

24, 110, 141, 218

282

23:27-28

190-195

19:26

210, 318

23:33

24, 218

19:27

71

23:37

46, 191-192

19:29

71, 182

23:39

372

20:9-14

238

24:10

237

20:15

172

24:12

82

20:26-28

133

24:12-13

177

20:28

26, 96, 339

24:14

112, 358, 372, 374

21:12

141, 218

24:30

361

384 Scripture Index

24:38-39

168

1:27

57, 365

24:42

168, 176

1:35

106

24:48-51

93-94

2:5-11

102

25:1ff.

79

2:7-12

364

25:5

176

2:11

35

25:10

176

2:14

73

25:11

176

3:5

139-140, 141, 152, 198

25:12

176

3:28

320

25:13

176

3:28-29

319

25:21

26

3:29

320

25:30

223

3:35

159-165

25:31

114, 361

4:11

21, 182

25:31-32

326, 373

4:19

170

25:31-46

276

4:39

365

25:32

372

5:4

80

25:34

114, 284

5:19

73

25:41

92-98, 223

5:41-42

57-58, 365

25:44-46

160

6:3

68

25:46

92-98, 182

7:6-7

78-79

26:24

346

7:9-13

193

26:28

22, 89, 101, 108, 139,

7:14

56-61

147, 155, 179, 185, 209,

7:18

163

237, 248, 277, 319, 347,

7:19

163

353

7:21-22

291

26:31

50, 186

7:21-23

190-195

26:62-63

332

7:34-35

57

26:63

298

8:33

24

26:63-64

296-300

8:34

27, 374

26:64

298

8:35

71, 375

26:65

298

9:35

132-133

27:32

243

9:37

133

27:34

222

9:41

282

27:41-42

218

9:43

93

27:57

193

9:50

350-355

28:9

102

10:2-12

306

28:18

12, 25, 326, 329

10:5

198

28:18-20

363-368

10:9

310

28:19

164, 336-342, 345

10:11-12

307, 307-316

28:19-20

17, 26, 136, 373

10:15

181-189

28:20

25, 65, 72, 89, 185, 210,

10:17

153, 162

339

10:19

153, 291

10:20

154

Mark

10:21

154, 170, 270

1:4

345

10:22

275

1:15

21, 43

10:25

170

1:17

68-74

10:25-27

17

1:22

364-365

10:27

165, 185, 200

1:25

57

10:33-34

70

Scripture Index 385

10:44

183

6:29-30

237, 242-248

10:44-45

151

6:30

238

10:45

18, 22, 42, 69, 89, 101,

6:32-34

212-220

104, 139, 155, 209, 248,

6:33

234

252, 282, 353

6:35

54, 212, 234, 242-248

11:15

334

6:36

227, 242-248

11:17

372

6:37-38

278

11:22

109

6:46

151

11:24

108, 109

7:14-15

58, 365

11:25

109, 148

7:25

117

12:14

216

7:29

157

12:29-30

75-82

7:36-48

54-55

12:41-44

2707

7:45-46

218

13:19

75

7:48

248

13:22-23

175

7:50

248

13:26

133

8:8

56-61

13:31

61

8:10

286

14:38

168

8:12

50, 59

14:61-62

20

8:14

87, 169

14:62

21, 298, 326

8:18

56-61

15:5

332

9:2

358

15:11-13

370

9:26

52

15:34

96

9:51

70

9:53

217

Luke

9:54

217

1:51

80

9:55

217

1:73

299

9:56

217

2:1

323

9:58-59

272

2:31

367

9:60

38, 218

3:1

323

9:62

177

3:8

41, 55

10:1

235

3:11

41

10:2

374

4:25-27

371

10:3

340

4:28

372

10:7

55, 238, 239

5:32

40-43, 69, 248

10:9

235, 340, 358

6:12

106, 339

10:16

77, 367

6:20

170, 271

10:19-20

83-91

6:21

170

10:20

188, 209

6:22

232, 287

10:21-22

60

6:22-23

83-91

10:23

61

6:23

144, 170, 183

10:25-29

264-265

6:25

170

10:27

81

6:26

169, 213, 232

10:29

42, 263-268

6:27

167, 230-241

10:30

265

6:27-28

141, 212-220

10:31

266

6:27-36

244

10:32

266

6:28

111, 221-229, 243

10:33

266

6:29

214, 240

10:34-35

282

386 Scripture Index

10:36

266

14:21

140

10:37

213, 266

14:23

374

10:38-42

56-61

14:26

72

10:39

61

14:28

74

10:42

61

14:31

74

11:4

41

14:33

17, 73, 85, 170, 271,

11:5-8

108

360

11:13

105-112

15:2

192

11:20

21, 84, 139, 182, 296

15:7

145, 374

11:23

70

15:13

41

11:28

159-165

15:20

76

11:35

172-173

15:21

41

11:40

199

15:24

38

11:41

199

15:29

192

11:42

75-82

15:30

41

11:44

197

15:31

192-193

11:46

178, 200

16:1-9

193, 276

11:49

76, 214

16:9

277

11:52

341

16:10-12

269-273, 274-280

12:1

110

16:14

80, 193

12:5

52, 95, 223

16:15

191, 200, 220

12:15

170, 271

16:16

163

12:18-19

276

16:18

307-316

12:20

276

16:19-20

275

12:20-21

271

16:22-23

275

12:21

115

17:10

125-129, 130

12:32

98,113-119, 280,338

17:15

352

12:32-34

281-289

17:20-21

84

12:33

170, 271, 280

17:21

21, 182, 296

12:34

272

17:24

175

12:37

133-134

17:32

177

12:42

240

18:1

105-112

12:42-43

177

18:1-8

108

12:47-48

142

18:9

42, 127, 129, 157, 209

13:1-4

42

18:9-14

158

13:3

40-43

18:9-15

42

13:5

40-43

18:11

157

13:13

353

18:11-12

127, 156

13:23-24

166-173

18:13

125-129, 161

13:25

166-167

18:13-14

42, 153-158, 185

13:25-27

167

18:14

129, 134, 209, 277

13:28-29

167

18:15-17

158

13:32

218

18:17

286

13:33

70

18:18

274-275

14:11

134

18:18-23

158

14:12-13

218

18:22

274-275

14:13-14

282, 283

18:23

275

14:14

65, 71, 247

18:24-25

274-280

Scripture Index 387

18:25

271, 287

24:46-47

