All Authors
October 18, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
Broken Down Cities
Proverbs 25:28
Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls. As good Kuyperians, when it comes to the various authorities that God has set in place in this world, we speak of sphere sovereignty. In the sphere of the home, the husband is called to take up the good work of ruling well over his wife and children, taking up the sacrificial responsibility of protecting, directing, and equipping them for their work. In the sphere of the Church, the Lord has entrusted the keys of the Kingdom to the elders—we are presbyterian, that is, rule by presbyters, from the Greek word for elders. We are called to shepherd the flock for their good and to the glory of God. In the civil sphere, the civil magistrate is appointed by God to protect their citizens and fend off the wicked. These are all legitimate God-appointed authorities, each faithfully carrying out their task in their own sphere. Each ruler is entrusted with authority and responsibility for directing and shepherding those under their care. So we know this, but we can forget that all three of these sovereignties assume one thing. They all assume that the ones in charge first and foremost rule over themselves well. Before we can instill in our children, in our congregants, in our citizens a spirit of virtue and self-control, first and foremost we have to be self-controlled. How you rule—or don’t rule—over your own appetites, your own passions, your own desires and emotions, over your own body and mind and soul—that says a lot about how you will rule over others. And if you are a man without any self-control, as our proverb says, you are like a broken down city without walls. You are like a broken down city without walls, and therefore, how can you expect to train your wife to exercise restraint in her emotions? How can you train your children to obey right away—all the way—and cheerfully, if you do not obey even your own conscience right away—much less all the way—much much less cheerfully? Men, we are called to discipline ourselves first and foremost. That means not giving way to anger—or whatever you want to call it; we are tempted to call anger by another name because, of course, the Scriptures condemn the anger of man (Jam. 1:20). And so we call it frustration. It’s irritation. It’s a slight annoyance. As it happens, not only does the anger of man not produce the righteousness of God—neither does the frustration, irritation, or annoyance of man produce the righteousness of God. Discipling ourselves means not letting our hearts grow cold toward our wife, our kids, our brothers. It means setting a guard over our tongue, not simply apologizing after we set the place on fire. It means confessing our complaints and grumbles to God, not giving vent to them to whoever will listen. It means exercising moderation on how much we eat and drink, maintaining—but not obsessing about—a healthy body so that we have strength to serve others. It means, like Job, making a covenant with your eyes, refusing to be enticed by the forbidden images. It means riding roughshod over your heart when it whines like one of your toddlers, saying, “But I don’t want to.” I don’t care that you don’t want to. As the great Puritan, John Owen, put it: “Let a man not think that he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps toward his journey’s end.” So here’s the charge: Daily walk over the bellies of your lusts. Kill your sin. Be king over your own spirit first. Exercise self-control. Be a city with walls. Then you will prove a good king, capable of training up others to do the same.
October 15, 2026 • 15 Minute Read
A Theology of Community & Why Individualism is Bad
Introduction As we get started, I want to give a brief introduction to this series of Men’s Forums we’ll be doing this year—Local Christendom. I want to get to some definitions, but first I want to tie this into last year’s series, How to Rule Well in the Home. This series builds upon that one. A well-ruled home is the basic building block of Christendom, but it’s not the end of the matter. Well-ruled homes will be productive—that is, they bring blessing to those outside the home—and Christendom is built up by well-run, productive households laboring together for the Cause of the Gospel. If that’s clear, then onto some definitions. What do we mean by “local Christendom”? First, Christendom—as we’re using it—means the Kingdom of Christ on earth, taking on physical shape and physical dominion in this world that Christ came to save and reign over. Recall the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that prayer, and we labor to see it brought to pass. The Kingdom that Christ rules over will become incarnate over every square inch of this world. It will be seen in the homes we build, the roads and bridges, in art and literature, in music and films. Its banner will hang in our schools and hospitals, auto-shops and restaurants. Christ came to save, redeem, and wash this world, and He does so by saving, redeeming, and washing mankind—and then, from this renewed mankind, energized by His Spirit, we build up the City of God. It will be imperfect here. The work will be gradual, with setbacks and obstacles, with frequent skirmishes against the City of Man. But as Christ promised, the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. So that’s Christendom, and when I say local Christendom, I’m talking about that physical incarnation of Christ’s Kingdom around us—that part of Christendom with a 83815 zip code or 838-something, that part of Christendom being built up in the area that we inhabit. Outline Tonight our focus will be on Mission & Vision. In two weeks, October 25th, we’ll focus on Education as Christian Paideia. And then in November, our focus will be on building Christendom—involving politics, the arts, ministry, business, and all that stuff. A Theology of Community, and Why Individualism is Bad This evening we’re focusing on Mission & Vision. The overall mission that we’ve been tasked with is, again, to pray that the Kingdom of the Lord would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven—and to labor to see that prayer fulfilled by our Spirit-filled labors. Our mission is to see the world converted to Christ and built up in Him so that all that we do—all that mankind is and does, all that we produce, all that we think and love and create—so that all of it is in accord with the will of God and glorifies Him through Jesus Christ, by His Spirit. It’s a grand mission. A great commission. And it’s the work of generations and generations. That’s our mission. In setting vision for how to carry it out, I want to focus on the necessity of community. My talk is entitled, “A Theology of Community and Why Individualism is Bad.” Why Individualism is Bad So why is individualism bad? First let me define my terms. Let me define individualism. Individualism is the mindset that defines mankind by the individual person—or individual household. It is the political, economic, theological independence of the individual from everyone else. With such a focus, individualism stresses individual initiative, action, and interests. In other words, it says, “I am going to do this—I am going to do this, my way—I am going to do this, my way, for my benefit.” Individual initiative, action, and interests. Individualism