Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Suffering from James 1:12-25
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
Some decades ago there was a young Englishman who felt called of God to go into the ministry, and he enrolled in a theological training institution in his country in England. He was quite gifted. After several years, he became pastor of a local church in England, and his ministry began to flourish. Numbers grew, people were genuinely converted, and people thought of him as a young man with promise.
After just a handful of years, he was caught out in adultery. Inevitably, of course, he resigned. He just disappeared off the face of the map. Nobody knew quite where he went. In fact, he showed up in Canada where I was a student at a seminary in Toronto. He showed up as a student there. None of us knew anything about this background. He showed up there and took some more theology. We graduated in the same year.
I went off to Vancouver and served a church out there, and he disappeared into the wilds of Ontario. A few more years passed, and I went to England to begin work at Cambridge University. Through the perennial ecclesiastical grapevine I heard his ministry was progressing quite nicely and growing. Then I heard he had gotten caught in adultery. He resigned and disappeared off the face of the earth.
More years passed, and I went back to Vancouver. More years passed, and the Lord in his strange providence brought me down to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where I now teach. When I arrived, of course, we didn’t know any churches in the area at all, and my wife and I were going to start looking around a bit and visit a few, but the administration of the seminary asked instead if I would perhaps visit a certain church 10 miles or so from the seminary.
They had been through a recent trauma. They had had a pastor who was quite capable, and people had begun to be converted, and the church was growing. Then suddenly he had gotten caught out in adultery. Would I mind going in there and see if I could repair the damage? You guessed it. Your friend and mine from England.
Why am I telling you this? Whatever it might say about the way some churches (at least in the past) have not been too careful about doing enough background checks, the reason I have told you is because of what he then said in subsequent years when he was confronted. He disappeared into the wilds of Ohio where he sold computer parts.
If someone came to him and said, “Three times? Didn’t you learn anything? What’s going on? How did that happen? You name the name of Christ and you see people converted. This?” he would respond, “God says he will not allow us to be tempted above what we are able but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. I wasn’t able to bear it, so God is a liar.” That’s all he’ll say.
Yet, if we’ve been Christians for a while we know others who have been put through some of the most appalling sufferings (sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, betrayed by close friends and by spouses) who somehow by the grace of God come out stronger and more stable and more gracious and more conformed to Christ. Some face terrible tragedy and don’t become bitter; they become better. Others face the same things and turn inward and turn malicious and turn vicious.
What’s the difference? The same experiences turning out very different people. What’s the difference? If you want to become bitter and malicious, if you want to give excuses to yourself and when you face trials and temptations merely become a nasty person, you might as well leave now. I’ve got nothing to say to you except, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
But if you would like to be the kind who does not go down the track of my old friend but who rises under trial and temptation, then listen to the Word of the Lord, for here in this passage God gives us several insights that transform everything. If these are genuinely absorbed into our belief structure and acted upon, they change everything.
1. When you are struggling under trials, remember the Christian’s goals.
Verse 12: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” In fact, in this passage James is actually picking up on a theme he first introduced back in verse 2.
It’s worth going back to verse 2 to follow it all the way through. Verse 2: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
When I was a young man at McGill University studying chemistry and mathematics many moons ago, we heard somebody come on to campus and give a Bible study on this passage. Of course, 40 years ago everybody was using the King James Version, and there we were told, “Consider it pure joy, my brethren, when ye fall into divers temptations …” I still remember the King James Version.
Some of us who heard this counsel from James, chapter 1, verse 2, thought, “Well, if this is what God says we’d better take it seriously,” so we made a small pact among ourselves. We agreed anytime we heard anyone else in this pact begin to complain and whine we would quote this verse at them.
Well, you can guess what happened. It wasn’t pretty! Somebody wandered onto the McGill campus the next day complaining about a calculus exam, and somebody else in the pact smirked and said, “Consider it pure joy, my brother, when you face trials of various kinds,” and laughed. Someone else came in and complained about a girlfriend/boyfriend problem.… “Consider it pure joy, my brother, when ye fall into temptations of various kinds.”