43

18:26

275

24:46-51

23

18:27

275

24:49

336-342

19:8

23

19:8-9

73, 170, 271

John

19:10

23, 69

1:1

68

19:12

94

1:12

54, 76, 277

19:13

177, 278

1:13

39

19:14

94, 237

1:14

68, 352

19:17

278

2:9

365

19:19

278

2:11

352, 360

19:27

92-98

2:15

141

20:9

337

2:17

222

20:46

169

2:19

100

20:46-47

125-129, 193

2:21

101

21:1

271

3:1

37, 193

21:12

86, 330

3:3

37-39, 193, 342, 355

21:12-13

369-375

3:4

37

21:16

27, 117, 247, 287, 330

3:5

37-39

21:16-17

45, 86, 144

3:6

38, 102, 342

21:18

145

3:7

37-39, 42, 206

21:23

140, 353

3:8

39, 206-207, 355

21:24

369-375

3:10

37

21:34

169

3:14-15

95, 156, 237, 352, 353

21:36

80

3:16

46, 76, 102, 115, 277

22:15-20

343-349

3:16-18

49

22:19

336

3:17

337

22:20

174-180, 266, 296,

3:19

292, 352

22:25-26

127

3:19-20

46

22:25-27

133

3:29

88

22:26

130-137

3:36

49, 76, 93, 95, 102, 108,

22:29-30

287

140, 145, 156, 183, 237,

22:31-32

67

352, 353, 367

22:32

186, 210

4:14

45-46, 51

22:37

49

4:18

321

22:41

106

4:20

100

23:9

332

4:21

100

23:33

227

4:23-24

99-104

23:34

221-229, 230

4:25

100

23:39

254

4:34

151

24:25-26

370

4:46

365

24:26

353

5:10

194

24:27

81, 250

5:15

194

24:32

23

5:16

194

24:39-43

23

5:18

194

24:44

162

5:22

373

24:45

23

5:22-23

326

24:46

21, 372

5:23

55, 102, 134, 367

388 Scripture Index

5:24

59, 93, 96, 183, 209,

8:50

360

277

8:58

102

5:27

329, 365

9:5

352

5:29

223-224, 354

10:9

337

5:39

81

10:10

69

5:39-40

46

10:11

49

5:40

44-47

10:14-16

337

5:42

79

10:16

47, 339, 366, 372

5:42-43

75-82

10:17-18

326

5:42-44

76-77

10:18

22, 286, 365

5:44

115, 194

10:25

234

5:47

370

10:26

219

6:28-29

162

10:27

61, 318

6:35

44-47, 51

10:27-28

184

6:36

370

10:27-29

66

6:37

188

10:28-29

210

6:40

58

10:28-30

277

6:44

47

10:29

188

6:47

50

10:30

102, 268, 326

6:53-54

348

10:35

141, 223

6:54

25

10:38

234-235

6:60

25

11:25-26

65

6:63

58, 348

11:40

353

6:65

47, 188

11:43-44

44-47, 58, 365

6:66

25

11:51-52

69-70

6:66-68

58

11:52

47

7:4-5

236

12:14-15

114

7:7

237

12:23

353

7:18

216, 292, 360

12:25

71

7:19

156

12:27-28

69, 354, 359

7:32

56

12:28

360

7:37

44-47, 50

12:32

339

7:45-46

57

12:36

48-51

8:12

68-74, 352

12:37

370

8:26

27

12:49

57

8:28

57

12:50

57

8:29

360

13:13

337

8:31

245

13:20

51, 366

8:31-32

62-67

13:31

353

8:32

139, 216

13:34-35

70, 263-268, 337

8:34

46, 65

14:1

48-51

8:37

59

14:6

134,215- 216, 292

8:41

314

14:7-9

76

8:42

42, 52-55 76, 187

14:9

19, 82, 102

8:42-44

198

14:11

48-51, 234-235

8:44

187, 291, 297

14:13

105-112

8:45

216, 292, 370

14:15

53, 55

8:47

60, 61, 216, 219

14:16

179, 210

Scripture Index 389

14:16-17

338

17:13

61, 88, 106

14:16-18

185

17:14

213

14:18

89, 338

17:15

210

14:24

57

17:17

212-220 292

14:26

18, 210, 340

17:20

366

14:27

338

17:20-21

341

14:28

55

17:24

88, 352, 360, 361

15:1-2

67

17:26

77, 89

15:4

62-67

18:36

27, 50, 114, 166

15:4-5

63

18:37

59-60, 213, 216, 219,

15:5

64, 135, 139, 152, 161,

291

185, 189, 207, 245

18:38

216

15:6

67

19:11

327

15:7

109

19:27

218

15:8

245

19:30

96

15:9

62-67

20:21

363-368, 374

15:10

64

20:27

48-51

15:11

16, 45, 61, 72, 83-91,

20:28

337

151, 189

21:15-22

55

15:12

63, 64, 267

21:18

360

15:13

237, 267, 360

21:22

25, 69

15:16

55

15:18

237, 367

1 Corinthians

15:19

213

5:7

346

15:20

27, 70, 86, 213, 338

11:20

346

15:23

367

15:24-25

237

15:25

222

15:26

179, 210, 216, 292, 296

16:2

27

16:5

68-69

16:7

68-69

16:12-14

340

16:13-14

89, 354-355

16:14

179

16:22

88, 189

16:23-24

108

16:24

88, 105-112

16:27

76

16:33

74, 339

17:1

90, 354

17:2

365

17:3

51, 88

17:4

19, 106, 352

17:6

188, 209

17:9

188

17:11

187, 210

17:11-12

66-67

PERSON INDEX

Alcorn, Randy, 270

Grundman, Walter, 147

Allison, Dale, 357

Arnal, William E., 32

Habermas, Gary, 33

Augustine, Aurelius, 26, 52, 82

Hagner, Donald, 340

Augustus, Divine, 323

Heth, William A., 312

Hoskyns, Edwyn, 29

Band, Erster, 298

Hurtado, Larry, 32

Barnett, Paul, 33

Blomberg, Craig L., 21, 33

Instone-Brewer, David, 309, 312

Bornkamm, Gunther, 30

Isaksson, Abel, 313-314

Boyd, Gregory , 33

Braun, Herbert, 31, 32

Jewett, Paul K., 345

Bromiley, Geoffrey W., 312

Johnson, Luke Timothy, 33, 34, 35 ,36

Bultmann, Rudolf, 30, 31

Jones, David W., 312

Caesar, Tiberius, 323

Kähler, Martin, 30

Calvin, John, 52

Käsemann, Ernst, 30