falsely views mankind as the collection of individual men and women. In this case, mankind is not greater than the sum of its parts. There is not a great goal or telos for humanity beyond the individual’s own interest and welfare. Rather we interact with one another insofar as you are useful to me—insofar as you can help me achieve my individual goal or aspirations. But that’s bad news. Bad news all over. It’s bad news all over—first and foremost—because it’s not true. This kind of doctrine is a false doctrine. Mankind is not merely a collection of individual men and women. But mankind is a whole. We are an integrated body of men and women. There is a great goal and telos for humanity. And we can carry out that goal only by working together. In a moment I want to elaborate on this biblical vision of mankind, but first let me give a litany of reasons why individualism is bad. I have five for you. First. Individualism is bad because it fosters arrogance. Arrogance is the vice of thinking of yourself more highly than you ought. Humility is the virtue of sober judgment, of thinking of yourself accurately. The particular strain of arrogance that individualism trains us in is this: we are trained to think of ourselves as independent of others. But this is to think of ourselves too highly. We are not independent of one another. We need brothers. We need their gifts, their corrections, their encouragement. We need their rough edges. Think of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” We need their accountability—we need them to pull us back when we’re starting to drift, and we need them to push us when we’re thinking of giving up. We need their labor. We need their strengths, and we need their weaknesses so that we might utilize our strengths. We need their wisdom and their pushback. We are not self-sufficient islands, having in ourselves all that we need. And that won’t ever be the case. So we shouldn’t aspire to it. Individualism fosters arrogance—it teaches us to think of ourselves wrongly. That’s bad. Second. Individualism also trains us in selfishness. Since humanity is simply the collection of individual men and women, we come together not for a communal purpose and goal, but simply because, as I said earlier, you are useful to me. I am willing to work with you so long as that fits me and my own interests. But once that calculation goes into the red—once you are a liability, in other words—that relationship is severed. That’s selfish thinking. It’s calculating. It’s stingy, just like we read in Proverbs 23:6–8: Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten,
and waste your pleasant words. Individualism trains us to think in this way since the overarching aspiration it lays upon your life is—plain and simple—your best interest. Your profit. Your benefit. Or, at most, your household’s. But Scripture calls that selfish. So individualism fosters arrogance; it trains us in selfish greed. Third. It produces quarreling and strife. James writes this, James 4:1–3: What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. A society given over to individualism will not remain a society for long. It dissipates, as in our day, into tribalism—and then into sheer anarchy, where everybody seeks after his own interest, his own profit, using others in a calculating and greedy way. There is no loyalty. No mutual bond that binds you to your brother. If you’ve read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, you’ll recognize this as his world. It’s an all against all—and why? Because according to the doctrine of individualism—a doctrine Hobbes himself embraced—leads to that. In his view of mankind, as in our day, there is no natural common good to mankind. In other words, there is nothing to hold us together apart from our usefulness to one another in getting at our own individual goals and interests, and so it leads to anarchy. So it leads to fighting and feuding. (Also consider Lewis’ depiction of hell in The Great Divorce.) Fourth. Individualism hamstrings our efforts. Not only does it lead to quarreling, it hinders mankind from doing what only mankind can do. We not only need one another for our own livelihood, to meet our basic necessities. We need one another in order to accomplish the mission we’ve been entrusted with—again the mission of seeing the world subdued to Jesus Christ. That is not a solo project. That is not the work of a few. It is the work of a united, baptized, coordinated mankind. It is the work of the whole church—and it is a generational work. But individualism cannot aspire to any of this, and so it weakens our labor. It atomizes our work, atomizes our homes, atomizes our missions. When individualism permeates the church it leads to scattered effort. We do a group huddle on Sunday, but then we’re off on our own during the week. We regroup once again, and then scatter once again. In this case, the body worships together, but it does not work together. But the labor we’re called to is not a scattered effort. That wouldn’t accomplish much. It is not the effort of the professional or super-holy saints. It’s not the effort of individual households, like islands separated from others. It is a joint, communal effort. The body that worships together should also work together. Related to this, individualism also limits our ambitions—that is, what we hope to accomplish. When you consider your own strengths and abilities, and what you yourself can do, that’s pretty limited. Think of the sort of stuff a single man, or a single household can do. But then think about what a town could do—a town all operating toward the same goal. How about a city? How about a nation? How about all of mankind? But the work we’re called to involves a new mankind, not a bunch of renewed individuals going about their own missions. So individualism doesn’t scale. It hamstrings our efforts; it fences in our ambitions. Fifth and finally. Individualism leaves us vulnerable. It makes us easy for the taking. If you don’t have a people, you are easy prey. History gives us a great analogy—consider how Caesar conquered Gaul. Caesar conquered Gaul through a series of campaigns in the first century BC. In Gaul there were dozens of Celtic and Germanic peoples (these were loosely known as Gauls); and these Gauls were tribalistic. Individual households and clans and small tribes constantly going their own way—at war with one another—each seeking their own self-interest. Seeing this, what did Caesar do? He took advantage of all their divisions and conquered them tribe by tribe. He’d feign friendship with one tribe, give them what they wanted—use them against another tribe—then turn on the first group. They were divided—and Caesar conquered them. That’s a good picture of what individualism does to a society. It divides. In so doing, it leaves us as easy prey to a greater villain—a villain against whom we would easily defend ourselves, if we weren’t all given to our own self-interest. That was the strategy used by Caesar, and that is the strategy being used against us today, both in the Church and in society at large. We’re being conquered and we don’t even know it yet. And why? Because we’re all given to our own little ambitions and interests, at odds with others, with no loyalty, no common good to unite us. A Theology of Community Now to the second part. That was largely by way of warning. What I’d like to do now is consider