Who actually has authority over the formation of my child, and does this school know its place beneath that authority?

You see, Paul tells fathers in Ephesians 6:4 to raise their children “in the paideia and nouthesia of the Lord.” That word paideia is simply fascinating to me, yet it is often underemphasized as our English language doesn’t have an equivalent word. Paideia is not merely education as though Paul is only telling dads to instill a set of facts into a child’s head. I think a fitting word for paideia in our language would be “enculturation.” This work to which we are called is to immerse our child in the whole atmosphere of formation. As a Greco-Roman father would seek to raise his child up into a “true” man of the culture, so too should Christian fathers seek to raise their children to be truly formed into the way of Christ.

With that noted, it’s important to recognize that Paul takes that word and hands it to fathers. You’ll notice that this was not given to the state, teachers unions, or even to the church. Fathers are held responsible before God for the paideia their children receive.

Seeing this, the schooling you submit your child to for eight hours a day is not a matter of whether or not they’re receiving governmentally approved babysitting while you earn money. For the Christian, this is a matter of whether you’re going to obey your Lord and whether you’re stewarding their formation well.

In Loco Parentis

In loco parentis, which means “in the place of the parent,” is a shorthand title for the transfer of custody and liability from a parent to the school system for a set duration of time. I think this title works well for the defined purpose. I don’t necessarily have an issue with what it’s saying. I do, however, take issue with what it is NOT saying.

The common understanding of this term includes nothing about who forms the child’s mind and heart during those hours. And like a rip current, that silence is exactly where drift happens. Sure, a father can affirm, in principle, that he is responsible for his child’s paideia, all while functionally treating the school as an independent formative authority that he never questions, coordinates with, or governs.

Dad, no school stands in your place. Rather, a school, at its very best, stands as a delegated aid to the father for the purpose of carrying out a portion of a work that remains his before God. The issue we have is that a majority of parents are completely ignorant of the fact that school is subservient to their enculturating work. The school is an aid to your mission, not the other way around. It seems to be, however, that the modern education system of this day views parents as glorified babysitters while office hours are closed until tomorrow’s real formation awaits.

Three Questions Before You Register

Before you enroll your child anywhere, whether it be a Christian school, public school, co-op, or otherwise, please ask yourself these three questions:

First, do I understand this school to be subservient to me? By this, I mean that when you pack your child up to enroll them at XYZ Elementary School, are you doing so with the understanding that this school serves you in your mission? The school’s teaching, extracurriculars, and culture all exist to serve the paideia you have already established at home.

Second, do I actually know the presuppositions and paideia of the place I am sending them? If you’re reading this, you are most likely a Christian, so let’s talk shop. As a believer, you submit yourself to the Bible’s doctrine on God, man, knowledge, and the world. So, let me ask you this: If your child is to be enculturated in a biblical understanding of what it is to be a creature of God, should you be comfortable with them being thrown into a daily cocktail of godlessness? Whether they publish it or not, every school teaches a paideia. The contrary is utterly impossible. This means that a school with no explicit theology will still form your children into some vision of what a human being is for. If the paideia of the place you’re sending your child is one that not only tolerates, but welcomes effeminate men, masculine women, furries, open celebration of sexual degeneracy, and more — you have your answer before you’ve even asked the question.

Third, have I detached myself from my child’s education? Beloved, to detach yourself from the formation of your child is sinful. This is not an article against public schooling. I myself was public schooled in what I considered a rather conservative place. On top of that, it’s needful to note that every school is different. The questions I’m proposing are structured in such a way that you are given a lens to evaluate whatever school you’re entertaining. What I am saying is that whether you choose public school or not, you have a duty to be actively invested in their formation. This means you should know your child’s teachers, what they’re like, and what your child is being taught. You’re not allowed to shirk that responsibility without sin.

A Final Question

Here’s my final, and most summary question for you to walk away with: Does this school actually work with or against the formation happening in my home?

Now what does faithfulness here practically look like? It might look like sitting in on a class before you enroll your child(ren). It might look like meeting with a counselor, administrator, etc. to ask what this school believes a human being is and what they are here for. It looks like reading what your child is actually assigned to read, meeting the teacher who will spend more waking hours with your child than you will on many days, and treating that day’s subject matter as conversation starters around the table that evening.

While we homeschool our children, I don’t think any of this requires homeschooling to be faithful. It does require remembering who bears the weight of responsibility before God. Fathers do not get to retire from the paideia of their children merely because someone else is willing, for a fee, to take up part of the labor.

In summation, please know that the school serves you, parent, as you form your child in the paideia of the Lord.

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I say all of that to say this: from my perspective, it seems that something in my generation’s soul is hungry for enchantment. That is, there is a longing for a world that is more than what can be measured by analytics, and for a story that is going somewhere.

It seems that Rome has noticed, and boy has she capitalized. It seems to me that the convert stories are everywhere, and they almost all follow a similar script in stating that the modern world is flat, Rome is enchanted, therefore Rome is true because Rome is beautiful. I understand the appeal from that perspective. I too have a love for what might be considered “enchanted.” But I want to write to you as a Protestant, and I want to tell you that this longing is not the whisper of Rome calling you home. It is an innately human longing, and I am convinced that it is answered more fully, not less, in a Reformed and biblical vision of who you are and what you are for.

An Innate Longing

While there is a sense in which the man who spends all of his free time LARPing is behaving childishly, it needs to be said that the longing for enchantment itself is not childish. As a matter of fact, I believe that this longing is telos bubbling up in your chest before it shows up in your theology.

You see, you were not made to arrive fully formed. You were made to become. In the Genesis account, we find that Adam in the garden was good, but Adam was not yet all that he could be. The covenant God made with Adam was never a plan to keep him circling the same garden forever, barred in some Edenic prison to shield him from the uncultivated world before him. Rather, his pre-fall life was one of probationary innocence with a destination. By that, I mean that Adamic obedience was meant to carry Adam somewhere he had not yet been. That trajectory was built into unfallen human nature itself. This means that the abandoned journey that hypothetically awaited Adam did not wait for the fall to exist, and it does not exist only to undo the fall. What I’m getting at is this: the idea of growth, of movement, of a twisting path through the unknown which molds a man into a greater version of himself is intrinsic to the human experience.

That is why Frodo’s road out of the Shire lands on something true in you. That is why the idea of adventurous pilgrim routes beckons to a generation raised on screens. This generation is not nostalgic for a digital fantasy adventure. They are remembering, however dimly, that they were made for a journey with a destination.

The modern world, however, mutes this idea with the promise of immediate gratification. This sort of “soulless capitalism” (to be distinguished from God-glorifying capitalism) promises that comfort and consumption are the end of the story, if you’ll just buy my product, of course. But this is yet another devilish little play on that sinful urge toward lust, greed, and gluttonous thinking. As with all sin, it promises fulfillment only to allure you into her house and leave you wanting.

The Secure Base of the Immutable God

In the 1970s, John Bowlby, and later Mary Ainsworth, articulated what is known as the “secure base” concept. In her research, Ainsworth showed that children who have a consistently warm household will use that household as a secure base from which to explore. In this study, she found that children would venture out, encounter something novel or mildly stressful, and return to their parents to “refuel” emotionally before venturing out again.

Far more glorious than the comfort of a doting parent stands the God who changes never. His character never changes; His purposes never change; His faithfulness never changes. In Malachi 3:6 we read, “For I the LORD do not change.” In James 1:17, we read that He is the Father “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

When I mention the doctrine of God’s immutability, people’s eyes tend to glaze over. Even worse, when I explain it, they also visibly shiver at the thought of how cold this doctrine is. But, beloved, this is not a cold, philosophical doctrine. It is the ground beneath your feet as you go out. It is the “secure base” of our soul — of our very being! We can walk into an uncertain and changing life full of new seasons, new failures, new griefs, and new growth precisely because the God who calls you does not shift. The pilgrim can leave home because Home, ultimately, is not going anywhere.

To make this even more glorious, it is this unchanging God who took to Himself a human nature that does change, that grows, that walks a dusty road and becomes weary and worn. The Son who upholds the universe by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3) also, as a boy in Nazareth, “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). The immutable One became a pilgrim. To recall my statement from early on, this reality — that Christ grew — teaches us that growth is not merely a redemptive response to our fall (praise God for sanctification!); it is also something meant for humanity all along. Jesus walked the very trajectory Adam was always meant to walk, and He walked it without sin, all the way to glory. Your Savior sympathizes with your changing, your growing, your not-yet, because He lived it Himself.

To summarize thus far, I am presenting an argument that human beings are made for journey, for pilgrimage if you will. While this enchanted idea of journey comes with fears of the unknown, the believer finds assurance in knowing that he has a “secure base” in the unchangeable and sympathetic Lord of Glory.

The Far Green Country

This leads us to ask, why do we long for enchantment? Why do we long for a world charged with meaning, or for a story with a meaningful end? Because, at the bottom, you long to be like your God. He is perfect, which is to say that He is complete, whole, lacking nothing, unchanging in His perfection.

Now, you will never be immutable. That belongs to God alone. He is the Archetype, and you remain a creature, an image who is ectypal and dependent, however glorified you become. But the image longs for what the Archetype is. And thankfully, the Scriptures promise us that the pilgrim road we are on is not aimless wandering in the meaningful void. Rather, we are on a journey to that “far green country under a swift sunrise,” to quote Frodo. We, who behold Christ throughout our journey, are being bumped and bruised from glory to glory. This is our purpose. This is, as the catechism put it, “the chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Our pilgrimage is aimed at that.

This is why the way you get there matters as much as the fact that you are going. Paul does not tell us we become like Christ by the sheer effort of gritting our teeth. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Beholding is becoming. You do not manufacture your own transformation any more than a mirror manufactures the face it reflects. You look, by the Spirit, at the glory of Christ, and you are changed.

The Fount of True Enchantment

Finally, to the person feeling a pull toward the seeming “enchantment” of Rome: you do not need a church that claims to mediate enchantment to you through her own authority. You need the God who is Himself the ground of every true enchantment in the world, who has drawn near in His Son, and who transforms you by beholding Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word.

While there were possible successors who may have rejected the majestic in a rationalistic response to the Enlightenment, the Reformers did not disenchant the world. Instead, they relocated the Glory wherein the enchantment bubbles up eternally. Our God took on a nature like ours so that our changing, our growing, and our unfinished pilgrim life could be gathered up into Him and carried to completion.

Why does my generation long for enchanted pilgrimage? Because it is the duty of mankind. How could we, who know that all things were made by our God, who is ever with us, think of this world as anything less than enchanted as it comes from His hands?

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As you can surely agree, there is a particular ache that comes with an old photograph, a childhood hymn, or a smell that takes you back to a house you have not lived in for twenty years. There is a word for it, and we call it nostalgia.

It’s inevitable. We will all deal with it, and our hearts have a way of recalling those moments with ineffable beauty. Thus, we find ourselves, living in this fallen world, longing for the Edenic bliss of those bygone days. You know as well as I do, those days were not truly Edenic, but they are precious to us. And since this feeling in inescapable, what do we do with it?

In Ecclesiastes 7:10, we read, “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.” Certainly, with Genesis 1-3 in mind, we know that the emotions of men aren’t innately sinful. However, understanding that we are affected by the fall, our emotions can tempt us to sin. Thus, like all others, nostalgia can tempt us to unhelpfully fixate over the past in a way that discolors the beauty and purpose of the present day. With that said, I want to propose that there is a dangerous/sinful use of nostalgia, as well as a use which is both fruitful and eschatological.

Consider Israel in the wilderness with me. God had just delivered them from four hundred years of bondage with His mighty hand, and within weeks they were weeping for Egypt saying, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5). Notice what memory did to them. It did not merely recall Egypt. It edited Egypt. Gone were the taskmasters, the beatings, the cries of their infant sons drowned in the Nile. What remained was memories of fancy meals and full bellies. This is nostalgia’s first great danger. Nostalgia is often a dishonest historian. It curates. It airbrushes bondage into comfort and calls slavery “the good old days,” so long as the slavery is behind us and the wilderness is in front of us.

This is why Paul warns the Corinthians not to grumble as some of the wilderness generation did (1 Corinthians 10:10). One might say that grumbling is nostalgia’s tongue crying out against God. It says God’s past provision was better than His present ones, and it is always, at bottom, a rejection of present obedience in favor of a fictional past. Whenever you hear a Christian pine for “how the church used to be” or “how America used to be” with no mention of sin, no mention of the cross, no mention of the mercy that governed even the darkest of those days, you are listening to garlic-and-onion theology. It is nostalgia unmoored from truth, and it will always breed discontent with wherever God has actually placed you.