Carey, William, 288-289

Keener, Craig S., 219, 223, 240, 243, 312,

Carson, D. A., 33, 299, 359, 360

323, 324

Chesterton, G. K., 134-135

Kierkegaard, Søren, 206

Crouch, James E., 131

Knight, Jonathan, 32

Koester, Helmut, 131

Davey, Noel, 29

Köstenberger, Andreas, 309, 312, 315

Davies, W. D., 357

Dawes, Gregory W., 30

Ladd, George, 21, 163, 182, 207, 341

Dennis, Lane, 13

Laney, Carl, 312

Desjardins, Michel, 32

Lenski, R. C. H., 279

Drewery, Mary, 289

Lewis, C. S., 24, 85

Dunn, James D. G., 30, 32

Livia, Empress, 323

Luther, Martin, 151, 180, 184

Edwards, Jonathan, 52, 85, 86, 87, 91,

Luz, Ulrich, 131

140

Elliott, Matthew, 52

Machoveç, Milan, 31, 32

Maimonides, , 191

Flew, Anthony, 341

Martyn, Henry, 123

Friedrich, Gerhard, 131

Mathis, David, 13

McClaren, Alexander, 132

Geldenhuys, Norval, 340

McKnight, Scot, 30, 32

Griffin, Ted, 13

Minkema, Kenneth, 91

392 Person Index

Moreland, J. P., 33

Steinbach, Carol, 13

Stott, John R. W., 191, 199, 200

Niederwimmer, Kurt, 31, 32

Strauss, David Friedrich, 30

Strauss, Mark L., 312

Pascal, Blaise, 258

Strobel, Lee, 33

Piper, John, 29, 66, 73, 83, 88, 91, 102,

103, 126, 136-137, 257, 354, 368

Taylor, Justin, 13, 88

Piper, Karsten, 96-97

Piper, Noël, 13

Wenham, Gordon, 312

Wilberforce, Rev. S., 123

Reimarus, Hermann, 30

Wilkins, Michael J., 33

Winter, Bruce, 13

Sailhamer, John, 191

Witherington, III, Ben, 30, 32

Saint Francis of Assisi, , 36

Wrede, William, 30

Sandell-Berg, Karolina Wilhelmina, 118

Schlatter, Adolf, 31, 32, 298

Schweitzer, Albert, 30

Shammai, Rabbi, 309

Spinoza, Benedict, 30

SUBJECT INDEX

Abiding

forgiveness and justification at bottom

in Jesus, 62-67

of striving, 185

Jesus keeps his own, 67 n. 2

Jesus’ death in our place, 49

Adultery

Jesus purchases our joy, 89

a kind of generation, 79, 199

Authority of Jesus,

from adultery to lust, 207-208

but not the sword, 26-27

Anger

how Jesus lays claim to the world, 365

don’t be angry, trust providence, 141-

in the Great Commission, 25-26

142

Jesus speaks words of God, 57

and love, 143-144

Jesus silences demons, 57

and proportion, 142

no one spoke like him, 56

and providence, 143

total, 26-27

and servanthood, 150

what is it?, 364

definition, 139

Jesus’ and ours, 140

Baptism, see Ordinances

not a decision, 138

Beauty

the vine is the source for stilling, 152

of God is compelling, 77

what kind prohibited, 151

Belief

Antitheses

command for in Jesus, 48-51

six to show righteousness that exceeds

meaning of belief in Jesus, 50-51

Pharisees’, 201

resting and striving, 178

Anxiety

when you pray, 108-110

and the lilies of the field, 116

Bible, see Scripture

be bold in proclamation, 121

Boldness, see Courage

can’t add a cubit to life, 116

hairs of your head numbered, 123

Caesar

life is more than food, 115

render to him his, 323-335

not for daily necessities, 113-119

Childlikeness, see Humility

not for the threats of man, 120-124

Christ, see Jesus, Obedience, Messiah

not Jesus’ way of guiding, 113

Church

resting and striving, 178

Jesus on church discipline, 343-344

tomorrow anxious for itself, 118

“I will build my church,” 336-342

you can only be killed, 122

Civil disobedience

you will have what you need, 118-119

battle to be brokenhearted in our resis-

Apostleship, 340 n. 2

tance, 334

Assurance

shaped by Jesus’ authority, 332

depends on location and demonstration,

Commands of Jesus

208

beware of taking off the edge, 300

Atonement

how I selected them, 34-35

and new covenant, 22

Condemnation, see Judgment of God

death of Jesus, purchase, and pattern,

Cost of following Jesus, 73

266

Courage, see Anxiety

394 Subject Index

brokenhearted boldness, 130-137

Election

five implications of humility for bold-

chosen by God and given to Jesus, 188

ness, 135-136

Emotions

humble boldness in cause of truth, 134

commanded by Jesus, 52-53

in proclamation, 121

God responding with different, 145 n. 3

Cross

in the New Testament, 52 n. 1

command to take up our crosses, 68-74

unstable, 103 n. 2

fifty reasons why Jesus died, 15

Enemies, see Love

having them may mean you are in step

Dangerous Duty of Delight, The, 83 n. 1

with Jesus, 213

Death of Jesus, see Atonement

killers and snubbers, 214

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die,

Eternal life

15

Jesus has words of, 58-59

purchase and pattern, 266

ours now, 182

Death

perfection and justification, 154-157

glorifying God in the way we die, 360

some measure of obedience required,

spiritual, 38

160

Eucharist, see Lord’s Supper

Demonstration, see Location,

