Jared C. Wilson's Blog

The best books I read this year. As every year, please keep in mind that not all of these were published in 2021—they were just the best books I read in 2021. And like last year, I am not including re-reads.

In ascending order . . .

Honorable Mentions: Truth on Fire by Adam Ramsey, Servants for His Glory by Miguel Nuñez, Justification Vindicated by Robert Traill, and Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States by Colin Quinn.

10. Belichick and Brady: Two Men, the Patriots, and How They Revolutionized Football by Michael Holley

Was it Brady? Was it Belichick? [little girl meme:] Why not both?
This meticulous chronicle of the rise of the middling New England Patriots into perhaps the NFL’s most versatile legacy team is a fine meal for those who want to see how the sausage was made. I picked it up expecting it to be more biographical of the coach and quarterback and found instead a detailed account of the whole team’s ups and downs game by game, season by season in the Brady/Belichick era. Great for fans of the Patriots or just fans of football.

9. The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by John Billman

My interest in both true crime and mysterious disappearance stories drew me to this book, which is more the latter the former. It’s a riveting and chilling survey of a sampling of the mind-boggling number of people who simply disappear in American forests and wildernesses. Some stories are told in short fashion, while Billman also follows a couple of stories over the length of the book, recounting the desperate searchings by families, friends, and law enforcement. If you want to be spooked about the great outdoors, this is your book. I found it a fascinating reminder of how small we really are.

8. The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson

Led by the subtitle, I went into this book expecting more reflections on art and artistry, along the lines of Peterson’s excellent Adorning the Dark. Instead it’s more of a memoir-slash-book about trees. Yes, you read that right. Once I adjusted, I found it a really moving read — personal, honest, and poetic. Quite touching, if this is your kind of thing.

7. The Challenge of Preaching by John Stott

This slender volume is actually a distillation of Stott’s work in his “big” preaching book Between Two Worlds. More on the philosophy of preaching than the practicalities, I still found it chock-full of important takeaways. Stott has a rare knack for applying timeless truths to the pressing needs of the day.

6. 11/22/63 by Stephen King

A writer finds a time portal in a diner and decides the best thing to do is go back and stop the assassination of JFK. From that nifty premise comes an epic book dealing with questions of love, ethics, and the nature of time and space itself. Some parts lag, but the story just kept me plugging along. And while the ending was not exactly what I expected, it was still satisfying in its own right. One of later King’s better works.

5. True Spirituality: How to Live for Jesus Moment by Moment by Francis Schaeffer

I’ve actually had this book for a long time, and I can’t believe I’d never read it until this year. Written with Schaeffer’s signature insight, True Spirituality serves as an excellent primer to the Christian life, a kind of “basics for believers” that goes deeper (but not academically so) than the average introductory text. A really refreshing read.

4. Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn’t: The Beauty of Christian Theism by Gavin Ortlund

I guess it wouldn’t be a top ten list without an Ortlund entry! This time it’s another excellent work from Gavin, who also made last year’s list. Why God Makes Sense is a bit like Tim Keller’s Reason for God but for your even more academic-minded and intellectual atheist/agnostic friends. If I were ranking recommendations based on “level of intellect,” Gavin’s would be top, Keller’s middle, and my (of course) Unparalleled third. The former two are really about the case for Christian theism against atheism/naturalism while mine is more about the case for Christianity among comparative religions, but all three would fall into the genre of “spiritual apologetics,” employing logic, history, and the expected apologetic reasonings but really specializing in the transcendent *beauty* of Christianity, alongside its intellectual coherence. Gavin Ortlund has written a book here that I think should serve the church well for decades and decades to come. Fantastic.

3. The Pastor as Counselor: The Call for Soul Care by David Powlison

This little monograph, published posthumously this year by Crossway, is a thoroughly rewarding reflection on the utter necessity of pastoral ministry for real human flourishing and the vital truth of the supernaturality of Christianity. Powlison’s work served to remind me again of the uniqueness of pastoral care and, through these reminders, actually refreshed me with the grace of Christ in a surprising way.

2. Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him by Jackie Hill Perry

The best new release I read in 2021 was the best Christian book I read all year and thus my pick for the 2021 For the Church Book Awards. Perry’s book is just a thoughtful, wonderful staring at the glory of God. What could be better? As the pursuit of personal holiness comes not primarily through behaving but beholding, I relished page after page of her combining classical theism with poetic language. Holier Than Thou would make an excellent use of any Christian’s time, especially in a day of casual flippancy (even in the church) about God.