But, as I said before, nostalgia is not intrinsically sinful. Scripture also commands us to remember. “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations” (Deuteronomy 32:7). The Psalter is full of a man revisiting his past and forcing his memory to serve his faith rather than his flesh. Asaph, in the darkest night of his soul, does not flee memory. He interrogates it. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord... I will remember your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11, notice that before Asaph recalls what the Lord’s done, he remembers who the Lord is). This is nostalgia sanctified. This is what nostalgia was always meant to be. It wasn’t meant to be an escape from the present, but an argument against despair that is built from the honest record of what God has actually done.

Now there is one more use that I simply cannot ignore. In his famed Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” The final thing I want us to learn is that nostalgia is meant to point us forward.

The fathers, Hebrews tells us, were seeking a homeland, desiring “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:14-16). Did you notice that? These men were homesick for a place they’d never even been! Like our fathers before us, every believer carries a memory that is etched into our very being: we ache for how things were meant to be. I’ll admit, I grow rather weary of hearing people speak as though this is an unjust longing. Beloved, this is the Spirit’s own testimony that we were not made for this present groaning creation (Romans 8:22-23). The old hymns were not wrong to call this world a wilderness and heaven our home. If anything, we are not nostalgic enough for what is coming.

So test your longing. If it edits out sin and calls it a golden age, repent of it. If it recounts God’s faithfulness to strengthen present obedience, cultivate it. And if and when you find yourself nostalgic again for bygone times, remind yourself, “If a moment so fleeting and so fragile that it slipped through my fingers like sand, can mean this much to me, how much more glorious is the God who not only gave it to me, but invites me to enjoy Him forever?”

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A manufacturer called Wonderluxe designed them to fail because a product that never breaks never gets repurchased. Knowing the plan of their makers, these appliances were outraged (a response that is natural to us all when it comes to planned obsolescence). So the appliances raged. They fled to Mars, built a missile, aimed it at the planet that made them this way, and invited earthly appliances to join them in their rage.

While I am quite fond of the idea of an article on the theological problems with planned obsolescence, I’ll refrain… for now. Instead, I want to focus on a deeper question buried in that plot that has nothing to do with consumer goods and everything to do with how you handle life in a broken world.

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!

As his father lay dying, Dylan Thomas famously wrote this in his poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night:

Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, 
RAGE
against the dying of the light.

The Wonderluxe appliances aim their rage at their makers. To them, it feels like justice, but it’s vanity. In the old Ecclesiastes sense of the word “vanity,” it is vain to exert rage toward a cause that can’t bear the weight of the real question.

Even if every human on Earth answered for the sin of planned obsolescence, the appliances would still be left with the deeper fact of their own design. Even with man destroyed, they would still be finite and fragile appliances whose very existence is dependent on a will outside themselves. Their fury never gets past the proximate cause to ask the question underneath it. They are not strong; they are vainly raging by screaming into an inescapable void.

When I think of it, Job does something that looks very similar on the surface, and yet, it is almost the opposite. You know the story: Job loses everything that mattered to him almost immediately, and he does not go quietly.

He curses the day he was born (Job 3:1). He accuses God of hunting him like prey (Job 10:16). He demands a hearing, a trial, a chance to make his case before the Almighty (Job 13, 23). His friends, as flawed as they may be, do their best to talk him into what they believe to be a tidier theology. Job refuses. But here’s what I want us to notice: Job never once directs his complaint at nothingness. Every furious word from Job’s lips is addressed to Someone. Job’s protest only makes sense because he believes that Someone is actually there to hear it.

And that brings us to consider the foolishness of raging against the void, doesn’t it? Dear unbelieving friend, you know this raging is futile if it is but a void that you are raging against.

What the unbeliever calls “the void” is not truly void at all. It is the creature’s terrifying and unavoidable confrontation with a living God. C.S. Lewis, speaking through Aslan, put it this way:

I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms… He didn’t say this as if he were boasting, nor as if he were sorry, nor as if he were angry. He just said it.

Men may rage against mortality, injustice, decay, disease, weakness, and death, but if there is no God, there is no court of appeal. There is no Judge to hear the case. There is no Father to receive the tears. There is only matter, motion, appetite, entropy, and eventually silence.

G.K. Chesterton, arriving at the same point through a different avenue, puts it this way:

The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank. (This quote may be apocryphal, but Chesterton is commonly credited with it.)

This is why Job is so different. Job’s words are raw; they make us uncomfortable, and he doesn’t speak with the neatness of a man who has read all the right systematic theology books that we would have recommended. He speaks like a man sitting in ashes with dead children, ruined wealth, a diseased body, a confused wife, and friends who would rather defend their tidy assumptions than sit with him in the mystery of God’s providence.

And yet, for all his anguish, Job does not scream into some empty, pointless, namelessness called “the void.” He cries to God.

This matters because lament is not unbelief. If the Psalms teach us anything, and boy do they teach us a lot, they certainly declare that God is not scared of your emotions; lament included. Lament is, in one man’s words, “What faith sounds like when it is bruised, bewildered, and still clinging.” Job does not understand what God is doing, but he cannot let go of the fact that God is the One doing it.

The unbelieving world often borrows this posture without borrowing the God who makes it meaningful. It wants the moral weight of outrage without the moral world in which outrage makes sense. It wants to indict death, suffering, and evil, but it refuses the Judge before whom indictments can be brought. It wants to rage against the dying of the light, but it does not want the Light of the world.

So rage that ignores the Creator collapses into vanity. Now, this isn’t because suffering is insignificant. Nor is it because grief is irrational. It’s not even because death is “natural” and should be kindly accepted. It shouldn’t!

The rage is vain because it is misdirected.

Job teaches us something better. Bring your complaint to God. Bring your confusion to God. Bring Him your sorrow, your fear, your bitterness, and your unanswered questions. Don’t dress them up in pious costume. But do not scream into the void as though no one is there.

There is Someone there.

For all the admiration we are right to have for Job, we simply have to consider the perfection of Jesus Christ. He suffered not because of hidden sin, but because of our sin. He entered the brokenness of this world. He cried out in agony on the cross, not into “the void,” but to God!

So rage, if you must. Grieve. Weep. Ask. Lament. It’s not wrong to mourn the sufferings of this broken world. But do not scream at the void. Cry out to the God who is there.

And when you do, He will assure you, “You do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” (1 Thess. 4:13).

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Throughout the last half-decade or more of my ministry, an estimated 80% of my counseling cases with teens concern one thing: Pornography. Lest you think these cases are only coming from rebellious teenagers in broken homes, I want to make it clear that, in my experience, these cases are coming from children belonging to seemingly godly parents who send their kids to Christian schools and even regularly attend church.

Why is that relevant? Well, the tendency I have noticed is that most parents will hear this and think to themselves, “That is a real problem, but not in my house.” If you’re thinking that right now, I’d like to gently shake you awake by telling you that it’s that level of complacency that will provide opportunities for your children to access porn.

The Numbers

In 2023, Common Sense Media surveyed over 1,300 teenagers nationally and found that 73 percent of thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds had already watched pornography online, and more than half had seen it by age thirteen. The average age of first exposure was twelve. Fifteen percent had seen it by age ten or younger. Which means that they were first introduced to pornography in the fifth grade.¹ So, if you’re thinking, “Eh, my kids are too young!” Let me tell you, this is not a problem that waits for a wayward season in college. It is a problem that is hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce on your child while you’re assuming they’re secured in their adolescent innocence.

More than half of the teens in that same study who had encountered pornography reported seeing violent material. This violent material contains content depicting force, pain, or coercion and presents it as ordinary sex.² So, not only is your child introduced to nudity and sinfully provoking “love” before its time (to quote the Song of Songs), they are being catechized.

What I feel is often missed is that pornography isn’t only introducing your child to godless perversion. It’s certainly doing that. But, it’s also stealing their brain and sowing a debauched, wicked, and degrading understanding of one of God’s most precious gifts: the purity of marital intimacy.

Now, you might be thinking, “Ah, Pastor Hunter, that’s an ‘out there’ problem! My kid goes to church weekly. I mean, he even goes to a Christian school!” In 2024, Barna’s research found that just over half of practicing Christians have some history of viewing pornography, with nearly one in four doing so weekly or more.³ On top of that, most pastors report a personal history with it.⁴ So, to put it plainly, it’s most certainly not just an “out there” problem.

A Sin Problem

We are not dealing primarily with bad habits, screen-time mismanagement, or a willpower deficit that some better filtering software will solve. We are dealing with sin. Did you get that? Your use, your child’s use, or anyone’s use of pornography isn’t just some cultural taboo — it’s a sin against the Creator of all the Earth. It’s subjecting those who bear His Image to your lust and objectifying them for your pleasure. And it’s assaulting God’s plan in the intimacy reserved exclusively for marriage.

The lust of the eyes is now delivered at broadband speed. But accessibility isn’t the root problem. The root problem is sin. Christ taught us that, “Whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). While I am an advocate for barriers, we must be crystal clear that this is a problem of the heart.

Understanding this is going to be a great aid in the way you respond when you discover that your child is addicted to porn. If you think that your child’s use of porn is gross (it is), and that it’s a failure of discipline, you’ll respond by tightening down the hatches (which is not necessarily wrong). If you think that your child’s use of porn is a sin against God, however, your first response won’t be, “Where is your phone?” While we’ll get to that, your first response, knowing that this is a sin problem, will be, “Son, let me tell you about the Savior of sinners.”

With an understanding of the Law’s condemnation and Christ’s work for us, you’ll then, having shown them how Christ’s love motivates obedience, seek to remove the temptation from their life. They may not be thrilled, but it’s better that a man lose his hand than his whole body be cast into Hell. We’re not playing games with sin in this house, bud.

Your Complacency is Not Neutral

I am preaching through the household codes of Ephesians right now, and I cannot write this piece without bringing you to Ephesians 6:4. It reads, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” We tend to hear that verse as a warning against harshness. It is! But it is also a warning against absence. A father who hands his ten-year-old an unsupervised device, never monitors the use of said device, and assumes silence from their kid means innocence is neglecting the formation of their child and passing it off to who knows what on whatever app they’re viewing. Omission is not safer than commission.

Again, you might say, “Not my child!” But let me ask you, when was the last time you looked through their search history?

You might say, “Well, I trust them!” Brother, have you conveniently forgotten what your brain was like when you were 16?

“But I don’t want to embarrass them!” It would be better that you embarrass your child than hand them over to be discipled by demons, which will sow seeds of destruction for their future marriages, and damn them to Hell.

Look, I know you’re busy. I, too, am in the busiest season of my life right now. But they’re worth it. You will make time for your priorities. So, how highly is the soul of your child prioritized in your life? Do your actions match the value you’ve assigned in your response to that question? If not, it’s time to consider practical steps to handle this issue.

Practical Steps for Parents

Finally, let’s get practical:

1. Be discipling your child through the Scriptures.

   1. While this entails regular family worship, it also entails seeking to capture every moment with them for the sake of Christ and their formation.

2. Talk with your (age-appropriate) child about the dangers of pornography.

   1. They should know about the value of a person, the purpose of the institution of marriage, and the beauty of that union.

3. Be cautious about sleep-overs. Many children are exposed to pornography for the first time by friends, cousins, etc.

4. Block adult content websites on your child’s phone.

   1. For iPhone (iOS), you will go to:

      Screen Time: Navigate to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. Toggle the feature on and set a passcode. Under Content Restrictions > Web Content, select Limit Adult Websites to filter explicit sites automatically. You can also manually block specific URLs under Never Allow.

      Passcode Security: Ensure the Screen Time passcode is unknown to the child to prevent them from disabling restrictions.

   2. I’d also recommend checking their phones for “secret apps.” These apps are creatively designed to look like things as simple as a calculator.

      1. To learn more about this, feel free to visit: https://kidsnanny.ca/blog/secret-apps-kids-use-to-hide-things/

5. Use Brick

   1. Brick is an app and device that will allow you to block certain apps and websites from your child’s device. I use this myself to limit screentime.

      https://getbrick.com/

6. Keep Your Child’s Phone in Your Room at Night.

   1. I can think of no good reason why your child or teen needs a cell phone in their room with them at night. “But they need to have it so they can wake up for school!” Beloved, alarm clocks are still a thing.

In conclusion, I am disturbed by the far-reaching and deeply rooted grasp that pornography has on our society. It is imperative that we safeguard our children to the best of our abilities and that we prepare them to counter this perverse culture with a mind firmly anchored in Biblical truth. We must not grow weary in well-doing, beloved.

