Review: Gently and Lowly

You’ve heard it said that perfect love can cast out fear. When was the last time you felt it?

Maybe it was a long time ago, strong arms that took away the thunder’s bite. Maybe it was more recently, a love that made a loss lose its terror. There are some relationships that slide solid earth under our feet just when we need it.

Has that relationship, for you, ever been with God?

Dane Ortlund wrote a book, Gently and Lowly, wanting to set your feet on the solid ground of God’s love. His argument is simple: Jesus, and therefore God, is more tender towards us than we dare to believe, and it could change everything if we lived like it.

I had a privilege to read Gently and Lowly immediately after reading Union with Christ by Rankin Wilbourne. Union with Christ is a delightful tour through the doctrine of its title, showing historically, biblically, and practically why our being in Christ is so rich and crucial. To then double click on who Christ is in Gently and Lowly was breathtaking, perhaps like a bride in an arranged marriage seeing her groom for the first time and staring open-mouthed at how beautiful he is.

Ortlund’s tactic is to weave Scripture as the warp and selected Puritans as the woof in his tapestry of the lovely Jesus. The call and response between the two sources truly sings. It is easy for the reader to discern that Ortlund has read a lot of Goodwin and Bunyan, and carefully. In fact, he does a great service taking sources that may be too dusty for some and presenting the parts that really shine, acting as their interpreter. But if this were his only task, it wouldn’t be enough. He only works as their interpreter in order to drive to the greater purpose: the heart of Jesus Christ.

Were we to only see it in the Puritans, we may doubt it. Every generation, after all, has its pet themes and glaring blind spots. Instead, Ortlund persuades that these men simply lingered on a theme that is very present in our biblical texts. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who saw many a familiar passage turned in a fresh angle. And the fruit of this turning wasn’t primarily the endorphin hit of new information – it was primarily a heart stirred to wonder at the goodness of God. I can honestly report that I teared up with joy a many points in my reading.

Ortlund has a pastoral heart in his work. He can’t illumine the gentleness, the graciousness, or the patience of Jesus without explaining how precisely opposite this is from the way we normally think of him. We conjure up a Jesus who holds his arms crossed; Ortlund shows us a Jesus with arms already around us.

This is especially evident in how he discusses our sin. When we fail, when we rebel, we easily think of a God who sighs and rolls his eyes. Or we imagine Jesus annoyed, or angry, or standing a little farther often until after we’ve repented. But using his sources, Ortlund argues again and again that in our sin is actually where God’s heart goes out to us the most. It is where the book feels most scandalous, and yet I would be curious to see a good argument against Ortlund’s case as he builds it. He is very careful to explain how much God hates sin and how full he condemns it, even while he reminds us that a father is desperate for his child even and especially when the child is destroying herself. He cannot bear to see the one he loves so treated, even if the wounds are self-inflicted.

The immensity of this love is constantly repeated in Gentle and Lowly. Ortlund shows again and again that it is Jesus’s very character to respond this way. It is a love spanning further than galaxies, holding stronger than steel beams. It is a love unconquered and unconquerable – and it is for us.

This is theology at its most practical. There are truths about God which must force change in our lives. What Ortlund wants to see changed is our fear of coming before God, our shyness in seeking him, even our forgetfulness. He wants us to so believe in how we specifically are loved right this very second that we actually make use of our relationship with God. That we feel the fear of him melt away – if we are in Christ, everything is ours.

Moreover, there is nothing like the loveliness of Jesus to empower us to fight our sin. That is not what this volume is about, and yet I believe it will be a major effect. When our fear drops away, we don’t feel guilt and shame about our sin. Instead there is a proper facing it, calling it by name, and dealing with it. It is common knowledge that much of our sin comes from us trying to plug the holes in our hearts with things which look suitable but always ultimately fail. When we see the worthiness and delight of Jesus, we finally recognize why these other things will never do, and we begin to really crave him instead of our former drugs.

I highly recommend this volume to you. If you’ve ever wanted to obey the command to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” Gently and Lowly will be a trustworthy tool for the task.

Podcast: TGC's Gospelbound

I had a chance to chat with Collin Hansen at TGC on his new podcast about Born Again This Way, especially the challenge of choosing to listen to God words above the words of our desires. Give it a listen!

To Truly Live, I Needed to Die

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

We’re dead either way. The grace is that we get to choose which death we die.

Lent, the season of solemnity and contemplation, has become this year a global grappling with sickness, loss, and death not seen in generations. There is no spiritualizing away this novel coronavirus, tying it up in neat religious packaging. Yet there remains opportunity to be confronted not just by headlines and disease, but by God’s Word and the depths of mortality.

Read the rest at Christianity Today!

Friendship When You Could *Like* Like Someone

I have a distinct memory in college of how disappointed a female friend of mine was when I answered that no, I was not attracted to her. 

She wasn’t trying  to initiate something romantic. And it wasn’t because she was afraid of what a potential attraction might mean for our friendship. I guess she just wanted to know if she was pretty. I remember laughing heartily and pointing out to her that being same-sex attracted didn’t mean that I was  to all people of my same sex! 

Yet for many Christians like me—who experience same-sex attraction but are seeking to faithfully follow Jesus—the question of friendship with people who share our gender isn’t so laughable. There is a lingering question, a posed threat: Does our potential towards forming romantic and sexual attraction in these friendships doom them from the start? 

Consider, for example, how in Christian circles we often treat cross-gender friendships. They are certainly encouraged in group settings—especially with the not-so-subtle goal of meeting potential spouses. But cross-gender friendships which form away from group settings, or form between people who are already married to others, are much less common, and much less encouraged. There are certainly problems to this, but there is also some  wisdom. Friendships can naturally lead to romance. 

But where, exactly, does that leave those of us who experience same-sex attraction? If received wisdom is to usually avoid one on one friendships where attraction may blossom, that seems to cut us off from intimate friendship with people of our own sex. And as we’ve just noted,  there isn’t much space for us to just form those bonds instead with people of the other sex (and that person might form such an attraction towards us!) 

From this angle, the message to the same-sex attracted Christian: Not only will you perhaps never marry, but maybe it’s not safe for you to have friends of any gender either. Good luck out there! 

Brothers and sisters, this is not  God’s message to us. Fearful isolation is no Christian’s inheritance. 

Good, Very Good, Not Good

You might recall the procession of Creation in the opening of Genesis. God created all things by his mere word and pronounced over each new segment, good, good, good! What joy. Creation of humanity leads to the blessing “very good,” a crowning moment. So we’re forced to pay attention when God observes Adam in Genesis 2:18 and says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Yes, this passage is about way more than friendship (indeed, it leads to the establishment of the first marriage). But what I want to remind us of is that Adam had full access to God, before sin even entered the world, and still, God said his solitude  wasn’t good. Adam was not deficient in his relationship with God, but he was also designed for the company of humans. And so are you and I. 

Occasionally in the church we sense an implicit  message of “God is enough, you shouldn’t need others.” So, we reason, maybe not having friends is fine if we have Jesus. Except that even Jesus needed his friends as he struggled in his own Garden. 

The triune God exists eternally in relationship,  and our loving, committed human relationships are a part of how we reflect him. And that doesn’t have to mean marriage relationships, or romance, though it could. It simply means we all need forms of human intimacy. 

Yes, for the same-sex attracted Christian there’s risk involved in developing close friendships with people of the same gender. But there’s also a risk in not developing these friendships—that we shrivel to a husk of ourselves due to loneliness. 