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

I read Of Mice and Men in junior high school and then didn’t pick up another Steinbeck book for thirty-some years. So I’m a latecomer to appreciate his mastery of setting, pacing, and especially characterization. This is my first time through this masterpiece, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner which follows the epic saga of the Trask and Hamilton families in the Salinas Valley of California across multiple decades in the early 20th century. But Eden is really a recasting, a transplanting of that Genesis saga across time and space to the hard soils of the American west coast and the American heart. The best book I’ve read this year.
—

If I may, I’d also like to point you to two books I had published this year: Gospel-Driven Ministry, my almost-everything-I-know introduction to pastoring, and Love Me Anyway, which I wrote for anybody who’s ever laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if God cares.

Previous lists:
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016

If you’ve ever laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if you could ever feel loved, I wrote this brand new book for you. Here are 20 choice lines from Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing . . .

1. “When you do relationships through the love of God, you learn over and over again that love has a lot less to do with feelings and a lot more to do with forgiveness.” (p.17)

2. “Love is patient, because love gives people space to be themselves. If you love someone, you give them room to breathe.” (p.24)

3. “Think of the child who in a fit of frustrated rage says to her mother, ‘I hate you!’
The mother is obviously hurt, struck to her very heart. But fighting back tears, she doesn’t say, ‘Sometimes I hate you too!’ or ‘You don’t know the half of it!’ Instead, she says, ‘Well, you may hate me, but I love you. And nothing will change that.’ It’s not true to say that what the child says or does doesn’t hurt. But the love will not be changed. If anything, the love may become even more lavish, more furiously defiant to match the rage. If a child’s hate will be turned to love, only love will do the trick. But if our giving of love is contingent upon reciprocity, we will be sunk.” (p.28)

4. “Think of what love might result if we all put each other’s interests ahead of our own. We’d find ourselves in a beautiful stalemate.” (p.37)

5. “It’s not too late to change. We don’t have keep following these clods of dirt down the chaotic spiral of fear, anger, and confusion. We don’t have to keep tearing each other up. Sure, that may be good for views and clicks. And it’s easier than kindness. But hatred is how the world works. The spirit of the age is all about biting and devouring. But you and I are different. Aren’t we?” (p.40)

6. “Envy is a genius of an enemy because it passes itself off as being on our side.” (p.46)

7. “Most of us are prepared to love others only up to the point where it begins to actually cost us.” (p.59)

8. “We are faced every day with so many opportunities to remember we are not the center of the universe, that God has commanded us to love others as we love ourselves, knowing that when it came right down to it, the One who is the center of the universe was willing to do it first.” (p.62)

9. “See the love of the one whose face was battered for you, who, even while your sin was murdering him, spoke forgiveness to you. He was willing to lose his life to gain even you. If that’s not love, love doesn’t exist.” (p.65)

10. “Love comes as a great interrupter. It pacifies our bloodthirst. It can soothe our nerves. It can rewire our thinking about the other person. In love, we don’t want to just win the argument, we want to win the person. So we bring the reality of love to our consideration of past and present wrongs. We let love reframe our consideration of them. It doesn’t tell us wrongs are rights! But it does give us the perspective of God’s storyline, a big picture vantage point about his glory and his name being known, which puts our own desire for vengeance in stunning perspective. Humbled by the portrait of God’s love we see in the Scriptures, for instance, we find the supernatural strength to confront even great evils with greater mercy.” (p.68)

11. “I had come to the end of my rope and found there the sufficiency of Christ. I brokenly submitted to the reality that my life was in his hands, not my own. I came to the end of myself and found there the goodness of Jesus. It is a great irony of life this side of the veil that we see the loveliness of Christ most bright the lower we get. And he’d been with me all along. When I felt most alone, in fact, he was closer than ever.” (p.82)

12. “You don’t know what love is until you really know who you’re loving. Sin and all. And you don’t know what love is until you really know the One who loves us perfectly. Our sin and all.” (p.85)

13. “When someone makes their love conditional upon our performance, our agreement, our satisfying their preferences, suddenly we end up in a transactional relationship that runs counter to 1 Corinthians 13 love.” (p.91)

14. “Have you ever wondered if you will ever feel loved? The enemy did an incredible job of using those feelings against me. When I faced the dissatisfaction of earthly loves, when my self-interested romances never quite seemed to pan out, he would play on my fears, target my insecurities. He deftly moved from ‘Nobody loves you’ to ‘Nobody could love you.’ Is it any wonder that my misadventures in romance were directly connected to a lack of assurance of my salvation? I was trying to avoid accepting back then what I’m perfectly fine acknowledging today — I am not a naturally lovely person. I’m a mess, in fact. But I’m more sure today not just of my lack of loveliness but of Christ’s loveliness for me.” (p.96)