We must fight. We must fight for the sanctity of marriage. Fight to counter society’s disturbing perversion of sex with a God-honoring view of intimacy reserved for marriage. And we must fight for the safety of our children’s minds and souls.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Common Sense Media, Teens and Pornography (2023): 73% of teens ages 13–17 surveyed had viewed online pornography, more than half by age 13, with an average age of first exposure of 12; 15% had seen it by age 10 or younger. commonsensemedia.org/research/teens-and-pornography ↩

2. Common Sense Media, Teens and Pornography (2023), as summarized in Internet Safety 101’s research compilation: 52% of teens exposed to pornography reported seeing violent content, including depictions of choking, pain, or apparent rape. internetsafety101.org/statistics/pornography-statistics ↩

3. Barna Group, “Over Half of Practicing Christians Admit They Use Pornography” (Oct. 24, 2024), from the Beyond the Porn Phenomenon study conducted with Pure Desire Ministries. barna.com/trends/over-half-of-practicing-christians-admit-they-use-pornography

4. Barna Group, “The Silent Problem of Pornography Use Among Pastors” (2024): 67% of U.S. pastors report having struggled with pornography at some point; 18% say it is a current struggle. barna.com/research/pastors-pornography-use

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For others, however, this command creates immediate tension. As they read this command of the Lord, their minds begin to ask, “How on Earth am I supposed to honor such dishonorable parents?” Certainly, it’s fair to ask: What about the father who abandoned his family? What about the mother who manipulated her children? What about the parent whose presence in your life is associated more with wounds than warm memories? Do they deserve honor too? And if so, what does honor look like then?

The first thing we must understand is that God does not ground the Fifth Commandment in the worthiness of parents. He does not say, “Honor your father and mother if they have earned it.” He simply says, “Honor your father and mother.” If honor were conditioned upon parental performance, the command would cease to function the moment a parent failed. Yet every parent fails. Some fail in ordinary ways. Others fail catastrophically. The command remains because its foundation is not parental perfection but divine authority.

This means that honoring your parents begins by asking the right question. Many people ask, “Do they deserve my honor?” Scripture asks, “What does God require of me?” Those are not the same question. The first places the parent at the center and subjects them to whether or not you deem them worthy at the time. The second places God at the center.

At the same time, honoring a parent does not require pretending that evil is good. We are not called to deny abuse, excuse neglect, or ignore genuine sin. In fact, because we belong to the God of truth, we should be the last people willing to distort reality. Calling sin “sin” is not dishonor. Refusing to tell the truth is not honor. So, hear me carefully: There are parents who have behaved so disgracefully that their sin disqualifies them from being present influences in the lives of their children.

David provides a helpful example for us to consider honor to a dishonorable man. Saul was a wicked king. He was jealous, murderous, unstable, and repeatedly sought David’s life. Yet David consistently refused to treat Saul with contempt. He would not take vengeance into his own hands. He would not celebrate Saul’s downfall. He would not even seize the opportunity to humiliate him when it stood before him. Instead, while David saw Saul’s faults clearly, he also recognized that Saul occupied a position established by God. David’s refusal to dishonor Saul was not rooted in Saul’s character but in David’s reverence for God. (Side note: You might be thinking, “Wait, Saul wasn’t David’s Dad. And you’d be right. However, the Fifth Commandment encompasses not only biological parents, but rulers and spiritual leaders as well. Thus, this example stands.)

The same principle often applies within families. Honoring a sinful parent does not necessarily mean approving of their behavior. It does mean that you’ll refuse to let their sin become an excuse for your own. It means that you’re going to choose godliness when bitterness would be easier, and it means refusing to return evil for evil.

In practical terms, honor may look different from one situation to another. Sometimes it means speaking respectfully about your parents even when discussing painful realities. Sometimes it means expressing gratitude for the genuine gifts they did provide. Sometimes it means caring for an elderly parent whose parenting left much to be desired. Sometimes it means praying faithfully for a parent who has never asked for forgiveness. In certain circumstances, it may even mean establishing wise boundaries while refusing to cultivate hatred in your heart.

That distinction is important because many Christians assume there are only two options: complete closeness or complete rejection. This is yet another example of our human tendency to fall into extreme ditches. I am convinced that the Scriptures present a wiser path. There are situations in which distance is prudent and necessary. There are situations where trust has been broken and should not be casually restored. Yet even where closeness is impossible, honor must remain. To refuse them their honor is to refuse God His glory in your obedience.

Perhaps the deepest challenge of this command is that it reveals what we truly believe about the Lord. It is not as difficult to honor honorable parents. As with most things, the real test comes when honor becomes costly. In those moments, the Fifth Commandment calls us to trust that God’s wisdom is better than our instincts and that His commands are good even when they are difficult.

Ultimately, the command points us beyond our earthly parents to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the perfectly obedient Son. Where we have failed, He obeyed. Where we have struggled to honor authority, He submitted Himself perfectly to His Father. Our hope is not found in our flawless obedience to the Fifth Commandment. Our hope is found in the One who kept it perfectly on our behalf.

The command to honor father and mother was never intended to teach us that parents are worthy of worship. It was intended to teach us that God is. And it is that all wise God who wove respect for authority into the fabric of society. Remember: Your parents may not be perfect, but they’re the parents God gave you!

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Most Christian men already know they’re expected to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, but what they’re missing is what it looks like when the adrenaline of Sunday morning has worn off. It’s Tuesday, you’re in the middle of another busy week, you’re exhausted, she’s frustrated, the kids are loud, and the last thing you feel like doing is modeling the love of the Son of God to His precious Bride when you walk through the door after work.

If you heard me preach on the subject of husbands loving their wives recently, let’s think of this as the practical companion to Sunday’s sermon. Today, we’ll consider three honest questions, one for each point, and some talk about how to answer them.

Die for Her: Are You Actually Present?

Brothers, we are called to die daily for our wives in a way that communicates the sacrificial death of Jesus for His Church. The application of “dying for her” that most men miss isn’t some dramatic scenario where we boldly take a bullet for our wife. 99.9% of the time, it’s less like a John Wick movie and more akin to the attitude you have in the first ten seconds after you walk in from work when she starts telling you about her day, and your mind is still at the office. It’s the way you respond when she comes to you in pieces after a hard day with the kids, and all you want to do is sit down and decompress. It’s whether you put your phone in another room at dinner or just silence it and set it face-down on the table where you’ll still reach for it twelve times before the meal is over.

Dying to self looks ordinary from the outside. It looks like eye contact when she’s talking. It looks like making her comfort a higher priority than your own at the end of a long day, consistently, without keeping score. It looks like ruthlessly killing that surge of harshness that swells up in you when her fragile emotions erupt. It’s relentlessly seeking to handle her gently, as the Lord so handles you.

Richard Phillips said something in his book that I shared Sunday, and I want you to sit with it again: the man who assaults your wife every day might be you — through your anger, your harsh words, your complaints, your indifference. Brother, most of us aren’t failing our wives in dramatic ways. We’re failing them under the accumulated weight of a thousand small inattentions. And she feels every one of them.

Our testimonies as Christian husbands will be defined by the thousand small and intentional choices we make every day. Let that flow from the daily decision to, first, recognize our need for Christ, and second, recognize our calling to crucify the flesh for her good and His glory.

Disciple Her: Are You Actually Leading?

This is where most Christian husbands feel the most convicted and lost at the same time. Brother, you know you should be leading spiritually. The problem most men face is that they don’t know where to start. So let me tell you where to start: tonight.

I’m not telling you that you must start with a full family worship program or a theological lecture. I’m inviting you to simply open your Bible at the dinner table and read one passage out loud. Explain to them what the passage means, point them to Jesus, and assure them of His strength as they seek to obey His word. Then, pray for them. If you’re feeling really bold, lead them in a hymn; our family’s favorite is the Doxology. And that’s it. That’s family worship in its simplest form, and it grows from there as you learn how to minister to your household. By the way, if you don’t know what to read, open the Psalms. You cannot go wrong with the Psalms.

Now here’s the thing about ministering the Word to your wife specifically — you have to know what she’s carrying before you can apply Scripture to her in an intimate way.

What is she anxious about right now? What is she grieving? What is she struggling to believe? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you can’t speak the Word into her life with any precision. Which means before you can disciple her well, you have to be paying attention to her. And that brings you right back to the first point.

Now, if you’re the man sitting who still says he’s not equipped for this, I want you to recall William Gouge’s words from Sunday one more time, “If your wife lives and dies in spiritual neglect because you refused to provide for her soul, her blood will be required at your hands” (summarized). Gouge wasn’t teaching that a husband can save his wife, but he is emphasizing the solemn stewardship God has entrusted to us. Let me remind you that you have the Spirit, the Scriptures, and the Church. You’re more equipped than you think. And if you still feel unprepared, your elders will help you. But you have to start.

Delight in Her: Does She Know You Like Her?

Most men assume their wife knows they love her because they married her, they provide for her, and they remain faithful to her. But there is a real difference between a wife who knows her husband loves her and a wife who feels genuinely delighted in. The word cherish that Paul uses in verse 29 means to warm, to comfort, or to inflame. It is an active word, and it requires you to initiate something.

So let me ask you, does she know what you find beautiful about her, not just physically, but as a person? Have you told her lately? Do you actually know what she enjoys, not what she needs from you, but what brings her real joy? And when she wants those things, do you make room for them, or does she feel like she’s pulling teeth to get your buy-in? Do you pursue her, or do you wait for her to come to you? You’re the head; you be the initiator of the direction in which your home is heading.

Don’t make her wonder whether you really care for her, and don’t make her badger you into being the spiritual leader of the home. You do it because it’s what you were made to do. This is your reasonable, God-glorifying worship with boots on. This is theology for daily living! So tell her she’s lovely. Take her out. Show her she’s your priority. Learn her favorite coffee order. Ask about the book she’s reading. Take an interest in the things she enjoys, even when they aren’t naturally interesting to you. That hobby of hers may not interest you, but she does, and that’s enough for whatever particularly boring hobby (in the male mind) she has to become a hobby of mine.

When this kind of Christ-glorifying delight swells up in you, you’ll notice that your home will become something of a foretaste of our heavenly marriage.

Does God look at your marriage with delight as He sees the love of His Son for His bride reflected? He should. Let me say that another way: Brother, your sacrificial devotion and delight in your wife is something that God glorifies in! Why? Because He sees the story of the Gospel portrayed in it!

Now, in case someone misunderstands me. I want to make it clear that none of this is possible in your own strength. But the same Christ who has called you to this is sanctifying you for it. Every time you fail, and boy will you fail, you bring it to the cross, receive grace, and get back up and try again with the Spirit’s help.

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In this fallen age, submission is rarely celebrated. Children resist parents. Employees resent bosses. Citizens grumble under the government. And perhaps nowhere is this hostility more pronounced than in the biblical teaching that wives are called to submit to their husbands.

From childhood, our daughters are catechized by the stories and songs of the culture to view authority with suspicion. From Ariel, to Moana, and, most pronounced, in Elsa, they are taught that there is something great in casting off authority. Surely, you’ve heard Elsa belting out, “No right, no wrong, no rules for me! I’m free!” The message is consistent: freedom is found in casting off authority.

As Christians, we must recognize that this hostility toward authority did not originate with modern feminism, Hollywood, or even contemporary politics. Its roots stretch all the way back to Eden.

Following the rebellion of our first parents, God declared to Eve, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). Thus, the struggle between authority and submission is not a modern phenomenon. It is a symptom of the Fall itself.

As Christians, however, we are not left to navigate these questions by personal preference or cultural trends. God has spoken and His Word is perfect, sufficient, and authoritative. Therefore, even when Scripture confronts the assumptions of our age, our responsibility is not to explain it away but to understand it and submit to it.

In Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul has made his move from theological discourse to its application. Having spent the first portion of his letter unfolding the glories of the gospel, he now shows us what gospel-shaped living looks like inside ordinary relationships. Paul, as it were, takes a seat in our homes and demonstrates how the lordship of Christ transforms husbands, wives, parents, and children.

When Paul calls wives to submit to their own husbands, he is not degrading women. Instead, He is showing us all that in submission, we find something beautiful about the gospel displayed.

Biblical Submission is God-Glorifying

The first thing we must understand is that submission is fundamentally an act of worship.

Paul writes, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” Notice that he does not ground this command in the worthiness of the husband but in the lordship of Christ. So, the fountainhead of a wife’s submission is not her husband — it’s Jesus. The authority placed on the husband as head must be understood, not as something ontological, but as something delegated to us from God as the True Authority.

Submission, properly understood, is the willing recognition of God-ordained authority. It is a disposition that seeks to honor God’s design and support the leadership He has established.

This does not mean mindless obedience. It does not require silence, passivity, or the abandonment of wisdom. Scripture presents wives as helpers, companions, and fellow heirs of grace. A godly wife offers counsel, insight, and perspective. She strengthens where her husband is weak and complements where he is lacking.

Yet after counsel has been given and discussion has occurred, biblical submission willingly follows leadership.

This is why Sarah is held up as an example in 1 Peter 3. Her submission was not rooted in Abraham’s perfection. Anyone familiar with Abraham’s life knows he made plenty of mistakes. Rather, Sarah trusted God enough to place herself under the leadership God had ordained.

