“A person’s days are determined; you have
decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.” (Job 14:5, NIV)
What are you waiting for? I frequently find myself wishing things were
happening faster. Maybe it’s because I’m naturally an impatient person, or
maybe it’s because I love the thrill of seeing things get done. Either way, I
often feel that one of the greatest struggles in life is living in the tension
of waiting.
So what are you waiting for? A new job? A new house? A new relationship? A
call from your doctor? Take inventory of your heart for a moment. Have you ever
noticed how the other highway lane or the other grocery line always seems to be
moving faster than the one you’re in? What tends to happen to you when you feel
like something you’re waiting for is taking too long? Do you grow agitated by
your circumstances? Do people start to rub you the wrong way?
It’s very easy to be short with others when life seems to be stuck at a red light. It gets worse when others seem to be finding or achieving the very things for which you are most longing. It’s as if you’ve been stuck in the back of the line for a ride at Disneyland, and you keep watching one person after another jump ahead of you with their fast pass. You begin to wonder, Where’s my fast pass in life?
It can be discouraging to the point of debilitating when you live in a
fast-paced world, yet seem to be stuck in slow motion. We think, Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to have a
fast-forward button for life? We all know what it’s like to experience the
unwelcome tension of waiting. Millennials like myself probably struggle with
this even more than former generations. After all, we are enmeshed in the world
of fast food, next-day delivery, and real-time news alerts. Every bit of
information we need is merely a click away. Our culture has programmed us to view
waiting as an unpleasant part of life. When we do have to wait for something,
we see it as nothing but an inconvenient obstacle to our life plans.
But what if waiting is part of
the plan? What if God intends to do something in us while we wait that could
not otherwise happen? This is where a healthy view of God’s sovereignty can be
indescribably freeing. “My times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:15).
Scripture offers this promise to our restless hearts: “And we know that for
those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called
according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). Read that promise again, only slower. The
first thing we need to see is that God is working out “all things” for the good
of His beloved children. “All things” has to include even the tiniest details
in life. How we choose to respond to waiting reflects our confidence in God’s
sovereign goodness and wisdom in that moment. I intentionally say we choose how we respond, because while we
cannot always change our circumstances, we can
always change our attitude (Philippians 2:14).
Over a dozen passages in the Bible talk about waiting on or for the Lord. To wait for the Lord is “to put your hope
in the Lord with great anticipation.”
“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for
the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14)
“For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall
inherit the land.” (Psalm 37:9)
“Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the LORD, and He will deliver
you.” (Proverbs 20:22)
“…but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall
mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk
and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
The oft-repeated cliché “Good things come to those who wait” could be
amended to “Great things come to those who wait on the Lord.” But let’s be
careful not to reduce waiting on the Lord
to some version of hyper spiritualized laziness. It is an act of faith, whereby
we live in the present in full reliance on the One who holds the future. It’s
not an excuse for passivity. Followers of Christ are to be passionately
involved in loving service in the midst of the waiting (Romans 12:6-13). “Never
be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically” (Romans 12:11,
NLT).
While the late Tom Petty was talking about his romantic relationship, the
chorus from his song “The Waiting is the Hardest Part” can well apply to our
situation: “You take it on faith, you take it to the heart/ The waiting is the
hardest part.”
We see many examples in Scripture of those who had to wait a long time for
their prayers to be answered. The woman with a bleeding problem had to wait
twelve long years for healing (Luke 8:43-48). Despite their faithfulness and
courage, Joshua and Caleb had to wait 40 years to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy
2:7; Joshua 5:6). Abraham and Sarah had to wait until they were 100 and 90 to
have children (Genesis 21:5-7). The lame man at the Pool of Bethesda waited 38
years before God healed him (John 5:5-9).
In each of these cases, God was doing something in those who were waiting
while they waited. Think of it. The man of John 9 who had been blind from birth
had the unspeakable privilege of not only being healed by Christ but coming to
know Jesus as Messiah and Savior (John 9:35-39). In the words of Jesus, all
those years of blindness “happened so the power of God could be seen in him”
(John 9:3).
Treasure this truth: God is never idle. He is doing something in and through you today to reveal His power in you tomorrow. He is always at work in the waiting.
“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved…” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2a, NIV)
Recently, my wife Whitney and I welcomed our son Ryan into the world. A newborn baby is truly a wonder to behold. Their soft hands are already grasping for another hand. Their mouth already seeking nourishment. Their eyes slowly opening and struggling to focus for the first time on the big bright world around them.
With Ryan’s arrival, we have noticed our older two boys (Logan and Weston) acting up a bit more than usual. I don’t think there’s any surprise here. Children often need time adjusting to the arrival of a new sibling. It’s a new era for them. The truth has gradually dawned on them, on a completely new level, that they are not in fact the center of the universe. I find myself wanting to teach them over and over, “It’s not all about you.” Many a parent can relate to this.
Parents rightly see the need to discipline and correct their misbehaving
children. But here’s the question I want us to consider: In the midst of discipline,
are we teaching our children the gospel of Jesus Christ? Is our method of
correction, discipline, and instruction working to support or deny the truth of
the gospel? Does the message we are conveying sound more like self-salvation or
divine rescue?
No one has to teach their child to be selfish. Parents know firsthand that we all come into this world with a self-centered bent. We want what we want, and we want it now. It’s a shocking truth to learn that the world and everyone we know is not in orbit around us. Even as adults, however, we tend to live as if the story of the universe is all about us. But the gospel of Jesus Christ tells us a better story. It tells us that we were made for a much higher purpose than to live for ourselves. According to Scripture, we exist for God. To worship Him, love Him, and honor Him. It is only in living according to our God-given purpose rather than our self-made plans that we find true and lasting joy. This is precisely the goal of the gospel, the Bible’s central message.
Over and over, Scripture reminds us that we are on this planet to worship and enjoy God. “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31, NLT). Anything less will leave us empty, beaten up, and dissatisfied. When we live for God rather than self, our actions correspond to our design.
You may remember watching the animated Disney classic Pinocchio as a child. It’s a fascinating story of a puppet that comes to life when his maker wishes upon a star that his little marionette whom he named Pinocchio might become a real boy. That night, a glowing blue fairy partially grants his wish by bringing Pinocchio to life. However, he remains a wooden puppet. Pinocchio awakes and — humorously — is shocked to be alive. The blue fairy tells Pinocchio that if he proves himself “brave, truthful, and unselfish,” Geppetto’s wish will come true. She also assigns the loyal little locust, Jiminy Cricket, to be Pinocchio’s constant companion and voice of conscience.
The tale follows Pinocchio and Jiminy on their many adventures as the puppet sets out to discover what life in the world is really like. While Pinocchio is loved by his “father,” Geppetto, he soon discovers there are many in this world who want to lead him astray. He also learns how easy it is to make wrong choices. I doubt there is another Disney movie that is so chock full of moral lessons and aphorisms, like when the blue fairy says, “You see, Pinocchio, a lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
In the film’s darkest moments, Pinocchio and a friend are lured to Pleasure Island, a place where selfish boys can live it up — smoking, drinking, gambling, and doing whatever else they want — all without the moral restraints of parental authority. Unfortunately for Pinocchio and his friend, the island is cursed so that all the naughty boys who travel there transform into donkeys and are eventually sold into slave labor. One boy-turned-donkey desperately cries out for his mother. In a menacing tone, the island’s owner says, “You boys have had your fun. Now pay for it!” Pinocchio barely escapes, but his friend does not.
In a final act of courage, Pinocchio tries to rescue Geppetto from the belly of a sperm whale that swallowed the puppet maker while he was searching for Pinocchio. While Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket survive the whole ordeal, Pinocchio is killed. At the end of the film, there is a touching moment when Geppetto weeps over his broken puppet lying on the bed. Suddenly, the fairy not only resurrects him but transforms him into a real boy. “Father, I’m a real boy!” Pinocchio shouts in amazement. Apparently, Pinocchio’s final act of bravery proved him worthy of life.
In many ways, Pinocchio is something of a parable for how the modern world understands Christianity. Many today, even in the church, see Christianity as a moral prescription for life. God’s law is a list of dos and don’ts that we are to follow. We can think that, like Pinocchio, we must prove ourselves worthy of life. This way of thinking makes sense to us, but it stems from a wrong view of God.
We can think of God as if He were like a giant fairy, watching over our
every move, evaluating our lives to see whether or not we really deserve to be
accepted as His child. If we know we’ve blown it — spending too much time at Pleasure
Island — we can hear God demanding that we pay up for all that we’ve done. Many
people today live with this view of God, persistently uncertain of whether they
have done enough or are good enough to go to heaven. Even if we see God as
kindhearted and encouraging like the fairy, urging us to listen to our
conscience, we can think it’s ultimately about us being good enough to meet God’s
expectations.