A Way of Escape

 So how do we mitigate against that first risk? If it’s up to us, friends, we’ve lost the battle against sexual temptation before we’ve started. Eventually, like unsupervised toddlers, we break everything we touch. 

But God knows this better than we do, and has promised to supply everything we need. Thus, since we are designed for relationship, his Spirit will guide us and empower us for relationship, if we let him. 

As a young Christian I thought it was inevitable that, if faced a certain type of temptation, I would eventually crumble. I might make it for a time, I reasoned, but my desires owned me. And they would assert their rights. 

But that’s not true.  Our desires are strong, but they don’t own us. They are illegitimate masters, squatters on the land. Jesus bought us with his own body, and he demands to take possession. Or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

This promise is not that faithfulness is a breeze. It is a promise that faithfulness is possible, because of God’s presence with us. Through his Spirit, and his Word, and his people, he will give us what we need to engage in friendship faithfully. 

In Born Again This Way, I spend time discussing more of what that means practically. But it means at least two things that can be stated in short. First, we need to have more than one good friend. With just one close friend, there could be a temptation to pour into them a spousal type of love, and to subtly substitute their company, and approval, and presence for that of God. There is more safety and wisdom in cultivating more than one close relationship. Second, we need to be honest. If we notice types of attraction  forming in friendship, we need to have a safe sibling in Christ to share that with. We’re not designed to do this alone. 

Sometimes the way of escape will mean leaving a friendship. But other times it will mean staying. I’ve had the latter situation occur, where my attractions actually dried up and died toward that friend. There is no perfect game plan. But there is a Perfect Friend who helps us. 

You are God’s gift

Not only will God  give us what we need, but he wants to give us to our church. Your brothers and sisters who do not experience same-sex attraction need good friends too. And God has given you gifts and experiences that he wants you to bless the church with! If we hole up in fear we are robbing the church of the treasures God has invested in us. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10).That means at least this much: the church needs you.

We can’t pretend that same-sex attraction doesn’t present challenges to pursuing close friendships. But in reality, all humans are sinners. Every person brings into relationship their own sinful desires that threaten to strangle everything good. 

But God has called us to more. He saw us dead in our trespasses, brought us to new life, and knit us into a family. And God desires to give us everything we need to flourish in his household. Will you trust him?

This piece originally appeared on The Good Book Company Blog

Podcast: The Good Book Company

I got to join my publisher, The Good Book Company, for an episode of their podcast to talk about my book Born Again This Way. I had such a great experience working with them. You can listen to the episode here.

Coming Out and Coming to Faith

The Welcome to Born Again This Way was recently published on The Good Book Company’s blog as a stand-alone article. Read it below or enjoy it here!

I became a Christian much to my own surprise. It was as if the sun of the gospel had evaporated my atheism in an instant.

But as time went on, one reality remained like a stubborn puddle: I was sexually attracted to women. I still am.

So many questions pressed for attention. How could something that felt so right be condemned as wrong? Why would God prohibit acting on these desires for love? Would Iever have sex again? What words should I use to describe my experience—since neither gay nor straight seemed to fit? How should I navigate close female friendship in my new Christian community without everything getting… complicated?

My new Christian friends didn’t know where to point me. They had never had to consider these questions from my angle; they were all attracted to the opposite sex—a fact which presented enough challenges of its own in the fight for joyful obedience. And all the while, we were bombarded with the loud, monotone declaration of our culture: “You must obey your sexual desires.”

I remember one cool morning in Wyoming, sitting outside with a friend who also happened to be named Rachel. We were discussing one of our guy friends who had come to Christ in college. Before that, he had lived by following his own intuition of what would make him happy and fulfilled. He had had a girlfriend with whom he was sexually active, but when he met Jesus, he called it off and broke up with her.

Rachel and I had learned that this ex-girlfriend had recently also come to know Jesus as her Savior, and it seemed that she and our friend would now resume their relationship—this time both as Christians. Perhaps they would even one day marry! Wouldn’t that be a lovely story of redemption?

It seemed like it to us. But it also made me quietly realize that that story would never be mine. If any of my ex-girlfriends came to Christ, I would rejoice. But none of them would be my future wife. Redemption could not look like that for me. It just felt so unfair: an ache in the heart that pulsed dreadfully, not letting me ignore it. I voiced it to Rachel and received sympathy. Yet neither of us really had an “answer.” It felt like uncharted territory. It was.

My life has told a different story than what society expects for me and what I expected for myself, because God himself has written his own twists and turns into the narrative

Our culture sings that we’re “born this way,” as if that settles the matter. But I’m born again. My life has told a different story than what society expects for me and what I expected for myself, because God himself has written his own twists and turns into the narrative: unexpected blessings that are more powerful, more lovely, than anything I could have imagined in my former life.

This book is my story. It’s just one among many, and it’s not intended to be weaponized against anyone else or used as a pawn. But my hope is that my account of coming out, coming to faith, and what came next will be a refreshment to you on your own journey. Though I have experienced failure and pain, I have also received freedom and joy. In later chapters, I’ll also share stories of others who are walking this path with their eyes fixed on the Lord.

Even more than stories, I want to offer you the Scriptures, and show you how those ancient, God-breathed words can meet us right in our very contemporary circumstances. They will challenge us and comfort us, and ultimately root us in the God who loves us.

And whoever we are, that’s what we most need.

I wrote Born Again This Way for you

Perhaps you’re sure of your sexuality, but unsure of what Jesus has to say about it—or whether he has any right to own it. You are welcome —I wrote the book for you.

Maybe you find yourself secure in Jesus, fighting to say yes to him and no to same-sex sexual sin—yet still, like all Christians who have gone before us, you’re living in a body that is not yet free from temptation. You don’t want to limp to the finish line but to run your race with joy. My book is for you.

Or maybe you’re listening in on this conversation as a pastor, significant other, friend, or parent of a Christian with same-sex attraction. You long to love like Jesus, who came full of grace and truth. My book is for you too.

I want to show you that Jesus is beautiful, powerful,  and worthy right at the heart of this conversation, right at the heart of our sexuality. He is not scared or unsettled by anything, and if we are rooted in him, we can be people of power and love and self-control.

This is what I want for myself, and what I want for you. I’m not writing as a polished product, standing behind the finish line, clapping for you with the medal already around my neck.

I’m right with you, sometimes stumbling, often aching, but also running with joy.

No matter where we start from, no matter what shape we’re in, he is not hindered. His love and power are more than sufficient. He is always more than we expect.

My Same-Sex Attraction Has an Answer

When I wrote my first article on being a same-sex-attracted Christian, what surprised me most were the emails I started receiving from straight men. The notes often came from men my parents’ age, the same message nestled again and again into my inbox: “I never expected this to help me.”

People attracted to the opposite sex read about same-sex attraction for many reasons. Sometimes a pastor wants to disciple a young man who experiences same-sex attraction. Sometimes a woman wants to know how to love a sister who identifies as lesbian and has left the church. Still others simply want to think biblically about trends they see in the culture around them. But what they don’t usually expect, it seems, is commentary that helps them in their own fight for the obedience of faith.

My latest book, Born Again This Way: Coming Out, Coming to Faith, and What Comes Next, is meant to help same-sex-attracted Christians thrive in Jesus and also help others come alongside us in our journeys. But Christians who experience same-sex attraction are asking questions that tap into some very universal streams. God has made all of us embodied desirers, and as sinners who fall short of his glory (Rom. 3:23), we have similar challenges spring-loaded into our systems.

Read the rest at Christianity Today!