It didn’t help. It was like pouring salt in a raw wound. It seemed like a game of spiritual one-upmanship. “I can quote it at you more often than you can quote it at me.” But in the mercy of the Lord, gradually it came to be heard as what it is: the Word of God. Do you know what? That year in McGill Christian Fellowship, in InterVarsity Group, complaints ceased and we saw more converts in that year than in any of the other years I spent at McGill.
Do you hear what the text says? It doesn’t say, “Put up with it.” It says … get this …” Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds.” Not because you’re a masochist. “Go ahead! Hit me again. The pain feels good.” That’s not what the text is saying. No. It says, “Consider it pure joy,” because you know what you’re really after.
Consider a long-distance runner. This past October for the Chicago Marathon, my wife’s brother flew over from England. (My wife is English.) He had turned 60, and he decided he would celebrate his 60th birthday by running the Chicago Marathon. He has been a runner all of his life, and he trained for it. Out of a field of 40,000, he came in at about 13,000. Not bad for 60. Not bad. In fact, for the 60- to 65-year-olds … there were something like 5,000 of them … he came in at about 1,200. Not bad at all.
You watch these runners, and they have a whole cycle of how many miles they’re supposed to run this week and how many miles they’re supposed to run that week. The week before they do 20 miles. There’s some pain in all of this, you understand, but they know the pain builds endurance. You don’t get the endurance if you don’t push. Personally, I have other ways to prove my manhood; nevertheless, if you’re going to be a runner, that’s what it takes. It takes that kind of push, doesn’t it? It’s the pushing that gives you the perseverance.
What does the text say? “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds because …” Not because of masochism. “… because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance develops maturity, and you want to be mature.” In other words, this text makes no sense at all unless you really do want to be spiritually mature, and then you will recognize in God’s providence the trials that come along stretch your faith. That stretched faith develops perseverance, and perseverance is necessary if you’re to become mature.
Down in verse 12 the author takes it one step farther. He says, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test …” That is, his faith has been stretched. He’s now more persevering. He’s more mature. “… he will receive the crown of life God has promised to those who love him.” In other words, not only is there the prized goal of becoming more mature now, there’s the ultimate goal in a new heaven and a new earth of receiving what James calls the crown of life.
This crown of life is the reward that is life. It means the crowning life. Life in its best. It’s the same kind of thing you find in Revelation 2:10. “Be faithful even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Life at its resurrection best. Life at its new home in a new heaven and a new earth. Life in the perfection of what is still to come. Persevere because that’s what you’re heading for!
You know, if you’re a Christian, the trials that come your way in God’s providence are designed to add just that bit of stress that your faith will be stretched, you will persevere, you’ll become a little more mature, and the ultimate reward is all the glory of heaven itself, and that changes everything. If you don’t really believe in heaven, none of this makes sense. If you don’t really want maturity, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense at all!
But if you want to be spiritually mature, then it actually makes sense to hear God saying, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials.” Some people are made nervous even by this reward language. They say, “Rewards and all that? I thought salvation was by grace. It seems a bit strange.”
I was helped a long time ago by a passage in C.S. Lewis who helped to explain, it seems to me, some of the reward passages in the New Testament. C.S. Lewis pictures two men. One of them goes to the red-light district of town. He wants a woman, so he goes to the red-light district of town and pays his money, and he has his reward.
Another falls in love with a young woman and courts her honorably with great honor and restraint and courtesy, wins the affection and the trust of the entire family, and in due course, there’s a wonderful wedding, and he has his reward. What’s the difference? Lewis says the difference is, in the first instance, the reward is so incommensurate with the payment that the transaction is obscene.
In the second case, the reward is simply the culmination of the relationship. That’s what Christian rewards are. They’re the culmination of a relationship grounded in grace itself, a relationship that begins here and is finally consummated in heaven. Those are the kinds of rewards Christians want: the culmination at the consummation.