American sociologist Christian Smith called this version of Christianity “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”[1] It essentially boils down to this: God is there for us when we are in a bind, but generally lets us go through life relying on our conscience (rather than His Word). The main thing God cares about is that we try to live a good life and be decent individuals, because heaven is the reward for good people when they die. Makes sense, right? The only problem is that this is nothing like the Christianity of the Bible.
What’s wrong with the above description? Well, for starters, there’s no mention of how Christ fits into that version of Christianity! In Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Jesus is merely an add-on to Christianity, rather than the hub and center around which everything turns. At best, such a view sees Jesus as a good example or a wise teacher. Certainly, He was the supreme example and wisest teacher ever to live, but to reduce Him to these descriptions is to try to have Christ without the cross. It turns a blind eye to the bleeding and dying man staked to the cross. It ignores the miraculous triumph of the empty tomb. It downplays Jesus’ own radical claims: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
Here’s the challenge for Christian parents. It is far easier to skip the gospel and address the moral behavior of our children with rewards or threats. “If you obey, I’ll give you…” “You’d better not disobey me, or else…” Honestly, I catch myself relying on this tactic all the time. I’m certainly not saying that all our rules should be thrown out or that we should stop disciplining our kids. Both of these are essential and sadly not practiced by many parents today.
But when we discipline our kids, are we pointing them to the truth of the gospel? Are we merely addressing their outward behavior, or are we striving to address their heart? The heart is the epicenter for all our children’s thoughts and motives. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Jesus said that all our evil thoughts and actions spring from our sin-riddled hearts (Matthew 15:19). If all we ever use is rewards or threats in our discipline, we are actually encouraging our kids to ask the self-centered question: “What’s in it for me?”
Whether we like it or not, we are teaching our kids a gospel not just with what we say but with how we act. The only question is whether the gospel we are giving is the true gospel of Jesus Christ or something else. When I discipline my son for stealing cookies or talking back to Whitney or myself (speaking hypothetically, of course), I want him to know that what he’s doing is a serious problem. And this problem has to do with the sin in his heart. He needs to know not only that his sin saddens me, but that it saddens God, too (Genesis 6:6). I also want him to understand that Jesus loved him so much that He did something about the sin in his heart. In fact, He suffered and died for it, so that God can forgive him and scrub his heart clean of all that sin (1 John 1:8-2:2). My son needs to know that no matter how good he strives to be, he can never work off his guilt. Only Jesus can do that. Beyond this, I want him to know that he’s not alone. “Daddy has sin in his heart, too, and needs Jesus just as much.”
I want my sons — even at a very young age — to recognize their great need to be reconciled to God. The Bible says, “It’s your sins that have cut you off from God” (Isaiah 59:2, NLT). “So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making His appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’ For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NLT). We need to explain to our kids that what makes sin so serious is that we were made for a relationship with a holy God. At the same time, our kids can be confident of their standing with God through faith in Jesus (Romans 8:1; Philippians 1:6).
In every generation, there is a danger of losing or distorting the gospel. Most often this drift from the gospel is well intended. After all, it’s not wrong to want to see our kids live good and moral lives. Pinocchio is a story that resonates with some of our most basic moral intuitions. But what our kids need to see is that there is a much greater story, a powerful story ofredemption, that is taught in Scripture and centered around Jesus Christ. Teaching our kids to be good boys and girls is too small a goal. We need to teach them to be Christ-centered, Christ-exalting, and Christ-loving kids. We want their obedience to be rooted in love, not self-centeredness.
Above all else, Jesus-following parents need to embrace the truth that they are in the disciple-making business.
Photos Courtesy of Pixabayand Disney.com
[1]
Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so
that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him,
because He cares for you.” (1 Peter
5:6-7)
Not long ago, I was teaching a small group on the importance of seeing God as supremely glorious. I pulled out a “fun size” Snickers bar. I said, “This represents how many of us are tempted to view God. He’s handy when we are in a pinch, makes us feel good, and always strives to bless us — when he can. The problem with this ‘fun size’ view of God is that, because this god is small, he’s also incapable of handling all the problems of this world. You see, this ‘fun size’ god would like to do something about suffering and your personal struggles, but ultimately he can’t. He’s trying his best, but it’s a challenge to keep all the plates spinning.”
I then pulled out a “king size” Snickers bar. “This represents the true God,” I said, “who is King over all His creation. Nothing is too difficult for this God, because He truly is in control. This sovereign and unlimited God is on the throne, and He alone can be trusted with everything we are going through. This is the right view of God that we need to get.” After a few people nodded their heads, someone pointed at the king size bar. “You going to eat that?”
According
to the Bible, much of our anxiety and other stress-related feelings are rooted
in a small view of God. Only a great and awesome God can truly calm our fears. “Do
not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your
God. I will strengthen you; surely, I will help you. Surely I will uphold you
with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). Such a statement is comforting,
but only if spoken by a God who reigns.
Here
is what Peter says: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God
so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him,
because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7). Peter tells us what to do with our
anxieties — throw them all on God! But he doesn’t just tell us what to do with our anxiety, but also
both how and why.
This
is too important to miss when we read this passage. God is bigger than your circumstances. He is bigger than your
worries. He is bigger than all of your struggles in life, no matter how massive
they may seem right now. God is more powerful, more glorious, and more fearsome
than anything that could possibly scare you right now. Let that truth soak into
your heart: God is immense.
All of heaven is flooded with the majesty of His greatness. That is why Peter tells us to submit to the “mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6). The most massive, blazing hot star out there in the night sky does not even come close to approximating the awesome power of God’s hand. According to astronomers, the largest known star in the universe goes by the name “UY Scuti,” a hypergiant boasting a radius 1,700 times the size of our own sun.[1] It is hard for us to comprehend how much light and energy must emit from such a massive star like UY Scuti. Yet even the ginormous Scuti cannot hold a candle to the power of God’s little finger. Consider what God Himself says about His “mighty hand”: “It was My hand that laid the foundations of the earth, My right hand that spread out the heavens above. When I call out the stars, they all appear in order” (Isaiah 48:13). That is the first point Peter wants us to get.
Photo Courtesy of Our Planet
So much of our worries, anxieties, and stress-induced thoughts about what we are going through stems from having a diminished view of God. You might be thinking, Really? That tightness in my chest and high blood pressure I get can have something to do with the way I view God? Yes, it can. Here’s why.
When you have a “fun size” view of God, you will inevitably convince yourself that He cannot handle the biggest, most heart-pounding things in your life. You know the things I am referring to: financial concerns, family struggles, that long battle to find a good job, kids that won’t stop throwing fits, health issues, difficult people, and that lurking temptation that won’t leave you alone. These struggles are real.
We
often adopt a “fun size” view of God, because on the surface a small God makes
sense to us. Although we don’t verbalize it, we can think, Isn’t God just like me, only a little bigger, smarter and more
powerful? That kind of God is manageable, understandable, and still
available to help us out when we are in a pinch. So, we could say he is useful. But such a deity does not
command our worship. As Evelyn Underhill wrote, “A god small enough to be
understood is not big enough to be worshipped.” A god who is wringing his hands
and constantly struggling to get a handle on a world spinning out of his
control cannot calm our fears. Such a god is just as anxious as we are — if
not, more so because there is more for him to worry about! More importantly,
such a deity is not the God of
Scripture.
It may be that you do not actively think about God as small and weak. But the question is: Do your responses to difficulties reflect a belief in a small god or God Almighty?
For the Israelites to catch a small glimpse of “the glory of the LORD” was like looking into “a devouring fire” on top of a great mountain (Exodus 24:17). This was no small brush fire. When this glorious God merely touched the mountain with the tip of His finger, smoke completely enveloped Mount Sinai. “The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a brick kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently” (Exodus 19:18, NLT).
Knowing we are accountable to such a God deflates our arrogance and cuts us down to size. When you catch a vision of who God truly is in all His glory, you are less inclined to boast of your accomplishments. You are less likely to see yourself as a spiritual giant, but instead you will recognize how you have dishonored such a God in countless ways. In those moments, His grace and forgiveness will never taste so sweet. It is only when you see and confess the depths of your sin that you can see and experience the heights of His love. Only the humble can praise Him as the “God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). Your heart will sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). In other words, if your sin and God’s grace were to go toe-to-toe, God’s grace would win with a triumphant knockout every time.
That is why Peter says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you” (1 Peter 5:6). Humility is a big deal in this passage. Right before this statement, Peter writes, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (v. 5).