Podcast: Hole In My Heart Ministries

I got to join my friend Laurie Krieg a second time on her great, gospel-saturated podcast to talk about a chapter from my book Born Again This Way, on the theme of friendship as family. Check it out here!

Podcast: Theology in the Raw with Preston Sprinkle

I love everything Dr. Preston Sprinkle puts out in the world through his Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender, and I was pumped to be on his great podcast! Check it out here.

'Nickel Boys' and the double victory of love over racial injustice

Tucked into Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead’s newest novel, Nickel Boys, is an absolutely Christian understanding of sin.

Whitehead creates a fictional yet all-too-real world in the Nickel Academy, a reform school for troubled youth in civil-rights–era Florida. He populates the terror-filled environment and diagnoses its malady: 

You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other. Nickel was racist as hell—half the people who worked here probably dressed up like the Klan on weekends—but the way Turner saw it, wickedness went deeper than skin color. It was Spencer. It was Spencer and it was Griff and it was all the parents who let their children wind up here. It was people. (105)

The novel’s main character is a black teenager named Elwood. We see the school through his eyes, and through his wounds. Rapes, brutal physical punishments, and everyday racist offenses fill the narrative like a gas leak: potentially explosive, impossible to contain. Like Whitehead’s previous book The Underground Railroad [read TGC’s review], Nickel Boys shows us how narrative can unmask evil. 

The white characters in Nickel Boys are not sympathetic. Caught up in a culture of evil, even most of those who seem dependable, who offer some glimmer of hope for dignity, eventually turn to betrayal. It takes many individuals, and many types, to hold together an unjust system, and this should trouble all of us. 

As readers we know that Spencer—the white man who brutalized Elwood’s body upon his arrival at Nickel—is a racist monster. Whitehead makes it clear who is chiefly to blame: white people and white systems. And yet he refuses to be simplistic. As Elwood’s friend Turner observes, the evil at Nickel Academy couldn’t be contained by any one person or set of them. The gas leak was pervasive. “It was people.”

Sin is a vagabond, a vagrant, a squatter living wherever spaces opens up. It will take up residence in laws and systems, in governments and companies. But perhaps its favorite abode is the human heart, and it does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, or anything else. The tragedy of Nickel Boys is the tragedy of the world: that we are not the solution, but part of the problem, because we are so thoroughly tainted by sin. 

Making the Leap to Love

What, then, is Whitehead’s answer? As Elwood sits in solitary confinement, punished for a righteous act of truth-telling and exposing evil, he reflects on his hero, Martin Luther King Jr. It was King who inspired Elwood’s courage, and King who, like Elwood, had been imprisoned for refusing to accept a wicked status quo. What would King say? What would he do? 

In those long hours, he struggled over Reverend King’s equation. Throw us in jail and we will still love you. . . . But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory. No, [Elwood] could not make the leap to love. He understood neither the impulse of the proposition nor the will to execute it. (196, emphasis original)

Even for those of us who get the diagnosis of sin right, the radical remedy of loving enemies can only take root in a heart that has been confronted by Jesus Christ. Given the bleakness of racial oppression in Elwood’s world, how could he not in his flesh reject love? His human hero proclaimed it, but love made no sense. It makes no sense. After all, sinners never deserve it. 

The human heart can resound for justice, and still stop short of love. We don’t need to love in order to know evil should be punished and things should be different. As image-bearers of God, enough of him lingers in each of us to stir up these impulses. Common grace is real. But it cannot save. 

Read the rest at The Gospel Coalition

Christians & Sexual Reputation

I can never watch when the bride kisses the groom.

As the climax of the wedding ceremony, it should be a moment of rapt attention, even fawning. But I inevitably end up staring at my shoes with cheeks gone warm. I’m not a prude if that’s what you’re thinking. Perhaps I just feel the weight of what the kiss represents, that coming consummation, and find it not mine to share in. Get a room, you two. 

I recognize that I’m the foolish one here. Of course sex is intensely personal. But we can’t escape that it is just as intensely social. However, as Christians, we should never blithely accept that an is legitimates an ought. How should we respond to the social nature of sexuality, as a community that is ostensibly different from the world on this point? 

Specifically, what should we do with that pungent aspect of the social side of sex: reputation? 

Read the rest at Fathom Mag

Reconciled Reconilers

Nothing can rip us up quite like the tension between a desire to share the gospel with our gay friends and the fear that to do so would somehow harm them. We wonder if the good news will sound so good when it comes to the sexuality part. Or we pause with understanding caution, knowing that many of our gay friends have in fact been hurt by the church. Sensationalist media headlines prey on these fears and past wrongs, without backing up their claims with data.

Even I, a same-sex attracted missionary, feel this tension. I didn’t come to faith through someone sharing the gospel, but through stealing a copy of Mere Christianity! So I’m not writing as someone who has this all figured out, but someone who wants to find a God-and-people-honoring way forward.

I believe God provided one, in 2 Corinthians 5:16-22.

Reconciled Reconcilers

In this passage, we find that if the gospel transforms us first, we will become reconciled reconcilers. Paul offers us good news, good posture, and good hope for our conversations. So let’s lay out that text.

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconcilingthe world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Now this is not a passage about mission amongst gay people – while there was much gay sex in the Greco-Roman world, there wasn’t gay identity. But it is notable from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that there were people in the church who had had sexual relationships with people of the same gender (1 Corinthians 6). In fact, there were lots of people who dealt with sexual baggage – one guy was sleeping with his stepmom and proud of it! Perhaps this hypocrisy and confusion is all too familiar for us today. Is it really in this context that Paul can declare, “The old has passed away, behold, the new has come”?

Yes! Because God has worked a marvelous reconciliation through Jesus, even ridiculous sinners like us can be made new. And not only that, we can participate in making others new, too.

Look at logic of the passage. Verse 21 is a fact, established history. God – for our sake – made Jesus to be sin. Now anyone who wants to can exchange her sinfulness for Christ’s righteousness. There is no application fee other than Jesus’s blood. There is no qualification except admitting that you need this. It should have been us, bloodied and beaten on that cross. Instead it was him, and we can walk free. No one is too guilty to receive it. No one is so good they don’t need it. No one. It is all from God, and if we experience it, it changes us. We are made the righteousness of God – against all logic. We are made a new creation – no longer slaves to sin but purchased by Jesus. And to experience it is to be deputized to pursue others.

You’re It!

On one level you could think of it like a giant game of group tag. In traditional tag, one person is “it”, and they chase someone down to tag them make that person “it” instead, and the madness goes on forever, or until all the youth group kids finally wear out. Group tag is a little different though. You start with one person being “it,” but the goal is to make everyone part of the “it” team. So the first person tags a second, and now they’re both on the hunt together. If you’re touched, you join the team of the ones chasing, until everyone is gathered up.

Imagine Jesus is the first one “it” – and we’re all running away from him like crazy. But when he touches us, we’re “it” too. Because to be loved and forgiven, we can’t but be taken up into the game as well. To be really seen, and really loved – that’s good news that can’t be stopped. So, we run, and try to bring others in, try to get others touched by Jesus-in-us.

The text is more dignified of course, with talk of ambassadors. But notice the same inevitability: we are given this task, entrusted with it. It’s not optional. We represent our king in this world, and so we implore. Another translation of that could be “beg” – and when do we beg? When we desperately, deeply care. When we’re pleading with someone to come down off the bridge before they jump, that’s when we beg. When we sit with tears in our eyes, asking our friend to shelter with us and not back to the boyfriend who is abusing her, we beg.