how Scripture understands mankind. I said individualism is the mindset that defines mankind by the individual person—or individual household. It stresses individual initiative, action, and interests. It pictures mankind as a collection of individuals—not a whole. It is like a pile of stones, each distinct and separate from the other. But Scripture views mankind as something more like a house—or really, as a body. That’s one of the most significant metaphors the Holy Spirit uses. Mankind is a whole; we are a unit. We are in Adam, or in Christ. We are members of Him and of one another. Paul writes this in Colossians 2:19, that: “From the Head [Christ] all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with an increase that is from God.” You as an individual do not exist apart from Christ. There is no you apart from being a member of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’d be like a cut-off toe. That toe doesn’t have a use. It’s not alive. It’s just a cut-off toe. This means that mankind is not merely the collection of individual persons, each with his or her own so-called rights. Mankind is a united organism or person summed up in Christ—or, for the unbaptized, summed up in Adam. That is a much different view of mankind than what individualism teaches. This metaphor of the body really has to baptize our imagination. It needs to shape how we relate to Christ. For instance, it’s how we understand His atonement of our sins. Jesus was not merely an individual offering up a sacrifice for a bunch of individuals. No, He died—and we died in Him. But He also was raised from the dead—and we were raised with Him. His atoning death was our death; that’s why we don’t have to bear our sins, because in Him we already have. It also has to shape how we think of one another. Throughout the apostolic letters, we are exhorted to treat one another—not according to our own individual rights, or out of respect for each one’s autonomy—we are exhorted to treat one another as our own members. For instance, Paul says in Ephesians 4:25 that we all have to “put away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor.” Why? Is it because lying is bad? It is. Is it because lying doesn’t respect our neighbor’s right to the truth? That’s not what Paul says. He says, “Put away lying, speak the truth to one another—for we are members of one another.” In other words, it’d be like lying to yourself, thus hurting yourself. That’s stupid. That’s suicidal. So this metaphor needs to baptize how we relate to Christ, how we think of one another, and it needs to shape how we think of our mission. We have not been commissioned to a solo mission. We have been commissioned as the people of God to corporately pray for the Kingdom of God to come, and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; and we are commissioned to labor in the Spirit, to labor as a body, to see that prayer fulfilled. Christ has called us to build Christendom and to take dominion over every square inch of creation that His rule might be incarnated everywhere. The devil knows the only way we can accomplish this lofty goal is by laboring together in the work: as one body, united to our Head and united to one another. I’ll conclude by contrasting this Christian mindset to the sort of mindset produced by individualism. Contrary to individualism, this theology of community fosters in us humility, not arrogance, for we know that we depend on one another, and we have our part to contribute. It turns us away from selfish ambition and toward a communal aspiration—toward the common good that our Lord directs us, one and all, to. It guards against strife and quarreling—for we are one, we are bound together by faith, by mission, by the Lord we serve, the Spirit that fills us, by the work we’ve been given. Also, our labors are not hamstrung, nor our ambitions constrained, for our strength only grows as we prevail, for we gain more and more members, all pulling toward the same holy ambition. And finally, as this united whole, pressing toward the same goal, we are far from being vulnerable; we are the true Leviathan. Or much more, we are Christ incarnate. The Church is His body, as Paul writes in Ephesians 1:23, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” So the charge is this: Be done with individualism. Have your imagination baptized and get to work. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
October 11, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
On God’s Covenant Promises
When we baptize infants and small children of Christian parents, we don’t baptize them on their own profession of faith, but rather on their parents’ profession of faith. Now, some from a more baptistic background might find this strange, even unbiblical. Is this cheating? Are we sneaking our children in through a side door? Is that the case? The short answer is No. The fuller answer centers on God’s covenant promises. For instance, in just a moment I will ask these parents, “Do you trust in God’s covenant promises concerning your child and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation, as you do for your own?” We baptize the children of Christian parents on the basis of these covenant promises. You would be right to ask what we mean by this. What are these so-called “covenant promises”? Let me give you a few examples from the Scriptures. First, the Lord promises to be God not only to us, but to our children. This is the central covenant promise. When cutting covenant with Abraham, this is what the Lord said to him: “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you” (Gen. 17:7). Second, also to Abraham, the Lord promises the land to him and to his descendants: “Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:8). As with all of God’s promises, this promise is expanded. In the new covenant, God promises not merely the land of Canaan—but everything. The heavens and the earth made new—it belongs to us and to our children. Third, the Lord promises to sanctify and renew us, and to also carry out this work in our children. This is found in Deuteronomy when the nation of Israel was about to go into the promised land: “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). These promises are not only present in the Old Testament, but they are expanded and renewed for the Church, sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ, thus making them even more certain. But don’t trust my word for it. This is what Peter says after his inaugural Pentecost sermon: “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). Therefore, since the covenant promises are for us and for our children, we as parents do not presumptuously set our hope in a secret side door, sneaking our children in hoping God won’t mind it. No, quite the opposite. We come boldly in faith, bringing our children to the Lord, through the entrance of the Church, with a heart fully trusting in His sworn and blood-sealed promises. We bring our children to be baptized, even as Abraham circumcised his sons: hoping in nothing less than our Father’s faithfulness, Jesus’ bloody sacrifice, and the Spirit’s renewing power to save not only us, but also our children. And so we cast our children upon God from birth (Psalm 22:10), for He has promised to be their God, to give them the inheritance, and to cleanse and renew them by the blood of Jesus and the renewing presence of the Spirit.