I don’t think Christians can be persevering, mature, and stable unless they actually become hungry for heaven. I don’t think it can be done. That’s why Jesus tells us elsewhere, does he not, to “Lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrode, where thieves do not break through and steal.”
If it does not become part of your passion to hear the Master’s, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful over a few things; I’d like to make you ruler over many things …” Unless that becomes your passion, none of this makes sense. If it does become your passion, this is so obvious it scarcely needs to be said. Notice one small point in verse 12. “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”
A friend of mine is pastor of a church. He recently took a funeral. It was the funeral of an old woman. She and her husband had been married for about 60 years. At the graveside, the old man said with tears to my pastor friend, “God must have more for me to do, else why has he left me here?” My pastor friend said, “My dear brother, God has nothing more for you to do except to love him still.” Do not misunderstand. My pastor friend was not saying he was all washed up and there was nothing more for him to do.
The point is your self-identity as a Christian is not, first and foremost, tied to what you do; it’s tied to whom you love. The first commandment is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. Isn’t it? It’s the first commandment because it’s the commandment we always break when we break any other. If we commit any sin, we sin against that commandment. We de-God God.
In our suffering, in our tears, in our loneliness, in our bereavement, what God wants of us is to love him still. That’s part of the perseverance. James says, “My dear brothers and sisters, blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” That’s the first point. When you are struggling under trial, remember the Christian’s goals.
2. When you confess God’s sovereignty, do not misunderstand God’s motives.
Verses 13 to 15. Part of the difficulty in trying to understand verse 13 is in the Greek language in which this was written the word behind trial and the word behind temptation are exactly the same word. It’s only the context that lets you know which is which. James can plunge from one to the other, and we have to try and sort it out in our minds.
The point is James can plunge from one meaning to the other because he is writing as we experience these things. The same events that are opportunities to go forward (they’re trials) are temptations to go backward if we fail them. Trial becomes temptation because it finds an answering chord within us. The very same trial may, in fact, make us put down deeper roots and trust Christ. It may tempt us instead just to thumb our noses at Christ and sing with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.”
Verse 13a, if I were paraphrasing it, would be rendered, “If you are tempted by such trials …” That is, tempted to go backward by such trials. “… do not say, ‘God is tempting me.’ ” In other words, if you face the kinds of trials we’ve seen in chapter 1, verse 12, do not say, if you’re tempted by such trials, “God is tempting me.” After all, God does test people in the sense that he purposefully brings them into situations where their willingness to obey him is proved and tested.
Genesis 22, verse 1, in the matter of the almost sacrifice of Isaac, we’re told, “God tested Abraham.” Judges 2:22: “God tested Israel.” King Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32: “God tested Hezekiah.” Although God may do this to prove his servant’s faith or to lower their pride or to foster endurance, he never, ever, ever does so in order to induce sin. He never does so in order to destroy their faith. He’s not interested in tempting us in this moral sense at all. Why should we think that?
Verse 13b: “For God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone.” In other words, God himself cannot be tempted by evil. He’s above that. There is no answering chord in God that draws him toward that which is evil, so if there is no answering chord in God that draws him toward what is evil, why should we think even for one moment he’d have the slightest interest whatsoever in inducing us to sin?
In other words, any vision of God that imagines him somehow sovereignly over us like a policeman with a radar gun who is still young and immature and is really eager to see somebody get caught, that God is like that, waiting for somebody to do something naughty so he can go, “I got another one!” is a horrible betrayal of what God is. God is not tempted by sin, so why should we think he would ever be interested even for one instant in tempting us to sin?
God in his wisdom, like a good parent, may test us and push us, but never, ever should we think he is interested in inducing sin in us. No, no, no. If we’re going to think about sin and temptation, we had better put the blame where it properly belongs. Hence, verse 14. No. It’s not that God tempts us; rather, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
This is a pretty hideous picture. It’s meant to be shocking. The mother is the desire. The child she conceives is sin. Sin, when it comes to maturity, actually is nothing but death. The baby comes to birth, and it’s stillborn. It’s already death itself. It’s one of the many pictures of the Bible that shows how sin corrodes us and captures us and ensnares us and enslaves us.
