Part 2: People

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of prayer from 1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:13.

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“But, brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan stopped us. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.

So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God’s fellow worker in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them.

In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know. For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and that our efforts might have been useless.

But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you. Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus Christ comes with all his holy ones.”

Some of us think, by and large, the church is quite a nice place. You get fellowship there and friendship, sometimes a reasonably safe haven. In the best of circumstances, some sensitivity to aesthetics, and in older buildings, a pipe organ. Quite a nice place (the church), were it not for one thing: the people.

If only we could have church without the people. It would be nice to get the feeling of solid, magnificent, corporate worship without all those people. It would be nice to feel the glow of intimate fellowship without all those obstreperous, obnoxious, insensitive people. Of course, as soon as we word it this way, we remember the line from Pogo: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

The church is people, people like us and, in fact, the church rightly has a reputation for gathering a disproportionate number of eccentrics and oddities partly because, by and large, the church is a fairly charitable sort of place, so inevitably, the lonely people, the disoriented people, and the oddities tend to gather around the church. Then the rest of us who aren’t odd (are we?) feel uncomfortable by their presence.

Yet, Christian leaders, mature Christians, will always relate every aspect of Christian service and life to people. Instead of being task-oriented, we will be people-oriented. We will not think of programs in the abstract. We will not even think of doctrines as mere systems. Whether our task is arranging flowers or ushering or playing an instrument, we will be less concerned for our reputations and protecting our turf than for edifying and nurturing people.

Of course, it is also true mature Christians will relate every bit of their life and service to God. It is true, in a sense, that all we do is aimed at pleasing God. We aim to please him, and we remember that we give an account to him. Still, humanity is the sphere of the outworking of our obedience to God. We human beings do not set the agenda; we are the agenda.

Not least is this true, or it ought to be true, in the area of intercessory prayer. Last week, we saw part of the framework of Paul’s praying turns on praying with eternity’s values in view, praying with respect to the end, and praying for the things God is concerned about, but let us be quite frank. It is possible to pray for those things and forget there are people out there.

We may pray for revival in the abstract but not think through what that means for you, for me, for the people in the next room in the dorm. We may pray for a spirit of fellowship but not understand that means self-denial for me as a call rep for all the people for whom I am responsible. We may pray for good leadership but not deeply understand that leadership will begin by knowing everybody’s first name and greeting them by name.

No prayers in Scripture are more moving in this respect than the prayers of Paul, and of all the prayers of Paul, I suspect it is this one in 1 Thessalonians 3 that most intensely illustrates how people-focused Paul’s prayers are. Let me just read verses 9 and following again. Listen to the intensity of the language.

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.” There is not a trace of mere professionalism. In fact, there are three things to observe about the people-oriented nature of this prayer before we look at the petitions themselves.

1. Observations about the people-oriented nature of Paul’s prayer

A) Paul’s prayer arises out of his intense longing to be with the Thessalonians.

If you read the history of the founding of this church in Acts, chapter 17, you will be reminded of the fact that Paul has just landed in Europe and planted a church in Philippi where he has been beaten up for his pains. He passes through Apollonia and Amphipolis, perhaps because there are no Jewish synagogues there, and he arrives in Thessalonica and begins his evangelism, as was his want in the Jewish synagogue.

Things go well at first, but eventually, the situation becomes so desperate that he has to slip out of town at night. Then he goes on to Berea and something similar happens there. Eventually, he goes on to Athens, and he finds here not only an absence of Jews but a kind of intellectualized idolatry that leaves him struggling to articulate the gospel afresh in a context which is not where he ordinarily begins his evangelism.

Now, all alone, he sends back Timothy and other workers into Macedonia to the north of Greece to find out how these Christians are doing, these fledgling churches where he has spent at most a few weeks. He spent not more than four weeks in Thessalonica. He says, in chapter 2, verse 17, “But, brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you.”

Again, in chapter 3, “So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God’s fellow worker …” Again, verse 5: “For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith.” Some of you have led others to the Lord. Do you feel this way about them afterwards?

If you can’t keep in contact with them, you just about can’t stand it? You want to find out where they are. You haven’t simply chotted one up on your scout chart and left them to the Lord’s sovereign devices. Rather, you intensely long to be with them, to nurture them, to instruct them, and when you don’t find out how they’re getting on, you send somebody to find out or you make the trip yourself or you go way out of your way to find out how they’re doing, not because you are professional but because you love as Christ loves.

That is the framework out of which Paul prays. Elsewhere, in 2 Corinthians 11, when he goes through his list of sufferings, he mentions toward the end, “Above everything else, I have on me daily the pressure of all the churches. Who is not offended, and I am not moved?” Paul has learned to rejoice with those who rejoice, to mourn with those who mourn. Never a professional, he is profoundly committed to these people.

B) This intense longing to see the Thessalonians is not stimulated by some kind of self-interested desire for worldly praise or for professional friendship.