All through Scripture, we see that God utterly hates the foolish, self-exalting
pride of humanity. “And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty
pride of men shall be brought low, and the LORD alone will be exalted in that
day” (Isaiah 2:17). Those who refuse to acknowledge they owe everything to God
— including their very lives — will one day be humbled.
J. D. Greear writes, “The real God is not a god who simply completes us and
makes us feel sentimental during worship; he is a God who humbles us and
transforms us from the inside out. When you really see him, you’ll either love
him or hate him. The one thing you will not be is bored.”[2]
You may be thinking, What does all this have to do with anxiety? Wouldn’t a more immense view of God only give me more anxiety? No, and here is why: “God… gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). We need this glorious vision of God to humble us, because it is only from our knees that we will be able to give Him all our anxious thoughts. Peter makes this connection clear: “Humble yourselves… casting all your anxieties on Him” (v. 7).
Only when you fear God more than your circumstances are you able to look to Him as your only hope. It is in handing over all those anxious thoughts that plague your mind at night to this immense God of all grace that you experience relief. Hold nothing back. Cast “all your anxieties on Him.” Lastly, Peter says to throw all your anxieties into His hands, “because He cares for you” (v. 7b). Don’t miss the great importance of this little statement.
If you are a follower of the risen Lord, then you not only have a Savior but also a Father. This Father has laid claim to you. You are his beloved child. In the darkest hour, He will not let you go. Just as an earthly father longs to calm and comfort his children when they awake from a nightmare in the darkness of night, so our heavenly Father loves to relieve His children of anxious, worrisome, and fearful thoughts. All He asks is that you bring them to Him. All of them. Whatever is weighing heavily on your mind, tell Him about it and admit they are too big for you. Don’t give in to pride and tell yourself you can handle them on your own. Hurl them into your Father’s strong hands, because only He can bear them.
So, here’s a question I leave with you: What is something you are struggling to give over to God? And lastly: Knowing that God is a loving Father who can handle everything you could possibly throw at Him, what is keeping you from handing it over?
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:10-11).
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up
in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4)
In a matter of weeks, my wife Whitney is due to deliver our third boy, Ryan David Smith. Thus will begin yet another chapter in our life together. We are experiencing the strange mixture of unbounded excitement and a pinch of sheer terror at what lies in store for us. But mostly we just can’t wait to meet the little guy. God has been so very gracious with us. Whitney and I love our boys and cannot imagine life without them.
Although we are keenly aware of how cranky we can be when sleep deprived, we are, truthfully, just as excited for our third son as we were for our first two. Whitney has pointed out how active Ryan has been in the womb. Many times, she has grabbed my hand and put it over her tummy when Ryan is in the middle of his daily karate exercises. What expectant dad doesn’t get a kick out of that? (Insert groan in response to the dad joke here). So much life and so much vibrant personality already bound up in this tiny person! I have even played this fun little game where I press twice on him, and he immediately responds with a kick as if to say, “Yeah, I felt that!”
I
think of what King David — after whom we named Ryan David — wrote about God’s direct and intimate involvement with
every step of a baby’s development in the womb:
“For
you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being
made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my
unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that
were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16)
It is a marvel to me how our older two boys can be so similar, and yet so very different. Both are testosterone-filled boys who love to run wild, crash little cars, pretend they are swash-buckling pirates, jump off the couch, and wrestle their old man on the ground. At the same time, they are remarkably distinct in personality and preferences.
Logan
(4) is a thinker. He is deeply empathetic and constantly looking for ways to
meet the needs of others. God has given Logan a very organized mind that loves
to see how things fit together, and he relishes well-structured environments.
Despite his tender heart, Logan also loves the thrill of adventure and hardly a
day goes by without him asking to ride his bike. At this point, I’m thinking he
would make a fine neurosurgeon, an engineer for skyscrapers, or perhaps someone
who does humanitarian relief work overseas.
Weston (2), on the other hand, is a doer. Granted, he is two years younger, but we can already tell he is more action-oriented. The little chunk is in love with every animal he meets, and energetic life seems to pulsate through his tough little body. When Weston enters a new place, the first thing he looks for is the highest point that he can climb to and jump off. Hence, the nickname Whitney and I have given him: “Wild West.” I am guessing he’ll end up as either a lion tamer, a stuntman, or a CIA agent.
Weston (2) and Logan (4), July 2019
With
the arrival of our third boy, I feel an even deeper sense of responsibility and
accountability for my role in their lives as a father. I am very aware of my
many faults and flaws, and, no doubt, there are many more of which I am not
aware. But this doesn’t change the fact that I am called to be a godly example
to these boys. While I do not expect to be a perfect dad, I want to strive to
be all that God calls me to be for them.
It
is virtually undisputed that fathers play a tremendous role in the lives of
their sons, especially in their formative years, when they are learning what it
means to be a man. Research continually bears out the long-term consequences in
the lives of both boys and girls when there is no father or father figure at
home.[1]
There is something profoundly grounding and nurturing about having a loving
father who is present for his son and deeply interested in his life. I myself was
blessed to have such a father in my life, and he continues to be a role model
for me today.
Obviously,
mothers play an essential role in the boy’s life, too — mine certainly did!
However, there are certain things that a boy can only learn from a man. For
example, as their dad, I can show my sons how a man ought to respect and honor
a woman. From an early age, my boys are noting the way I treat Whitney. If I
were to give her only a minimal level of attention, dismiss her concerns as
trivial, or ignore her comments and suggestions, my boys would begin to pick up
the false idea that men need not respect women.
A lack of respect for women from a young age invariably results in teenage boys viewing girls as objects for their pleasure rather than persons deserving their respect and thoughtful consideration. This subject is not popular to talk about, but it needs to be said more often. Whenever men disregard the inherent value of women, this always leads to devastating consequences. One of the primary roles for a father of boys is to model for his sons the great importance of honoring women. For example, they need to know from an early age that it is never okay to hit a girl.
This is important because a boy’s wiring is different from a girl. Recent studies have discovered more ways male and female brains are different even at the molecular level.[2] Aside from the obvious genetic and anatomical dissimilarities, boys have higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of serotonin. Serotonin is a hormone that helps regulate self-control and “facilitates good judgment” when emotions run high.[3] It explains at the chemical level why men often act violently and recklessly when they lose their tempers.[4]
My wife Whitney with Weston and Logan, July 2019
Something
I have learned about my boys is that everything is a race for them. If you ask
one to set the table (with their little plastic plates and cups), the other
seizes the opportunity to beat him to the punch. The same is true when it is
time to go to the park, pick out a bedtime story, or brush their teeth. It does
not matter if there is no prize whatsoever. Everything
is a race. This competitive streak in boys is both a good thing and a bad
thing.
Research
has shown that higher levels of testosterone correlate with higher levels of
competitive, aggressive, and even, sometimes, violent behavior. This explains
why, by nature, boys tend to be more competitive than girls. Girls, on the
other hand, tend to be more relational. Granted, there are exceptions, but
overall this tendency holds true. Psychologist James Dobson writes, “Testosterone
almost certainly plays a role in the fact that the vast majority of crimes of
violence are committed by men, and that the prison population is occupied by a
vastly disproportionate number of males.”[5][6]
The
point here is not that boys are a bunch of little criminals in a cute disguise
and that girls are sweet little angels incapable of doing wrong. Parents around
the world can testify this is not quite true! Neither is the point that boys
are biologically preprogrammed to act violently. As a Christian, I believe what
the Bible says about the spiritual and moral brokenness of every person, and
his or her desperate need of a perfect Savior (Romans 3:9-25). I also believe
what the Bible says about each person being responsible for his or her own
behavior (Romans 2:1-16; 2 Corinthians 5:10).
By
God’s grace, boys can grow up to be men who lead a life where they respect
others — especially women and those in authority — and use their strength
ultimately to promote peace. There is nothing inherently evil about
testosterone, but it is essential to recognize the inevitable fallout when parents
do not raise their boys to make wise, moral, and God-honoring decisions.
Moreover, that competitive streak in boys can be a very good thing, because it can lead to them pushing one another to improve, work hard, and always strive for excellence in whatever they do. Young men can actually build a deep bond of brotherhood through their competition with one another. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). So, please don’t feel the need to hamper that adrenaline and stifle all forms of rivalry. Instead, help your boy channel that grit and determination to win into right behavior. Boys need to know there is a time to be tough, and there is a time to be tender. Helping them distinguish between those two times is of paramount importance.
That
is why it is so important for not just the mom, but also the dad to provide
guidance and discipline for boys regarding how they treat others. In fact,
because boys tend to respond better to male authority figures, it is the dad’s
responsibility to lead the way in both loving discipline and gentle instruction
(Ephesians 6:4). As a Christian, I see my primary responsibility in raising my
boys is to both share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them and model a life
consistent with that message. Only the gospel is “the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Therefore, it alone has the
power to transform hearts and make them disciples (followers) of the Lord Jesus.