We implore you – we plead with you, we beg you – be reconciled to God. Because we know the death we were saved from, we take a tone of earnest love.

God has worked a marvelous reconciliation through Jesus – and he commissions us both to taste it, and to offer it to others. The only food that will last forever. We don’t do it with triumphalism, or indifference. We do it as the forgiven, with tenderness. As reconciled reconcilers.

Past Fouls

But we have to face the fact that LGBT people have not often been the recipients of this type of tenderness. God has worked a marvelous reconciliation through Jesus – and yet we have not been faithful ambassadors to same-sex attracted people.

There is nothing about God’s sexual ethic that requires us to be bullies. In fact, God’s sexual ethic should make all of us meek – we are all sexually broken, and all need forgiveness and healing. But instead, we’ve winked at sexual immorality in the church, including the abuse of children, while condemning same-sex attracted men and women for experiencing temptation alone, whether or not we act on those temptations. The church has demanded that gay and lesbian people agree with God before they come to him – ignoring that the pattern God works with is always salvation, then transformation – while turning a blind eye to rampant pornography use. Hypocrisy stinks, no matter who smells it.

Paul wrote in our passage above, “From now on therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.” The offer of reconciliation should never be barred by how a person is or seems in the flesh, what the raw data on them could be. And yet isn’t this precisely what we have done? Decided that our gay friend wouldn’t want this good news. Or churches and people who have said, No, you can’t have it, because of how you look, or what you feel.

No Exclusion Clause

Paul wrote, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” Yet we have acted the exact opposite: precisely counting people’s trespasses against them. Sometimes even assuming or inventing trespasses just because someone experiences same-sex attraction. This type of behavior is what harms our friends, not the good news that the God who made them loved them enough to pay for them with his blood.

Don’t consider anybody based on their physical selves, their clothes, their language. Don’t consider them based on their sins or trespasses – God through Christ doesn’t count those against us. No. Be ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. He did not count these against us, and we received reconciliation.

The sins and mistakes of the past and present are many. But the grace and love of God is more. There is hope for us to live as reconciled reconcilers. First, we must remember the gospel ourselves, that great news that God saves sinners, of whom we are the foremost. From this, we can take up the tone most appropriate for a reconciled reconciler: earnest invitation, love-steeped begging. Not looking at trespasses or the flesh, but only at the mighty work of Jesus on our behalf.

To do this will help overcome the sins of the past. The church has sometimes focused on rules not relationship, condemning based on action or temptation, as opposed to inviting based on image-bearing. But to be a reconciler demands that the relationship comes first. Paul is begging that people be reconciled to God their Father, not a set of Terms and Conditions. If we keep this priority ourselves, we will proclaim an obedience that flows from being loved, instead of the impossible: an obedience that creates it. Jesus is the One who already earned it. We just need to spread it abroad. We just need to experience it by the power of the Spirit in our own chests.

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” We don’t have to be afraid. If we are humble enough to accept this reconciliation, God can make us humble enough to plead for others to receive it too – even our gay loved ones. And trust me, the love of Christ has been more precious to me than the love of any woman.

So tag. You’re it.

This post originally appeared at the Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender.

Sons Like Plants, Daughters Like Pillars

Does anybody actually know what biblical manhood or womanhood is?

For those of us who love the Triune God and his image bearers, this question persists. Our culture is raising new and unexpected questions about manhood and womanhood all the time. How can we love those around us as we grapple with this conversation? How can we understand our own selves, right here, right now?

Christians can affirm that sex and gender are good gifts from God, and yet struggle to agree on much after that. We sense that Disney-scrubbed expressive individualism, which would define sex and gender based solely on the slogan “you do you,” falls short, even if it at times appeals to us. But the eager confidence of others who claim to know exactly what biblical manhood and womanhood are also can make us uneasy. Especially when suspect exegesis is fired like bullets at siblings in Christ.

I have nothing against confidence. There are so many things the Lord has told us of which we can be life-sacrificingly sure. For example, we see that the very creation of dimorphous sex was God’s good idea in the first place. But the how of sex in the world, how to not just be male but a man – this is where certainty becomes suspect.

Our evangelical instinct to turn to the scriptures may occasionally turn up surprises for us, however, when it comes to gender. This is exactly what happened to me in Psalm 144.

To read the rest, click over to the Center for Faith, Gender, and Sexuality!

In the Face of Sexual Temptation, Repression is a Sure-Fire Failure

My first relationship to desire was to give in to it. As a teenager in the early aughts, I believed that life was found by identifying my desires and rushing toward their satisfaction. I played this out in academics and especially in sexuality. My life beat to the pulse of Ariana Grande’s chant, “I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it.” The right response to desire was indulgence.

Unbeknownst to me as a nonChristian, the purity movement was running in parallel. Those who experienced that movement from the inside have spent recent months breaking down its excesses and missteps. Their conclusion (and mine) is that repression and avoidance are unbiblical responses to desire, no more Christian, perhaps, than my teenage, atheistic abandonment to it.

In the midst of these reoccurring public square discussions, the tension between libertinism on one side and repression on the other leaves most of us yearning for the reasonable via media, the middle way between failed extremes. In that space, is there a scripturally sound theology of desire?

Yes. I want to suggest that Christian asceticism, ancient though it is, offers a way forward. It uniquely treats God as the end, not the means, of desire.

Read the rest at Christianity Today

"Gay" vs. "Same-Sex Attracted": A Dialogue

Last month I was invited to have a public conversation with my friend Greg Coles about a very sensitive topic: whether or not someone should call themselves a “gay” or “queer” Christian. As Christians, we of all people know that language is important. Writing for this series helped me clarify my thinking, and I hope by posting the series in one place, it can be a help to you as well.

The conversations was hosted by the Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender, and the first post is an introduction by the founder of the Center, Preston Sprinkle.

Next, Greg explains why he started calling himself gay, as a man committed both to Jesus and to the traditional biblical sexual ethic.

I responded by explaining why I use the term same-sex attracted to describe my sexuality.

Then we got into the fun stuff. Greg kicked off by sharing three of his concerns with the term same-sex attraction. I responded briefly with some thoughts about his concerns.

After this, I had a chance to share my own three concerns about Christians using LGBT+ language. Greg then took the chance to respond at length to my concerns.

Finally, we ended with a jointly written post about our hopes for the future of the church, especially in light of this important conversation.

My hope is that as you consider this conversation, you would be moved to seek understanding, and even more to seek how you can best love and honor God and your neighbor.

Does She Spark Joy? Sorting Through Marie Kondo

To read this article at desiringGod, click here.

I didn’t seek out Marie Kondo, but I can’t seem to escape her.

My news feeds, my Netflix previews, even at my women’s ministry meeting at church, there she is. It’s as if everyone is announcing that she has been raised up for such a time as this. Her mission? The decluttering of our households.

Kondo launched a new documentary based upon her organization process, popularized by her international best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Her method, however, is not merely about finding new tricks for storage, or encouragement towards a yearly Goodwill donation. Instead, her call is for people to move through their possessions item by item, asking a simple question: Does this spark joy in you? If yes, it stays. If no, it leaves. What could be simpler than that?

The Gospel of Kondo

My interaction with Kondo’s method has been somewhat indirect. I’ve encountered her ideas through book reviews and her documentary, but especially through the reactions of my friends and acquaintances who are seeking to implement her tactics. Whether writing on social media or discussing their process in person, the tone of conversations sound not like watercooler chatter about a hot reality show. Instead, it reminds me of the focus and effort of serious amateur runners comparing our training schedules and personal bests.