Rather, it is his pursuit of their spiritual good. I teach in North America when I’m there at a large theological seminary with about 1,600 students.

As I see new generations coming through all the time and question them as to why they are there, what they think they are doing, what kind of ministry they hope to engage in, far too often I hear some sort of response as, “I think my gifts are such-and such. I think I would really feel fulfilled if I could teach in Bongo Bongo, or if I could enter into youth ministry in New York.”

It’s amazing how many of them feel called to California. Some of them lay out entire states where they don’t feel called. Where is this sense of dying to self and seeking the good of others that is essential to being a Christian? If you seek fulfillment, you will not find it. If you seek death to self-interest and if you die daily, you find your life. Isn’t that what Jesus taught?

So also in our religious observance. There is a sense in which going to church and participating in a meeting such as this and praying and going to the Sunday evening evangelistic service and so on can, in a sense, fulfill our sense of duty, our sense of obligation, but the danger always is of a mere professionalism, a mere raw obedience that is not characterized by love for the people whom allegedly we are serving.

What does Paul say by contrast? In chapter 3, verse 2, “We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God’s fellow worker in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.”

He is concerned for their good, and his very purpose in sending Timothy is not to keep his own apostolic reputation up but to stabilize their faith, to do whatever is necessary to stabilize their faith in the face of an impending persecution. Even when he says in chapter 2, verses 19 and 20, these words, he is not in any sense being self-interested. “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”

Does that mean Paul is interested in counting the number of spiritual scalps, and he’s afraid his score will come down a little if these people don’t persist till the end? No, that’s not what he means. He has exactly the same attitude as that which is ascribed to the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53. There we are told, “He will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”

So also Paul, as he looks forward to the last day and giving an account before the Lord Jesus, the only kind of praise, of glory, of consummation, of reward that he wants and anticipates that he looks forward to is the joy of seeing men and women whose lives he has influenced with the gospel there standing before the Sovereign Lord in all his holiness. “You are our joy and our crown,” he says. That is where all of his desire is, and he pours himself into their lives.

C) Paul’s prayer springs also from unaffected delight at reports of the Thessalonians’ faith, love, perseverance, and strength.

He’s not only concerned. When he hears any good about their spiritual maturation, he’s ecstatic. You see that already in chapter 1, verses 2 and following. “We always thank God for all of you.

Mentioning you in our prayers, we continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers, loved by God, we know that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction.”

Again, now in chapter 3, verses 6 to 8, Paul has sent off Timothy and Timothy has returned to Athens with a report. “But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you. Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.”

Isn’t that astonishing? What gives you your greatest joy? Where you derive ecstasy? Is it when your college goes up in the boat races or when you get that first that you didn’t really believe you’d quite make or when she says yes? Is it when you bought some new piece of equipment or a new car or a new dress? What gives you your joy?

Do you remember what John says in the second and third epistles? “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking according to the truth.” This is not only an orientation toward the future for giving an account on the last day. It’s not only that. It’s recognition that in light of this accounting on the last day what ought already to give us joy and pleasure now is everything which contributes to the glory of Christ and the good of his people. That is wonderful.

To hear that Christians are advancing. That is terrific. To see that some part of my life is bearing fruit in others. That is the source of Paul’s ecstasy. “You are my joy and my crown.” He says, “Now we really live, because you are standing firm in the Lord.” This sort of perspective is essential to fruitful Christian living. Otherwise, eventually, our prayers will become corroded. It is essential to fruitful Christian praying, or else, eventually, we will be asking for merely mechanical things.

It is small wonder in the light of these sorts of sentiments that Paul’s prayer is simply permeated with his love for the people, the love of the Thessalonians for whom he prays. It is extremely important to maintain this perspective in our thought as we work through the particular foci of prayer in these verses.

2. The particular foci of Paul’s prayer

A) Paul offers thanks to God for them (verse 9).

The psalmist in Psalm 116 could say, “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?” Now, this sort of thanksgiving is particularly uttered with respect to these Thessalonian Christians. “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?” There are two things I want you to note about the way Paul articulates this thanks.

First, he thanks God for their growth. Over against two other possibilities. There are some Christians who refuse to thank other Christians for anything lest the flattery will go to their head. Somebody has really gone overboard in arranging the meetings or in organizing the drives or in setting up the entire ushering system, but if they have done it, they’ve done it as unto the Lord. Why should I thank them? I don’t want to flatter them. They might become corroded. They might just become big-headed. You thank some organist enough times over 25 years and he won’t give the wretched thing up and let some younger person take his place.

Other people, the super-suave types, are just the opposite. They keep the wheels of the machine well-oiled by flowery praises everywhere. “That was a magnificent job you did on ushering this morning, brother. I don’t think I could have passed the bags like that.” Everything is superfluous, everything is extraordinary, everything is generous praise and flattery, and everybody goes away feeling good and starts straining their shoulders as they pat themselves on the back for what super saints they are.