Christian parents are not merely parents; they are disciple makers. By God’s grace, my generation can raise a generation of godly men who know what it means to love God and neighbor. For those of us who know Christ, we can take great courage in knowing that we are not left alone to this branch of discipleship we call parenting. Jesus said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
[1] I have tremendous respect for single moms. When I talk about the importance of a father, in no way am I suggesting that single moms should despair. Rather, your role is vital in your child’s upbringing, and godly men who are not your child’s father can and do serve a significant role in helping to guide and instruct a child, even though this will look different from a father’s role. A helpful resource is Emerson Eggerichs, Mother and Son: The Respect Effect (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2016). It also needs to be said that God can overcome all statistics and circumstances. Time and time again, I have met men who grew up without a father, but have been radically transformed by Jesus Christ, the One who is not limited by statistical trends.
[2] Catherine S. Woolley, et al, “Sex Differences in Molecular Signaling at Inhibitory Synapses in the Hippocampus,” (The Journal of Neuroscience, 12 August 2015), 11252-11266. Woolley, who was originally averse to the concept of sex differences in the brain, later had to admit that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrated that male and female brains are fundamentally different at the molecular level. Her article is found here: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/35/32/11252.full.pdf
[3]
James C. Dobson, Bringing Up Boys
(Tyndale House Publishers, 2018), 25.
[4] It
is important to acknowledge what is happening at the chemical and neurological
level as a partial explanation, but
certainly not the full explanation.
[6] However, another interesting statistic is that men with absentee
fathers are more likely to commit violent crimes than men who had a loving father
in the home. See Don Elium, Raising a Son
(New York: Random House, 2004); James C. Dobson, Bringing Up Boys, chapters 5 and 6.
“When I consider your
heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set
in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you
care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned
them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:3-5, NIV)
Have you ever reflected on the purpose of your existence?
Have you ever sensed deep within your bones that this short life cannot
possibly be all there is — that there must be something more?
Where did we come from? Are humans merely biological
machines, or is there something more to us? Why is there something rather than
nothing?
Throughout the centuries, humanity has asked these perennial
questions related to our origins. We are persistently curious about where we
came from. What got this whole thing
going anyway? It is for this reason that inquisitive children ask their
parents, “Where do babies come from?” Atheists and theists alike agree that our
meaning is rooted in our origins. Our past is the key to our future.
Having said that, I fear that our culture often discourages honest reflection on the deeper purpose of life. The vast majority of Hollywood scripts and commercial advertisements suggest that true happiness and pleasure is found in the here and now. It is not just our culture, however. Something in us prefers immediate gratification to thoughtful reflection. We seem hesitant to consider what may lie beyond the horizon of our material world. Nevertheless, despite our endless pursuits, there remains the nagging sense that we were made for something transcendent.
In the words of A. W. Tozer, “The yearning to know what
cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the
Unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth
unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster
theologians call the fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to
its Source.”[1]
Cosmically
Irrelevant?
Consider the alternative: “Man is the result of a
purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”[2]
Now really, can anyone actually believe this? Can anyone truly live as if they
are the result of a mindless, purposeless, and accidental process? Harvard
professor James Wood writes of an atheist friend who at times awakes in the
middle of the night with a piercing anxiety:
“How can it be that this world is the result of an
accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can
it be that every life — beginning with my own, my husband’s, my child’s, and
spreading outward — is cosmically irrelevant?”[3]
Even for the atheist, this bleak picture of existence is a tough
pill to swallow. For life to be utterly devoid of meaning seems impossible. I’m
reminded of a line from the film On the Waterfront,
spoken by Marlon Brando’s character, Terry Malloy. Terry longs to be a prizefighter,
but one obstacle after another prevents him from achieving his dream. He tells
his brother, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody,
instead of a bum, which is what I am.” We all want to be somebody in this world.
We want to matter. Yet, the atheistic worldview mocks the whole human race for being
caught in some grand delusion.
When nearing his death, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs said, “I’m about fifty-fifty on believing in God… For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye… It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures.”[4]
Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia
Most of my friends know that I am an avid Seattle Seahawks fan. My friends and I have joked about how the four preseason games that precede the regular NFL season are a waste of time to watch. After all, many of the stars play for only a small portion of each preseason game and the wins and losses have no bearing on the regular season and postseason. Even when aired on national television, the fact that these games are merely preseason seems to suck all of the magic and drama right out of the stadium.
Now think about this: if you really are the accidental byproduct of nature and you are ultimately headed for non-existence, then it is not just NFL preseason games that are meaningless. Everything is ultimately meaningless. Whenever we push the transcendent out of our thinking, life becomes, in the words of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” If there is no God, we have no basis for ultimate meaning in life, and we are compelled to agree with Shakespeare’s Macbeth that life “is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Without God,
we have no explanation for how the universe came to be, and we have no reason
to think our lives have more value than the bug squished against your
windshield.
On the other hand, what if the Bible got it right, and we
are the creation of an all-wise and beneficent Creator who molded us and
designed us with a purpose, namely, to know Him?
How you answer the question of origins has profound
implications for what it means to be human and for understanding our ultimate destiny.
Ancient Wisdom for
Today
To solve this perplexing enigma, we need to return to the ancient wisdom of Genesis, the biblical book of beginnings. However, before we consider the sacred text, I think it is important to consider some of the biases that inevitably effect the way we read Genesis.
Despite the oft-repeated motif that science and religion are
forever at war, this view is misguided for several reasons. Everyone comes to
the evidence of nature with certain presuppositions, and these presuppositions
color our interpretation. Science is based on observations of natural processes
today, but this does not explain the origin
of those natural processes.
Metaphysical naturalism is the worldview that nature is all
there is. Carl Sagan articulated this view when he famously began his
television series Cosmos with the
line, “The cosmos is all there is, or has been, or will be.”
In contrast to this
nature-is-all-there-is perspective, Scripture begins with the radical claim “In
the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
In response to all false worldviews
which would have nature be eternal or be god itself, the Bible claims that the
cosmos had an absolute beginning and that God created it, and therefore stands
outside and over it. Therefore, God — not nature — is the eternally
self-existent ultimate reality.
“Before the
mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are
God.” (Psalm 90:2, my emphasis)
“To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.” (Isaiah 40:25-26)
M31 Spiral Galaxy. Photo Courtesy of Jason Ware, NASA
Imago Dei
Genesis not only tells us how God created the universe in
general, but also how He created the first human beings. After creating all the
other creatures, great and small, God speaks within His own Trinitarian
council, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may
rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and
all the wild animals, and over all creatures that move along the ground”
(Genesis 1:26). The Bible is very clear that the first humans did not descend
from apelike creatures. [5]
Instead, God directly fashioned them and breathed life into their nostrils (see
Genesis 2:7, 21-22).
In creating human beings, God’s purpose was to have a creature uniquely designed to image — or reflect — His character and nature in a way no other creature could. Unlike all the animals, we alone have the ability to reason and reflect on our own existence. All it takes is one visit to the zoo to witness the striking differences between a human being and every other creature. You will never find a chimpanzee writing a sonnet, a dolphin studying algebra, or an orangutan making laws by which his fellow apes should live. Human beings alone are morally accountable to God. We all know this intuitively. After all, no one ever charges the lion who preys on a zebra with murder.
Bearing God’s image has many implications. Because God is
personal, we are personal. Thus, we can relate to one another with language.
And, I would argue, we experience the fullness of our humanity when we have
learned to love as God loves.
Ostensibly, we are but specks in a vast and uncharted universe, and yet the Bible everywhere affirms humanity’s sacred value. There is even a strange dignity to us because God created us to “rule” (Hebrew, radah רָדָה, v. 26). As God’s image bearers, we are called to represent God’s good and loving rule over His world. Lastly, the Imago Dei (image of God) means that we all have a profound sense of morality deeply embedded in our soul. Intuitively, we know that it is evil to violate another human being, and that we all possess intrinsic worth.
This is why the Deist Thomas Jefferson could pen the
following words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these Truths to be
self-evident, that all Men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” All
of this makes sense in light of the fact that we have been “crowned… with glory
and honor” (Psalm 8:5).
Some time ago, my friend Matt and I were in conversation with a university student who identified herself as an atheist. We’ll call her Madison. [6] We discussed with Madison the evidence for and against God.[7] “If there is no God, then you and I have no more intrinsic worth than a bug, since we are all here by accident,” I pointed out. She shrugged. “I’m okay with being a bug.” Later on, in a moment of transparency, Madison gave one reason for doubting the existence of a good God: such a God had apparently allowed men in her life to mistreat her. I expressed sincere sorrow over what they had done and affirmed her intuition that what these men had done really was evil. I also told her that their sinful actions grieved the heart of God, too (see Genesis 6:5-6; Isaiah 63:10). “Madison, I don’t think you are just a bug. You were made by a God who loves you more than you know. And no one should ever treat you as if you were a bug.”