Do you remember how Psalm 1 begins? It begins by describing the righteous person. In verse 1, the righteous person is pictured negatively, what he or she is not like. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” The idea is you start off walking in the counsel.… You start picking up the advice, you start following the lifestyle, of wicked people. If you do that long enough, then the psalm says you stand in the way of sinners.
That’s what the Hebrews says, but it’s still a bad translation, because in English to stand in someone’s way means something different from what it means in Hebrew. If you stand in someone’s way in English, you’re blocking them, aren’t you? Did you ever read Robin Hood? Robin Hood and Little John on the bridge? Each stands in the other’s way.
Nobody reads Robin Hood anymore, but Robin Hood and Little John stood on the bridge, and each stood in each other’s way. One of them is going to land in the drink because they’re blocking each other. They’re standing in each other’s way. In Hebrew to stand in someone’s way doesn’t mean to block them. It means to adopt their lifestyle. It means to walk in their moccasins, to do what they do.
You start by picking up the advice of wicked people and, sooner or later, you’re indistinguishable from them. If you do that long enough, then you sit in the seat of mockers. Now you’re in your La-Z-Boy chair and you pull the lever and your feet come up, and you look down your long self-righteous nose at all those stupid, ignorant, bigoted Christians. It’s not enough you have to do what is evil and adopt that lifestyle yourself; now you have to be sneeringly condescending at everybody who doesn’t agree with you.
At this point, Spurgeon says, “A person has received his master’s in worthlessness and his doctorate in damnation.” It starts off with the bad advice and the bad habits and, eventually, the bad character. So also here, when we find answering chords within us that destroy us and tear us down, they’re awful things, but we had better see their origin is within us. Stop blaming God. That’s what the text here says. When you confess God’s sovereignty, do not misunderstand God’s motives.
3. When you feel abandoned and crushed, do not forget God’s goodness.
Verses 16 to 18. Verse 16 is transitional. “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.” We would say in contemporary idiom, “Stop kidding yourself, guys!” In other words, “Stop passing the buck. You really have to see God and his character for what it is.” He says, “Listen. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
I’m standing at this small lectern, this small pulpit. There are some lights above. Besides the chandelier lights you see there are lights that you don’t see, spots that are up there shining down on me. It’s a pretty well-lit building, isn’t it? Lots of light, but even in this pretty well-lit building, there are inevitably shadows.
I hold my hand here, and there are shadows. In fact, there are several layers of shadows. There’s one set of fingers coming from a spot up there, there’s another set of fingers coming from a spot over there, and another set of fingers coming from a spot up there. Because all of our lights are finite. They’re not all over. They’re not equivalent. All of our lights, because they’re finite, inevitably cast up shadows somewhere else.
But all the heavenly lights.… God made them. They all have a certain angle, too, don’t they? On a bright, bright night in the Wisconsin woods (that is, the middle of the night with a full moon), you can actually canoe across a lake and see the shadows cast by the moon. God made the heavenly lights, but in him there is no darkness. There’s no shadow. There’s no downside to God. He is good. He is good, good. He is good, good, good, good, good. He’s never anything other than good.
Sometimes in our foolishness we think God sort of chooses one of his attributes at a time. “Today I think I’ll choose my sovereignty. Now I’ll choose my compassion. Now I’ll choose my goodness. And now I’ll choose my wrath.” No, no, no. God is always who God is. He is never, ever less than sovereign. He is never, ever less than just. He is never, ever less than good. He is not vicious. He is not mean. God is always irrefragably, irreducibly, irretrievably, unmistakably, inevitably good. In him is no darkness at all. He’s the author of all good gifts.