Sanctification

Faith, see Belief

that you are child of God, 242-248

False prophets and false christs, 175

Fear

Desiring God, 83 n. 1, 102 n. 1, 103 n. 2,

fearing God and hell, 92-98

126 n. 1, 137 n. 5

fearing unbelief, 96

Discipline in the church, see Church

God feared and trusted, 95

Disobedience

precious gift, 98

why they do not listen, 59

Flesh, born of, 38

Diversity

Following Jesus, see Obeying Jesus, Self-

all are sinners, 39

denial

the demand that we pursue it, 367

joining him in what he does, 69

Divorce and Remarriage, see Marriage and

Forgiveness

Divorce

and anger, 150

better not to marry? 317-318

and servanthood, 150

bibliography, 312 n. 2

changes us, 148 n. 2

eunuchs for the kingdom, 318

don’t be angry, embrace this, 146-152

from divorce to faithfulness, 202

forgiven little loves little, 54

is there an exception? 311-316

not forgiving imperils the soul, 232

Joseph’s betrothal to Mary, 314-316

on taking the log out of your eye, 149

marriage great but not ultimate, 322

opposite is not alienation, 231

Moses’ permission of divorce, 303-304

pray for your enemies, 227

one man, one woman, by grace till

seventy times seven—how? 147

death, 317-322

why they need it though they are igno-

prohibitions without exceptions, 309

rant, 228

the devastation of divorce, 304

Freedom of a Christian, 151 n. 4

the folly of homosexuality, 319

Fruit

the unforgivable sin? 319

believe Jesus and bear fruit of love, 165

what if you have already done it? 321

healthy tree must bear good, 161, 205-

whoever divorces and remarries com-

211, 211

mits adultery, 307-316

if you abide you bear, 64

Don’t Waste Your Life, 73 n. 1

Future Grace, 66 n. 1

Subject Index 395

Generosity, see Giving

make a global claim on behalf of Jesus,

Gentiles, the times of, 372

373

Giving

make disciples of all nations, 363-375

goodness of God as the ground of our,

missions lasts as long as the age lasts,

284

366

how you lay up treasure in heaven, 268-

the mission cannot fail, 369-375

273

the times of the Gentiles, 372

increase your joy in Jesus, 274-280

measure you use will measure you, 271-

Happiness, all men seek, 258 n. 3

273

Hate

shows our freedom from things, 282

doing good when hated, 236

why it is not prudential self-regard, 281

love hates evil that destroys persons,

Glory of God and Jesus

221

aim of obedience, 18

should we hate the wicked? 221-223

glorifying God in how we die, 360

Healing

how Jesus glorified God, 352

how shall we obey the command to,

its relation to holiness, 351 n. 1

235

Jesus’ first passion and supreme value,

Jesus’ ministry and ours, 234

351

Jesus authority to, 235

joy glorifies Jesus, 90

Heart

let your light shine to glorify God, 350

a new one loves Jesus, 53-54

no greater love than God’s glorifying

loving God from the heart, 80 n. 2

self, 354, 359

loving God with all of it, 80 n. 1

Heaven

pray to that end, 106

Jesus’ window into, 254

revealed in work of Jesus, 19

lay up treasure there by giving, 269-273

the Father and Son glorify each other,

name written there, 188

353

selfishness separates from, 273

ultimate goal of Jesus, 18

Hell, see Judgment of God

what is the glory of God? 351

Holiness

God, see Kingdom of, Spirit of, Son of,

its relation to glory, 351 n. 1

Judgment of, Word of, Worship, Will of

joy is the root of, 87

lavish care of God, 285

Holy Spirit, see Spirit of God

sin an assault on, 41

Homosexuality, the folly of, 319

the best of fathers, 284

Humility

the gift of his sovereign rule, 287

and trust, 132

God Is the Gospel, 354 n. 2

by war on pride, 125-129

God-entranced Vision of All Things, A, 88

childlikeness, 131

n. 5, 91 n. 8

five implications for boldness in truth,

Gospels, the

135

reliability, 32-33

key is presence of grace felt, 130

titles of Jesus, 21 n. 2

lowliness leads to servanthood, 132

Government, render to Caesar, 323-335

the gift to receive all things as gift, 136

Great Commission

we are only unworthy servants, 129

and point of the book, 17

Hyperbole in Jesus’ commands? 240

and the pursuit of ethnic diversity, 367

Hypocrisy, 194

authority and intimacy around it, 25

clean inside of cup, 196-204

by prayer, word, and suffering, 362

Israel and God’s way of pursuing the

Ignorance

nations, 369

does not excuse from needing forgive-

Jesus’ followers speak on his behalf, 366

ness, 228

396 Subject Index

Impossibility of obedience, 17

fearing God who can destroy, 94

Jesus’ promise to help us do it, 185

hell described by Jesus, 92

Imprecatory psalms

hell means sin unfathomably serious, 97