October 11, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
Cultivating Fruitful Community
Hebrews 10:24–25
Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. In Hebrews, as in all the apostolic writings, the Lord calls us to cultivate community—to build one another up, to be in each other’s lives, to consider one another, to stir one another up to love and good works, and to exhort one another so that nobody is taken away by the deceitfulness of sin. This is a call to thick community, to cultivate that rich soil where true, spiritual life can grow and bear fruit ten, fifty, and hundredfold. With this in mind, I have four things we ought to cultivate in order to make this thick community fruitful. First and foremost, let us all be committed to worshipping the Lord. We must each and all commit to drawing near to God steadfastly, in season and out of season. As the Apostle exhorts us, we must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together before the Lord, as is the habit of some. The truth is: if you are not committed to worshipping God with His people, then you cannot expect the blessing of God. If you are absent, if you take the worship of God lightly, if you have a false heart or a guilty conscience, or if you’re hollowed out by unbelief, and do not regularly draw near to God together with God’s people, then quite simply, what are you doing? Where are your priorities? I’m not saying that there are not extraordinary Sundays where you can’t worship with God’s people, whether here or wherever you’re at. But beware of studying reasons to miss church. The Westminster Divines warn us concerning divorce, saying that men are prone to study reasons for divorce. And the same is true of the Lord’s Day. Beware of studying reasons for skipping worship, for being away from your covenant Lord. It is a slippery slope. And the end of both divorce and of forsaking the assembly of the saints is unnatural, for it cuts against God’s design for humanity. So that’s the first habit that really must be in place: prioritize worshipping the Lord with His people. Second, pursue brotherly affection. Paul writes of Christian love, in Colossians 3:14, “Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” Love binds us to one another. If it doesn’t, then there’s no hope of cultivating distinctively Christian community, for the Spirit who animates Christians is the Spirit of Love. If we are bound together simply by similar interests, or the latest doctrinal fad, or our favorite podcast, or by our shared grumbles about all the other churches or even society at large, that’s not going to last. Only Christian love for one another creates the actual loyalty, commitment, generosity, charitableness and joy where Christian community thrives. Everything else is sinking sand. Cultivate love for your brothers and sisters. Put to death all that would rise up against it. Third, we need humility. The humble man does not think of himself as having arrived. But also, he is not full of self-pity—that’s only pride in disguise. The humble man knows he is a work in progress, and he trusts that the Lord is sanctifying him. And so he welcomes others to weigh in on how he is doing. The Apostle calls us to encourage and exhort one another—which means sometimes you are going to need to be encouraged and exhorted. You cannot always be the encourager and the exhorter. You have blindspots, too. You are also in need of sharpening words and faithful wounds of a friend. But how can you receive these things well, if you’re not humble? So cultivate humility. Fourth and finally, we need patience. Christian community takes time. You must be patient with yourself. You must be patient with your wife and family. You must be patient with your brothers and sisters. You must be patient with your pastor, and your elders and deacons. Hebrews describes the Christian life as a long obedience and a long pilgrimage to a heavenly country. We are all going the distance, and like Israel out of Egypt, we are all going together with families, with small kids, with men and women, with the weak and strong, the young and old. This means we have to be patient. So in summary: we are called to this work—to cultivate rich, thick Christian community—and in order to do this, we need to prioritize worship; brotherly affection and humility; and we must be patiently long-suffering in this work.
October 4, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
A Nation’s Shame
Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalts a nation,
But sin is a disgrace to any people. Abortion is an abomination. Generations after us will look back on our time as a blot upon the history of mankind. We will be remembered as those who perfected the systematic slaughter of our own children. Abortion is our shame and our disgrace. I do not think I need to convince any of you of this. We all agree that abortion is evil. It is the murder of the most vulnerable among us. Yet we can be tempted to fall into another ditch: the ditch of feeling largely unaffected by it, as though it doesn’t concern us. That temptation can run so deep that we fail to see the need to vote against a proposition that will spell death for thousands. “After all,” we say, “I would never kill my children. It is wicked that they would kill theirs, and God will judge them for it. But I’m not doing it.” This is the voice of individualism, or of libertarianism—the “Don’t tread on me, and I won’t tread on you” mentality. The problem is that this is not how the world works. Individualism is a lie. We are not alone in this world. Our actions are interwoven. The world is like a mosaic, or a fabric; our lives and our actions are threads that make up a tapestry. Individualism pictures a different world, one in which every man is an island and what happens on another island doesn’t really concern him. That mentality produces the times of the Judges: a world in which every man is free to do whatever is right in his own eyes, and every woman is free to do with her own body—and with the life growing within it—whatever she wants. That is anarchy. It is a world that dissipates into chaos. It is the world of the Judges, and it turns into the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. Consider Abraham’s nephew Lot. He was a righteous man, yet he lived in the midst of a wicked people. He himself did not abort his children. He himself did not participate in their pride parades. He himself did not get into gunfights. He himself did not beat his spouse. Yet he reaped the whirlwind of his neighbors’ sin. His whole life was swallowed up by the destruction God brought upon these abominations—his home, his children’s futures, his marriage. He was snatched out of the fire; his own skin was saved, and that of his two daughters. But that was all that made it out of the wreckage. The point is this: individualism focuses on me and on you, not on us. Mankind is an us. We are a people—a people that either pursues righteousness and is exalted, as our proverb says; or a people that pursues sin and is put to shame. We do not have the option of being unaffected. We must act as a people, drawing our more reluctant neighbors along with us in the direction of God’s Word, so that we might be the salt and light of the world; and so that we might in fact be a blessed people and not suffer the same fate as righteous Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah. We have an obligation to one another, and we carry out that obligation by entering the fray, by supporting and endorsing good laws for our state, and next month by casting this bloody proposition down to the ground in contempt. Go cast your vote. Encourage others to do the same. Rally the troops. Let us cast this wickedness out of our state in the name of Jesus.