You can’t now take that goodness and start saying, “So that means he doesn’t really get angry, does it?” No, no, no. He’s good, and he’s just, and he’s holy, and he’s perfect, and he’s sovereign. He is all of his attributes all of the time. He’s never less than all of them. But one of the things the Bible keeps saying about God is he’s good. Do you want the supreme proof that he’s good, the proof the Bible holds out above all other proofs?
Is it the glory of a really spectacular sunset? Is it the wonder of a woodpecker’s tail feathers? They’re strong at the bottom end so the bird can pivot on its claws and peck pretty strongly at the top end. Only woodpeckers have strong tail feathers like that. We have five bird feeders out the back of our yard including a hummingbird feeder. They are extraordinary little critters, aren’t they? Is that where the glory of God, the goodness of God is best seen?
No, no. This text tells us where the goodness of God is most powerfully seen. Verse 18: “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” What does this expression mean this Word of Truth? Some people have thought it might mean the word of God in creation itself. He called things into being by his powerful word, and we human beings are the firstfruits of the ultimate creation.
No, no, no. This expression, the Word of Truth, only shows up five times in the New Testament and in every case it means one thing. It’s most powerfully seen in Ephesians 1:13 where we read, “And you also were included when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” The Word of Truth is the gospel. The final proof, the biggest proof that God is good is that he chose to give us birth through the Word of Truth. That must now be new birth. He chose to give us new birth through the gospel, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
I know a man who, several years ago, faced a particular crisis in his family. He then had a lass, a daughter, who was 14, almost 15. This lass lost her best friend to leukemia. The family was a Christian family, and they grieved pretty well. The girl talked it out and cried it out and prayed with her parents and so on.
Some months passed, and he heard her quietly crying in her room. He tapped on the door and went in. He said, “Come on. Tell me about it.” He put his arm around her, she said, “Daddy, God could have saved my best friend and he didn’t, and I hate him,” and she burst into tears.
He said, “I’m so glad you’ve told me. You might as well. God knows what you think in any case. No point hiding it and pretending something different. But before you become too convinced that God is malicious, I want you to ask yourself two questions. First, do you want a God who is just like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp?” Robin Williams’ Aladdin had just come out at the time, so it was on everybody’s lips.
“Do you want a God like that, who is very powerful and can give you exactly what you want and can do absolutely anything (any miraculous task whatsoever) but is always under the control of whoever rubs the lamp? In which case, who is God? The genie becomes merely a sort of miraculous gofer to whoever owns the lamp.
Or do you want the God of the Bible who sometimes is so big, so immensely and spectacularly huge that he will do some things you won’t quite understand? Second, how do you measure the love of God? Do you measure it by whether or not you get everything you want or do you measure it by the height of a little hill just outside Jerusalem? You lost your best friend; God lost his Son.”
In fact, he didn’t lose him; he gave him. When life doesn’t make much sense and the hurts are everywhere and you’re facing sentence of death yourself at a premature age because of disease and you’ve been betrayed and you’re crying, where is the greatest demonstration of the love of God?
This text says it’s in the Word of Truth. It’s in the gospel by which he gives us new birth. It’s in the Word of Truth, the gospel, the good news that God sent his only Son. He didn’t have to. He chose to. That’s what the text says. He chose to give us new birth by the gospel, the gospel of the death and resurrection of his Son, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all the glory that is still to come at the anticipated consummation.
Fifty billion years into eternity with resurrection bodies will you still think God is so desperately unfair? Because all of that will have been secured by that little hill outside Jerusalem. How will you measure the love of God? How will you measure the goodness of God? When you do not understand, return to the cross. Return always to the cross. Return. Return. Return to the cross. For when you feel abandoned and crushed, do not forget God’s goodness.
4. When you hear gospel instruction, do not merely listen to it; do it.
Verses 19 to 25. This needs to be carefully unpacked. Verse 19: “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” I’m reading from the NIV which has a nice little heading in there which seems to be talking about something new, but in point of fact, the original, of course, has no headings in it. Those were put in by later editors.