The immensity of the response proves she’s on to something. Americans are glutted with stuff, spilling over with things. We all just came out of Christmas, which for many of us means trying to figure out where to stash our new items when we were already bursting with the old.

We all know that advertising lies to us, that it sells us products we don’t need with promises they can’t keep. That knowledge isn’t power. Though our loneliness and dissatisfaction remain, we continue to try to plug these emotional holes with toys. We believe our stuff should make us happy, even though all the evidence points away from this. What a strange walking by faith we Americans live.

Yet we sense that our relationship with things is disordered. Kondo is not the first or the only person interacting with our intuition here — see the growth in the tiny-house movement and minimalism more generally. But there is something in her approach that seems to scratch our itch.

Has Kondo Uncovered Something?

She doesn’t rip through like a bulldozer, condemning our hoarder tendencies or shaming us for what we’ve gathered. Instead, Kondo asks us to engage our emotions towards our things — to unlock our gratitude for them. Perhaps their service to us is complete, but we can still recognize what they gave to us and be thankful for that. Shame is replaced by joy. Doesn’t this have a gospel ring? By going through this process, we’re encouraged to be less dependent on our stuff — less owned by it. Kondo wants to reinstate our agency in our relationship to what we possess, instead of being owned by our possessions.

How freeing this is! It is clear that many of those who are working through the Kondo method are reaping true benefit. Materialism is one of the deadliest plagues of American life, and this method feels like a sturdy sword placed in the hand just in the nick of time.

But while Kondo may have solved one massive problem, the movement seems to have uncovered an even bigger one. One headline screams, “Marie Kondo’s deceptively simple ‘Tidying Up’ tips are spreading the gospel of joy when Americans need it most” (NBC). Doesn’t that seem to be just what we need? Doesn’t it seem to line up with what we believe?

Kondo has led many of us to declutter our homes, minds, and hearts, but it’s what we find underneath, where all our things once were, that matters most. The problem is that Kondo is still asking for our stuff to be what sparks our joy. Just a smaller portion of stuff.

Decluttering People?

Yes, she militates against our hoarding, which is good. Yes, she encourages us to be people of gratitude. Amen! But when we ask each thing whether it brings us the right amount of joy, we’re still thinking of things as the locus of contentment.

Perhaps more significantly, this method of decluttering could incite us to think of human beings transactionally as well. I’m not implying this is Kondo’s intention, but it’s not hard to apply the mindset in this direction. Counselors and clinicians rightly warn of allowing narcissists and other toxic people to abuse us. But if we spring-load our minds to keep only what brings us a specific amount of joy, we’re liable to let that mechanism bleed into our relationships, too. Is life truly about how each thing, or person, makes us feel?

What then is a proper response for a Christian? Kondo is meeting a real need, a true problem some of us (though certainly not all) have. Perhaps we can see past the magnetic Marie towards a gospel solution. One that has been hiding in plain sight in the shadow of an often-misused Scripture: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

The Secret to Abundance

It’s not unusual to see this verse commandeered for tasks it was not designed for, like promising athletic prowess or career success. Like all statements, though, it must be understood in its context. In the verse just before, the apostle Paul writes, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Philippians 4:12).

Secret. Isn’t this exactly what Kondo is tapping in to? We Americans do not precisely know how to abound. Not in the sense that we aren’t stacked with plenty — clearly we are. No, in the sense that right in the middle of abundance, we’ve lost our way. We don’t know how to thrive in abundance. It drowns us instead of lifting our boats. There just has to be a secret to mastering this, instead of letting it master us, right? How can we be the richest and yet unhappiest people of all time?

Part of what appeals so powerfully in Kondo’s method is gratitude — replacing our careless, callous attitude towards our things with thankfulness. Our hearts easily grow numb, and so the process of engaging them meaningfully in our daily lives awakens something profound. Christians as well as non-Christians feel it.

Kondo’s background and Shinto-influenced worldview, however, cannot supply the correct destination for that healthy thanksgiving. She speaks her gratitude to the items themselves, as if they have ears to hear and hearts to receive that thanks. Truly they have no life in them. They did not give themselves. The gifts were not designed to receive these valid human responses. They were only ever meant to act as signposts to the Giver himself.

Possessed by God

When we are rooted in Christ, our abundance rests not in how much or little we own, but in who owns us. Earthly possessions don’t just enter our lives quietly. They take up space, demand upkeep and protection, and tether our hearts. We find we have less trust for people, less time for hospitality, less emotional space for God.

Being possessed by Jesus produces just the opposite. As we grow in him, we soak in the abundance of forgiveness and grace — treasures not meant to be hoarded but shared extravagantly. When we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, we view our things as gateways towards praising God and serving others. And what if our many things get stolen? As the author of Hebrews celebrates, “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34).

Kondo says, only keep the items that spark your joy. Paul says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), because he first could say, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. . . . I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).

A Better Possession

Marie Kondo wants us to say goodbye to things we don’t need, so we can gratefully hold on to what we already have that sparks our joy. Yet we know deep down that even the most immaculately folded shirt, as organizationally helpful as it might be, cannot ultimately do this. Our most beloved and meaningful trinkets won’t really make us happy now, nor will they make it past the heavenly gates.

If there is life-changing magic in tidying up, how much more power resides in the gospel truth of being owned forever by God. Because of Christ, when the Father looks at us, he feels joy. He will never move us to the discard pile. Instead, Jesus promised that his Father’s house has many rooms, where he is preparing a forever place for us. Grounded in this irrevocable promise, we can sing with an ancient prophet, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines . . . yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17–18).

Maybe the Kondo craze can wake us up to the treasures we already possess in Christ, the greatest spark of joy. Even better, perhaps it can spur us to share the wealth.

DeYoung on the 10 Commandments

Click here to read this review at TGC

Quick, can you name the 10 Commandments?

Some of you who attended Bible drills as children might have your pneumonic at the ready. But many Christians are vaguely familiar with the commandments at best. Others who didn’t grow up in the church—like myself—may have never given a thought to memorizing such a list. After all, didn’t Christ come to fulfill the law? What does Sinai have to do with us?

Into this scene comes pastor and prolific author Kevin DeYoung with his new work, The 10 Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them. DeYoung isn’t interested in shaming the church for our lack of knowledge. Nor is he interested in a memorization challenge. He’s interested in equipping us for holiness and mission. He does so by clarifying points of confusion, using up-to-date examples, and pointing to the deep realities beyond the outward simplicity of the statements.

Do they still apply? Which ones? What do they mean in light of God’s mercy revealed in Jesus?

Highlighting the timelessness and goodness of God’s commands, pastor Kevin DeYoung delivers critical truth about the 10 Commandments as he makes clear what they are, why we should know them, and how to apply them. This book will help you understand, obey, and delight in God’s law—commandments that expose our sinfulness and reveal the glories of God’s grace to us in Christ.

Not Our Instagram Vibe

But first, DeYoung wants to frame the larger “why” at play in studying the Decalogue. The church isn’t ignorant of the 10 Commandments because we’ve tried hard and failed. No, there is a type of apathy involved. Along with that, we have a cultural allergy to authority and rules. Thunder, lightning, a booming voice, and chiseled tablets aren’t exactly our Instagram vibe right now.

This makes the introduction of this book more important than usual. DeYoung thoughtfully meets the culture by prodding us to see that we all care about morality, even when we say we don’t. We feign open-mindedness and tolerance, while establishing new rules that are right in our own eyes. Because of this, we need universal laws—a code that is transcendent, timeless, and wise. We need to see that these laws aren’t oppressive but good, because they were designed by Someone Good. DeYoung poignantly asks, “Have you ever thought about how much better life would be if everyone kept the Ten Commandments?” (21).