September 27, 2026 • 5 Minute Read
What God Has Joined Together
Mark 10:2–9
“The Pharisees came and asked Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” testing Him. And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” In our passage, our Lord is once again debating with the Pharisees, and in particular debating the grounds of divorce. The question they pose to Jesus was a live question among the Jewish teachers of the time. Jewish law at the time permitted divorce, as the Pharisees go on to say, quoting from Moses in Deuteronomy 24. The question was on what grounds is it permissible—on what grounds is it was lawful. So far as the law was concerned, the matter was somewhat ambiguous. Moses writes in Deuteronomy 24:1 that a man who takes a wife and marries her may write her a certificate of divorce and send her away if it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her. The grounds of a lawful divorce in Deuteronomy 24 center on a wife finding no favor in her husband’s eyes because of some uncleanness. There were two different schools of thought at the time, each taking hold of Deuteronomy 24 at opposite ends. The stricter school, following the teacher Shammai, emphasized the uncleanness part, saying that a man may not divorce his wife unless he found unchastity in her. In other words, unless she was guilty of adultery, of infidelity. The other school of thought, the more liberal one, following the teacher Hillel, stood at the other extreme. It emphasized the “no favor in his eyes” part, arguing that a man may divorce his wife simply if she has no favor in his eyes anymore. So she burns his toast in the morning—there’s the door. It wasn’t quite a no-fault divorce, but the faults were small and petty, and they turned on the husband’s mood that day. This was the broader context, the larger debate. The Pharisees hope to pull Jesus into it. They want Him to take a side. But what does He do? He cuts their legs out from beneath them. The debate centered on Moses in Deuteronomy 24, and the Lord says that yes, that command was given. Divorce was permitted, but as a concession, and as a concession because of the hardness of their hearts. While the Jewish religious authorities were acting like lawyers, quibbling about the letter of the law and how to get around it, Jesus returns us to the heart of the law, to the heart of God’s original design for marriage. In the beginning of creation, at the very institution of marriage, divorce was never part of the design. God’s design for marriage was a one-flesh union. A man leaves his father and his mother, and he is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh, so that they are no longer two but one flesh. So Jesus concludes, saying: “Therefore” (not on the basis of Moses’ concession, but on God’s original design) “what God has joined together” (not Moses, not the father and the prospective husband, not the state), “let not man separate.” Divorce was never part of the plan. Marriage between a man and a woman was never meant to be dissolved. Marriage was designed to be an earthly picture of God’s love and devotion, His union with His people, and His people’s loving devotion to Him. But just as sin broke the one, so also sin breaks the other. The fruit of both—our break with God and our break with our spouse—is devastating. It is misery and sorrow and chaos, and not just for the spouses, but for all involved: the children, and even society at large. Just look around us. But the good news is this: Jesus came to renew God’s good creation, including mankind, including our marriages. He came to unite us once again to our Maker, renewing covenant with us, and He came to heal the wounds and holes and broken bones in our homes, in our marriages, and in our families. We try to heal these wounds lightly, or we try to study reasons to make them permanent, to justify and excuse the breaches in our union, as the Jewish authorities did in Jesus’ day. But in Jesus, God has made known His way. Our breaks with God and our breaks with one another need blood: blood and confession, blood and humility, blood and forgiveness. Let us therefore resolve today to love God’s design for marriage, to strive to glorify and honor and preserve that design in our own homes, and in so doing to join our Lord in renewing and rebuilding the ruins of a society wrecked by the sin of infidelity and spousal treachery, and by the plague of no-fault divorce. This begins by coming humbly before our God, confessing our own hand in this, and imploring Him for mercy. Faithlessness of every kind is a great sin. Infidelity toward your spouse, disloyalty toward your brothers and sisters, dishonesty with your coworkers and teachers and clients—all of this is transgression against God, first and foremost. Let us therefore confess to Him our faithlessness so that He might forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
September 20, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
Absorb the Sin
1 Cor. 6:7–9
Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated? No, you yourselves do wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren! Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? This passage is one of Paul’s stern corrections leveled against the Corinthians. Christian brothers were suing Christian brothers, going to law against one another—and that before pagans. The apostle sees this, for both the guilty party and the innocent, as a failure. Their brotherhood has broken down into the kind of brotherhood we find throughout the Old Testament: the brotherhood seen in Cain’s treatment of Abel, in the rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac, the feuding of Jacob and Esau, and in the envy and wrangling that plays out among the sons of Jacob, especially in the brothers’ cruel treatment of Joseph. That is the backdrop, and the Corinthians are still at it. They are factional, strife-driven, bumping and feuding and suing one another. Nothing is new under the sun. The kind of brotherhood we see among the patriarchs, the same kind of brotherhood down through the history of Israel, is the brotherhood present here in a Christian church—and the churches in Corinth were not the only ones with problems. This same kind of fractured, pushing and pulling, in-fighting is present down through the life of the Church, even into our own day. But Paul doesn’t only point out their failure; he points them to the solution. It is right there in the questions he poses: “Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?” It is easy to miss this—not because it’s unclear, but because we don’t like it. This is not the solution we want. We want our rights. We want to be vindicated. We want the judge or the crowd or whoever it might be to look upon us as the one who is in the right. In this endeavor, we miss the Gospel. We all say we want to be like Jesus, and to a point we’re sincere about it. And yet here is where the rubber meets the road. Are you willing to be wronged? Are you willing to love your brother by absorbing the sin, by turning the other cheek, by walking the extra mile? Are you willing to be cheated, without turning to violence or bitterness or revenge, or petty lawsuits? That is a very tough question. But that is what it looks like to follow after Jesus. Jesus the Innocent One was punished as a sinner. Jesus the Holy One was treated as unclean, taken outside the city and crucified like a wretched criminal. Jesus, the Just One, was taken away by injustice. If anybody ever was wronged, Jesus was wronged. If anybody ever was cheated, Jesus was cheated. But what did He do? He returned blessing for cursing, love for hate, mercy for cruelty. He walked the extra mile. He turned the other cheek. He entrusted His soul to the Just Judge, to His Father, and He freely, from the heart, forgave His brothers. That is what Jesus did—and what He still does. That is the substance—the content—of His command to us when He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him. We have to wrestle with that if we are going to be His disciples. Our hearts squirm before this commandment, before the Cross of Christ. It is folly to us; it is a scandal. It even looks to us to be unjust, even unloving. But look at Jesus, look at what He did, and look at the fruit of it. The harvest of His willingness to absorb the wrong, to be cheated, to suffer great injustice, was and is a Kingdom. He became the Desire of All the Nations. His brothers flocked to Him; the nations flocked to Him. We have flocked to Him. God’s entire plan of redemption centers on seeing this love, feeding on this love, and incarnating—or, embodying—this love toward one another, and toward a world that does not know Him. Christians, in following Christ, this is the way. It is the way of the Cross. It is not easy. But its end is life—life not just for you but for the world, even for those who wrong you.