Modern atheists find themselves in a conundrum. They want to
deny God, but they are also innately aware their lives have value — something only
possible with a sovereign Creator.
The Inner Clue of
Meaning
Genesis also explains why God is our authority: He authored us. We belong to God by His
divine Creator’s rights. When an author writes a book, she owns that book and
thus it bears her name. In the same way, a musician has rights over the song he
composed. We have laws about trademarks, copyrights, and patents because
we recognize that the maker has ownership over what he has made. Because we
belong to God, we are accountable to Him.
When the religious leaders questioned Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar, He asked to see an imperial coin. “Whose image and inscription are on it?” Jesus asked. The men, who were really just seeking grounds to accuse Jesus of insurrection, replied, “Caesar’s.” With a twinkle in His eye, Jesus responded, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:15-22). What was Jesus’ point? That which bears the image of the Creator — a human being — belongs to the Creator.
This is the foundation for what makes you valuable. It is what gives your life infinite purpose. You were made by God… for God. The gospel of Jesus Christ unlocks the mystery of your existence, because it explains you to yourself. Our yearning for something more comes down to this: Having a relationship with God is what life is all about. The ultimate potential you crave for is bound up in knowing Him.
According to the Bible, when our first parents, Adam and Eve, chose to go their own way and defied His authority over them, this broke that priceless intimacy with the God of infinite love. Jesus Christ, the God who came to earth and clothed Himself with human flesh, makes reconciliation possible. Death is the penalty for sin, but God wanted to save us from what we justly deserved (Romans 6:23). Therefore, God resolved to send His own Son to die in our place. In order to do that, the Son of God needed to become human. In coming to save those who bear the image of God, Jesus came as the supreme “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
The Bible says that Jesus, the God-man, “bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” because they separated us from our Creator (1 Peter 2:24). “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18). When we repent of our sin and trust in Christ’s saving death and death-conquering resurrection, God restores us to the fellowship with Him we were originally created for. Meaning, as it turns out, is not some trick of the mind or useless fiction. It is the inner clue pointing you back to the Source from which you came.
[1] A.
W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (Indo-European
Publishing, 2018), 9.
[2] George
Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution,
revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 345.
[3]
James Wood, “Is That All There Is? Secularism and Its Discontents,” New Yorker, August 14, 2011.
[4]
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 571.
[5]
More and more fossil and DNA evidence supports this divergence between the
great apes and human beings. See Marvin Lubenow, Bones of Contention (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992, rev. ed.,
2007); Jon Cohen, “Relative Differences: The Myth of 1%,” Science 316:1836, 2007.; Jeffrey Tomkins and Jerry Bergman,
“Genomic monkey business — estimates of nearly identical human-chimp DNA
similarly re-evaluated using omitted data,” Journal
of Creation 26(1):94-100, 2012, or online at https://creation.com/human-chimp-dna-similarity-re-evaluated.
“By faith we understand that the
universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out
of things that are visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)
On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 had the unique privilege of becoming the first human beings to see the far side of the moon. Coming out of their fourth orbit, these astronauts — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — were mesmerized by the breathtaking view of earth, with all its beautiful and vibrant colors. It stood in stark contrast to the barren landscape of the moon in the foreground. In that captivating moment, the crew thought it was only fitting to read reverently from the majestic first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
Thus begins the grand story of Scripture. How different this account is from all the ancient pagan creation myths. For example, the Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish, speaks of the gods warring with one another and finally forming the worlds out of the carcasses of slain gods. In contrast, this God of Genesis, Yahweh, does not need already existing matter to create His universe. There is no battle raging in Genesis 1. God simply speaks, and a vast universe stretches into existence.
That phrase “the heavens and the earth” is called a merism, where two ends of a spectrum are
used to encompass the whole. In Genesis 1:1, we are meant to take “the heavens
and the earth” as the entire cosmos being created by the one God. Modern
science has now caught up to Genesis in recognizing that there had to have been
an absolute beginning to the universe, but for many centuries the consensus
among secular scientists was that the universe was eternal. In contrast,
Christians and Orthodox Jews have always believed that only God is eternal.
“Before the
mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” (Psalm 90:2)
God Speaks and Things Happen
“And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light”
(Genesis 1:3). God merely speaks and things burst into existence. This same basic
pattern is followed throughout the whole first chapter (see verses 6-7, 9, 11,
14-15, 20-21, 24, 26-27). And what’s the point? I think Psalm 33 best captures
this.
In Psalm 33:6, we read: “By the word of the LORD the heavens
were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.” Verse 9: “For He
spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.”
The whole point is that creation was instantaneous, just
like the miracles of Jesus. Jesus did not need to take that water from the
wedding in Cana, run to grab grapes from a local vineyard, press them down, and
wait for the whole process of fermentation to be completed before He finally
made wine. No, the whole point of this first “sign” was that Jesus transformed
the water into wine in a moment (see John 2:1-11).
In the same way, God did not need long ages of stellar
evolution before creating the first star.[1]
Genesis offers no rhetorical flourish when describing the creation of those
massive gas giants with all their incredible combustion. Almost as an
afterthought, we read, “He also made the stars” (Genesis 1:16, NIV).
This instantaneous creation by His word displays God’s infinite creative power. All He has to do is exhale, as it were, and galaxies spin into space, whole worlds take shape, and all the various living creatures fill the earth. Just imagine how much power this Creator must wield!
Photo courtesy of DesktopBackground
God of Infinite Power
Yahweh is not like the gods of the ancient cultures, who
needed humans to be their slaves because they were too tired.
“Have you
not known? Have you not heard?
Yahweh is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
His understanding is unsearchable.” (Isaiah 40:28)
Nor did He need to kill other gods in order to form the worlds. It
is simply the awesome power of Almighty God on full display. This is the God we were made to
know and with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13).
You and I were made to bow down and worship such a God. And after
considering His infinite power, this only makes sense.
“Worthy are
You, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for You created all things,
and by Your will they existed and were created.” (Revelation 4:11)
Wired for Glory
But more than that, we were created to know Him. This is the greatest privilege imaginable: to know the Creator. That is why we ought to consider what the Bible says about Him. For knowing God is the key to finding true and abundant life. From the beginning, humankind was designed to be in relationship with this infinite Creator. We are wired for glory. That is why we hunger for glorious experiences, achievements, and relationships. But everything else will ultimately leave us empty and unsatisfied until we come to know the One who authored our life.
“And this
is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
you have sent” (John 17:3).
Eternal life is found in repenting of sin against this Creator and trusting in Jesus Christ alone as Savior from that sin. I invite you to open your Bible and discover this awesome God for yourself.
[1] As an aside, the current theory of stellar evolution that is widely accepted in the secular academy is that stars are born from the elements produced by already existing stars. The problem for the atheist is how those first stars came to be. While the current theory among secular scientists is that the first stars formed from a collapsing cloud of gas, this theory has numerous problems. See Rod Bernitt, “Stellar Evolution and the Problem of First Stars,” https://creation.com/stellar-evolution-and-the-problem-of-the-first-stars. Even the agnostic astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has admitted: “Not all gas clouds in the Milky Way can form stars at all times. More often than not, the cloud is confused about what to do next. Actually, astrophysicists are the confused ones here. We know the cloud wants to collapse under its own weight to make one or more stars. But rotation as well as turbulent motion within the cloud work against that fate. So, too, does the ordinary gas pressure you learned about in high-school chemistry class. Galactic magnetic fields also fight collapse: they penetrate the cloud and latch onto any free-roaming charged particles contained therein, restricting the ways in which the cloud will respond to its self-gravity. The scary part is that if none of us knew in advance that stars exist, front line research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form.” Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007), 187.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring
and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)
The Bible, from its very beginning, makes sense of the world. It explains why we are both beautiful and wonderful — because God created us in His image — and why we are also deeply flawed and tragic, and indeed why our whole world is in a constant cycle of triumph and failure — because of our sin. Yet, from the beginning of Scripture we are promised a Savior. In only the third chapter of the Bible, our first parents, Adam and Eve, rebel against their Maker by eating the forbidden fruit in act of open defiance. Their generous Creator, Yahweh, gives them the entire Garden of Eden, inviting them to indulge freely in all its variety of delicious fruits.