In doing so, she displayed something of her trust in the Lord Himself.

Your Husband is a Gift for Your Good

The second truth Paul teaches is that a husband is meant to be a gift for his wife’s good.

This is where modern discussions often go wrong. We hear the word “headship” and immediately imagine ruthless domination, yet Scripture paints a very different picture.

Paul says that the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the Church. To get this, we must ask, “How does Christ exercise His authority?” Well, He does it by sacrificing Himself for the blessing of those who are His.

This means that biblical authority is never a license for selfishness. It is a God-given responsibility to direct in a way that displays God’s glory and benefits those entrusted to your care.

Every husband is called to imitate Christ here. He is called to be a provider, protector, servant, and shepherd within his home. His authority exists, therefore, not for his own advantage but for the flourishing of his wife and family.

That means headship, when exercised properly, should not be viewed as a burden upon a wife but as a blessing from God.

Of course, no husband does this perfectly, and most husbands are keenly aware of their shortcomings. We forget things. We make foolish decisions. We often fail to love as consistently as we ought.

This is why a wife’s submission cannot ultimately be rooted in her husband’s perfection. If perfection were the standard, no husband would ever qualify. What we must understand is that submission is rooted in God’s design, not in flawless execution.

Your Response Must Be Life-Encompassing

The final truth Paul emphasizes is that this posture of submission must be life-encompassing.

Verse 24 states that as the Church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands “in everything.”

That phrase has generated no shortage of confusion.

Paul does not teach here that a husband has absolute and final authority. He is not saying that a wife must follow her husband into sin. Nor is he suggesting that abuse should be tolerated in the name of submission.

The book of Acts provides a clear example in Sapphira. When she joined her husband in lying to God, she was held accountable for her own sin. Her obligation to obey God superseded her obligation to follow her husband. Her refusal to obey God by refusing Ananias’s plan resulted in her demise.

When a husband commands what God forbids or forbids what God commands, a wife must obey God rather than man.

Likewise, Scripture never calls women to endure violence under the banner of submission. Abuse is not headship. It is the grotesque corruption of headship. Let me put it this way: If authority is given to display God’s glory and bless those under your care, then abuse of that headship is a blasphemous abdication of office.

What Paul means by calling wives to submit “in everything” is that a wife should approach marriage with a settled posture of trust and submission already established in her heart. She has recognized God’s design and is prepared to follow her husband’s leadership across the ordinary decisions of family life.

When a man gets down on one knee and asks a woman to marry him, he is confessing that he wants her by his side. He delights in her. He needs her help as he seeks to fulfill God’s calling on his life.

And when she says yes, she is making a confession as well. She is saying, “I trust you. I am willing to follow your leadership. I am willing to devote myself to helping you fulfill what God has called you to do.”

Together, they become a living picture of Christ and His Church. This is why submission, though despised by the world, possesses a subtle glory.

It is not weakness, inferiority, or oppression. It is faith expressing itself through obedience.

And when practiced according to God’s design, it becomes a beautiful testimony to the wisdom of the God who created marriage in the first place.

The God who authored the gospel is the same God who designed the family. His commands are not burdensome, and His ways are always good. Therefore, Christian wives can embrace biblical submission not as a curse to endure but as an opportunity to glorify Christ, strengthen their husbands, and display the beauty of the gospel before a watching world.

Praise God for the beauty of the Redeemed Household!

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You’re awake at three a.m. again. Your mind is racing, and so is the clock on your nightstand. As you lie there, you’re consumed with worry about how you’re going to survive the next month, the next week, the next day. Maybe a relationship seems irreparable. Maybe the bills are more than you can handle. Maybe it seems like you’re losing everything.

How can you go to church and mean the words you sing when life is like this? Sure, it’s easy to praise God when everything is going well. But what about when it isn’t?

If that’s you, you’re not alone. In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet has no good news. Judah is past the point of redemption, judgment is coming, and Habakkuk knows exactly what that looks like. He knows the Chaldeans are coming. He knows Judah is going to lose everything. And as an American terminal optimist raised on movies with happy endings, that kind of storyline doesn’t sit well with us. But that’s what happened in 586 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar arrived.

So how on earth do we rejoice in the Lord while losing everything? Well, as we wrestle with that question, I want us to see three things about praise that endures the storms of life.

Praise That Endures Recognizes Reality

Habakkuk doesn’t pretend that things are different from what they are. In verse 17, the problems compound the longer he goes. First, the fig trees won’t blossom. While that is inconvenient, it is manageable. Then the grapes fail. Then the olive oil. Then the grain harvest. With this occurring, we’re talking about mass starvation and economic collapse. And knowing all of this has Habakkuk in a choke-hold.

But here’s what I want us to get from the start: Christian praise is not plastic. It’s not a rigid stoicism that either refuses to see reality or sees it and pretends feelings don’t matter. It’s not right that children get sick. It’s not right that fathers lie awake wondering how they’ll provide for their families. It’s not right that a widow stands beside her husband’s grave. We live in a broken, sin-cursed world, and there’s no honor in pretending otherwise. Habakkuk clearly feels the weight of what’s coming, and he says so. That’s not a failure of faith on his part, it’s a godly man reckoning with his reality honesty. What we need to remember when life is like this is that the praise that glorifies God is perfectly aware of reality, perfectly honest that it hurts, and purposefully anchored in who God is.

Praise That Endures Is Rooted in Redemption

Notice that in verse 18, Habakkuk says, “Yet I will rejoice.” The word “yet I” is emphatic in the Hebrew. So this is a decision, or a vow. What we need to realize is that it is not a fleeting feeling. Habakkuk literally just told us what he’s feeling: petrified. So, what we need to ask is, "What gets him to this place of rejoicing if the circumstances haven’t changed?”

He goes to God. Chapter 3 opens with a prayer rooted entirely in God’s past faithfulness. In essence, Habakkuk cries out, “Lord, I know what you did for us when we were hopelessly lost against Egypt. I need you to do it again.” And then, across verses 3–15, Habakkuk rehearses who his God is.

He remembers that God is a present God. Habakkuk recalls that the Lord didn’t just part the sea; He walked Israel through the wilderness. He’s not an absentee Father. Habakkuk remembers that God is a powerful God. That his God is a divine warrior who commands creation and causes the nations to tremble. And then, most importantly, he remembers that this present and powerful God is also a pardoning God. In verse 13, he writes, “You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one.” This warrior isn’t coming to destroy His people. He’s coming to rescue them.

That word for “salvation” in verse 18 is the same root used in Luke 2:11 when the angel announces to the shepherds: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.” The Divine Warrior Habakkuk was looking forward to is the same Jesus we look back on. He came to strike the head of the enemy. Colossians 2 tells us He disarmed the principalities and powers, nailing the record of our debt to the cross. So, the praise of Habakkuk and the praise of you, my storm-faring brother, is stable because you’re anchored to something the Chaldeans of life can’t touch.

Paul asks in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Do you feel like you’ve lost everything? Look up and remember who God is. Look back and remember what He’s done. Then remind yourself: He gave you His Son, and He hasn’t let go yet.

Praise That Endures Will Remain by Grace

Finally, in verse 19, Habakkuk says the Lord will make his feet like a hind’s feet and set him on his high places. When I was in Montana last summer, I remember looking up at the mountains and watching mountain goats clinging to near-vertical rock faces with just a few inches of ground beneath their feet. That’s the image here. God isn’t promising Habakkuk smooth sailing or flat fields. He’s promising to sustain him in hardship.

That’s exactly what Horatio Spafford discovered when he lost his four daughters to a shipwreck in the Atlantic. Sailing over the very spot where they drowned to retrieve his grieving wife, he wrote: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll — whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

So how do we rejoice while losing everything? We look up at who God is, look back at what He’s done, and look down to remember that He sustains us by His grace. The circumstances may be as bad as they can get. But the God of our salvation is unchanged, unmoved, and He is ours.

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Your pastor is called to lay his life down for the flock, to set himself before you as an example of Christlikeness, and is to prioritize your spiritual growth knowing he will give an account to Christ for you. But you know this. You know his role is meaningful, and that’s why you’re here. While that’s mutually agreed upon, what’s often overlooked is caring for those men who care for you. Here are a few things these men wish they could speak with you about:

Don’t Make Pay a Taboo Topic

Paul tells us that a faithful minister is worthy of his wages (1 Timothy 5:18). Applying the general equity of Deuteronomy 25:4 to the ministry, Paul illustrates the financially bound minister to a muzzled ox. To muzzle an ox while forcing him to tread the grain would be an unjust burden upon the creature you’re forcing to labor for you. The Lord, being mindful of these creatures, wants them properly cared for. This principle stands for His ministers.

If you want your pastor to be fully focused on the ministry while he is ministering, see to it that you’re caring for him in an honorable way. An honorable minister isn’t there to be rich, so don’t feel that you have to make him so. But we also need to remember that there isn’t anything particularly Christ-honoring in burdening him with impoverishment either.

I understand that there are limitations for many churches. I know that there are small churches that are incapable of providing what they’d like. I’m not speaking to those assemblies. The congregations that need to hear this are the ones that don’t realize that their pastors are to be a prioritized investment for them. This means that when you hire a pastor, don’t offer him a pay package that assumes his wife will make up for your lack. That’s shameful. When you’re structuring his compensation, you should ask, “Will this man be able to comfortably provide for his family? Will he be able to save for retirement? Will he be able to practice gracious and warm hospitality?”

One of the issues I have heard time and again from ministers is how frustrated they are with how taboo this topic is to discuss. There is virtually no other occupation conceivable where a man would be considered money-hungry for negotiating a comfortable wage. However, if a candidate inquires about this during the first meeting, he is often considered “in it for the money.” This ought not be so.

Give Him a Book Budget

One of the first things a quality seminary will teach its students is that it is not there to produce finished men. Instead, it is there to put its students on a path toward a lifetime of fruitful study. You could say that his degree is not the destination, but the on-ramp. What sustains a pastor’s ministry over decades, then, is not what he learned in his first years of formal education, but what he continues to learn after graduation.

One of the necessary tools for this lifetime of study is books. He will need books. Big books, small books, boring technical ones that take months to work through, and fun accessible ones that revive his imagination. Commentaries, historical theology, biblical languages resources, works of church history, and yes, the occasional novel that reminds him that he is a human being. And, as you may have noticed, those things cost money.

Here is what I want you to consider: give your pastor an annual book allowance, and make it a meaningful amount. Don’t think of it as some sort of charity account, think of it as an investment. The man who is reading widely is the man who is feeding you well. This investment might manifest itself in powerfully constructed sermons, pastoral counsel, or wisdom that sees danger brewing amid a rapidly changing culture.

Speak Specifically About What Blesses You

As I said earlier, pastors will give an account for how they steward their congregants. With that understood, there is nothing more lifegiving than hearing of your spiritual growth. While there is a real danger in pride that we must actively mortify, the way most of us first knew of our calling was through the reports of the church. We do want to know that our ministry is being used by God in your life.

When I say you should speak to your pastor about how his ministry is blessing you, I don’t mean that you should robotically say “Good job” on the way out each week. I mean that you should say, “Pastor, I need you to know that your statement on gossip hit me between the eyes. I have been struggling in that area so much lately. It’s like you’ve been following me around!” Better yet, you might say, “Pastor, a few weeks ago you preached on the subject of assurance. I can’t tell you how much the Lord has used that in my life.” When I say these kinds of conversations are lifegiving, I mean that they assure your pastor that his labor is not in vain, that the Spirit is using him, and that you are being fed.

Don’t Ghost Him

If you’re having an issue with your pastor, your congregation, or yourself, and are thinking of leaving your church, you should talk to him first. Good pastors love their flock. We want to know you, your stories, your struggles, your aspirations, and your spiritual state. Since that’s true, there is a great deal of pain that comes when those whom you have poured into disappear without a word.

You say, “My problem wasn’t even with him!” Okay, voice that to him. Perhaps it’s a relational conflict with a sister in the church. Let him pray for you and offer counsel, or even intervention. Perhaps you’re feeling underutilized. Voice that concern to him and see where service is needed. The problem that many pastors face when folks leave without a word is taking it personally. If he did nothing wrong, tell him. If he did something wrong, tell him.

Invite Him Into Your Life

When you join the congregation, you place yourself under the care of its shepherds and your fellow members. This means that there is an assumed right to speak into your life — even in difficult seasons. One of the Scriptures I most often recite to myself in seasons of difficulty is Revelation 21:8. There we are told that cowards go to Hell. Knowing that I am in Christ, that He gives a spirit of courage, and that He has put me in this place for a purpose gives me the kick in the pants I need to do what I must.