Yet even more, we need the gospel. Being convinced of the law’s goodness might fool us into thinking we actually can create the type of order they describe—if not in the whole world, then perhaps in our individual lives. As Tim Keller is fond of noting, we humans tend to ping from irreligion to legalism as quick as a pinball. DeYoung is just as quick to correct this tendency: “The Ten Commandments are not instructions on how to get out of Egypt. They are rules for a free people to stay free” (24).

From here, DeYoung takes us chapter by chapter through each of the 10 commandments. It’s clear that this work is written by a seasoned pastor: there’s always a structure of questions, exhortations, or examples to keep the audience on track. It’s a strength that DeYoung doesn’t use the same framing for each chapter. Like a good exegete of both Scripture and culture, he anticipates the particular confusions of each commandment and plans his treatment to engage them. This is an eminently practical book.

A particularly strong example is the way DeYoung clarifies and translates the second commandment. On first blush, a 2018 reader might not understand what making graven images has to do with her life. It sounds so far away and implausible. But DeYoung shows that the heart behind this law is “against worshiping God in the wrong way” (42). We begin to see that this happens today, just in different forms.

Yet in an age of individual expression, we still need to be walked through the “why” of the second commandment. Isn’t sincerity of intention enough? Here DeYoung exposes what is at stake in keeping this word: the glory of God in the world. The reader is invited to and coached in theological reflection, which adds a depth and richness to the faithful life that rote obedience could never achieve. Such moments happen frequently through 10 Commandments, and are its chief strength.

Reclaiming Treasure

In order for an even wider audience to be able to relate to the book, I wish DeYoung had included more examples beyond the nuclear family. And given the book’s strong beginning, a more robust epilogue that reiterated how God’s good law relates the gospel would’ve been appropriate. Nonetheless, DeYoung’s book is a helpful entry into the current climate. Personal moral failings and terrible atrocities continue to fill our screens and timelines. The church and the world are hungry for true righteousness, even if they don’t realize it.

What better time for us to rediscover and reclaim the treasure of the law, rightly understood in relationship to the gospel of grace?

Loving Our Transgender Neighbors

Click here to read this article at desiringGod

How do you know you are a woman or a man?

Perhaps you would simply say, “Because of my body.” After all, the physical differences between males and females are not difficult to spot. This objective, physical reality is what the word sex describes.

Yet many of us concede that we also feel like a man or a woman. How do we describe this feeling? Surely it doesn’t have to mean full alignment with the qualities our culture often assigns to men and women. For example, I’m more “think-first” and less “feel-first” than most women. I love sports of all kinds, including football. Makeup and ultrafeminine clothing don’t bring me to life; they shut me down. My primary romantic and sexual attractions are to other women. Yet I have never for a moment doubted that I was a girl, that I am a woman. I have felt comfortable and secure in being female, even as tomboyish as I am.

The ways we live out our given sex in the world is commonly known as gender. Gender can be manifested in how we dress, the hobbies we have, the roles we play. We fall all along the spectrum of how closely we align to various (and changing) cultural gender expectations and expressions. This is normal. Your story may be similar to mine, or quite different. Yet most of us, no matter our place on that spectrum, are not troubled by our sex and gender. Being a female or male, and thus a woman or man, simply is.

But for people who identify as transgender, it doesn’t seem simple at all.

What Is Transgender?

Though transgender is an umbrella term for many experiences, at its most basic, it describes people whose internal, subjective sense of gender or identity doesn’t match the objective sex they were born into.

Some people respond to this friction by living according to their subjective sense, as opposed to the gender that matches their sex. A transman is a female in sex who lives in the world as a man. A transwoman is a male in sex who lives in the world as a woman.

A small percentage of transgender people elect to surgically align their bodies with the gender they identify with. In the past, this surgical procedure was called a sex change, though more people are now calling it gender affirmation surgery. But most trans people do not have surgery for a variety of reasons ranging from preference to affordability. Instead, they may wear different clothes and take hormones that affect their hair patterns, voice frequency, and things like fatty tissue. They may also choose a new name and use pronouns that match their gender identity.

These are consequential and often controversial decisions, made because that internal feeling is so compelling. What would it mean to not feel like you were the sex you were born into? To feel this so strongly that you would say you know you’re the other gender?

For many, it is extremely disorienting and psychologically painful. But we need to be careful. Like many things, these feelings occur along a spectrum. Some transgender people feel slight incongruence between their sex and gender, whereas others feel it debilitatingly. Some experience distress at the presence of their feelings, while others do not. There is no one-size-fits-all trans experience.

For example, some people reject the sex binary altogether. That is, they don’t feel only masculine or only feminine, but may choose to express aspects of both at once, or express them differently from one day to the next. They reject being only man or woman, and may identify as genderqueer, nonbinary, or gender-fluid.

Is the Gospel Big Enough?

In my experience, many Christians are not sure what to do at this point in the conversation. Some even become angry or shut down. That response is due sometimes to convictions, sometimes to confusion, and sometimes to both.

I want to invite you to think about transgender concerns not primarily as topics to be discussed, but as issues affecting real people, human beings made by God. Many transgender people (though not all) are extremely vulnerable to homelessness, suicide, and abuse ranging from verbal insults all the way to murder. And even if they were not vulnerable in these ways, as image-bearers of our God, they deserve for us to treat them with dignity, respect, and love. If we have any battle to fight, it’s with spiritual forces of evil, not flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).

Therefore, we have an important question to ask: Is the gospel big enough for our trans neighbors?

We who have lived the miracle of rebirth know that no one is more powerful than God. He alone brings the dead to life, and defines life correctly. Still, confusion and conflict jostle our newsfeeds and our minds. How can we begin to understand what coming to Christ would look like for someone who identifies as transgender, or for someone who identifies as genderqueer?

Our Story of Rescue

God has given us his Spirit and his word so that we can be “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20). As good ambassadors, we ache to represent our Sovereign accurately and discerningly. We are on his mission to rescue sinners — to extend the same rescue that Jesus has brought to us.

Our culture believes in the power of story, and God’s authoritative Story gives us a framework to understand even very difficult experiences. No brief treatment could begin to answer all our questions about how to love our trans neighbors, but we can gain some bearing in the conversation by looking briefly through the biblical lens of creation, fall, redemption, and glorification.

Creation: Male or Female

Eden was not yet perfection, but it was good. God’s initiative, power, and love were on display as he set up a planet bursting with potential that was waiting to be realized. In the midst, he placed two humans, the potential realizers. In Genesis 1–2, God created a man first, and then declared this man insufficient by himself for his noble task (Genesis 2:18). Therefore, God also created a woman, and together they received the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28: “fill the earth and subdue it.”

The creation of humanity into the twofold structure of sex — male and female — is purposeful and good. God has freedom in his authority. Had he wanted to make one sex, or more than two, he could have. But he decided to make only two, and according to Genesis 1:27, this sexual difference is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human, an image-bearer, a vice-regent of God in the world.

Male and female was not just an Eden phenomenon: you also are human, and you have a sex. You did not choose your sex any more than you chose your parents. Your sex was given to you by a loving and wise God. How you respond to your God-given sex is part of how you respond to God himself. But because we no longer live in the garden, that response from birth — for all of us — is treachery.