In fact, you should be reading verse 19 in the light of what has come before. This anger, this becoming angry is part of the alternative to trusting God and his goodness. Facing trial and temptation and blowing up because of it. “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.” That is, when you face trial and temptation of various kinds.
“For man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.” This righteous life that does, to some extent, come even by the testing that pushes us a wee bit. “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.”
The word, in this context, has to be, in the light of the flow of the whole passage, the Word of Truth. That is, the gospel. You humbly accept the gospel that is planted in you which can save you. It’s worded like that, which shows this is not talking about our initial salvation. There are lots of passages that do speak of our initial salvation, but this gospel word that comes within us and which we now act upon actually saves us in the midst of our trials and temptations. That’s why a little farther on in the paragraph it’s called the perfect law of freedom.
Let me explain. This is very important. This past year at Trinity a number of us started a new organization we call CCI, Christ on Campus Initiative. One of our number got funding from a small foundation. He’s concerned about producing 40- to 50-page papers, sort of extended booklets, for a new generation of college students all around the country who really are bone ignorant in terms of basic biblical values.
I still do a couple of university missions a year, and when I speak to unbelievers on university campuses today, they don’t know the Bible has two Testaments. They’ve never heard of Abraham. If they’ve heard of Moses they confuse him with an actor or a cartoon figure. They have no idea of biblical history at all. When I was a young man, if I were dealing with an atheist, he or she was a Christian atheist. That is to say, the God he or she disbelieved in was the God of the Bible, which meant the categories were still on my turf. I can’t even presuppose that anymore.
This faculty member at Trinity became really concerned about how you start explaining the basics of the Bible to a new generation that really doesn’t know anything, so we put together a small package with the foundation backing it. One of the things we did with this foundation was we arranged to pay for the writers we wanted so we don’t have to sell enough copies to make this things pay for itself. The foundation pays for it.
That means we can distribute the stuff as cheaply as we want, which means we’ll distribute it all on the Internet for free. Eventually, starting next January the first ones will start coming in. It will start going on one of the websites, the Gospel Coalition website, and then no doubt on other Christian university organization websites. It will all be distributed for free.
As part of our concern in this regard, to make sure we got things right we flew in to the campus half a dozen Christian workers from university campuses from around the country. All of them were experienced. All of them had at least one degree in theology, at least five years on campuses. Some of them had PhDs and had been there a long time (20 or 30 years). We brainstormed together about what they perceived to be the greatest needs on university campuses today, the things that needed to be addressed from a Christian frame of reference.
One worker who came.… She and her husband both did degrees at Trinity at one point. They are Ivy League graduates, and she now works at an Ivy League school, in fact. She says in her experience of counseling young women.… She’s in an organization where she spends 20 to 25 hours a week, one hour at a shot, with 25 women every week of the academic year for 4 years. They take them right through. It’s a very intensive sort of program. She gets to know these 25 very, very well indeed.
She says over the last five years she has come to the conclusion that young women today are constrained by three big goals. First, from their parents. From their own drive. “Never get less than an A.” Well, it’s an Ivy League school. That’s not going to happen at every school. I understand that. It’s not going to happen in every department, but in an Ivy League school it can happen all right. From their parents, from their own academic drive, “Never get less than an A.”
Secondly, from the broader world around (from the media, occasionally from their parents, and certainly from their peers), “Be yourself. Be free. Don’t let anyone squeeze you into a mold. Be yourself. But make sure you incorporate into that a little bit of care for others like going and helping some victims of Katrina or something like that.”
It’s not always easy to put together the first one and the second one. You can be so much being yourself and doing your own thing and having your party that you don’t have time to do the first one and get and A, but we’ll let that one pass. Note, too, already there is some level of competition in this, because even in an Ivy League school not everybody does get an A. There’s competition, which means there’s only room for some failure.
Thirdly, one they would never, ever put quite like the way she put it, one that comes usually not from parents, to some extent from surrounding media, and certainly from fellow young women, “Be hot,” which affects how you dress and how you talk and how you present yourself, because that, too, involves competition. There are only so many Christian guys to go around. How do you get noticed? What puts you up? What puts you down? Who makes you number one? That, too, involves competition, so there’s only room for failure.