However, a serpentine traitor and enemy of Yahweh — a one-time captain of the Lord’s hosts — beguiles the human couple by casting God in a negative light as a miser who withholds His very best from them. Charmed by the hiss of the snake, they take of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — the only tree off limits. In choosing the fruit, they really choose themselves over God and His good authority. Just as they were warned, the consequence of rejecting the Author of life was and always will be death (Genesis 2:16-17). Their revolt against God left a path of destruction in its wake, and we are still feeling the aftershock of humanity’s fall from glory today. Despite our numerous achievements, all of human history is pockmarked with war, famine, disease, suffering, and death — the residual effects of separation from our Creator.
The Snake Crusher
And yet, we cannot miss that in this very chapter — Genesis 3 — the Lord shines the ray of hope into the darkest moment in the storyline of Scripture. No sooner does God bring Adam and Eve under His just curse in Eden than He promises a future “Seed” that will undo the damage wrought by the serpent who tempted them into rebellion. In fact, although the promise is for humanity, He gives the statement in the form of a judgment directed to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15, NASB).[1] The Hebrew term for “seed” here is zera` (זֶרַע) and can be translated as “offspring” or “descendant.”
Writing roughly four thousand years later, the Apostle Paul recalls this precise passage when he tells the Roman Christians, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (Romans 16:20). Even in this statement there seems to be an assumption that in order for us to be reconciled with this “God of peace,” the serpent, Satan, must be crushed underfoot. Tracing this idea back to Genesis 3:15, we see early hints that this “snake crusher”[2] is also the Savior who will reconcile us back to God, the one we have been running and hiding from (see Genesis 3:8).
Tracing the Promise of a Seed
As we continue in
the story of Genesis, we come to Abram, the man Yahweh calls out of pagan
idolatry to worship Him as the one true God (Joshua 24:2ff.). In calling Abram,
God also made some grandiose promises to him. “Go from your country and your
kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” Yahweh told
him. “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your
name great, so that you will be a blessing. 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” (Genesis 12:1-3). God elaborates on this astonishing
promise: “To your offspring [zera` (זֶרַע)]
I will give this land.”
In the next
chapter, the Lord shows Abram the land of Canaan and reiterates the promise:
“Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and
southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give
to you and to your offspring forever” (13:14b-15). Once again, the word zera` (זֶרַע), “seed,” is used (here translated “offspring”).
Given the narrative structure of Genesis, we have an early hint here that the
seed of the woman (3:15) is connected to this seed of Abram (13:15). As Abram
grows older, he begins to doubt that any offspring will actually come from his
loins (15:3). God responds to Abram’s doubt by upping the ante: “Look toward
heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them… So shall your
offspring [zera` (זֶרַע)] be” (v. 5).
When Abram and his wife Sarai attempt their own scheme
for getting Abram an offspring by having Abram sleep with their maidservant,
Hagar, the result was disastrous. A boy Ishmael is born, but a vicious family
feud ensues and God declares that Ishmael is not the “seed” that was promised.
Instead, the seed line is to come from Sarai’s womb, despite the fact that she
is nearing 90. As it turns out, through a miraculous conception, Sarai (now
called Sarah) and Abram (whose new name, Abraham, means “father of many
nations”) have a son named Isaac. God assures Abraham that “through Isaac shall
your offspring [zera` (זֶרַע)] be named” (21:12).[3]
This promise of a seed to come is repeated throughout the remaining narrative of Genesis (24:7, 60; 26:3-4, 24; 28:4, 13-14; 32:12; 35:12; 48:4). Interestingly, King David is also promised a seed [zera` (זֶרַע), “offspring”] who will both come from his body and reign from his throne forever (2 Samuel 7:12-13). We know Solomon, David’s son and immediate heir, only partially fulfilled this promise (vv. 14-15) because Solomon no longer sits on the throne (v. 16) and his kingdom certainly did not last forever (vv. 12-13). Psalm 89 also makes clear that this ultimate Seed of David will reign in an eternal kingdom (see Psalm 89:4, 29, 36). So after Solomon, Scripture leaves the reader expectantly awaiting this true or ultimate Son of David yet to come. In other places this descendant of David is called “a Righteous Branch” (Jeremiah 23:5; 33:15) and “the Stump of Jesse”[4] (Isaiah 11:1). At times, this promised Seed is simply called “My servant David” (Ezekiel 34:23-24; 37:24; cf. Jeremiah 30:9) as if shorthand for “Son of David.”[5] It is clear by now that the Seed is referring not merely to a generational line of descendants, but more specifically to an individual descendant of both Abraham and David.
The Seed of the Woman
At this point, it is worth reviewing the original promise
of Genesis 3:15. The attentive reader will remember that the promised Seed is
said to come from the “the woman.” This is very odd considering that the “seed”
normally comes from the man.[6] Thus, Genesis 3:15 presents something of a conundrum.
Despite it being the first reference to a promised Seed, it does not fit with
the normal Jewish understanding of zera` (זֶרַע).
We find a clue concerning how the promised Seed could
come from a woman in Isaiah 7. There, Yahweh gives a prophetic sign through
Isaiah to Ahaz, a king of Judah with a shaky faith in God. In fact, Isaiah says
the prophecy is for the whole “house of David” (v. 13). The prophet then says,
“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (v. 14).
Significantly, `Immanuw’el (עִמָּנוּאֵל)means “God with
us.” A virginal conception was as common in Isaiah’s day as it is today. It would
therefore constitute a legitimate divine sign that this little baby is “God
with us.”
Now we come to the New Testament, which details the
arrival of one called Jesus of Nazareth. In the opening narrative of his
Gospel, Matthew describes both the conception and birth of Jesus, making the
clear argument that Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.[7] “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph,
before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit”
(Matthew 1:18). An angel tells Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father, to name the
child “Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (v. 21). Matthew
then comments, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the
prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call
his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (vv. 22-23).
Additionally, Luke’s Gospel records what the angel Gabriel told Mary, who wondered how she could bear a son as a virgin: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). It is remarkable that Gabriel also connects Mary’s virgin-born son with the prophecy given to David: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (vv. 32-33).
The Promise Keeping God
All that we have seen from Scripture boils down to this startling conclusion: Jesus of Nazareth is the Promised Seed “of the woman” of Genesis 3:15. He is the virgin-born God-man of Isaiah. He is the Son of David, who will reign on His throne forever. He is the Seed of Abraham, who will bring blessings to the nations. The Apostle Paul makes this connection, too: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring [Grk. sperma, σπέρμα]. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16, emphasis added).[8] Thus, the Promised Seed of Genesis 3, first spoken of in only the third chapter of the Bible and hinted at across the pages of the entire Bible, could only be speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, how did this Promised Seed crush the head of the serpent under His feet (Genesis 3:15)? Not only did Jesus overcome every temptation of the devil (Matthew 4:1-11), but we are also told that the “reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8b). If Satan’s power is bound up with leading us into sin and condemning us for that sin, then Christ bearing our sin and guilt away on the cross would spell his undoing. Indeed, this is the message of rescue we find in the New Testament: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses… God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him” (Colossians 2:13-15).
The “rulers and authorities” here refers to the spiritual forces of darkness. Jesus went to the cross so that “through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). As our guilt is removed in Christ, the ancient serpent loses all ground for accusing us, and we are rescued from our great enemy. God has been telling His people for ages of this One who would be bruised that we might be healed (Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 53:5). What a marvel it is that our gracious God would pursue us in love even as we ran from Him and promise us One who would “save His people from their sin” immediately after we, in Adam, first turned our back on Him. Just as He always will, God kept His promise.
[1] I am unsure why the NASB does not capitalize the “him” in this sentence, following its convention of capitalizing divine pronouns.
[2] I first saw this term used of
Satan in the children’s book The Biggest
Story: How the Snake Crusher Brings Us Back to the Garden by Kevin DeYoung
and Don Clark (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015).
[3] Hebrews 11:17-19 recalls Abraham’s great
faith in this divine promise, emphasizing his recognition that Yahweh can do
all things — including raising Isaac from the dead were he to sacrifice his
beloved son to the Lord.
[4] Jesse was David’s father, so the
prophecy carries the same meaning as promising one from the Davidic line.
[5] It is clear from Isaiah 9:6-7 that
this promised Son of David who will reign on David’s throne will be both God
and man.
[6] For example, in Genesis 38:8-9, we read that Onan was to have sex with his dead brother’s wife in order to raise offspring on his behalf. Onan, knowing that the “seed” [zera` (זֶרַע), “offspring”] would not be his, spilled his “seed” [zera` (זֶרַע)] on the ground (v. 9). Also see Leviticus 15:16-18, 32; 22:4, where the ESV translates zera` (זֶרַע) as “semen.”
[7] Matthew intentionally begins his
Gospel with: “This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).