proper hating of the wicked, 221-223

hell not a mere natural result, 93

Indulgence of the flesh perilous to soul,

is surely coming, 42

169

our desperate plight, 48-49

Israel

Justification

God’s roundabout way of pursuing the

and perfection, 154-156

nations, 369

and the final judgment, 161 n. 1

Jesus gives what he commands, 47

at bottom of our striving, 185

the blessings of Abraham are for the

by trusting Jesus, 153-158

nations, 373

Jesus as our righteousness, 157

location as basis of demonstration, 267

Jesus, see Obedience of, Obedience to,

n. 3

Cross, Atonement

this man went home justified, 156

abrasive words, 24

what is the ground of our acceptance

as the new place of worship, 100

with God? 277

as water and bread, 45-46

bluntness, 218 n. 1

Kingdom of God

gives what he commands, 47

already in, 181-189

he is worth all the suffering, 374

arrived in history in Jesus, 21

his anger and ours, 140

in the ministry of Jesus, 21 n. 3

his infinite worth, 104

Jesus as king, 114 n. 1

his second coming time unknown, 176

mystery of, 182 n. 1

loved us perfectly in loving himself per-

secret: it is here, 181

fectly, 268

Knowing God for all that he is, 75

of Gospels most radical, 35

our treasure, security, and honor, 243

Law

resurrection of, 22

does Jesus sum the law up without

summary of person and work, 19-23

God? 252

tough language, 24

external conformity not enough, 152

yoke easy, burden light, 44-45

God’s will today and the law, 162

Joy

how our experience of the law changes

and self-denial, 85

with Jesus, 163

command to rejoice and leap, 83-91

on these two commands hang the law,

full, 88 n. 6

251, 253

God our exceeding, 82

pointing beyond itself, 255 n. 2

in Hebrew, 82 n. 1

Let the Nations Be Glad, 368 n. 1

in obeying Jesus, 26

Levites, 266 n. 2

in persecution, 144

Life, see Eternal life

Jesus purchases, 89

Light

Jesus’ stains our striving, 189

Jesus’ and ours at his second coming,

lay up treasures in heaven and increase

361

your joy in Jesus, 274-280

what is the light that we let shine? 357

means to glorify Jesus, 90

Listen to Jesus, 56-61

no limit to joy in Jesus, 90

Location in Christ

produced by being in kingdom already,

and demonstration of our location, 210

183

is ground of assurance, 209

root of holiness, 87

Lord’s Supper, 346-349

selling all because of, 84

how is the cup and bread the body and

Judgment of God

blood? 347

Subject Index 397

love with same commitment as to your-

truth is its root, 215

self, 256-262

turns the other cheek, 237

Love, see Giving

what “as yourself” means, 257

and anger, 141

when candidates for love compete, 239

and the emotions, 52-53

when doing good does not give, 239

as Jesus loved us, 263-268

Loving God, see Love

as treasuring God above all, 81

Loving Jesus, 52-55, see Love

as yourself, 249-255

Lust, 202, see Purity of heart

believe Jesus and bear fruit of, 165

by the security of our heavenly Father,

Marriage and Divorce, see Divorce and

244-246

Remarriage

challenges the absoluteness of the

better not to marry? 317

beloved, 217

divorce and remarriage the unforgivable

command to love Jesus, 52-55

sins? 319

does good to those who hate us, 233

eunuchs for the kingdom, 318

first for God, second for neighbor, 78

God creates the union of each marriage,

for God a matter of the heart, 78-79

302

for God, litmus test is Jesus, 76

is there an exception? 311-316

for God with heart, soul, mind,

Joseph’s betrothal to Mary, 314-316

strength, 80

marriage great but not ultimate, 322

from limited love to love for enemies,

marriage mirrors God’s covenant with

203

us, 301

greets killers and snubbers, 214

Moses’ permission of divorce, 303

greets people outside our group, 233

one man, one woman, by grace till

hates evil that destroys persons, 221

death, 317-322

how the first commandment sustains the

prohibitions without exceptions, 309

second, 260

the devastation of divorce, 304

how to love like Jesus, 244

is the glory of God an ulterior motive

the folly of homosexuality, 319

for love? 359

what if you have already done it? 321

Jesus loved us perfectly in loving himself

whoever divorces and remarries com-

perfectly, 268

mits adultery, 307-316

joyful sacrifice of love and suffering,

Mercy

356

don’t be angry—embrace this, 146-152

joy in reward sustains love, 247

freely you received it, give it, 247

loving God becomes visible in loving

Messiah—Jesus’ claim to be, 19-20, 22

others, 252

Meta, 41 n. 1

loving God with all you are, 75-82

Methodology

loving neighbor with same commitment