Fall: Not Shocked by Sin

If creation was defined in part by relationship and purpose, sin is marked by alienation and frustration. Scripture shows that the fall touches everything: men, women, and the entire world we live in (Genesis 3:16–19). This fallenness includes our very bodies. Not everything in the world or in our bodies is meant to be the way it is. God has a revealed will — that which he declares he desires. He also has a will of permission — what he has allowed given the reality of the fall. Our feelings and circumstances are twisted and unstable from the beginning. They may be very real, even so powerful that they feel decisive, but they are unable to guide us toward life (Jeremiah 17:5–6).

Not one of us is unscathed. We are each born glad rebels, rejecting God for our own meaning-making. We are each alienated and frustrated in our roles and relationships. That some people experience alienation or frustration in relation to their sex should not surprise us at all. That others chafe against the goodness of the sex binary, desiring to blur the distinctions between male and female partially or entirely, also should not shock us. Which one of us has not desecrated a good gift of God, by viewing pornography, or lying to a loved one, or worshiping success?

Paul wrote that “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). One big mistake we can make as we think about our trans neighbors is to forget that we are one with them apart from Christ. One in fallen humanity. But also one in being able to be lifted up.

Christ: Grace and Patience

In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can find life. He is our one hope. Only his death can pay for our sin (Romans 3:23–24); only his resurrected life can give us power by the Holy Spirit to receive transformation now and life eternal (Romans 6:4). Salvation includes the breaking of the curse of the fall even today, while we live on an imperfect earth (Romans 8:20–23). We must repent of our unbelief and receive Christ by faith.

As Christians, we know with tears that being in Christ does not heal all sickness or remove all temptation and sin (Matthew 6:12–13). For example, though I was born again almost fifteen years ago, I still battle same-sex attraction, as well as pride, selfishness, and a host of other struggles. I have seen growth in understanding and in obedience because of the Spirit, though the progress has been slow and uneven. Hasn’t each of us had frustrations and alienations that have lingered?

We should expect that this also will be true for our trans neighbors who come to Christ. It will be a journey to figure out how to live in their given sex and how to express gender in biblically appropriate ways. God compares life in him to the growth of a tree (Psalm 1:3; Isaiah 61:3). These things can be slow, so gradual they are sometimes imperceptible. Will we be patient with each other?

We can and must affirm that God created humanity male and female. We can and must also walk patiently with all people who struggle to know what that means for them right now.

Glory: Our Struggles Will End

“Behold!” says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:51–53.

I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Someday, our struggles against sin will be done. We will rest in the complete victory that Jesus won for us in the new heaven and new earth. We will rest in glorified, beautiful bodies. All of us who feel the frailty of aging, who weep with painful chronic injury, who can’t shake feeling we’re not supposed to be the sex we were born with — we will find rest if we trust in Jesus. There is not a tear that won’t be wiped away by our tender, powerful God. The promise of future peace doesn’t take away present pain. But we know that the one who makes the promise cannot lie, and we have hope.

Is the gospel big enough for our trans neighbors? Is it big enough for us, for our pain, disappointment, and sins? In fact, it is the only thing big enough for us all, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

Let’s live like we believe it.

Learn the Bible's Story to Understand Your Own

Click here to read this review in TGC

Have you ever tried to picture heaven and worried you’ll be bored? Clouds, robes, harps—these cartoon images abound and fail to rouse longing. The idea of singing an infinite loop of praise choruses can fill us with dread. Some sure promises lift us up, like when God declares he will wipe away all our tears. But what about our tears now? Our lives are often heavy, and our open Bibles can seem mute in the face of our questions. What does ancient Israel have to do with my hurting child, my lost job? How could the promise of future golden streets palliate current global poverty or systemic injustice?

Nancy Guthrie—a Bible teacher, speaker, and host of Help Me Teach the Bible, a podcast of The Gospel Coalition—wants to speak life to God’s people in the midst of confusion. Her latest work, Even Better than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible’s Story Changes Everything About Your Story, puts forth a simple premise: We must read the Bible as one grand story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end—and the distinctions between these parts matter, even to our everyday lives.

Read the Story Rightly

Why would this knowledge be transformative? As Christians we know that the Scriptures start at the beginning of creation and wrap up when Christ comes again. Yet this is right where Guthrie presses us. What do we imagine when we picture that coming day? What would be the consequences of letting that future soak our present?

Experienced Bible teacher Nancy Guthrie traces nine themes throughout the Bible, revealing how God’s plan for the new creation will be far more glorious than the original. But this new creation glory isn’t just reserved for the future. The hope of God’s plan for his people transforms everything about our lives today.

Written for individuals and small groups alike, this book will help you understand God’s plan for the future of his people—life in a garden even better than Eden—in order to experience the glory of this new creation in your life even now.

Guthrie argues from decades of experience as a Bible teacher that we often stumble right out of the gate on these important questions, because we misunderstand the beginning. She writes, “We tend to think of [Eden] in perfect and even ultimate terms” (12). But Eden was never meant to be the end. It’s not where Christ is preparing a place for us. Instead, Eden was chock-full of potential—potential that was stymied with the fall, but which God through Christ by the Spirit is restoring.

Eden, then, isn’t the goal we run toward. Instead, it’s like a treasure chest containing down payments of what we will one day receive in full. Guthrie invites us into nine mini-stories stretched across Scripture—the wilderness, the tree, God’s image, clothing, the bridegroom, sabbath, offspring, a dwelling place, and the city—to see just how glorious and life-changing these treasures truly are. She also shows us how to read the Bible with wisdom, joy, and hope.

With Wisdom

The amount of biblical data Guthrie processes as she traces each of her themes through the whole canon is impressive. She holds up familiar passages, turning them so a given theme can refract through it with added meaning.

Take, for example, the theme of clothing. Guthrie argues effectively that we don’t see a redemptive arc back to the nakedness of Eden. Rather, we press toward a new type of clothing: immortality. But this topic isn’t merely found in Genesis and 1 Corinthians. She argues that the extensive, even exhaustive descriptions of Aaron’s priestly garments in Exodus picture our need for covering that is glorious, beautiful, and holy. The high priest couldn’t enter naked. Just the same with us: unless we’re clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we can’t enter God’s presence.

Over and over again, Guthrie reveals the redemptive significance of familiar Bible stories. She demonstrates how to translate knowledge (the possession of information) into wisdom (the right use of knowledge). Readers are inspired to consider other well-known stories, and ways they may whisper the gospel freshly. Furthermore, Guthrie demonstrates that even difficult passages must connect somehow to this bigger story. Will we wrestle with God to get their blessing?

With Joy

A choice fruit of wisdom is joy, which Guthrie tends like a patient gardener. But she isn’t unfamiliar with grief. A main theme of the book is how massively the sin of our first parents interrupted what might’ve been a trajectory of glory. She shares her own and other people’s stories of deep pain, including the loss of children. Yet even in these tender, vulnerable places, she shows how various redemptive themes bring balm.

How can this be? It’s not by simply looking forward, twiddling your thumbs, and waiting for heaven while everything burns down around you. That type of eschatology has been preached before and been found lacking. While it emphasizes the goodness of what is to come, it has no power to meet the challenges of today.

Guthrie instead labors to show that the promises of the future should shape us now. Someday God will permanently dwell with us, but even today he has died to be with us wherever we go. We’re never truly alone. Someday we will perfectly reflect his image back to him, as we were designed to do. Our sin and flaws will be gone. But even now he is changing us from one degree of glory to another. Someday we will embrace perfect rest, released from cursed work into purposeful, joyful action. But even now we’re invited into peace. Even now we can reclaim our work as unto him alone.