With that said, there is something refreshing about a grown man look you in the eyes and says, “Pastor, if you see something wayward in my life, call it out.” You may think that sounds odd. It doesn’t. It sounds like a man who recognizes the deceptive nature of sin and the calling of his pastor. You need to have a similar talk with your pastor. And you should probably have it with some other men too.

Conclusion:

Of all the things I know your pastor wants you to know, he most deeply wants you to know that he is a human, he loves you, and he longs to see you made more like Jesus. He wants you to know that being your pastor is a privilege and that he longs to serve you in a way that brings glory to Christ.

While that is true, it doesn’t negate the reality of ministries hardships. Your pastor is not an ox to be muzzled, a person without feelings, or an office to be managed. He is a man. A called, accountable, and yes, sometimes tired man. He loves you more than you probably know, and he carries more than you probably see.

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Cremation, which is rapidly regaining popularity, has been met with relative silence by much of the Church. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there are few conversations more tender than those surrounding death. However, as I hope to make clear in my ministry, theology is not a science, but the science. It is, as the Medievals put it, “The Queen of all sciences.” So, we can’t detach this subject from theology.

What the Church Has Thought

For most of church history, burial was the near-universal Christian practice. This was not accidental, and it was certainly not cultural conformity. As a matter of fact, the early Christians buried their dead at a time when cremation was the dominant Roman practice, and they did so deliberately, as a statement of faith.

Their reason wasn’t to be different for the fun of it. Instead, their reasoning was theological. As Christians, they confessed the resurrection of the body. They looked at Jesus, who was really raised, bodily raised, and concluded that what happens to the body is not something we can dismiss. We are not not our body. You are not a soul sheathed in a meatsuit. Your body is not a shell, and it is not disposable. Knowing this, they buried, and they often buried facing east, awaiting the dawn.

It is with this in mind that we must note that this doctrine was so noted by the Pagans, that when our forefather’s were martyred, their persecutors would deny them burial, burned their bodies, and cast their ashes into rivers to “prevent their hope of resurrection.”1

This practice of Christian burial was almost universally held through the Reformation. Luther was buried, Calvin was buried. The Westminster Standards assume burial. Obviously we need to recognize that the Reformers were not superstitious about it. Knowing that God is capable of all things, they certainly understood that God can raise a body consumed by fire, drowned at sea, or scattered by war. But they still preferred burial as the fitting Christian witness that we expect to get these back.

It was not until the late 19th century that cremation began to gain acceptance in the West. It seems to me that this has been driven largely by secular hygienic and environmentalist arguments. The church’s gradual accommodation of cremation has followed culture more than it has led it.

Okay, we’ve taken a glance at our history, but what does the word of God say?

What Scripture Says About This

The Bible nowhere explicitly prohibits cremation, so I do not want to bind consciences where God has not bound them.

What Scripture does give us, clearly and consistently, is a theology of the body that ought to shape how we think about death and burial.

The body matters to God. This is the testimony of Genesis, where God forms man from the dust and breathes life into him. It is the testimony of the incarnation, where the eternal Son of God took on flesh and declared it good enough to wear forever. And it is the testimony of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul insists that the resurrection is bodily. Furthermore, Paul insists that what is sown is what is raised.

The seed image is worth sitting with. It was this argument that Pastor Greg Barkman used when responding to a congregant questioning this some time back. It changed my position on this matter. Paul does not say the body is discarded and replaced. He says it is planted. Given the historical context provided above, that’s worth noting.

As a Baptist, I must point on the consistency in holding to believer’s baptism by immersion and Christian burial. Both symbolize something that cremation does not. There is something in putting a body into the ground, Paul says, that speaks the gospel without words.

This is why many theologians, while affirming the permissibility of cremation, still express a preference for burial. It is not that God cannot raise a cremated body. He can and He will. It is that burial says something, however. It says something about the body, about hope, about the kind of resurrection we believe in. I don’t know about you, but I’m a talker. If I can say something even in my death, let it be that, as they lay my body down, “He is planted with a firm expectation that Christ will soon reunite his glorified soul with an incorruptible body.”

A Word for the Living

If you are reading this because you have already chosen cremation for someone you loved, or because you are planning to choose it for yourself, I want to be careful here.

The gospel does not rest on burial method. The resurrection work of Jesus is not threatened by your grandmother’s ashes on a mantelpiece. Both of my mother’s parents were cremated and, to my knowledge, my father’s parents are planning the same method. This is not a practice that I’m emotionally distanced from.

The question of cremation is a question about witness and wisdom, not about salvation. So, I believe it belongs to the category of things the Church should discuss openly, charitably, and without shame.

My own conviction, for what it is worth, is that burial is the better witness. I believe it is the strongest position both historically and biblically. But I hold that conviction with open hands. So, if you have already made a different choice, or are about to, I am not here to add weight to what you are already carrying. The God who spoke creation into existence out of nothing will not be stumped by your cremated ashes.

For I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. — 2 Timothy 1:12

If this piece raised questions you’d like to think through further, I’d be glad to hear from you.

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In the West, we’ve been taught that hate is always the opposite of love. Thus, hatred is that raging black hole that was vacated by love when a person decided to take a position opposite to the party doing the labeling. This ferocious void seeks to devour all that is true and kind in the world. It is the epitome of lovelessness and utterly despicable in all its forms. So, with solidarity against the void, we don our lawns with signs that loudly declare, “Hate has no home here!”

But is that true? Does hate truly have no home here, there, or anywhere? I sure hope not. It has been said that the deepest loves produce the fiercest hatreds. Think about how this works in ordinary life. A father who truly loves his daughter doesn’t shrug his shoulders as he stares at the thing threatening her. A doctor who loves her patients doesn’t make peace with the disease. A firefighter who loves his community doesn’t stand back to lovingly gaze upon the murderous rage of fire.

Love, when it’s real and not just sentimental, generates a corresponding hatred for whatever opposes the beloved’s flourishing. Knowing this, the Psalmist writes, (Psalm 97:10) “You who love the LORD, hate evil.”

The command isn’t tacked on as an afterthought. Rather, it flows directly from one’s love of God. To love the LORD is to hate evil. One is the proof of the other. Thus, this demonized and insatiable whistling black hole within the hearts of believers is actually a foretaste of the winds of impending judgment approaching this sinful world.

Unfortunately, I believe that we’ve lost this in much of our contemporary Christian culture. We’ve traded a once robust and muscular love that gets angry at injustice and grieves over corruption, for a thin, conflict-averse niceness that calls itself love but mostly just wants everyone to feel comfortable. We’ve confused gentleness with spinelessness and kindness with the inability to name evil by its name.

The worst possible sin for us to be convicted of, then, is not unrighteousness, but a lack of secularly defined love. But our Fathers never confused these things. Augustine and Athanasius raged against soul-killing heresy. Wilberforce didn’t politely suggest that maybe slavery was a bit unfortunate; the man hated it, and that hatred fueled decades of relentless political war.

The problem isn’t that Christians hate too much. It’s that we often hate the wrong things or nothing at all. Sure, we’re comfortable hating root canals and Mondays. Why? Because everyone does.

But evil? Exploitation? Lies that hollow people out from the inside? Abortion? A father abandoning his family? Sodomy? This is where we get nervous. This is where we stutter and say, “Well, it’s complicated.” Sure, sometimes there is room for nuance on certain matters, but for the most part, our cowardice leads our conviction to face death by a thousand qualifiers.

Quit qualifying what God has clearly condemned.

Psalm 97:10 assumes that love for God will express itself in concrete, particular opposition to what God opposes.

What does it look like? It looks like fighting for the vulnerable, because it loves them. It looks like a clear refusal to play along with derangement. It looks like grief over your own sin with the same kind of hatred you otherwise direct towards the sins of others.

In our culture, love has been redefined as affirming. Yet, I do not affirm my three-year-old son’s decision to stick screwdrivers in our light sockets. Why? Because I love him and want the best for him. And, out of love, I am bound to tell him what the outcome of his unwise decisions will be. It is the same with the believer. We, believing that God Almighty has the right to issue commands to His creatures, long to see the world brought into submission to Him. What do we do then? We evangelize, which means we must first show you that you’ve broken His law so that you might see the beauty of His gospel!

So, yes. Hate does have a home here. But it’s not the hate that you might think it is. Christian hate, God-honoring and righteous Christian hate, is a God-centered repulsion to the things which are contrary to His word. Christian “hate” is the exhaust of our love for God burning as it comes in contact with that which is evil. It is not a subjective disdain, but an objective hatred for that which is morally evil.

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As is often the case, we have overcorrected. Abandoning the conversation is not the answer. Why? Well, because the Bible does not abandon it. The problem with most modesty talk is that it often starts in the wrong place. The reality that we must understand about modesty is that it doesn’t matter how manicured you’re teaching your children’s dress to be if you’re not teaching them the glorious reason behind it. With that said, here are three ways the gospel actually addresses immodesty, and why that changes everything.

1. The gospel tells you that you are already seen.

Much of what drives immodesty is the desperate need to be noticed. And as the temperatures are rising here in North Carolina, it seems everyone wants to be noticed, unfortunately. We live in an attention economy, and the body has become currency. Show more skin, get more eyes, feel more real. A spiteful voice rises in me when I see such displays and grumpily asks, “Do they have no shame? Where are their fathers? Do they hate the souls of young men?”

While those are good questions, if we teach our daughters modest dress with that at the core, we’ve detached it from grace and grounded it in burdensome law. A more proper question to begin with is:

Does she know how valuable she really is?

For the lost, the answer to that is no. An anthropology detached from the Scriptures produces all sorts of self-degradation and immodesty stands among those ranks. But we know the truth, that we are made in the Image of God to show forth His glory in this world as walking statues. That God has made man the crowning glory of His creation, and made women the crowning glory of man. We know the truth! The truth that this God, whom we have rebelled against in body and soul, came to bear our shame. Christ, being stripped naked and nailed to a tree, was clothed beneath the robes of God’s divine wrath for sin that we might be redeemed.

Does she really matter? A society bent on sexualizing your daughters says, “No.” A society bent on ripping girls apart in the womb says, “No.” A society bent on destroying her femininity shouts, “No!”

But the gospels say, “Yes. She matters.” Immodesty among Christians is often a symptom of gospel amnesia.

2. The gospel tells you that your body means something.

The secular world has two contradictory messages about the body. Their first message to you is that your body is everything (worship it, display it, optimize it). On the other hand, they also teach you that your body is nothing. “It’s just matter, do whatever you want with it!” As a Christian, refuse both.

Your body is not a billboard. Your body is not your personal property to deploy however you see fit. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), bought with a price, and destined for resurrection. Can there be a more glorious declaration about the glory of the human body than there is in God the Son becoming flesh and dwelling among us?

If the Son has eternally taken to Himself a human nature, that means that your body is worth honoring, because it too will remain forever yours in the resurrection. It also means that how you present yourself to the world is a theological statement, whether you intend it to be or not.

Theology is the crowning jewel of all sciences; it is everywhere and speaks into everything — even the clothes you wear.

3. The gospel tells you that love considers others.

The most tense dimension of the modesty conversation is neighbor-love. Paul’s ethic in Romans 14-15 is relentlessly other-oriented. There, he commands the strong to bear with the weak, and teaches us that nobody should live for themselves.

Look, I’m not going to go down the road of blaming the lusts of men on women. This is not about assigning blame to victims or making immodesty someone else’s moral failure. But I’ll put it plainly: Men are responsible for their sinful lusts, and women are responsible for their sinful desire to weaponize their bodies for attention.

This whole discussion is about the basic Christian instinct to ask: How does the way I present myself affect the people around me?

Love dresses with that question in mind. A modest heart asks, “If my body is crafted with divine affection, am I stewarding it for God’s glory?” Furthermore, the modest young lady asks, “If I am the crowning glory of my husband, whether married yet or not, am I honoring him by showing my body to the world?” Dear sister, the man you want leading you and your future children is not going to be the man who’ll be attracted to shameful immodesty. The kind of man you’re looking for is looking for a woman who honors herself, and with herself, the Lord.

In conclusion, I’ll be blunt in saying that there have been people who make modesty reprehensible. Not that modesty itself is somehow evil, but that they’ve raised their legalistic noses so high that they’d drown in the rain. What those ladies must understand is that the length of your dress is no replacement for the beauty of a soul brought low before the Lord. If your pride is rooted in your dress, and not the Lord, you are a reproach to Him and His gospel.

Older sisters in the Lord, teach our younger sisters with patience and grace. Do not berate them, insult them, or embarrass them for what they do not know. Teach them the glories of the gospel and its bearing on this area in their life. Most of all, pray for them.

I’m not here to prescribe dress lengths or to bind your conscience to my dress preferences. I am not the Lord of your conscience. I am here, however, to invite you to think within a godly framework. The Lord alone is Lord of the conscience. May He be praised in you, both in body and soul.