15. “Jesus sees everything. He stands at the altar with us, sees right through our veil, right through our fig leaves. He sees it all. Every doubt, every mistake, every sin, every choice made over a lifetime in which we say ‘You don’t satisfy, God; this will satisfy me right now’ and asked, ‘Do you take this sinner to be yours?’ Jesus says resolutely, lovingly: ‘I do.'” (p.100)

16. “I very often think that the areas of our lives we are most desperate to protect are the very areas Jesus most wants to deal with in us.” (p.110)

17. “I think it’s because if Christian brothers and sisters aren’t honest and transparent and confessional with each other, we don’t really have fellowship with each other’s true selves, do we? We hide certain things from each other, mainly out of self-protection, out of fear, out of risk-avoidance and a sense of shame, and thus we end up not really knowing each other. We just know the best version of each other we can each manage to work up when it’s time to play church.” (p.111)

18. “While I’m piling up as many fig leaves as I think it might take to impress you and distract you, Jesus is exposing himself to all the hurt, all the pain, all the weakness, all the condemnation that I am desperately trying to avoid. You cannot be any more exposed than Christ was on the cross. And he went there. For us.” (p.115)

19. “The love we experience now in our faulty, failing ways, in our fear and in our flesh, is just a pale reflection of what is to come. That day we will know as we are known, love as we are loved. It will be beyond the utmost bliss that you can imagine.” (p.117)

20. “And at your last breath, when all else fails, when all you can’t take with you must be left behind, his love will carry you even deeper into his love. When you have no more need for food, no more need for water, no more need for shelter, his love will still be all of that for you, and more.” (p.119)

Learn more about Love Me Anyway, read an excerpt, or order the book via LoveMeAnywayBook.com

I’m really excited to share that my new book Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing officially releases today!

There may be no more powerful desire in the human heart than to be loved. And not just loved, but loved anyway. In spite of what we’ve done or left undone, in spite of the ways we’ve failed or floundered, we long for an unconditional, lavish love that we know deep down we don’t deserve.

I put my heart and soul into this book, exploring the incredible news that this kind of love actually exists, and it is an experience that is ours for the having. Chapter by chapter, we’ll journey through 1 Corinthians 13 to see what real love looks like. With engaging stories and lots of personal anecdotes, I hope to paint a picture of an extravagant God who not only puts the desire for love into our very souls but fulfills those desires in striking, life-changing ways.

If you were blessed by my book The Imperfect Disciple, I think you will especially appreciate Love Me Anyway, as it is as close to the style and substance of that previous work as anything else I’ve ever written.

Here’s what some other people are saying about Love Me Anyway . . .

“There is nothing more puzzling, misunderstood, and abused—or more wonderful, powerful, and good—than love. Love Me Anyway is a delightful, honest exploration of all the ways we human beings love, brushing away much of the clutter and confusion to explain what it really means to love—and be loved—well.” — Karen Swallow Prior

“C.S. Lewis famously said that if we love anything (or anyone), our hearts will be wrung and possibly even broken. Far from being an easy-breezy, schmoopy sentimental thing, love is a lifelong battle for those who dare to enter the arena. To love God and neighbor starts with denying ourselves, taking up crosses, and following the One whose own love ultimately cost him his life. Of course, the only alternative to the costs, inconveniences, and risks of love is isolation and selfishness, which bring the greatest forms of misery. But those who lean into love will find over time that, though it will cost them much, it is also the pathway to great gain. Jared has done a wonderful job spelling this out for us in this wonderful volume.” — Scott Sauls

“Wilson is at his best here — funny and insightful and kind about the enormously important (and confusing) subject of love. The only downside is I had ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ going through my head the entire time. I think he planned that, though.” — Brant Hansen

“I consider Jared Wilson to be my generation’s Yoda of gospel-centered writing. What drives Jared in this approach to ministry is his personal belief experience with the grace of God, and his belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Love Me Anyway, Jared explains how this grace impacts every single area of our lives, especially in our relationships with others and the church. Drawing from his theological convictions about the implications of gospel, Jared draws from a well known, but often misunderstood passage of Scripture, calling us to an approach to relationships that can only be understood by the grace of God in our own lives.” — Dean Inserra