[8] Similarly, Luke records Peter
making this same connection in Acts 3:25-26 when he preaches to the Jerusalem
crowds.
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:10)
My
family recently returned from a trip to Fresno, California, to see relatives. It
can be a roughly 12-hour drive from
there to Salem. However, as you can imagine, the journey is a bit delayed when
you have a one-year-old (Weston) and a three-year-old (Logan) accompanying you.
They actually both took a couple naps going both directions, which made things
go a little smoother. But, alas, even I was asking, “Are we there yet?” by the
15th hour on the road.
After
pulling into our driveway at zero dark thirty, the first thing Whitney and I
noted when stepping into our house was how chilly it felt. We soon realized
that our furnace was not working, and, perhaps, had not been working for close
to a week. My first thought was: I can do
this. I’ve fixed things like this before. I hoped this would be a quick fix,
but unfortunately, I had to call it quits when I could not figure it out after
an hour of fruitless effort. I had to go to work the next morning, so I decided
to try my hand at fixing it that evening as soon as I got home. When nothing I
tried seemed to be panning out, I turned to YouTube, the fount of DIY (Do-It-Yourself)
wisdom.
Sadly,
I kept bumping into one disappointment after another. Just when I thought I’d
solved the problem, something else turned out to be the “real” issue. The more
things I tried and failed, the more I read up on what can cause furnace
malfunctions. By the end of the weekend, I felt like I knew every nook and
cranny of my furnace, something I’d hardly looked at in the two and a half
years we’ve lived in our home. The worst part is, despite the plethora of
knowledge I had acquired on home furnaces, I still had not fixed it, and our
home was beginning to feel more like an igloo.
I
decided now was probably a good time to reach out for help. I called up two
family members who are more mechanically inclined, one of which was my father-in-law.
Rob, who my sons call “Pappy,” gladly agreed to stop by. Before he arrived, my three-year-old,
Logan, came into the garage to watch me struggle for a few minutes more.
“Dad,”
he said, in his sweetly matter-of-fact tone, “I think you should just stop and
let Pappy fix it.”
Out of the mouths of babes. Ah,
yes, it was plain to even my young son that I did not have the mechanical
skillset requisite to finish the job. It is a humbling thing to ask for help
and admit you do not know as much as you thought you knew.
I
cannot help observing that a similar thing can happen in our approach to
knowing God. How many different views on God are out there? How many different opinions
on Jesus Christ are floating around in our culture alone? There is an in-built
tendency for all of us to think we have things figured out, as if we intuitively
know what God approves of and what our purpose in life is.
But
we are mere humans. We cannot fathom the depths of God’s mind. It is a marvel
that He has mercifully revealed anything to us.
The
Apostle Paul exulted in God’s greatness:
“Oh,
the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the
Lord, or who has been His counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to Him that He
might be repaid?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To
Him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)
The
only right posture in approaching a holy God of this magnitude is humble submission.
“But
He gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace
to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he
will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse
your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched
and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to
gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:6-10).
God
is eager to shower us with grace and cancel our guilt. The question we all
should be asking is: Do I see my need for
grace? “Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your
evaluation of yourselves” (Romans 12:3a, NLT). That is why God, after surveying
all the wonders of the heavens, says, “All these things My hand has made, and
so all these things came to be… But this is the one to whom I will look: he who
is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).
Is
that how you approach God’s holy and perfect Word? Do you tremble at what it
means that God has spoken to you? When you turn to a passage in the Bible, do
you understand that you are about to encounter the Creator of the universe? Have
you seen how desperately you need to hear from Him? And have you recognized
just how shallow your wisdom is apart from Him?
Take the gospel for example. No mere human could have devised a plan where God’s holy and beloved Son ends up staked to a cross in order to accomplish our redemption. That is why “Christ crucified” is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (v. 21).
As it turns out, we do not have everything figured out. And we don’t know as much as we think we know. Certainly, we should turn to “God-breathed” Scripture for the divine wisdom we all need (2 Timothy 3:16). But let’s resolve to approach the Bible with the posture of humility, acknowledging the infinite gap existing between our relatively puny minds and the mind of our all-knowing God. And let’s thank Him for loving us enough to speak to us.
“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21)
“God’s
power is at its greatest not in his destruction of the wicked but in his taking
all the wickedness of the earth into himself and giving back love.”[1]
I
recently heard in the news about the unfortunate strife that led to the
collapse of a sports team with a lot of talent. Various sports commentators
discussed who was to blame for the team’s gradual demise. One television
personality even gave out certain percentages of blame to various persons
involved in the whole debacle. Before long, various teammates and coaches began
to voice who they thought should be blamed. Interestingly, not one person pointed
his thumb at his chest and said, “Yeah, it’s all my fault.”
Masters at Blame Shifting
Have you ever noticed how powerful your need to justify your own actions is? Why is that so often we are quick to blame in others what we would gladly excuse in ourselves? When the other team cheats or the other person lies, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But when our team gets caught cheating or we get found out, we shrug and quip, “Well, everybody does it.” Why is it that whenever we are accused of something, our gut reaction is either to go into hiding or fight with all our might to clear ourselves of all blame? Deep in our bones, we know that we cannot shoulder our own guilt. Our troubled conscience testifies to this. We need a way out.
We attempt to write off our guilty feelings as nothing more than social conditioning, or perhaps our parents’ strict disciplinarian methods fobbed off onto our psyche. We tell ourselves that we are not really that bad. After all, it is those other people in our lives that are the real problem. We both subtly and not so subtly affix guilt to our parents, our spouse, our boss, or our children. We even manage to paint them in a negative light with an “understanding” tone. We are masters at blame shifting. Can anyone really argue that this is not true of the human heart? We are constantly scouring the universe for someone else to be the scapegoat, when in our heart of hearts we know we are blameworthy.
The unwillingness to own up to our guilt seems to be a perennial problem. Remember what Pontius Pilate did after sentencing Jesus to death? He washed his hands before the crowds, as if to clear himself of all guilt for the blood of this righteous man. Very similarly, Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth desperately trying to wash her hands clean after her part in the murder of Duncan. “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” she wails. “Here’s the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”[2] We see this same dynamic when politicians or corporate executives plead ignorance when investigators catch them in a scandal.
So what does this self-justifying strategy say about us? It says something about our moral condition. The Bible explains our own condition to us. We are made in God’s image, and that is why we know right from wrong (Genesis 1:26-27). We know that guilt demands punishment. We know this. And yet, we also know that we have not even lived up to our own standards of right and wrong — let alone God’s standard of perfection. Scripture makes it clear that every human being finds him or herself in this quandary: we are both those who know what we ought and ought not to do and those who know we have failed to live up to these moral obligations. So, what are we to do about this predicament?
The Intolerable Burden
When we come face to face with the Law of God, we all know we fall short. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). When a shameful thing we have done or said in the past rises to the surface in our mind, we sense the weight of our guilt all over again. We can identify with Thomas Cranmer, when he wrote in The Book of Common Prayer:
“Almighty God, Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men, we acknowledge and bewail
our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously
have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty,
provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly
repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings. The remembrance of them
is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.”
In John Bunyan’s allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, the protagonist Christian bears an “intolerable” burden on his back. The great load represents the weight of his own sin, which grows more burdensome as he reads from a book. “He opened the book, and as he read, he wept and trembled.”[3] That is what Scripture does: it exposes our guilt so that we suddenly see the sinfulness of sin. But — and this is of infinite importance — it does not leave us to wallow in our guilt. It is right at this point that we begin to see our genuine need for the gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah. Our guilt demands punishment, and the more we know of God’s holiness, the more we are desperate to be free… and the more we long to be made new.
God’s Great Love
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All
this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).
In a world where we are persistently trying to shift the blame to someone else, God Himself shifted the blame from us to His own Son, Jesus Christ. Why? What could possibly lead a loving Father to do this? God “did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). To spare us from eternal judgment, He could “not spare His own Son.” The only way not to count our trespasses against us was to count our trespasses against Jesus. For God to overlook sin would mean that He would cease to be holy and just. God would cease to be God, and that could never happen. In order for God to uphold the moral order of the universe, He must deal justly with our great offense against Him. Someone had to go through the fire of judgment. God’s great love went out to meet the demands of His perfect justice.
Therefore, the Son of God bowed His head to the Father’s will and did just that. The very “punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6). Jesus received the cruelty of man and the wrath of God both without protest. Our Lord never once disobeyed His Father. He was utterly pure, spotless, and clean. “Yet it was the will of Yahweh to crush Him” (v. 10). He willingly laid down His life in obedience to His Father’s command.
The Free Gift
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV).