how I selected commands, 34-35

as to yourself, 256-262

of book, 23-24

loving your enemies, 212-220

Mina, an amount of money, 278 n. 2

no greater love than God glorifying him-

Missions, see Great Commission

self for us, 354, 359

Money

not oblivious of its effects, 219

and the healthy eye, 171

prays for persecutors, 221-229

how to lose true riches, 276

preserves the truth of the Bible, 215

lay up treasure in heaven by giving, 269-

seeing and savoring beauty, 77

273

self-love fulfilled in God-love, 261

mortal threat to entering heaven, 170

the command to love is love, 55

rich fool loses his soul, 276

the opposite of hating, 79

the rich man and the beggar, 275

the principle of justice applies too, 238

you can’t serve God and, 104, 272

398 Subject Index

why such a huge concern with our

healthy tree bears good fruit, 161

money, 270

not the ground of our acceptance with

Motivation for obedience, 19

God, 277

Munich, University of, 14

impossibility of, 17

Nations, all, 26 n. 7

some measure required, 160

teaching to obey, 18

Neighbor

treasure chest of joy, 26

don’t narrow the meaning of, 264

Old Testament—does Jesus sum it up

love him as yourself, 249-255

without God? 252

New birth, 37-39

Ordinances

New Covenant

baptism, 344-346

and Jesus’ aim, 22

believer’s vs. infant, 345 n. 1

and new birth, 38

the Lord’s Supper, 346-349

in the blood of Jesus, 22

Orthodoxy, 135 n. 4

Jesus fulfills, so we can enter narrow

door, 174-180

Pain, see Suffering

Perfection

Oaths

and justification, 154-156

can they do what love does not do? 297

awaits the age to come, 186

cherish truth and speak it simply, 290-

Perishing, see Judgment of God

295

Persecution

evasions of promise-keeping, 293

joy in, 144

from oath-keeping to simple honesty,

they will malign you, 121

202

Perseverance

say yes or no, 296-300

and the peril of nostalgia, 177

should followers of Jesus ever take

Jesus prays for us that we not fail, 186

oaths? 298

selfishness separates from heaven, 273

the folly of crossing your fingers, 292

Pharisees

truth evasion by belittling God, 294

blind to spiritual proportion, 197

truth is precious, 290

cast out of the kingdom, 192 n. 3

Obedience to God

hellish condition of being merciless, 197

as demonstration you are child of God,

in John 5, 194 n. 4

242-248

Jesus’ anger and entreaty, 191

demonstrates our location, 210

what they loved, 193

“do will of my Father,” 153-165

Pleasure

enabled by new-covenant fulfillment,

and pain can keep from kingdom, 168

174-180

eternal in Jesus, 71

healthy tree bears good fruit, 161

Politics, render to Caesar, 323-335

not the ground of our acceptance with

Position, see Location in Christ

God, 277

Praise of man perilous, 169

some measure required, 160

Prayer

Obedience to Jesus

always and not lose heart, 105

aim of book, 17

as asking, thanking, praising, and con-

as demonstration you are child of God,

fessing, 106 n. 1

242-248

for God’s glory, 105, 110

demonstrates our location, 210

for our joy, 106

display of Jesus’ glory, 23

for those who persecute you, 225

easy yoke, light burden, 44-45

for what? 111

enabled by new-covenant fulfillment,

for whom? 110

174-180

Great Commission by prayer, word, and

fruit of Jesus’ work, 23

suffering, 374

Subject Index 399

Jesus prays for us that we not fail, 186

Righteousness

not for the praise of others, 110

exceeding Pharisees’ easy and hard, 200

qualifications, 109 n. 2

must exceed that of the Pharisees, 191-

simplicity in, 107

195

through Jesus’ death and in his name,

108

Sacraments, see Ordinances

to keep us abiding, 66

Sacrifice, the measure of a gift’s size, 270

what to pray for our enemies, 225

Sanctification

with faith, 108

as demonstration you are child of God,

with perseverance, 108

242-248

Pride

be transformed by trusting Jesus, 159-

a sense of merit, 126

165

craving the praise of men, 127

believe and bear fruit of love, 165

is loveless, 128

demonstrates our location in Christ, 210

Jesus dissects the depths, 126

exceeding Pharisees’ is easy and hard,

we are only unworthy servants, 129

200

Promises of God take away anxiety, 118

life-and-death battle for purity of heart,

Prosperity not the source of joy, 86

207

Purity of heart,

not the ground of our acceptance with

a life and death battle, 207

God, 277

to will one thing, 206

perfection awaits in the age to come,

186

Quest for the historical Jesus, 30 n. 3, 32

some measure required, 160

n. 6

Salt, of the earth, 357 n. 1

disillusionment of, 31

Satisfaction, see Joy

first two, 30 n. 2

in God as part of what faith is, 50-51