Soli Deo Gloria.

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The woman, in her all important sphere, tends the home. This is not as a lesser calling, but a sacred one. She cultivates warmth, order, and love within those four walls. She pours herself into little faces and loaves of bread. She makes a house into a home. Everything accomplished by both the man and the woman is for that place; the home.

This is not some antiquated idea, but a Biblical one. This is how God would have it. This is the ideal.

But we do not live before the Fall. We live after it.

And some women — through death, desertion, divorce — find themselves carrying both halves of the burden. They wake before anyone else to make lunches for their kids, and themselves. They field work calls and hold crying children at night when there is no one left to hold them. They provide, protect, and they tend because there’s no other way.

What does the gospel say to her? What does God’s gospel say to a single mother bearing this overwhelming cross?

First, it says that God sees her.

Think about Hagar with me for a minute. She was alone in a wilderness with a child she could not feed. She sat down, looked away as to shield herself from the inevitable reality of her babies death, and wept. In the midst of this, the Angel of the Lord came to her. The preincarnate Lord comes to her, a woman, a single mother nonetheless, in the desert, at the end of herself, and asks, “What troubles you, Hagar?”

Our Lord has always a particular tenderness toward women carrying what she was not designed to carry alone. Whether it’s the widow of Nain or the widow with two mites, our Lord cares.

Second, the Gospel says that Christ is her provision.

She had one meal left. It wouldn’t be elegant. There would be not pomp and circumstances for this poor excuse for a cake, but its the last meal she expected to have with her boy before the stared the terminally long road of starvation in its face. The widow of Zarephath had one meal left and Elijah asked her to give it away.

To my conviction, and our surprise, she did it. And the flour did not run out. Our Lord is Jehovah Jireh, from Mount Moriah where Isaac was saved to those living at the bottom of the barrel in Zarephath. He is faithful.

The single mother who stretches a paycheck further than a budget seems to account for, or who finds the car repaired when she couldn’t afford it, or who receives a meal from a neighbor at exactly the right moment; that mother is not lucky. She is watched over by the Lord who provides.

Far greater than this, Christ has promised this weary and worn mother an inheritance in Himself far greater than the prosperity this world could offer. Christ calls this woman, who society would otherwise look over, a joint-heir of eternal glory in Himself. He is her exceeding great reward.

Finally, because of this, her work is not worthless or worth forgetting.

A mother receives no trophy for her labors. All she aspires for is that one day her children might rise up and call her blessed (Proverbs 31:28). They are her trophies. Those little faces with the image of a holy God etched into every molecule. She not only has a biological drive to care for them, but an eternal longing to raise them for Christ’s sake.

She receives no trophies, but Christ sees even cups of cold water. He sees her prayers over a sick child. He sees every seemingly hidden act of faithful motherhood, from dirty diapers to rooms that are disordered, and not one of them will be lost. He sees her tears as she lies alone, and keeps them in a bottle (Ps. 56:8).

She was not supposed to do it alone. And in some sense, in Christ, she isn’t.

Our blessed Lord has promised Himself to be a Father to the fatherless and husband to the widow. He has raised up His Church to be His hands and feet to love and care for her. And the same resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead is available to her on a Tuesday morning when she has nothing left.

It is not ideal, but there is much to be longed for beyond what this broken world affords. And so, Christ, the one who sympathizes with sinners, promises her “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Christ, the one who sees her struggles says, “I will be a Father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow.”

Worried mama, when Hagar put her child away because she couldn’t handle his end, the Lord comes to her and says that even though she couldn’t hear him, “I have heard the voice of the boy.” You keep doing your best. You keep providing for those children. This situation is not “right,” but it’s the one you’re in. And if you find yourself consumed with fear about your children, the Lord teaches us that He hears them too.

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There’s only one problem with that story. It isn’t Christian, and it certainly didn’t come from Christ. It came from Plato.

For the Greeks, their vision of salvation was to escape. They desired to see the immortal soul finally liberated from its material prison. The fleshly prisons would one day be shed in death to grant us entrance into bliss.

It’s a compelling picture for anyone who has tasted the dreaded results of the fall on their human bodies. This way of thinking is what turned the men of the Areopagus off to Paul’s presentation of the Christian faith. When they heard this man argue that these bodies would be raised again, they scoffed.

It’s also precisely what the Apostles’ Creed rejects when it confesses the resurrection of the body. I want you to notice that our fathers didn’t record a statement on the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. This isn’t to say that they reject the immortality of the soul, but that they reject the idea of an “eternal bodilessness.”

Consider the Lord. Jesus Christ didn’t vacate his body on Easter morning to fly into worlds unknown. Instead, He took it with him. Sure, it was glorified. But the disciples handled his hands, and he ate fish on the beach, and when Thomas demanded proof, Jesus didn’t say, ‘Oh Thomas, this ol’ thing doesn’t matter. The body was never the point!” No, He said, put your finger here. The resurrection of Jesus is the firstfruits of what God intends for all his people. So, what He intends is not escape, but bodily transformation.

This means that you’re not escaping this body… permanently, at least.

And if you are keeping your body forever, then the body is not incidental to who you are. By that, I mean that you are not a soul wearing a meat suit, waiting for the costume to come off. You are a creature God made from dust, breathed into, called good, redeemed in the flesh, and will raise in glory. The body is not the obstacle to the real you.

I’ve heard it said that you are not your body. You are your body, but you’re not only your body, seeing that you have a soul too. Since you are your body, you’re not trapped in it.

This means that how you inhabit it now is not theologically neutral. This means that whether we’re discussing sexuality, suffering, or worship, it’s all embodied. Worship is embodied as we sing with our lungs, lift our hands, and kneel in prayer. Furthermore, even our suffering is embodied, which is why the incarnation is not a weird detour in the story of redemption but the very center. The Son of God, as it pertains to His human nature, took on flesh, got tired, wept, and bled.

You will not escape your body. Not permanently, at least. Sure, the grave is a pause, but it’s not delivering you to eternal separation from your body. Instead, it’s delivering you from the effects of the fall. And when this body is raised for your soul to return, it will be raised incorruptible.

That should change how you live in it.

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He’s not wrong per se. Islam does revere Jesus as a major prophet, credits Him with miracles, and even expects Him to return at the end of days. In a recent article shared on X, Carlson offered this as a kind of bridge to push for a shared ecumenism across religious lines. Now, here’s the question we need to ask of such a statement:

Which Jesus do they love, Tucker?

You see, everyone loves a Jesus. The secularists love a Jesus who was a wise teacher with no real claims on their life, and the anarchists love Him as a rebel seeking to stick it to the man. In addition, the Muslims love Him too! But not as the One Scriptures teach Him to be.

When we read the Quran, it’s clear that the Jesus of Islam never died on a cross. In Surah 4:157, the Quran clearly states that Jesus was not crucified; it only appeared that way. It reads, “And [for] their saying, ‘Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah .’ And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.”

As shocking as that may be to you, the denial goes deeper than the cross. In Islam, there is a fundamental rejection of the incarnation at the level of principle. In Islamic theology, the idea of God taking on human flesh is an inconceivable blasphemy. To the Muslim, Allah does not “become,” and he does not condescend. To state that you affirm that the eternal Word dwelt among us in human form is, to Islam, an attack on the very transcendence of God. So for them, the Jesus they revere was never God to begin with. Jesus never died for sin, and never rose from the dead. So, when we talk about Muslim’s loving Jesus, we’re talking about a Jesus that is not eternally God, but a mere prophet sent forth from Allah. As Christians, we understand that no incarnation means no atonement and no atonement means no gospel.

To put it kindly, the Jesus that Islam loves is a Jesus who cannot save.

To put it bluntly, the version of Jesus that is taught by Islam is a heinous, soul-damning heresy that calls God a liar and preaches another gospel. To this, the Apostle Paul would say, “Let them be accursed.”

Now, I want you to hear me out here. This doesn’t end with the Muslims. It extends to our discussion of who Jesus is with anyone and everyone. I don’t want you to know that you like Jesus. I want to know what Jesus it is you’re telling me you like.

The Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, is a created being (Michael the Archangel), who is subordinate to the Father and decidedly not God in the flesh. He is the first and greatest creation, sure, but he is still a creation nonetheless. This means that when He hung on that cross, it was a good man dying, but it was not God purchasing His people with His own blood. Their New World Translation even rewrites John 1:1 to make sure you miss. It reads, “the Word was a god,” not God Himself. A Jesus who is a god is no God at all, and a Jesus who is not God cannot bear the weight of your sin.

Sure, they use the same name, but they’re telling you about an entirely different person.

This is why theology isn’t a hobby for academics. It’s a matter of life and death. Or, as I like to say, bad theology hurts people. Since that is true, we must have a zero-tolerance policy with bad theology. Again, the Apostle Paul didn’t say if someone comes preaching a different gospel, hear them out charitably (Galatians 1:8–9).

The Jesus who saves is the Jesus of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Our Jesus, the Jesus of the Scriptures, is fully God and fully man. Our Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised on the third day, and is returning as Lord and Judge. Our Jesus is not a mere prophet. He is not a created being. He is not one option on a divine menu. He is the Son of God, and He said so Himself.

So, next time someone tells you they love Jesus, don’t take that as the end of the conversation. Instead, I want you to ask, “Which Jesus?”

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**Cover image courtesy of the Tucker Carlson Network. All rights reserved to their respective owners.

This is my attempt to do that out of a genuine concern for the men sitting in our pews.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

I’ll be clear as to where I’m at on this matter; to me, a $5 wager among friends on a random Friday is not the hill I intend to die on. Christian liberty is a real thing, and I think that a random $5 wager among friends is usually a matter of prudence.

But that is not the world we are living in anymore.

What exists today is something categorically different. According to Grand View Research, the sports betting market size was $100.9 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $187.39 billion by 2030.1 This stuff is legal in most states, advertised relentlessly everywhere a screen is found, and engineered to keep you hooked. The apps are designed to be addictive. Using the “free bets” as a hook, these platforms aim to keep you in. However, the odds are always, always in the house’s favor. These are businesses, scummy ones at that, not charities. What is being sold as entertainment is, at its core, a system built to extract money from the people who use it.

So, to me, the question is not whether a Christian is free to bet five dollars with a friend. The question is whether we are wise enough to see what the culture is actually inviting us into.

It’s Not Simple Fun

In his novel 1984, George Orwell describes how a totalitarian regime keeps the “proles” passive and compliant. The method that he describes is not violence, but distraction. Of the proles, which were the working class that were kept deliberately ignorant of their own subjugation, he writes that “heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds.”2

Orwell wrote that in 1949. Back in those days, Orwell was not writing about DraftKings, but the authoritarian tactic of giving the people something to distract them so they never look up.

I particularly appreciate the brilliance of the use of “the horizon of their minds,” and believe that phrase deserves a glance. Gambling does not simply take your money. In its modern, algorithmically optimized form, it capitalizes on your attention. You are no longer watching the game; you are watching your bet. You are no longer enjoying an afternoon; you are refreshing an app. The game itself becomes secondary to the proposition riding on it. At this time, these apps have moved beyond sports and have now allowed betting on a bevy of topics ranging from politics to the weather.

A man’s mind is one of the greatest gifts God has given him. We ought to be very careful what we allow to fill its horizon.

Listen to Your Fathers

When the Westminster Larger Catechism, which was written in the 1640s, addresses the eighth commandment “You shall not steal,” it lists among its forbidden sins something it calls “wasteful gaming.” At that time, the word “gamble” did not exist. Instead, “wasteful gaming” was their word for what we now call gambling, and they placed it alongside theft, fraud, and covetousness as violations of the commandment governing how we handle what God has entrusted to us.

The word worth mulling over is wasteful. While one might not consider it inherently evil in the way that murder is evil, we must reckon with the fact that it is a wasteful squandering of what has been given to us. And what has been given to us by God in this conversation? Money that belongs first to God and has been entrusted to our stewardship, time that is finite and irreplaceable, and attention that shapes the kind of men we are becoming.

Gambling is wasteful because it is unproductive. If I were to plant a garden with hopes of having produce for my kitchen, I would be laboring in something potentially productive. The gambler, however, is participating in nothing inherently productive. While we might say that it is inherently evil in the same way murder is evil, it is worth noting that these fathers in the faith pair it with evils such as covetousness, theft, and fraud. But why? Why is it a sibling of covetous? Gambling is the unproductive endeavor of capitalizing on the loss of my neighbors’ time and wealth.

The money you make gambling doesn’t appear in a vacuum. You are taking your earnings from the loss of another person. How can you, as a Christian, justify that as loving your neighbor before God?

The Theological Heart of the Matter

I get it. The Bible does not contain a verse that reads, “Thou shalt not place a bet,” and we should be careful not to say more than Scripture says. But Scripture has a great deal to say about the loves and habits that form us, and none of it is theologically neutral.