“Most of us not only know what love is, but we think we’re pretty good at it. But there are depths and applications of love to be explored – both what it means to be loved and how to love. This book is classic Jared Wilson – thoughtful, creative, biblical, and personal. Love Me Anyway will expand the horizons of your heart for what love is all about.” — Mark Vroegop

“There are many songs, books, poems, and treatises on love and Jared Wilson shows us the substance behind all the longings that fill them. This isn’t just a book on how to love but how to be loved by the one who, knowing everything, loved us all the way through. Wilson has written a lot of books that I have loved but this one might be his best.” — John Starke

“The Beatles and Elvis sang about it. Just about every movie and sitcom cannot have a happy ending without it. Love is at the epicenter of our culture and human identity, but every love song and rom-com falls short when it comes to identity shaping love. That is the sort of love that can only be seen in God and His gospel. By taking aim at 1 Corinthians 13, Jared takes time to show us the roots of God’s love for us through the Scriptures in this very insightful book. The love of God and our love for God is the highest good of every human life and by the end of this book, you will know the beauty of being loved by God and a lover of God.” — Daniel Ritchie

“The best writers are faithful stewards of their scars. They craft healing words from wounded pasts. Jared has done just that in this richly textured exploration of love—real love, divine love, the kind that unmakes and remakes us. No one can write a book so honest, so poignant, who has not traveled through the ruins of lost loves and misused loves and come out on the other side radically altered by an encounter with the shockingly gratuitous love of a God who lives to forgive. Jared has. His book is a gift to us all.” — Chad Bird

Learn more, read an excerpt, and order the book today at LoveMeAnywayBook.com

I am so stunningly not like Jesus.

I feel this reality most deeply whenever I interact with another person, which of course is when my being like Jesus matters most!

It usually happens like this: I come home from work, which aside from teaching a couple of classes and conducting a few casual conversations, I have largely spent in my own mental world. I spend a lot of time by myself. And it’s draining. So when I get home, I want to be by myself. But home is where the people live who matter the most to me. And they get my leftover interest, my leftover energy, my leftover love.

Tired and self-pitying, I then see every request, no matter how small, as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Every request for my help or interest becomes a bridge too far. When I pull into my driveway, I shift my self- interest into drive when I put my car into park.

This happens throughout my day, as well, as texts and emails and phone calls pile up, little intrusions through my force field of self-worship. Every interruption is an usurping of my being the center of the universe. It happened even as I was composing this chapter. I was at my seminary office writing when I received a text message from my wife about a couple of household issues we’re currently dealing with. Our hot water’s been out for six days now, and a freezer we keep in the garage apparently shut off and everything in it spoiled before we noticed the smell of death wafting into the house. She was asking about a plan for cleaning out the garage. I was immediately irritated. Didn’t she know I was writing?

Well, no, she didn’t know what I was doing, because I wasn’t at home. And on top of that, there was no note on the message marking it “Urgent” or saying “You must respond immediately.” That’s just how I read it, because I was busy and didn’t want to be bothered. Because I’d rather wrongly attribute selfishness to others than rightly to myself.

And then I think of Jesus with all the pressing needs and interruptions in the course of his business. I think of him stopping to heal a frightened woman with a bleeding issue while on the way to help a man who’s daughter was about to die (and who did die while he had stopped to talk to the woman). Jesus didn’t get bothered by the interruptions in his ministry. He actually saw the interruptions as his ministry.

Jesus was perfect, and yet he did not look down on others. I am ridiculously imperfect, but I do look down on others. Jesus was perfectly holy, and yet was not arrogant. I am frustratingly unholy, but I am arrogant a lot. Like, a lot.

I am not Jesus. But I do want to be like him.

Jesus had so many opportunities to go around like a puffed up narcissist, and as God incarnate, you might think that he should. But even as he was saying things like “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and basically preaching himself as the true center of the universe, you never get the impression he’s pridefully boasting. He is humble. He is lowly. He is gentle.

As the very embodiment of love, Jesus cannot be what love is not. But I can.

Paul says that love “is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable.” Even in my solitude, even in my quiet, my self-centeredness is a spiritual boasting in myself. It’s this kind of boasting in myself which leads to my arrogance, which then prompts my rudeness and reinforces my self-seeking through irritability.

True love is essentially a de-centering of self.

Deep down in the recesses of every human soul is a cloying, ravenous monster ruthless for its own glory. This monster clambers out of its dark pit constantly, hunting and gathering food and trinkets—even collecting feelings and experiences—especially hungry for adulation and affirmation, but it is never satisfied with these things, so its stomach is always grumbling for more. This monster is us. Rather, it is the sinful nature in us. Paul describes how this monster competes with his other inner desire—to love and obey God—this way:

“For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:22–24)

“This body of death” is as constant war with our freedom in Christ. This is why Jesus says we must crucify the monster every day. “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The monster to be killed inside of us is pride.