To read this book is to remember how God sees and knows us. He will never leave us nor forsake us, and he infuses every day with his presence and purpose. We can look for it, and we can find it.

With Hope

But sometimes the realities of our broken world only find their suitable conversation partner in the world to come.

The story of the bridegroom is a case in point. Marriage was designed to bring blessing to God’s people. Even more, it was designed to communicate the unique, intimate, and joyful relationship between God and his chosen ones. Embedded into every culture are living pictures of God’s faithfulness, so that humanity might understand.

But everywhere this picture is defaced. Husbands and wives leave, physically or emotionally. They give their bodies to another. Or less perniciously, though not less grievously, they’re taken by illness or accident. Some men and women who long for marriage never attain it, and their hearts and bodies can ache. What way forward can be found in a sign ripped down?

Guthrie asks us to lift our eyes. All earthly marriages point to a coming consummation, the joy of which will overwhelm us. No one who is in Christ will be denied that wedding day. No believer will find his or her future spouse lacking. Even pain can teach what something should be, because we can feel what’s missing. As Guthrie writes, “Our less-than-perfect marriages or our longings to be married can serve to whet our appetite for this perfect marriage to come” (90).

This doesn’t remove the pain of adultery or unwanted singleness now, but it challenges us to answer the most prominent question of the Bible: Can we trust this God? No trite “yes” will do. Instead the broken body of Jesus, and his resurrection to indestructible life, invite us to consider who he is, and who he promises to be for us.

Our Only Hero

Guthrie cherishes the fact that Jesus is the Bible’s hero, the true second Adam, the one who redeems all things. Even Better than Eden is an invitation to experience him as that Hero in your own life, now and forever. It’s also a subtle tutorial in how to read your Bible with purpose, and it gives tools to communicate this many-faceted gospel to the world.

Read Even Better than Eden and lend it to a friend. May it stir us up to love and good works now, even as we say with eagerness, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

I Found Hope in my Husband's Chronic Illness

Click here to read this piece in Christianity Today

My husband Andrew’s foot ailments have given me a curious window into the Christian life.

Before he and I were dating, his first swelling incident was misdiagnosed by a college nurse, and we only discovered the mistake when it happened again five years later. Both seemed like freak incidents. Then in 2012, on a summer mission trip in the Middle East, his left foot swelled up and left him on the couch for the remainder of the trip. Much of his life since has been progressively couch-bound.

Every contradictory explanation added to the pain. How do you treat something that you can’t pin down? In 2013—around the same time that we found out we were pregnant—we discovered that one of the bones in Andrew’s feet had broken so many times that it had died. I didn’t even know bones could die. It would have to be removed, lest his body begin to eat it away, clearing itself of the decay.

Andrew doesn’t have an interesting injury story—he didn’t kick down a door to save a child or get into a fantastic sports accident. His feet are simply shaped all wrong for bearing weight, and it took two decades for that harvest to reap its fruit. Looking at him, one would never guess his body is so structurally unsound or that he’s had four foot surgeries in five years.

Even though his disability is often invisible to others, his vulnerability has dramatically changed our family life. Our daughter has always known her dad with some kind of “boo boo.” Sometimes she knows what’s going on because he has a giant pink cast on his foot that is highly visible. Other times his pain is hidden. He can’t play with her outside, even though he can walk around the house without crutches. The invisible danger of further injury always crouches nearby.

At the beginning of our life together, I was waiting for Andrew’s body to be normal again. After we did this procedure or got those orthotics, we’d have our life back, I thought. I was pragmatic, optimistic, even blasé. But years of doing one thing after another finally shook me by the shoulders: This constantly vulnerable state was here to stay. So were all the emotions that went with it. Realizing this caused me to enter into them truly for perhaps the first time.

Andrew and I would never have asked for his ailments, and we often pray for God to heal them. Nonetheless, living with them has brought many hard-won lessons that illustrate how we’re called to live as Christians in the world.

First, we live with constant awareness.

When I had strep throat in high school, I became painfully aware of how often a human needs to swallow. But as soon as it passed, I rarely thought about that vital function again. Similarly, in the life of faith, a crisis often brings some spiritual reality close and creates urgency where there was none. We are driven to vigilant prayer, scriptural study, Communion, even to fasting. The experience can be poignant, but oftentimes when the storm is over, our diligence and discipline also come to an end.

With Andrew’s long-term injuries, we have gained a mindset of constant awareness, which can be exhausting. Even when nothing is acutely wrong, we think about his body many times a day and speak about it just as often. Is there any progress? Is anything particularly weak or strong today?

In the same way, although much of our Christian life is an invisible reality, it should be constantly in our mind’s eye, because it is reality still. There is nothing about my body that necessarily shows I am risen with Christ, yet my union with him is even more real than my weight upon a chair. Accordingly, Paul urges us to set our minds on things that are above (Col. 3:1–2) and to think about it daily. Is there any progress in my faith? Is there anything particularly weak or strong today?

Second, we pursue constant action.

Awareness without action is foolish. We stay aware of Andrew’s long-term ailments so that we can act purposefully and wisely. Every day, he wears high compression socks. Every day, he intentionally limits his time on his feet. Every day, he treads as lightly as possible.

In the same way, our awareness of being united to Christ produces constant action. Every day, we pray and read our Bible. Every day, we seek the encouragement and correction of fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. Every day, we strive for grace-fueled obedience and limit our exposure to situations that tempt us to evil.

Actions are also more than everyday habits; sometimes unique circumstances call for unique choices. For example, if Andrew is having a good day with his feet, he may play with our daughter outside. But we’ll make sure that he ices his surgery wounds before and after. If he’s having a bad day, we’ll dramatically minimize his movements and in doing so have to say “no” to what might otherwise be good, healthy experiences.

Just so with our faith. If we’re having a good day—our faith is strong, our desire to draw near to God is high—we act accordingly. Perhaps we’re more boisterous during worship or quick to share the gospel with a neighbor. But we also have bad days, too. If despair clouds our spirit or we lose a battle against temptation, we may ask for prayer or read helpful verses to reframe our hearts and minds. These carefully calibrated actions are the mark of a Christian.

Finally, we live in constant anticipation.

The comparison between long-term ambiguous disability and our status as Christians may feel slightly mismatched. The first is unfortunate, a result of the fall. The second is a profound reversal of that fall, a great source of joy.

Yet we live on this side of heaven and can only see the beginning of Christ’s work—what is often referred to as the “already/not yet” of the Christian life. The Bible repeatedly encourages us to look to the future of Christ’s second coming, which should produce eager waiting. But unfortunately, the crush of the “not yet” can cause the “already” to lie limp in our hands.

For our family, that means we’ve cried thousands of tears because of the losses wrought by Andrew’s ailments—the many bottles of pain-killers taken, the many medical bills to pay, the many lost opportunities. Our daughter has made innumerable requests of her father that Andrew’s body forces him to deny. In other words, for all our awareness and action, we can’t take away the reality of his injury.

However, we know that God is bringing us to a new and better home, free from sin and free from pain. If Andrew’s ailments have brought us anything, then, it has been the joy of longing for this future home and eagerly waiting for it. Chronic illness has made the promise of our own resurrection very sweet for us, and we look forward to the day when Andrew will one day walk in a resurrected body with new and steady feet.

As Paul writes in Corinthians, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor. 15:51–53).

Resurrection life is so much more than a new body—but it is certainly not less. We will rejoice in the presence of our Maker, completely remade.

That’s something worth waiting for.