We long to be in the right before men and women. However, our most urgent need is to be in the right before our Maker. In biblical language, what we need most is righteousness. The marvelous truth of the gospel is that we have God’s own righteousness offered to us through the cross. As Martin Luther put it, a “great exchange” took place at the cross. Christ took our sin, so that we might receive His righteousness. He bears our guilt, and we are clothed in His perfection. Out of His abundant love and mercy, God urges you to lay down your defenses and receive the forgiveness He purchased with His Son’s death.
While
we are anxiously striving to justify ourselves day after day, the gospel is about God justifying us for
all time. The Apostle Paul explained it this way: “But now apart from the
law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the
Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to
all who believe” (Romans 3:21-22, NIV). Read that last sentence again. Divine
righteousness comes to us as a free gift through simple faith. All we must do
is turn from sin to God, entrusting ourselves to the tender and secure hands of
Jesus.
We do not pay off the great debt we owe. Jesus takes that debt for us. Oh, sweet release! Complete divine forgiveness is offered to us as a free gift! What could possibly be better news than this? The cross answers the great question, “How can I, a sinner, be made right with a holy God?” The answer: through faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrificial death on the cross for us.
Jesus really did die on Calvary for all our sins, but He did not stay dead. The tomb is still vacant. “Fear not,” He says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17b-18). As we approach the celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection from the grave, let us remember the chief need for every person on the planet is that we be reconciled to the God of love. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
[1] J.
N. Oswalt, “Isaiah,” in New Dictionary of
Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), eds. T.
Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, 222.
“I form light and
create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the LORD, who does all these things.” (Isaiah 45:5-7)
Just how sovereign is the God of the Bible? When one
considers the endless stream of chaos, violence, and injustice reported on both
local and national news stations, it could be very hard to believe that God really
is in control.
The Bible describes God as infinitely loving,
righteous, and good (Psalm 34:8; 145:17; 1 John 4:8). In fact, Scripture reminds us that if there is
one thing we can absolutely count on, it is that every single good thing we
have has come to us from the loving hand of our Father in heaven (James 1:17).
Friendship. Love. Family. Income. Health. A loving community of believers. The
food in our stomach. The mocha I drank this morning. The car I drove to work
in. Even the seemingly insignificant trivialities in life that brighten my day.
They all come to me as undeserved gifts from a Father who delights to shower me
with His love. This is important for me to remember, because apart from God’s
grace, I would quickly lapse into the worst kind of pessimism.
That being said, what are we to make of all this
evil and perversity in a world run by a good and holy God? In light of all the
suffering in the world, atheists such as Richard Dawkins frequently say the burden
of proof is on those who claim an all-powerful deity exists. Psalm 115:2 says
that the nations may taunt, “Where is their God?” But our response will always
be, “Our God is in heaven and does as He pleases” (v. 3). However, if we are
honest, we can admit it is sometimes difficult to see this.
Repeatedly, Scripture reminds us of God’s
all-pervasive sovereignty. “The Lord has established His throne in the heavens,
and His sovereignty rules over all” (Psalm 103:19, NASB). “The Most High rules
over the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will and sets over it the
lowliest of men” (Daniel 4:17). In fact, God’s sovereign control is so
meticulous that every roll of a dice or flip of a coin is determined by Him
(see Proverbs 16:33). Thus, God decides the outcome of every NFL game that goes
to overtime.
Why So Much Suffering?
But the question remains: If God really is in
total control, why is the world so filled with evil and suffering? Upon a
moment’s reflection, one can see that this is a tragedy-stricken world. We see
bitter racism, hostile international aggression, lawsuits filed between those
who once professed undying love for each other, and terrible diseases
afflicting little babies. How are we to make sense of this conundrum? This
question quickly flees the realm of the theoretical when either you or someone you
love is struck by grief, tragedy, or betrayal.
In the biblical worldview, we are reminded that
all suffering, disease, and death is the result of Adam’s fall into sin (see
Romans 5:12). Although he was one man, that rebellion had a cataclysmic effect
on all creation. We may downplay the seriousness of sin, but it always has
consequences that extend even to the creation we inhabit. The natural world is
subject to frustration, in “bondage to corruption,” and “groaning together in
the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:20-22). Adam led the way, but by
extension, the whole human race is described as being in revolt against our
Maker, suppressing the truth that He is righteous and we are not (Romans
1:18-21; 3:10).
It is into this broken world that God sent His
dearly beloved Son to suffer alongside us as a human being and ultimately bear
the infinite debt we owed for opposing God’s design and purpose, so that we
might be totally forgiven and reconciled to Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). God
loved us even when we hated Him (Romans 5:8-11). Jesus, the God-man, can
“sympathize with our weaknesses,” pain, and frustrations, because He lived as
one of us, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). In other words, God has proven
through the cross that He has not abandoned us. Because of Christ’s atoning
work, one day He will usher in a new creation where there will be no more pain,
tears, or death (Revelation 21:1-5). We must cling to this unspeakably precious
truth. At this point, you may be thinking, That
is all true, but what about the suffering we still have to deal with today?
“I Am Yahweh, Who Does All These Things”
Many have proposed the solution is admitting
God’s limited ability or knowledge, but Scripture everywhere rules that out.[1] Apparently, our comfort in
suffering cannot be that God tried His best, but was simply unaware or unable
to do anything about it. Remarkably, God often emphasizes the extent of His
sovereignty in the very context in which the most heinous evil is described
(see Genesis 45:5-8; 50:15-20; Acts 2:22-23; 4:27-28). Isaiah makes this very
point when he quotes God declaring how He will equip the ungodly King Cyrus to
accomplish His purpose.
“I am the LORD, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the LORD, who does all these things.”
(Isaiah 45:5-7)
Notice God intentionally describes the full spectrum over which He has control: “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things” (v. 7). The Hebrew word for “calamity” is ra (רָע) , which is most often translated “evil.” Although we may hesitate to credit God with having perfect control over all evil, our Lord is not. God seems to be going out of His way in Isaiah 45:5-7 to declare His sovereignty in all its fullness. Both good and evil occur according to His providential will. God is obviously not the direct cause of evil — He is spotless and holy. Nevertheless, He indirectly permits every instance of evil. If He did not, He would not really be sovereign. In fact, if something happened outside of His control, He would not truly be Yahweh, the God of Scripture. That is the whole point of saying, “I am Yawheh, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am Yawheh, who does all these things” (vv. 6b-7). God is the one who purposefully “works all things according to the counsel of His will” while nevertheless remaining perfectly righteous in all His ways (Ephesians 1:11).
The Greatest Comfort in Suffering
So, what’s the point? Just this: there is untold comfort in knowing and
believing that God really is in control over all of creation. When pain and
suffering rock our world, we can easily feel like we are drowning in a current
of chaotic emotions. Fighting desperately to keep our head above water, we can
struggle to believe that God is even real in those moments. Isaiah says Yahweh
is a God who at times seems to hide Himself (Isaiah 45:15).
However paradoxical it may seem
initially, the thing that will bring us the most hope and solace in the midst
of our suffering is the reality of God’s absolute control – the truth that
nothing can ultimately thwart His sovereign will. No matter how many times we
get knocked to the ground, we can know that our King is never knocked off His
throne. That is why we can trust Him when He says, “Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (v. 22).
This is not a provisional salvation, but an assured “everlasting
salvation” (v. 17). If God truly is sovereign, then we can bank on
His promise to use every instance of evil in our life to bring about His good
purposes. We can be certain that our suffering is not meaningless. “And we know
that for those who love God all things work
together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans
8:28). Perhaps no truth is more comforting while we walk through pain and
suffering than knowing that in the midst of all the chaos and confusion, God is
working for our ultimate good and His everlasting glory.
Obviously, His moral will can be resisted by His
rebellious creatures.[2] We’re
not merely pawns on the cosmic chessboard, but free moral agents who are
responsible for the choices we make. Yet, even this is only because He, the
omnipotent Creator, allows us to go our own way. God’s providential plan
for the universe — even His meticulous sovereignty — can never be
thwarted by human evil. Think of it: He can even choose to rescue His people
through a wicked man like Cyrus, who doesn’t even know Him (Isaiah 45:1, 4-5).
That is why He is a God worthy of our total allegiance and worship (v. 23).
When suffering afflicts us, we are often surprised by it, but God never is surprised by our suffering. And that is the truth that will be our lifeline pulling us through the agony of hardship.
[1]
“Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great
power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah
32:17; also see v. 27; Matthew 19:26; Luke 1:37). “Even before a word is on my
tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139:4; also see Jeremiah
23:24; Daniel 2:22; Matthew 6:4).
[2]
Think of any time we break one of the Ten Commandments, which are an expression
of His holy will for human life.
Lamp and Light 