September 6, 2026 • 5 Minute Read
Dirty Work
Ephesians 6:5-8
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. In this passage Paul gives instructions to douloi—to slaves. The slaves of Paul’s day were owned outright by their masters. They could be sold, killed, or used in whatever way their master deemed fit. Yet the gospel of Christ, the gospel that would in time transform the Roman social hierarchy, bestowed a new dignity upon this low and despised class. That dignity was given because Christ Himself, the Lord of lords, took on the form of a slave and gave Himself as a ransom for our sake (Matt. 20:28). According to this gospel and the Christian ethic that accompanies it, the slave is set forth as the paradigm of faithful obedience. What we find in Ephesians 6:5–8 is that this new dignity applied not only to the slave but also to his work. In his exhortation to Christian slaves, Paul promises that even in their despised position they could serve the Lord as they served their earthly masters, no matter how small, dirty, or dull that work might be. They were called to labor diligently in whatever they were asked to do “as slaves of Christ … doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men” (Eph. 6:6–7). These Christians could be assured that whatever service they rendered to the Lord they would “receive the same from the Lord” (Eph. 6:8). This was nothing short of revolutionary. The Christian slave could therefore be assured that as he faithfully washed the feet of his master’s guests, his heavenly Master would wash his feet—he would receive the same from the Lord. He could take comfort that as he stood at the master’s table filling glasses and serving, his heavenly Master would serve him as he reclined at table in the kingdom of His Father. No longer would the slave have to work for eye-service, anxiously looking over his shoulder to see whether his master noticed. No longer would he have to be ashamed of his work when others sneered, laughed at his expense, or simply ignored him. Though a slave, he was branded with the name of Christ, Master of all. Christ is a good Master, and His service is honorable. Christ promised to receive all of his labor and to crown it with the inheritance of a son (Col. 3:24). In Christ the slave’s work was given a worth far beyond anything an earthly king could bestow. By giving this value to the lowest kind of work, Christ likewise, by extension, gave value to every kind of lawful work done in sincerity of heart, as to the Lord and not to man—that is, to all work carried out with an eye first and foremost to please the Lord. Our Lord does not accept from His people only what we might wrongly regard as inherently “spiritual” work (evangelism, prayer, Bible-reading, mercy ministry, tithing). He does accept such work when it is carried out with a good heart—carried out in the Spirit, for the Spirit is what makes it spiritual. And He likewise happily receives every other kind of labor rendered in His name: from changing diapers to mopping floors, from serving tables to building tables, from giving a bottle of water to a poor man on the street to running a business that employs that poor man. In the Lord’s economy there is indeed a spiritual–worldly divide when it comes to our work, but that division is not found between different occupations. Scripture does not say, for instance, that teaching the Bible is spiritual while coaching soccer is not. The real divide is found between hearts: this heart is serving the Lord; that heart is serving itself. Put another way, the divide concerns the adverb, not the verb. It concerns how we carry out our work, not necessarily what work we carry out. This is good news. We can labor unto the Lord and serve Him no matter who we are, what we do, or where we do it. But this also serves as a corrective. Our work itself is not what Jesus desires from us; He wants our heart with it. He wants our dirty work, our dull work, our sweaty work—but not if it comes from a dirty heart. Even our very best work, if carried out in a self-serving, proud, or grumbling manner, is counted by Him as worthless as sin. Reminded of this, let us clean our hearts by confessing our sin to Him, so that we may serve Him uprightly, in His Spirit, with work that He delights to receive.