Proverbs 28:19 tells us that “whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have his fill of poverty.” The contrast here is not between what is legal and illegal, but between what is productive and the worthless. Between the man whose effort produces something and the man whose energy is poured into a system designed to take from him.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:23 that “all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.” I think a helpful question for us to ask here is not merely can I? But does this build me into the man God is calling me to be?

And then there is 1 Timothy 6:9: “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” The gambling industry is explicitly designed to provoke the desire to be rich. They dangle the carrot of quick, effortless, and fun earned money before the eyes of young men, and they have bitten it without a thought. That is its entire appeal unveiled, and it is the exact kind of appetite that Paul warns us about.

Get To Building Instead

Look, I’m not looking to beat up on you. Instead, I’d like for you to take this as an invitation to consider what could be built with the same time, money, and mental energy you’re pouring into a worthless app.

The young man who disciplines his finances, studies his craft, invests in his relationships, and gives generously is becoming someone. The young man who spends his Sundays half-watching games through the lens of a parlay and his evenings refreshing a gambling app is also becoming someone. The reality is that both paths compound over time. Who are you becoming today?

The habits formed in youth are the habits that define a man’s thirties, forties, and beyond. The appetite for easy money, once cultivated, does not stay small. It grows, and it follows a man into his marriage, his fatherhood, his finances, and his faith.

Ecclesiastes 11:9 reads, “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, And let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart, And in the sight of your eyes; But know that for all these God will bring you into judgment.”

Enjoy your youth. Enjoy the things that make you happy. Walk in the ways of a heart that is informed by the knowledge of the Lord. Do these things with a mindfulness that these days of youth, these days of life, are gifts to be stewarded for the Lord. And to that Lord we will give an account.

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At the age of 17, my pastor asked if I would be willing to fill in for a 5th-grade Sunday School class at our church. At the time, I was a part of a teaching program at my school, which allowed seniors to spend a semester teaching alongside a mentor. Little did I know that the Lord placed that time in my life to break me from my discomfort in public speaking. Learning of this, he took advantage of my interest in education and invited me to substitute. I accepted the invitation, and the rest is history. From that Sunday on, an insatiable appetite for teaching the Word nestled into my soul and reoriented the dreams that I originally had for my life.

While I am no longer a part of “that world,” I fondly reflect on how high their estimation of the ministry stood. In “that world,” the pastorate wasn’t simply respected, but was an office so highly beloved that young men were often exhorted to consider pursuing it themselves. Now, hear me out: I am not saying that churches should ask unlearned young men to preach the Word of God. As someone who was once an unlearned young man preaching the Word, there are many things I wish I could have taken back. But that’s not the purpose of this article.

The purpose of this article is that the Church should encourage young men to consider the ministry. C.H. Spurgeon once said, “Do not enter the ministry if you can help it. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth, let him go his way.”

While I appreciate Spurgeon’s statement, I would like to invert it. What if young men were encouraged to first consider vocational ministry and, only if their consciences would allow, should they be encouraged to pursue other things?

What’s With The Attitude?

One of the things I loathe to see on social media is complaining pastors. Look, I get it. The pastorate can be hard. But tell me of a more glorious occupation? God Almighty has saved you, gifted you, given you a desire for the ministry, and used His Church to recognize and call you. Praise God!

Writing to Timothy, Paul says, “If anyone desires the office of a bishop, he desires a good thing" (1 Timothy 3:1). One of the first filters that will remove many men in my above proposal is that young men should have a longing for this office. While it would be fitting to discuss this inward longing, I want to ask my fellow ministers, “Does your attitude about your office provoke young men to desire the ministry, or does it deter them?” If there are young men in the Church who long for the ministry, I want to stir that desire in them through my own love for this office.

The Lord promised us that He would give shepherds to His Church. I don’t want to dam up His blessings with my pessimism, and neither should you. Now, should we speak with rose colored lenses as though everything is perfect, everyone loves you, and it’s always easy? Absolutely not! I’m not asking you to be a liar; I’m simply asking us to have a conversation about the sin of complaint, bitterness, and cynicism seeping into our souls.

Let’s Talk

If a pastor’s attitude is the first thing that either stirs or smothers the desire for ministry in young men, an open conversation is what gives that desire somewhere to go.

In too many churches, the pathway to ministry begins only when a young man presents himself. The Church all too often waits to be approached rather than taking the initiative to approach. This places the entire weight of initiation on the young man, who may be least equipped to know what questions to ask or even what he is sensing.

There is a better way. Pastors and elders who are attentive to their congregations will notice, over time, the young men who linger after sermons with questions, who lead with conviction, who seem to have a longing to know Christ and to make Him known. These men deserve more than a nod of recognition. They deserve a conversation with you, brother. A real, direct, unhurried, honest conversation. They deserve a pastor.

I’m not encouraging you to go refine your recruitment pitch. And I am absolutely not advocating that you throw these young men into the pulpit. I’m advocating for a cultivated community where an elder, sitting across from a young man at coffee, can say, “Have you ever considered the ministry?”

I believe that we often shy away from this conversation because we’re afraid that this will somehow convince the young man that he is, without a doubt, called. I get that, I’ve seen that, and there should be a way to handle that. And there is. Why the inward call is certainly real, so is outward affirmation.

The Reality of Congregational Approval

These open conversations should not happen in a vacuum. One personal impression and private conversation isn’t sufficient. Instead, it should take place within the life of the local church. The local church has a God-given role in the recognition of those called to ministry that must not be bypassed or minimized.

Paul’s instructions to Timothy assume that the evaluation of a man for ministry is a communal act. The qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 are not a private checklist for a man to complete alone before announcing his calling and descending upon the flock as though he were sent from Heaven. They are the Church’s criteria. The pastoral qualifications are the standard by which a congregation, under the oversight of its elders, examines a man and either affirms or withholds its recognition. The congregation that has lived with a young man, watched his character under pressure, seen how he loves his family and serves his neighbors, is uniquely positioned to weigh in on whether the gifts he believes he possesses are the gifts they have actually observed.

The young man who has been affirmed by a congregation that knows him well carries into ministry a confidence that no seminary degree alone can supply. He knows that his calling has been tested not merely in his own heart, but in the community where it first took root.

It also serves as a merciful protection. Not every young man who longs for the ministry is truly called to it. When I began preaching, there were 7 “preacher boys.” There are two of us remaining. The congregation that loves these aspirants enough to say, “No,” gently and plainly does him a greater service than the one that simply waves him through. Paul’s charge to Timothy to lay hands on no one hastily (1 Timothy 5:22) is a word addressed not only to overseers, but to the whole culture of discernment that a healthy church cultivates.

If a young man longs to minister, but he is unteachable, unapproachable, or his preaching blesses no one, he isn’t called. Period. But if the congregation notices a godly disposition, a hunger for the Word, and a benefit from his teaching, he may be a gifted brother. If such a young man is in your church, encourage congregants to openly compliment them. It was the comment of an older sister at a random surprise birthday party that caused me to think that maybe this longing is worth speaking to my pastor about. And I’m thankful I did.

Conclusion

One of my most long-held and consistent prayers is that the Lord would send along an aspiring brother to mentor at some point in my ministry. This longing is so strong that I will hardly consider my ministry a success without it coming to pass. In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul writes, “And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” This thing doesn’t end with me. I’m not the final product of centuries of faithful mentorship. I am but a link in an otherwise glorious chain.

While I don’t place an unhealthy expectation on my son in pursuing the ministry, I pray that he will continue to bound into my office “to preach.” I hope that as he grows up around pastors, he sees something of a healthy love for Christ, His Church, and the calling which we bear.

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At the outset, I understand this is a rather taboo topic. Many, especially men, will shy away from covering this subject. I am not comfortable being among that band, so I’ll talk about it. This article is that conversation.

What They’re Not Telling You

Most people who use hormonal contraceptives such as the pill, the mini-pill, the hormonal IUD (Mirena, Liletta), the implant (Nexplanon), the Depo-Provera shot, and others believe they are harmlessly preventing pregnancy. While they are often right, they are not always right, and the mechanism that operates when the primary mechanism fails is something every Christian must reckon with seriously.

Here is what the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves acknowledge in their prescribing information:

Hormonal contraceptives work through a combination of mechanisms. The primary mechanism is ovulation suppression. Ovulation suppression prevents an egg from being released at all. The secondary mechanism is cervical mucus thickening. This increase in mucus makes it harder for sperm to reach an egg. But there is a third mechanism that operates, not before fertilization, but after it.

Hormonal contraceptives alter the endometrium (The endometrium is the lining of the uterine wall). By altering the endometrium, these contraceptives make it thin, hostile, and inhospitable to implantation.1

Now that you are aware of the three-fold mechanics of hormonal contraceptives, we must consider them in light of Christian ethics. To put my cards on the table early on, a child has been conceived. Thus, a genetically distinct human being, bearing the image of a holy God, exists. And the altered uterine environment prevents that child from implanting in the womb, causing his or her death.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not a loyal subscriber to the Quiver Full Movement. This is not a Catholic talking point imported into Protestant theology. It is printed in the package inserts. This is documented in the medical literature. The FDA-approved labeling for most combined oral contraceptives includes language stating that the drug may inhibit implantation as a mechanism of action.2

The Theological Weight of This Fact

The Christian conviction that human life begins at fertilization is not a tertiary religious preference. It is the only coherent conclusion from the data of Scripture and the science of embryology considered together. At fertilization, a genetically unique, self-directing human organism has come into existence.

While most biologists won’t contest this, what is contested is the significance of that fact, and that is where Scripture speaks to us with authority. For instance, Psalm 139:13–16 locates God’s sovereign, forming work in the womb from the earliest moments of existence. Jeremiah 1:5 and Luke 1:41–44 both affirm personal existence and even Spirit-filled responsiveness in utero, at stages far earlier than birth.

Most significantly, we must consider the incarnation of God the Son. In taking on human flesh, our Lord assumed human nature at conception, not at some later developmental threshold. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession affirms that man is made in the image of God (chapter 4), and that image is not conferred at birth, nor at viability, nor at implantation. It belongs to every human being from the moment that human being exists. If a human being exists at fertilization, and he does, then he bears the image of God at fertilization, and his destruction at any point thereafter is the destruction of an image-bearer.

When God declares to us, “Thou shalt not murder,” He is not limiting this to born persons. The Westminster Larger Catechism’s exposition of the sixth commandment includes the duty of preserving life in all lawful endeavors, and its corresponding prohibitions include all acts that destroy human life. If the hormonal contraceptive’s third mechanism ends the life of a conceived child, it falls under the prohibition of the sixth commandment.

This is not a conclusion reached by stretching. It is a conclusion that follows the Christian faith. The Didache, an early summation of Apostolic doctrine from the early second century (contested), says this concerning God’s commandment, “you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.”

The Objection of Uncertainty

The most common response to this argument is probability. When I bring this up, I’ll often hear, “The primary mechanism works most of the time. The thing is that we don’t know how often the third mechanism operates, or even if it does. So, you’re condemning something based on a rare or hypothetical scenario.”

There are several problems with this response.

First, the uncertainty itself is morally relevant. If you hear a pitter-patter outside of your bedroom door in the night, you don’t blow a hole through it with your 12-gauge. Why? Because your child is most likely the one behind the door! The presence of moral uncertainty regarding lethal action calls for restraint, not blind hopefulness. In Christian moral philosophy, in cases of uncertainty regarding whether an action destroys a human life, the presumption must favor life.

Second, the uncertainty is asymmetric. The benefit of continuing to use a potentially abortifacient contraceptive is convenience. Brother/sister, the life potentially lost is a human being made in the image of God. These are not some cheap items that we’re freely allowed to decide whether their lives are worth living or not. Lebensunwertes Leben, or lives unworthy of life, was a concept used to justify the systematic murder of individuals deemed disabled, mentally ill, or racially inferior in Nazi Germany. So, the burden of proof falls on those who would risk the destruction of an image-bearer, not on those who counsel caution.

Third, the manufacturers themselves do not claim that the third mechanism never operates. They list it as a mechanism precisely because it functions as a backup when the primary mechanisms fail. If ovulation is not suppressed and fertilization occurs, the altered endometrium serves as a secondary safeguard against implantation. This is not theoretical. It is the drug’s intended function. No pregnancy, no matter the cost.

Fourth, the honest answer to “how often?” is: we do not know, and cannot know. We cannot detect fertilization with regularity outside of clinical studies. We cannot know whether a given cycle produced a conceived child who failed to implant due to drug-altered endometrium. The absence of knowledge is not the absence of reality. Silent losses do not require our recognition to be real losses.