fruit of, 29

Scholarship, what die Wissenshaft should

sea of speculation, 30

be, 31

third quest, 32, 33 n. 8

Scripture

three quests, 30

Great Commission by prayer, word, and

suffering, 374

Reconciliation, see Forgiveness

Jesus provides it for his church, 339

Regeneration, see New birth

Second coming

Rejoice, see Joy

Jesus’ light and ours at his coming, 361

Relationships

time unknown, watch, 176

ruptures with people, 72

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 15

ruptures with things, 72

Self-denial

ruptures with vocation, 73

and cross bearing, 68-74

Repentance

and joy, 85

for all nations, 43

Self-love, as positive self-image, 257 n. 2

fruits of, 41

Selfishness separates from heaven, 273

meaning of, 40-41

Servanthood, see Humility

universal need of, 42

brokenhearted boldness, 134

Resurrection of Jesus, 22

how Jesus served and will serve, 133

Retaliation and loving contentment, 203

lowliness leads to servanthood, 132

Reward

New Testament service, 104 n. 1

Jesus is our great, 88

Signs

joy in sustains love, 247

sought by evil generation, 79

root of joy in suffering, 88

Sin

why seeking it is not prudential self-

as debt, 41

regard, 281

assault on God, 41

400 Subject Index

greatest threat is our own, 167

Truth

hell means it’s unfathomably serious, 97

a new standard of truthfulness, 298

Son of God

Jesus came to bear witness to, 291

and our sonship, 54

Jesus is the truth, 292

title of Jesus, 20

precious to ordinary people, 290

Son of Man, why Jesus favored title, 20-21

the root of love, 215

Sovereignty of God

the unloving use of, 217

enables obedience, 174-180

Tyndale House, 13

over the smallest things, 123

Sovereignty of Jesus, 47

Unity of New Testament, 24

Spirit of God

and new birth, 38

Vigilance, see Striving

and word are inseparable, 342

new covenant enables obedience, 174-

War, see Wartime lifestyle

180

life is, 166-173

Striving

Wartime lifestyle, see War, Giving,

forgiveness and justification at the bot-

Treasure

tom, 185

simplicity of William Carey, 288

Jesus sustains ours by his joy, 189

Watchfulness, see Striving

losing without Jesus, 179

when Jesus is not there, 68

resting and striving, 178

Weight of Glory, The, 84 n. 2

to cherish what we have, not earn what

Will of God, see Obedience

we don’t, 184

Wissenshaft, what it should be, 31

to enter our Father’s house, 187

Word of God, see Scripture

to enter the narrow door, 166-173

and Spirit are inseparable, 342

will not be in vain, 189

those of God hear word of God, 60

your righteousness must exceed

Workplace, secular

Pharisees’, 190-195

making much of Christ, 73 n. 1

Substitution, 15

Worry, see Anxiety

Suffering

Worship

following Jesus in, 70

all through and of Jesus, 101

Great Commission by prayer, word, and

as all of life, 103

suffering, 374

God in spirit and truth, 99-104

Jesus is worth it, 374

in spirit, 102

joy in, 86

serving, 104 n. 1

joyful sacrifice of love in suffering, 356

Worth of Jesus infinite, 104

pain and pleasure keep from kingdom,

168

temporary, pleasures eternal, 71

Summit Drive Grade School, 14

Taxes, render to Caesar, 323-335

Teaching the commandments, 18

those of the truth hear Jesus, 60

truth evasion by belittling God, 294

Title of the book, 24

Treasuring

God above all is what love is, 81

Jesus our treasure, 243

lay up treasure in heaven by giving, 269-

273

Document Outline

- Table of Contents

- Acknowledgements

- Suggestions for How to Read This Book

- Introduction: The Aim of the Book

- A Word to Biblical Scholars

- Demand #1 - You Must Be Born Again

- Demand #2 - Repent

- Demand #3 - Come to Me

- Demand #4 - Believe in Me

- Demand #5 - Love Me

- Demand #6 - Listen to Me

- Demand #7 - Abide in Me

- Demand #8 - Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me

- Demand #9 - Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

- Demand #10 - Rejoice and Leap for Joy

- Demand #11 - Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell

- Demand #12 - Worship God in Spirit and Truth

- Demand #13 - Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart

- Demand #14 - Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of Daily Life

- Demand #15 - Do Not Be Anxious About the Threats of Man

- Demand #16 - Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride

- Demand #17 - Humble Yourself in Childlikeness, Servanthood, and Brokenhearted Boldness

- Demand #18 - Do Not Be Angry--Trust God's Providence

- Demand #19 - Do Not Be Angry--Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness

- Demand #20 - Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven--Be Justified by Trusting Jesus

- Demand #21 - Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven--Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus

- Demand #22 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For All of Life is War

- Demand #23 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant

- Demand #24 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For You Are Already in the Kingdom's Power

- Demand #25 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees, For It Was Hypocritical and Ugly

- Demand #26 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees--Clean the Inside of the Cup

- Demand #27 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees, For Every Healthy Tree Bears Good Fruit

- Demand #28 - Love Your Enemies--Lead Them to the Truth

- Demand #29 - Love Your Enemies--Pray for Those Who Abuse You

- Demand #30 - Love Your Enemies--Do Good to Those Who Hate You, Give to the One Who Asks

- Demand #31 - Love Your Enemies to Show That You Are Children of God

- Demand #32- Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, For This Is the Law and the Prophets

- Demand #33 - Love Your Neighbor with the Same Commitment You Have to Your Own Well-Being

- Demand #34 - Love Your Neighbor as Yourself and As Jesus Loved Us

- Demand #35 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven by Giving Sacrificially and Generously

- Demand #36 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven and Increase Your Joy in Jesus

- Demand #37 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven--"It Is Your Father's Good Pleasure to Give You the Kingdom"

- Demand #38 - Do Not Take an Oath--Cherish the Truth and Speak It Simply

- Demand #39 - Do Not Take an Oath--Let What You Say Be Simply "Yes" or "No"

- Demand #40 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate, For Marriage Mirrors God's Covenant with Us

- Demand #41 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate, For Whoever Divorces and Marries Another Commits Adultery

- Demand #42 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate--One Man, One Woman, by Grace, Till Death

- Demand #43 - Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's and to God the Things That Are God's

- Demand #44 - Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's as an Act of Rendering to God What Is God's

- Demand #45 - Do This in Remembrance of Me, For I Will Build My Church

- Demand #46 - Do This in Remembrance of Me--Baptize Disciples and Eat the Lord's Supper

- Demand #47 - Let Your Light Shine Before Others That They May Glorify Your Father Who Is in Heaven

- Demand #48 - Let Your Light Shine Before Others--The Joyful Sacrifice of Love in Suffering

- Demand #49 - Make Disciples of All Nations, For All Authority Belongs to Jesus

- Demand #50 - Make Disciples of All Nations, For the Mission Cannot Fail

- Desiring God Ministries

- Scripture Index

- Person Index

- Subject Index

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Suggestions for How to Read This Book

Introduction: The Aim of the Book

A Word to Biblical Scholars

Demand #1 - You Must Be Born Again

Demand #2 - Repent

Demand #3 - Come to Me

Demand #4 - Believe in Me

Demand #5 - Love Me

Demand #6 - Listen to Me

Demand #7 - Abide in Me

Demand #8 - Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me

Demand #9 - Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

Demand #10 - Rejoice and Leap for Joy

Demand #11 - Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell

Demand #12 - Worship God in Spirit and Truth

Demand #13 - Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart

Demand #14 - Do Not Be Anxious About the Necessities of Daily Life

Demand #15 - Do Not Be Anxious About the Threats of Man

Demand #16 - Humble Yourself by Making War on Pride

Demand #17 - Humble Yourself in Childlikeness, Servanthood, and Brokenhearted Boldness

Demand #18 - Do Not Be Angry--Trust God's Providence

Demand #19 - Do Not Be Angry--Embrace Mercy and Forgiveness

Demand #20 - Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven--Be Justified by Trusting Jesus

Demand #21 - Do the Will of My Father Who Is in Heaven--Be Transformed by Trusting Jesus

Demand #22 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For All of Life is War

Demand #23 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant

Demand #24 - Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For You Are Already in the Kingdom's Power

Demand #25 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees, For It Was Hypocritical and Ugly

Demand #26 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees--Clean the Inside of the Cup

Demand #27 - Your Righteousness Must Exceed That of the Pharisees, For Every Healthy Tree Bears Good

Demand #28 - Love Your Enemies--Lead Them to the Truth

Demand #29 - Love Your Enemies--Pray for Those Who Abuse You

Demand #30 - Love Your Enemies--Do Good to Those Who Hate You, Give to the One Who Asks

Demand #31 - Love Your Enemies to Show That You Are Children of God

Demand #32- Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, For This Is the Law and the Prophets

Demand #33 - Love Your Neighbor with the Same Commitment You Have to Your Own Well-Being

Demand #34 - Love Your Neighbor as Yourself and As Jesus Loved Us

Demand #35 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven by Giving Sacrificially and Generously

Demand #36 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven and Increase Your Joy in Jesus

Demand #37 - Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in Heaven--"It Is Your Father's Good Pleasure to Give Y

Demand #38 - Do Not Take an Oath--Cherish the Truth and Speak It Simply

Demand #39 - Do Not Take an Oath--Let What You Say Be Simply "Yes" or "No"

Demand #40 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate, For Marriage Mirrors God's Covenant w

Demand #41 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate, For Whoever Divorces and Marries Anot

Demand #42 - What God Has Joined Together Let No Man Separate--One Man, One Woman, by Grace, Till De

Demand #43 - Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's and to God the Things That Are God's

Demand #44 - Render to Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's as an Act of Rendering to God What Is God

Demand #45 - Do This in Remembrance of Me, For I Will Build My Church