August 30, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
Forgive Us
Matthew 6:11
Forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us. This is the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, and as such it ought to mold and shape our prayer lives. It is instructive for us in many ways. To begin with, how wonderful it is that our Lord instructs us to pray this way. Jesus knows our frame; He knows that we are but dust and sin. Yet for that reason He does not cast us out of His royal presence. He pulls us near. He invites us in and calls us to come boldly before His throne and ask for pardon for our iniquities. This means that we are not being presumptuous when we confess our sins to Him—we are being obedient. This prayer meets every one of us, for every one of us has sin, and it meets us with fresh life. It is an invitation to come to the fountain of blood opened in the palms and feet and side of Jesus Christ. It is an echo of Isaiah 55:1, where our Lord beckons us, saying: “Come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This prayer is good news indeed. By asking our Lord to forgive us our trespasses, we do not cultivate a whimpering, weak, self-pitying spirit, but quite the opposite. It is unforgiven sinners who are weighed down by sin, like a bottle shaken up and ready to burst. When we hide our sin from God, our bones ache and our conscience condemns us. We are on edge. We lash out. We are overburdened and heavy laden. Here our Lord does not simply invite us; He compels us to ask for forgiveness. He demands to be reconciled with us. By teaching us to pray this way, He calls us to give Him our yoke—the burden of iniquity and guilt—and to take upon ourselves His yoke and His rest, so that we might be at peace with Him and with one another. For the tender conscience, this is an invitation. You are beckoned and welcomed to come to the Lord and lay your burden down. But this prayer is also for the proud and stubborn, for those who, like the Pharisee, point at their fellow brother and say, “God, I thank you that I am not like him.” This petition is commanded of you as well. Those whose sins are conspicuous and out for all to see are called to seek from the Lord forgiveness for their sins. Those who are self-righteous, whose sins are contempt and pride, are commanded to be humbled before their Lord. The fact is that we spend much of our time trying to avoid blame. We find excuse after excuse—like rocks—to hide behind. But those who follow Jesus must learn to pray this way. We must learn to pray as sinners, not as excuse-makers or blame-shifters, but as men and women and children whose very existence hangs by the strong cord of God’s almighty mercy. We all stand before Jesus Christ, the judge of the living and the dead, and we are in need of the forgiveness He offers. We must learn to receive it with humility and with joy. Finally, in this petition Christ not only calls us to confess our sins to Him so that He may forgive them; He also calls us to emulate Him in showing mercy. This is the paradox of the Gospel. The forgiveness of Christ frees us of our debts, and it also brings us into His debt. It makes of us debtors to mercy. All who ask for mercy will receive it—provided that they then show mercy. The Lord forgives us our trespasses, and we must now and always forgive those who trespass against us. You cannot be both forgiven and unforgiving. You cannot wash yourself in the blood of Christ while rotting in the manure of bitterness. Christ’s forgiveness is free, but it is not cheap. It will cost you all grudges, all bitterness, and all enmity against those who have wronged you. This prayer is good news. It is a command. And it is a calling to follow Jesus in the way of the Cross.
August 23, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
The Hypocrisy of Virtue Signaling
Mark 7:14–16
When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear Me, everyone, and understand: 15 There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. 16 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!” For centuries God’s people—the people of Israel—were given strict rules on how they were to eat, with whom they were to eat, and what they were to eat. The Pharisees were highly scrupulous about these matters and even added regulations, creating a law around the Law, in order to guard against any deviation. While they carefully kept an outward righteousness or an outward cleanness, they were inwardly full of all kinds of uncleanness. As Jesus says later in the chapter, they were full of “evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness” (Mk. 7:21–22). As a result they were numbered among those whom Isaiah condemned: those who honored God with their lips, but whose hearts were far from Him (Mk. 7:6–7). They thought they could please God with an outward show of obedience, that they could be made clean simply by avoiding certain foods and drinks and by other acts of outward virtue and righteousness. But Jesus corrects this, saying, “There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man” (Mk. 7:15). Jesus spoke of this sinful tendency—to exalt the outward at the expense of the inward—as hypocrisy. The Pharisees, though thoroughly religious and ardently living by the letter of the Law—they were hypocrites. This kind of hypocrisy is with us still; in fact, it is all around us. Our broader “post-Christian” culture is overflowing with it. It’s our main export. The reality is that every man, woman, and child wants to be justified. We want to be righteous. We want to be clean. But our hearts are defiled and unclean, and we are helpless to change our own hearts. So what do we do in order to prove that we are still righteous? We make a big deal about what we eat and drink. Our diet becomes a badge of honor; it becomes our righteousness. What began as a preference or a concern for health is exalted to be a moral matter. But it does not end there. Eating and drinking on principle is only one step, but it does not satisfy the conscience. Therefore we look for more and more ways to prove to ourselves and to others that we are righteous. We go farther and farther down the path of outward and overt virtue. In our day we call it virtue signaling. We fill our mouths—and our lawns—with virtuous slogans. We champion “noble” causes. White people make it their mission to cater to minorities. Straight people join the pride parade to prove that they are “allies.” Men take on the role of white knights, valiantly coming to the rescue of the poor feminists. Women, following an untethered empathy, give themselves to the loudest, fussiest, and saddest person or people group in the room. This sort of thing is all around us, and it is all so much hypocrisy. It is an outward show of goodness, nobility, virtue, and righteousness. But where is the fatal flaw? In doing all of these things so as to appear righteous, they prove useless—and worse than useless—when the heart is still overflowing with sin. None of these things can justify us before God, for He is the one who sees the heart. And when the heart is defiled, everything is defiled. The answer to a crooked heart, a defiled mind, and a guilty conscience is not the hypocrisy of virtue signaling. It is not a new diet. It is not the latest moral fad sold on an energy drink or a granola bar. It is a new heart. It is a new spirit. As Paul wrote, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but a new creation” (Gal. 6:15). You cannot make yourself new. But Jesus can. He does this as we come to Him, confess our sins to Him, seek His grace, and strive by the Spirit to put to death the old man and put on Christ. That is how we are made clean. That is where our righteousness is found—in and from and through Jesus.