A Pastoral Word

I want to speak cautiously here, because this truth lands in the lives of real people. Some couples learn about this and grieve the possible losses they didn’t know about. When my wife and I learned of this just after the birth of our first child, we were mortified. We will never know the result of our previous usage of such drugs until we stand before the Lord. I simply rest in knowing that God’s grace is sufficient, and I pray that one day, if this mechanism did claim the life of our child, I will be able to see them face to face.

Hear me well here: The grace of God is not conditioned on perfect knowledge. Men and women who used hormonal contraceptives in genuine ignorance of this mechanism stand no differently before God than those who sinned in any other area of ignorance. The same need that all men and women have is the same need you have today: the blood of Christ that covers all sin, and that blood is sufficient.

There is no special condemnation reserved for this category of unknowing action. But the response to grace is not continued ignorance. If you’ve read this article, you cannot claim ignorance anymore; you will be held responsible before God for the light He has shown.

The response to grace is a renewed mind. A renewed mind comes with a willingness to examine our lives, our practices, and our assumptions in the light of Scripture, and to repent and reform wherever that light exposes inconsistency. For couples who are currently using hormonal contraceptives: this is a conversation worth having, in good conscience, before the Lord and one another.

One argument I have been most confronted with is an emotional, “But I’ll have a million kids!” First, there are non-abortifacient alternatives. Barrier methods, cycle-tracking methods (including well-developed modern fertility awareness methods). Second, the prospect of numerous potential children does not condone the murder of one real child. This conversation is not comfortable, but it is necessary.

A Call For Pro-Life Consistency

We live in a moment where the destruction of unborn life has been dressed in the language of healthcare, autonomy, and reproductive rights. The church must not simply resist that framing at the level of surgical abortion while uncritically absorbing it at the level of chemical reproduction management. If we are pro-life through and through, we must be pro-life whether it pertains to abortifacient contraceptives or abortions.

The logic that justifies abortifacient contraception is, at its root, the same logic that justifies early-term abortion. You’ll often hear that the fertilized egg is not yet really a person, implantation is what matters, and the woman’s body is the relevant category. That logic should be alien to those who confess that every human being is made in the image of God and that God forms us in the womb. The coherence of a pro-life position demands that we ask uncomfortable questions about the entire spectrum of reproductive interventions, not only the ones that show up on clinic schedules and ultrasound screens, but the ones that operate silently, inside the bodies of women who have no idea a life may have been at stake. This is not an anti-woman argument, but a pro-image-bearer argument.

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The water motif reveals that God saves through judgment. Christ entered the baptismal waters in solidarity with us as sinners, bears the flood of divine judgment in His death, and rises to inaugurate the new creation. The life-giving Spirit flows through His people in their sharing of the Gospel. The work of Christ secures the expansive restoration of Eden’s lost river. This paper will trace the water motif from creation to new creation to show that salvation comes through judgment, namely, the Son of God, the true Water of Life.

CREATION, SANCTUARY, AND LOSS

In Genesis 1:2, we read, “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2, NKJV). This passage presents us with the uncomforting image of the primordial “deep” which is unformed, dark, and inhospitable to us. Yet it is there that the Spirit hovers. While these waters are not evil, they are inhospitable to life. That is, until they are ordered by the Word of the Lord. When God speaks in Genesis 1:9-10, the waters abate, the dry land appears, and it is good.

The ordering of these waters shows that they are both necessary for life and dangerous when unleashed. Even here, we are introduced to the idea that both blessing and judgment are united in the water. Furthermore, in bringing forth order, God declares Himself sovereign over life by ordering the chaotic waters and bringing forth grounds hospitable to life.1

The River in Eden

The pattern of God as sovereign controller of water and life continues into Genesis 2. In Eden, there flowed a river which nourished the garden. The waters that were originally inhospitable are now the means by which the lush paradise of Eden thrived, and humanity lived in a world that is most perfectly described as “good.” God has subjugated the waters and brought them to submit as servants for the good of His image bearers.2

In the Ancient Near Eastern mind, Eden would be clearly seen as a temple. With its trees (later the Menorah), its easterly exit, the Cherubim, the luxurious decorations of onyx and bdellium, and the presence of God, there are clear correlations between the Edenic proto-temple and that which is later seen in the Levitical cult. Eden, thus, appears as a sacred space, a proto-temple, from which life flowed.

At the center of this Edenic temple stood the river-nourished Tree of Life, which stood as a means of encouragement by its articulation that life is mediated through God’s covenantal rule. As long as mankind remained within its covenantal boundaries, there would be sustenance. The river in Eden, therefore, establishes that life flows from God, through ordered means, to His people.

East of Eden

If Eden is a life-giving, river-sustained proto-temple, then the failure and proceeding banishment of our first parents is more than mere failure. In the fall, Adam and Eve experience expulsion from the source of life. When they are escorted from Eden and barred by the angelic guard, they are cut off from the Tree of Life which once stood as a testament of the reward given by the Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Humanity, once called to reflect the glory of God and expand His temple, is now banished into the world they were called to conquer; this time without the sustaining river of God.

As the Biblical drama plays out, eastward motion regularly signals a distressing distancing of oneself from shalom. Now, the dustlings, who once enjoyed river-fed dirt which yielded fruit happily will now fight against rebellious dust until it one day reaches up to take them unto itself. Abundance, order, peace, and prosperity have been exchanged for scarcity, fear, and death. If the river symbolized sustenance, communion, and assurance, then being distanced from it signifies estrangement from each of those things.

DE-CREATION

Following the divine eviction of Adam and Eve, the suffering of mankind has resulted in universal longing for deliverance. This longing for the Deliverer is characterized by Lamech in Genesis 5:29, where we read, “And he called his name Noah, saying, ‘This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.’” The very naming of Noah expresses a hopeful longing for the promise to come to pass.

When the flood narrative later unfolds in Genesis 6-9, the waters that burst onto the scene are not typifying peace, but calamity. In the breaking open of the fountains of the deep, the author is referring back to the unordered chaos of Genesis 1. What was once an ordered means of provision for Adam has now become the tool of judgment, which will devour humanity and de-create the world.

Yet in the face of judgment, God’s mercy remains. Those same waters that consumed wicked men bore up the ark of Noah’s salvation. And so, Noah passes through unscathed. In this, the flood reinforces an established pattern which is that water unleashed brings death, but under God’s control, it is also the means of deliverance. Here we see a new beginning coming from the puddles of a de-created world. The waters that once threatened life are now the instrument by which evil is destroyed, and God’s promised deliverance is advanced.3

JUDGMENT AND DELIVERANCE

The Exodus and the Sea

The pattern of judgment and salvation through water reaches a defining moment in the Exodus. As the flood brought destruction and preservation to the world, so too will the waters of the sea be the means by which God will consume His enemies and deliver His people.4 After the Lord delivers Israel from Egyptian bondage, they find themselves trapped between the raging waters of the Red Sea and the raging anger of Pharaoh’s army. In essence, Israel had no hope of deliverance, and it is there that God displays His power in the parting of the sea.

In an overview of the Israelite and Egyptian drama, God sends the plagues to “de-create” Egypt.5 As Israel escapes to the Red Sea, the control of the waters certainly recalls creation imagery where God gathered the waters so dry land might appear. Here, He again subdued the sea so the people of God might be safely delivered. This once fierce representation of chaos and destruction is bridled by God for the salvation of His people and the glory of His name.

Water from the Rock

As Israel rises from the sea, we witness the birth of a people from captivity to live in “newness of life.” In the waters, humanity is divided, and God will dispense salvation to His people and death to His enemies.6 As a kind Father, God does not leave His infant children wandering without care. Instead, He guides them and guards them in the pillars, but that is not all. As the adrenaline fades, Israel experiences an ever-occurring case of faithless amnesia. In Exodus 17, Israel raises her voice against Moses and God in a display of faithlessness as they contend with thirst. In response to this, God provides a Rock from which the thirst of His people is satisfied.

The wilderness reveals the state of humanity east of Eden. However, the God who once nourished His people in that river-fed garden meets His people in the wilderness through this water-filled Rock. Typologically, the Rock that is struck is the source by which Israel’s needs are met. Likewise, 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul identifies the stricken Rock as a type of Christ, “...and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. In the stricken Christ, the needs of His Israel are met.7

PROPHETIC HOPE: RETURN OF LIFE-GIVING WATERS

In the latter days of Israel, the prophets noticed the water motif and, through divine guidance, projected them forward with hope. One of the clearest examples of this is in Ezekiel 47 where Ezekiel sees water flowing out of the temple in a vision. There, the stream begins small, but steadily deepens into a river. This water, which proceeds from God’s sanctuary, recalls that Edenic river. From there, this eastward-flowing river brings transformation. When it reaches the Dead Sea, even that once lifeless water will teem with life.

As Ezekiel recounts the multiplying fish and fruitful trees that bring healing and nourishment, there is a clear prophecy of Edenic restoration.8 In Ezekiel’s vision, life flows broadly from the presence of God and brings renewal to what is lifeless. The prophets thus cultivate an expectation that God will one day cause life-giving water to flow again.

CHRIST AS THE SOURCE OF THE WATER OF LIFE

The patterns established throughout the Old Testament reach their fulfillment in the person and work of Christ. In the Gospel of John, the Lord presents Himself not merely as One who provides water, but as the source of life-giving water.9 When speaking with a Samaritan woman, Christ declares that whoever drinks the water He gives “will never thirst,” because it becomes “a well of water springing up into eternal life” (John 4:13-14). Now, the motif of life-giving water focuses on Christ.

This theme deepens during the Feast of Tabernacles in John 7. There, Christ cries out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink (John 7:37). Adding editorial commentary, John explains that Christ spoke of the Spirit whom He would give to those who believe.10 So, the prophetic hope of life-giving waters from God is fulfilled in Christ and extended to His people through the Holy Spirit, which most notably occurred at Pentecost in Acts 2.

The motif reaches its most stunning climax in the death of Christ. When the Lord’s side is pierced, blood and water flow out (John 19:34). Just as water flowed from the stricken Rock in Exodus 17, so too does life-giving water flow from our stricken Lord in John 19. Just as life-giving water flowed from the Temple in Ezekiel 47, so too does life-giving water flow from Immanuel, God with us.

The judgment motif likewise remains, as 2 Thessalonians 1:3-12 explains that those who reject the gospel will receive the wrath of God. Thus, from Christ, there flows deliverance to those who heed His gospel, and judgment to those who refuse it. To those who receive it, their hearts will flow with living water (John 7:38). In this, we find that the Spirit-empowered Church, being the Temple of God in Christ, is the means through which God will pour out His life-giving Gospel into this fallen world.

CONSUMMATION

In Revelation 22:1-5, God brings about the consummation of all things. In verse 1, John sees a river flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, which is as pure as crystal, thus symbolizing the purity of this life, which flows solely from God as its source. Furthermore, it is necessary to note that it flows from the “throne of God and of the Lamb.” Thus, the nourishing river, which was lost by man’s rebellion, is only now enjoyed as man enjoys the rule of God.11

Finally, verse 2 reveals that the Tree of Life is on each side of this river. In this, John communicates that the nourishing, life-giving power of the tree is rooted in the river, which flows from God. This is doubtless a fulfillment of the fruitful trees mentioned in Ezekiel 47:12. Furthermore, it is worth noting that while the Tree of Life is singular, it is said to be in more than one place. From this, readers find that what was lost in Eden has only been expanded through Christ. Only those who are overcomers in Christ shall partake of this fruit (Rev. 2:7).12

CONCLUSION

This paper has demonstrated that the water motif reveals God’s saving work through both judgment and life-giving provision. From the Spirit hovering over and ordering the chaotic waters, to the river sustaining Eden, to the flood that both delivered Israel and damned Egypt, Scripture shows that life flows from God. In Christ, this pattern reaches its telos. He has entered the waters of baptism, bore the flood of divine judgment on the cross, and risen to inaugurate a new creation. Through His pierced side, there flows the Spirit, who extends salvation to His people. In Revelation 22, God reveals the consummation of this drama, as the river restores and expands what was lost in Eden. The tranquility fostered by this life-giving river has drowned out the clamoring of those who rebel against God and invites His saints to rest in His presence forevermore.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carson, Donald A., and G. K. Beale, eds.. Commentary on the New Testament Use of The Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Nottingham, England. Baker Academic. Apollos, 2007.

Carson, D. A. The Gospel according to John. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991.

Cooper, Lamar Eugene. Ezekiel. Vol. 17. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994.

Hoeksema, Herman, and Homer C. Hoeksema. Behold, He Cometh!: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation. Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Pub. Association, 2000.

Mathews, K. A. Genesis 1-11:26. Vol. 1A. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996.

Morales, L. Michael. The Tabernacle Pre-Figured Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus. Ph.D Dissertation, University of Bristol, 2011.

Osborne, Grant. Revelation. Baker Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

Stuart, Douglas K. Exodus. Vol. 2. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006.