Every one of us harbors pride in our deepest-seated self, so appeasement of pride is the chief industry of all mankind. From the things we buy to the relationships we participate in to even our motivations to things like work or family or leisure, when we are losing the battle of self- denial, feeding the pride monster is our greatest passion. The pride- appeasement industry is booming, because demand is always high, and therefore so is supply.

On the magazine racks at the grocery store we now find titles like All You and Self, no longer bothering to veil attempts at the subject we are most interested in. (I sometimes joke with a friend who subscribes to these titles that we should start a magazine called Others. But we know it wouldn’t sell!) Because we are all by default conspicuous consumers, consumer culture is predicated on our inalienable belief that we are the sun around which everything orbits. The cable company Comcast now even has an ad campaign where actress Jane Lynch assures customers of that very thing, saying directly, “You are the center of the universe.”

This is all blasphemy. The Christian message begins with the stark realization that we are not the center of the universe. Like Leo in Titanic, we stand at the bow, spreading our arms to span the horizon, not realizing we’re headed for disaster. We proclaim, “I’m the king of the world!”
And then the ship sinks.

This is an excerpt from my brand new book Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing, which releases next week! Learn more, read another excerpt, and order via LoveMeAnywayBook.com

Recently I was guest preaching at a church, and a woman came up to me after the sermon and said to me, “You preach with such kindness.” I have not been able to shake that remark ever since (and not just because it was a compliment!). It seemed significant to me for a couple of reasons.

First, the text I was preaching from was Genesis 18:16-33, where Abraham is interceding for Sodom, and “kindness” is not exactly the first impression one would take away from the passage. Additionally, this church conducted two services, and I was concerned after I preached the first that I had not made a significant enough tonal shift from my focus on the just wrath of God for sinners to the good news of Christ’s absorbing God’s wrath at the cross. The first two-thirds of my sermon in fact had a very serious focus on sin, justice, and condemnation. Prolonged and sober, it was perhaps as close to “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as I’ve ever preached, and I was afraid I hadn’t shifted enough into a more joyous disposition when I got to the climax of the good news.

But the woman’s remark also seemed significant to me, because it was such a unique appraisal. When was the last time you classified preaching as kind? Do you think, by and large, preaching today could be characterized by kindness?

I did receive the remark as a compliment, as I said, and found it hugely encouraging. Kindness is of course an important facet of the pastoral disposition, and preaching is a primary task of pastoral ministry. I think I want to pursue more kindness in my preaching, and I think that, if you preach, you should too. Here are three reasons why:

1. Kindness goes with the grain of the Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit includes kindness (Gal. 5:22); thus, preaching that can be characterized as kind is aligned with the supernatural power of God. If you want the true power of your preaching to be Spiritual and not simply rhetorical, you will mirror the disposition of the Spirit to those whom he was indwelled.

Preaching can be many other things as well — stern, fiery, light-hearted, or heavy-hearted — depending on the tone of the text being preached, but it should never be un-kind, as the Spirit of God comes with kindness (2 Cor. 6:6). Kindness in preaching exhibits the compassion — the “alongside-love” — that faithful pastors have for their flocks.

2. Kindness is a command.

Micah 6.8. Zechariah 7:9. Ephesians 4:32. Colossians 3:2.

Kindness isn’t optional. We are told to “remember” it, “love” it, extend it, and even put it on. Do not be afraid that preaching with kindness is some kind of squishy softening. It may involve incorporating a more gentle tone to your voice or a more pastoral approach to your content — or both — but it is not, properly applied, the wrong kind of compromise.

Do you always sound mad at your people? (Would they say that, even if you wouldn’t?) If so, why? Remember that the hallmark of the Lord’s shepherds is that they comfort God’s people, speak tenderly to them, and come bearing the message of peace and forgiveness (Is. 40:1-2). And this isn’t a matter of personality types or styles of speaking that you can put on and off — it is a matter of obedience.

3. Kindness commends the gospel.

Do you want your people to be good repenters?

Of course you do. Well, Paul writes in Romans 2:4 that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.

In Titus 3:4-7, Paul describes the good news of Christ’s cross and resurrection as the appearance of God’s goodness and kindness.