August 16, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
Envy Breeds Contempt
Mark 6:4
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” This line from Jesus is in the context of a return visit to His hometown of Nazareth. When the Lord came home, His reception was much different than it should have been. As He would in any other town, He went to the synagogue and taught, and many came to hear Him. They were astonished, but with a different kind of astonishment. People were often astonished—in a good way—at the Lord’s teaching. Here, however, their astonishment was that of unbelief—unbelief mixed with the poison of pride and envy. This is apparent in what they said. As Mark writes, those who heard Jesus were saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” (Mk. 6:2–3). And Mark adds this: “They were offended at Him” (Mk. 6:3b). On the one hand, they could not deny Jesus’ wisdom. They did not deny the mighty works performed by His hand. But they asked, in effect, “Isn’t this the guy we grew up with? The one we went to school with? Whose family we know?” And so their hearts were hardened. For all His wisdom, for all His merciful works, they wrote Jesus off. A little later Mark writes that Jesus was, in turn, astonished at their unbelief (Mk. 6:6). Thus was fulfilled an old proverb of the time: “A prophet is not without honor—except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” We have a proverb like this as well. You have doubtless heard it: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Jesus was despised not because of anything He said—in fact, His teaching was impressive; nor for anything He did—His works were marveled at. He was despised simply because they knew Him. He was too familiar to them. They knew His family. They knew where He grew up. For no fault of His own, the prophet was held without honor because He was too familiar. This social phenomenon was not new with Jesus, and it did not pass away with His generation. We are all susceptible to what is going on in this passage. Why? Because we are all susceptible to pride and to envy. The fact is that we have a much harder time receiving correction, acknowledging excellence, admiring virtue, giving honor, and respecting skill when the person is someone we know. And the more we know them, the harder these things become. This is not necessarily because we know their faults and flaws better. While that is true to an extent, it certainly was not true in our text. Jesus had no faults or flaws. We like to make that our excuse. But if we are honest with ourselves, it is because we are in the thralls of envy. We are filled with ourselves, and we cannot stand a rival. And our rival is not the stranger out there; it is our brother, our neighbor, our friend. That is who our rival is. And so, like these townsfolk, these fellow Nazarenes, instead of submitting to our brother’s wise counsel, receiving our father’s correction, acknowledging our friend’s excellence and virtue, honoring one another, and supporting each other, we take offense. We are offended by them. Why? Because he is our rival. He is our familiar. We know him too well, and—this is the crucial point—we want to rule over him. We want to be his better rather than the reverse. We should revise our old proverb. It is not so much familiarity that breeds contempt; it is envy that breeds contempt. And envy must either kill or be killed. Let us, then, learn from these Nazarenes. Let us not become, as Paul writes, conceited, provoking one another, envying one another (Gal. 5:26). But let us rather seek to outdo one another in showing honor.
August 9, 2026 • 4 Minute Read
God Resists the Proud
1 Peter 5:5-6
All of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. It’s probably true of every generation, but it’s especially true of our own generation—we bristle at authority. Call it egalitarianism. Call it feminism, or individualism, or Marxism—it’s all the poison of rebellion. It is rebellion against the good gift of authority and hierarchy which God has written into the DNA of His world. Now, Peter speaks into this anarchic lust, this rebellious impulse in all of our hearts. He speaks a command and a promise. He exhorts us, saying, humble yourselves, be submissive to one another, be clothed with humility—that’s the command, those are our marching orders. But he also gives us a promise for us to trust in so that we can actually obey those marching orders. It’s a double-sided promise: God resists the proud—that’s the pointy side—but He gives grace to the humble. Let us consider the pointy side of this promise: How does God resist the proud? He does this in many ways, but one way in particular is this: God resists the proud by giving them up as prey to their own appetites. He gives the proud up to what they sinfully desire, and it only results in their further corruption and sorrow. He lets His arrogant creatures learn the error of their way by giving them over to anarchy. He lets the stubborn toddler touch the stove. Think here of the prodigal son. He was a scoundrel for a son. He took his inheritance—while his father was still alive, remember. He broke out from beneath his father’s authority, and squandered it within a few years. He spent it on his lusts and ended up in a pigpen longing for a bite of what the pigs were eating. The Lord resisted him by giving him over to his reckless arrogance. But He resists not only rebellious children. He also resists—believe it or not—He resists women. He resists rebellious wives. I know you’re not supposed to speak about this. Women don’t have sins, apparently. You’re not supposed to speak about this, but I’m a pastor and I love you, so I will. The fact is divorce is rampant in our own day. And divorce is, as many studies have shown, by and large, initiated by women. Around 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. Without ignoring the fact that some of these divorces have biblical warrant; some men are, after all, unfaithful to their spouse, and the Lord grants that women in such a situation of infidelity or abandonment may divorce their husband. With that said, however, God knows that the majority of these divorces are just plain rebellious. They are not the result of infidelity or abandonment on the part of the husband, but rather the result of women trying to escape the God-designed authority of their husband. In our day, we can see why this temptation is very real. Our culture is, after all, heavily feminist, heavily anti-male. It subsidizes a victim-mentality. It promises women freedom: but it can only give that freedom which Satan enjoys in hell. It is the cheap and miserable freedom of anarchy, which is no freedom at all. The Lord resists these prideful attempts at overthrowing God-given authority. And in the case of divorce, the Lord often resists women who unlawfully divorce their husbands by giving them over to wandering, that is, to spouse-roaming. After divorce, the likelihood of another divorce increases, and then it increases again, and again, and again—until you’re like the Samaritan woman, having had five husbands, and now a live-in boyfriend. That wasn’t a coincidence, nor is it uncommon. God resists this kind of pride by giving women over to a desire that cannot be satisfied. If they will not respect the husband they vowed before God to take as their head, the Lord resists them by consigning them to a lifetime of miserable spouse-jumping. Why? Because the Lord resists the proud. He shows no partiality. He resists the proud whether they be men or women, young or old, rich or poor, in authority or under authority. The Lord resists the proud. But—brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers—He gives grace to the humble. Let us rather choose this better route of humility and faith, trusting in God’s gracious designs, and submitting to them even when it’s not easy, leaning not on our own understanding, but instead trusting in our merciful and mighty God, the God who resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
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