Overlying all of this is the insistence today that you can be anything you want to be, which quickly gets transmuted into, “You must be everything,” which generates more failure. The result is 80 percent of young women at Ivy League universities have eating disorders at one time or another during their four years, and almost the same percentage will be treated for depression.
I could tell you of similar demographic studies for young men. Don’t think I’m picking on young women here. I’m picking on them just because of this particularly astute analysis from this campus leader. Young men today are characterized by an extraordinary restlessness that often converts into a remarkable inability to make any responsible decision until they are in their late 20s or early 30s. That’s another question.
Now one of these young women becomes a Christian and pretty soon, with all of these background factors in her mind, she has to become the best Christian. She has to be the best in her grades, the best looking, the most free, doing her own thing. Now she has to become the best Christian, the best at the Bible studies, the best at the prayer meetings, the best of everything, until there’s more drive and more drive there and only failure again.
This Christian who has at some level understood the gospel is about grace, nevertheless, is now driven by the desire toward a certain kind of excellence that her self-identity is bound up with whether or not she’s good enough, even as a Christian, and that can only generate more failure. Listen. It’s the Word of Truth that can save you. It’s the gospel that can save you.
In all the world’s religions you are told, “Do, do, do,” in order to be accepted. The gospel says, “In Christ and by Christ you are accepted, and out of gratitude and thanksgiving to God we do.” The difference is huge, and we constantly forget it! We learn the gospel in some sense. Then, immediately, we have to sort of prove we really are committed to the gospel by doing, doing, doing, until finally at the end of the day we’ve begun to lose sight of the gospel, but it’s the gospel that can save you.
By coming back to the cross again and again and again, in our defeats, in our discouragements, in our trials, in our temptations, just when we’re feeling like failures all over again because we’re blowing up under pressure one more time.… Listen. Don’t just hear the gospel; do it. Put the gospel itself into practice, this Word of Truth which can save you. It saves you from this endless cycle of depression, of failure, of conformity to the world. It saves you. It transforms you.
The gospel doesn’t simply tip you into the kingdom, and then it’s all our counseling techniques after that that make you grow up. The gospel is what transforms you. The gospel is what saves you. The gospel, rightly conceived, rightly ordered, rightly understood, rightly applied in your life, and rightly adopted into all of your life takes you back to the cross again and again and again.
You say, “I am accepted in the beloved. I am loved not because of how much I achieve but because Christ died for sinners, of whom I am chief.” All of your desire to do, which is right, is borne out of gratitude, of thanksgiving, rather than the world’s constant pressure to make you number one. Christians, because of the cross, learn to be grateful people, trusting people, contrite people, broken people, and thus, free people. It’s why this Word of Truth is called the royal law of freedom.
Here it is then. This is what distinguishes between my friend from England and those who grow in the faith. When you are struggling under trial, remember the Christian’s goals. When you confess God’s sovereignty, do not misunderstand God’s motives. When you feel abandoned and crushed, do not forget God’s goodness. When you hear gospel instruction, do not merely listen to it; do it. Put it into practice all the days of your life. It brings gospel freedom. Let us pray.
Merciful God, undoubtedly amongst us tonight are some who are facing terrible trials and temptations. Draw them back to the cross and grant that they may see the perfection of your wisdom, the certainty of your goodness, and the Christ who died on the cross to draw us poor, needy, guilty sinners to himself. Open their eyes that they may see and put down deep roots of obedient trust in you, their Maker, their Redeemer, their final judge.
We pray you will strengthen wavering hearts and minds, renew broken wills, not by mere moral resolution (some resolve like that of the Stoics) but in gospel power reminding us our ultimate ground of certainty, of comfort, of self-identity, of knowing who we are is bound up with that little hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
So we go back to Christ and find there our comfort and grace to help in time of need. We ask, Lord God, this may be the experience of many here tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, and until the Master comes. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