Because the gospel is precisely that — good news — our proclaiming of it ought to be filled with the reality that it is the most kindhearted thing ever done by the God whose lovingkindness is forever. If you preach the good news in a frequently boring way or angry way or flippant way, you do not make it sound true. Many men preach the good news in ways that make it sound bad, which is really just a way to make it sound untrue. But if you preach with kindness, you will adorn the saving message with actuality, with beauty and believability.

The gospel’s power doesn’t need us, of course. It is power in spite of us, and the Holy Spirit relies neither on our eloquence nor our emotionality to do whatever he pleases. But because the Spirit condescends to use how we preach, we ought not forget to reflect God’s kindness when we preach it.

Then God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“Yes, it’s right!” he replied. “I’m angry enough to die!”
And the LORD said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow.”
— Jonah 4:9-10

Jonah didn’t do anything to get that plant; it was freely given to him. And he was acting like he deserved it, like he earned it somehow. Jonah is acting very self-righteously. He’s more concerned about his own comfort, which he thinks he himself deserves, than he is the idea of lost people going to hell, which he thinks he himself doesn’t.

Imagine for a moment if God treated us the way we often wish he’d treat others. Imagine if God treated us the way we treat others. We’d be in real trouble, wouldn’t we?

Jonah has a strong sense of justice, but it is distorted. Is it unjust for God to love the undeserving? The answer is no, first because God cannot be unjust. Everything he does is just, because he is a just God. And God is essentially holy but he is also in and of himself love. 1 John 4:8 tells us that.

But it’s also not unjust for God to forgive sinners because God has a plan for the punishment of their sin. Jonah becomes himself a living picture of this by spending those three days in that fish. Jesus says in Matthew 12:40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

And Jesus becomes the one who leaps into the stormy sea of condemnation to calm God’s wrath against us. And instead of running away from God’s plan for the forgiveness of those who don’t deserve it, Jesus, the only sinless man to ever live, runs towards those of us who need that forgiveness, ready to love, ready to die, ready to save.

It is not unjust for God to forgive sinners because he is punishing their sin – only by putting it on his only son Jesus.

These are our only two options, because God is just – either you take the punishment for your sin, which is everlasting torment in the place called hell, or Christ takes it for you at the cross.

Christians choose the cross. The place where mercy and justice intersect. The cross – the ultimate proof that God truly, deeply, greatly loves sinners like you and me.

If only Jonah could grasp these depths of God’s love! Nevertheless, he finds that it is grasping him, even if he’s kicking and screaming.

He’s discovering that God’s love is un-outrunnable. He can’t outsin it. If he wants you, he will have you. He is God. And his lovingkindness, the Bible says, endures forever.

Charles Spurgeon said, “After ten thousand sins he loves you as infinitely as ever.”

He really is a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster (Jonah 4:2).

So to run away from him is in fact to run into the disaster. If you keep ignoring him, going your own way, you are only headed to your own destruction.

Instead, run to him. Run to him. Right now. If you do, you will find not a wrathful, angry, condemning God but a loving, merciful, smiling Father. His love might be coming for you right this very second. Don’t run away. You can’t anyway. Just surrender.

Repent of your sin. Look to Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the dead and get under the shade of his love, which no worm or grave could ever destroy. He will cover you with his love forever.

The story of Jonah is in fact more proof that, believe it or not, God loves sinners.

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself . . . strengthen [you].” — 1 Peter 5:10

To suffer, with Christ, is a vastly superior life to never suffering without him.

And if he has saved you through his death, manifesting all his divine power in his own human weakness unto death, do you not think he can be your power in your suffering?

He will be your strength in the eternal life he gives you. Eternal life means just that—“eternal.” This means however much you suffer, even if it be all of your life, and even if your life is long, it will still be nothing but a blip on the radar of eternity. “After you have suffered a little while,” says Peter. It is the context of eternity, which is the length of our union with Christ and therefore the un-expiring duration of our security, which colors our suffering. So that Paul could refer to his missional life of suffering, “a light momentary affliction” (2 Cor. 4:17). It’s not even worth comparing to the eternal weight of glory.

It is the sustaining vision of eternal life in Christ that fixes even a lifetime of suffering to a fine point — a fine point that in the last day will be eclipsed by the glory of the radiant Christ, perhaps even distilled down to a jewel placed amidst your treasures, or placed in the crown of Christ himself as we offer our suffering up to him, finally in our fully sanctified state, truly not loving our own lives even unto death.

But the apostle here is not simply promising the escape of suffering –- he is promising the sustenance through it.

He will be your strength in the midst of your suffering, with sustaining grace to persevere. He is there, with you and around you and beneath you and over you and in you and beside you, and you are in him, and there is no furnace so hot that Christ will not walk into it with you.

I’m reminded of the passage in The Hiding Place, as Corrie ten Boom, with her father, contemplates the prospect of torture and death ahead of her:

I burst into tears, “I need you!” I sobbed. “You can’t die! You can’t!”
“Corrie,” he began gently. “When you and I go to Amsterdam, when do I give you your ticket?”
“Why, just before we get on the train.”
“Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need – just in time.”

When you must go through the furnace, you will not be alone.

In the weakness of suffering, Christ will be your strength.

I turn 46 this year, loosely ensconced in my middle age years, on the downhill slope to 50. I’ve thought a lot about this season of life, primarily from the standpoint of committing to passing the baton and investing in the Church’s younger generations. But I’ve also thought a lot about the peculiarities of this season of life, how for many it holds such uneasiness and insecurity. I’ve thought about the so-called “midlife crisis.” I used to think it was a weird thing that (mostly) men in their middle ages feel suddenly drawn to sports cars and career reinventions and (worst of all) trading in their wives for younger models. These things have become midlife cliches.

I still think that phenomenon is a weird thing, but I think I understand it a bit better now. Midlife brings new insecurities and awakenings to long-dormant regrets. Many of us face empty nests and the prospect of, in effect, starting over with spouses we’ve only related to for so long as co-parents rather than as partners or friends. Many of us face the reality of aging parents and any fears or worries or responsibilities that come with that. And of course we daily face the reality of lost youth, waning strength, more difficult processes for maintaining health. Time moves a lot faster the older you get. That’s a cliche too, but it’s true.

By God’s grace, I don’t feel the need to buy a sports car or to make a career change or to blow up my marriage. But I do think a lot about the distant past and the quickly approaching future. And I don’t know how anybody handles these things without walking with Jesus.

In midlife, Christ is a consolation for all the things I wish I’d done differently. He doesn’t change my past, but he can redeem it. And I’ve discovered he is faithful to do that. He does not judge me by my actions but by his own, freely given to me in love.

In midlife, Christ is a companion through all the worries and stresses. I’ve gotten more serious about my health over the last year and a half, and while I have no illusions about having the strength and energy I did at 25, I have no doubts that my friend Jesus is as strong as he’s ever been, and wherever I have to go, I know he will go with me. There is no partner like the King of the Universe who will never leave me or forsake me.

In midlife, Christ is a constant encourager. His Spirit has been bearing fruit in my life all along, and the longer I walk with him, the further down the narrow road I wander, the sweeter I find him, and the more precious. As so much is wasting away — including myself, day by day — his renewing presence sustains me, cheers me. I cannot imagine getting old without the daily newness of his mercies.

And I can’t imagine dying without him. Or, actually, I can. And that idea makes me increasingly happy that I know I won’t.

I would think I should be more sanctified by now! But I am grateful that the One who began the work in me will be faithful to complete it. That glorious truth is the only real antidote to the potential crises of middle age.

If you’re on the front side of middle age, I encourage you to begin investing in your friendship with Jesus now. Don’t put off communion with Christ. He’ll still be there, waiting for you, if you do — assuming you even make it to middle age. But imagine yourself in those days of thinning hair, stubborn paunch, creaky bones and joints, callouses of hand and scars of heart, having walked closely for years and years with the Savior. It will make the middle age something to savor.

This year will mark ten years since the publication of my second book, Gospel Wakefulness, which in many respects serves as a the lodestar of all my writing. It’s not my personal favorite of all my books, and it’s probably not my best written book, but everything else I’ve written has served mainly to contextualize and apply the primary principle in that book. Because of that, when people ask me “If I read just one of your books, which should it be?,” I usually point them to Gospel Wakefulness.

What is it about? It’s essentially about personal revival. It’s about the kind of quantum leap in sanctification that seems to occur when one is found at the intersection of a profound brokenness and a beholding of the glory of the gracious Christ. It is about that returned-prodigal sort of breakthrough where one comes to, in the book’s definition, “treasure Christ more greatly and savor his power more sweetly.”

That book was really my working out with literary fear and trembling what had happened to me about five years previous to the writing, when the almighty God reached through the roof of the guest bedroom of our Nashville home, where I was desperate and depressed, and grabbed hold of my soul to remind me of the good news of Jesus. It wasn’t a new message. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. But in the midst of my pain and ruin, it was as if I had heard it for the first time. That was my moment of gospel wakefulness, the dawning for me of the realization that the gospel wasn’t just for lost people, but also for messed-up Christians like me. The gospel in my heart grew ten sizes that day.

And by God’s grace, I keep going back to that moment in my heart and mind. It made me “gospel-centered” before I knew anything about a movement or a coalition or a tribe. Those things didn’t really even exist at that time. I didn’t become stubborn about gospel-centrality because somebody handed me a book or took me to a conference or told me to listen to somebody’s podcast. It happened because one moment I wanted to kill myself and the next I was rescued by a grace I was afraid had left me far behind.

Fifteen years or so from that moment, and now ten years from the book, I still aim to be driven by gospel wakefulness. Others may move on to other things, but I want to stay right here, neither forgetting how frail I am nor how beautiful my Jesus is. There’s quite a bit I would probably change in the book if I could go back — people I wouldn’t quote, stories I might not tell, means of expressions I might not use — but the meat and potatoes of it I still stand by. And I hope to still be standing by it another ten, twenty, thirty years from now. What better legacy could I leave, I tend to think, than that which is staked on my smallness and Christ’s strength? To that end, I will keep writing for more and more gospel wakefulness. And if you are one of the people who has been helped by that book (or any other book of mine, really), I thank you for reading.

On Maundy Thursday 500 years ago (1521), the Pope issued a Papal Bull listing Martin Luther and his followers for the first time as heretics. They had already been excommunicated, but now they were singled out as beyond redemption even in the afterlife. No indulgence could spring them. No, in fact, their only hope for escape from torment was a word from the Pope himself.

Fairly convenient, wouldn’t you say?

In his inimitable way, Luther scoffed, reprinted the bull with his own retorts written in the margins, and charged the Pope with being a drunk. As one does.

At the heart of the theological scrum was this: who damns and who saves? The Pope sets up himself as the arbiter, or, at least, Christ through himself. Luther says it is Christ alone.

It can be a fuzzy thing, this eternal life business. Who is in? Who is out? How do we know? What compels one in? What propels one out? We are veiled from what eternity looks like despite living in it right now. That second that just past is a pixel in eternity. The moment you pull the covers up to your chest in bed tonight is another. The moment still to come when you stop breathing is yet another.

What holds all this together? What connects all dots, accounts for all willed actions, foresees and forestalls? Jesus the exalted Christ, who upholds the world by the mere word of his power. When life appears frayed at the edges, when all of life feels as though spread too thin like butter on bread (HT: Bilbo Baggins), Christ brings into stark clarity all necessities for all of life. He is the necessity for all of life. He encompasses all the complexities in the simplicity of incarnate humanity and the wonder of exalted deity.

Have I lost you?

All I mean to say is, Jesus Christ is the apex of human existence, having been raised up on a cross and raised up out of the grave at the fulcrum of all of history. So when popes issue bulls to keep certain people out, citing all manner of disagreements and offenses, we may claim allegiance with Jesus Christ, who makes the matter quite simple, because he alone is the matter.

Paul gets much better at what I’m trying to get at here when he talks about “mystery.” For Paul, mystery is not something unsolved. It is something that was once unsolved but is now available and visible. But it’s still a mystery. It doesn’t cease being a mystery. This is because we cannot grasp Christ; Christ grasps us. When Paul speaks of mystery (as in Romans 16), he is talking about something we’ve been enlightened about but which is perhaps still too big for the container of our enlightenment. It is a light we can see and which fills us up, but is not limited to our filling.

Here is a good example from his words in 1 Timothy 3:16:

“Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.”

“Beyond all question” just refers to the fact that this hymn (if that’s what it is) is a confessional piece. It is theological and something to believe, to stake our life on. (The ESV in fact uses the word “confess” here, but I confess I like the NIV’s “beyond all question” better.) And then this: “the mystery of godliness.”

What is the mystery of godliness? What is the mystery of how God’s glory is manifested and spread? It is not a mystery in the sense that your favorite true crime case is a mystery or Amelia Earhart’s disappearance is a mystery.

This mystery is grasp-able because it itself comes near and grasps. A body that serves and heals and teaches and dies and is brought back to life by the Spirit and returns to the angelic abode. A body that is proclaimed far and wide. A body that is believed upon. A body that ascended to the God-dimension, where it sits presently at the Father’s right hand.

The mystery is that the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell in the fullness of humanity.

Christians, press further into the mystery unfolding before you every second: That no Pope or other papal personality (be it devil or man) holds your soul in his hand. Christ alone does, and since he has gone before you, the way is secure. It is secure because “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” I don’t want you to be ignorant of this mystery! (HT: Romans 11:25)

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—-to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
—Ephesians 1:9-10