Paul’s strategy (in fact, I don’t think it’s a strategy; I think it just comes naturally) is quite different. He thanks God for what he sees of God’s grace in their lives. In other words, there’s a sense in which he is thanking them, but indirectly, he’s really thanking God for them. That means there is nothing in it by which they can flatter themselves because he’s thanking God for what God has given them. They are recipients.

Yet, at the same time, he is, in effect, acknowledging what they have contributed to him, and that is typical of the way Paul thanks people. If you look at all of those “thanksgivings” at the beginning of his letters.… There is one at the beginning of all of his letters except the letter to the Galatians. In part, that was a standardized form, but Paul always uses that form to say something nice about the people to whom he is writing. In each case, it’s voiced as thanksgiving to God not to the people for something in the people.

If we start cultivating that amongst ourselves, we will simultaneously be encouraging one another and giving praise to whom it is due: God himself. That becomes a kind of backdoor way of reminding one another, if there is anything in our lives that is helping others and that is praiseworthy, in fact, we have received it from God.

Does not Paul say elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 4, “What have you but what you have received, and if you received it, why do you boast as if you haven’t received it?” What does he say? “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?”

Secondly, the thanks to God for the Thessalonian Christians is, in measure, Paul’s thanks for his own sources of joy. Do you see how he words it? “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have …” The joy we’re experiencing. “… in the presence of our God because of you?”

Paul’s delight in the Lord is not a lone-ranger mysticism. It’s not as if he retreats to the Lord’s presence and is so taken up in mystical delight that he can forget all those troublesome Christians out there. I have no doubt Paul does delight in the Lord, but here, his delight in the presence of the Lord as he comes before him in prayer in the sanctuary of the quiet hour is, in fact, the news that these Christians are growing in grace.

He acknowledges to them, thus, they have contributed to his joy, and he’s not ashamed to show his dependence in that way, too, which is why, for example, Hebrews 13 can tell Christians to be very careful how they treat their leaders because, the text says, they watch for your souls. It is important that they take on the task with joy. If, in fact, you’re opposing them tooth and nail at every step, they’re not discharging their tasks with joy. They come to see their service as a first-class pain in the neck.

There is a sense in which, just as Christian leaders will serve us, so also by our obedience to the faith because of their ministry toward us, we ought to contribute to their joy in service, so Paul here says, “We thank God. We cannot thank God enough. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of God because of you?”

B) Paul offers persistent prayer that he might be able to strengthen them.

In fact, in the midst of this part of the prayer, he changes the form. Verses 9 and 10 are what some people call a prayer report. Paul simply reports what he prays. Then verses 11 and on change the form. It’s now cast in the third person. It’s what some people call a wish prayer: “May God do such and such.” The form is not nearly so important as the content. What does he say in verses 10 and 11? “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.”

For some reason, Paul has been prevented in getting back, and the Devil himself has been part of this prevention. We see in 2:8, “For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan stopped us.” The nature of that stopping we do not know. We could make some intelligent guesses, but we do not know.

Paul has tried to leave Athens or, perhaps before that, he tried to leave Berea and go back. It may simply be the level of persecution in Thessalonica was so bad he knew his return would have caused more heat to the Thessalonians. He sees the persecution, ultimately, as coming from the Devil himself, so in that sense, the Devil obstructs him. We just do not know.

In any case, Paul wanted to go back and couldn’t, yet spends time again and again praying most earnestly, “That we might again see you and supply what is lacking in your faith.” Then he says, “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.” Very strong. Very strong language indeed. What is lacking in their faith, of course, in this case is not a deficiency in obedience so much as a deficiency in knowledge. They are ignorant. They are ill-taught. They’ve had four weeks of Christian tutelage. That’s all. Paul wants to go back and ground them in the faith.

How does that apply to our praying? After this meeting tonight, some of you, I understand, will be going back to your rooms and will be having others in for coffee and a chat. Some of us feel so nervous about those gatherings we enter the room wondering if everybody is looking at us. We wonder if we’re going to stick our foot in it. We are a bit self-conscious and awkward.

Others of us cover up by a kind of extrovert-like confidence that breathes out good cheer in all directions to the point where, afterwards when we cycle home, we wonder if we’ve made a first-class ass of ourselves.

When I was growing up in the province of Quebec in French Canada (I was reared largely in French), there were very few evangelical young people around. While I was still in the last part of high school, the churches over an area of a radius of 300 miles or so would come together for youth weekends and the like.

Eventually, you’d get 200 or 300 young people, which in Quebec in those days was an enormous number of young people. I’d sometimes go to these things and come home and complain how nobody paid any attention to me and how I was isolated. Probably partly because I was English, they were all doing their thing and not interested in what I’m interested in.

Finally, my mother who was a cockney and didn’t mince her words, said to me, “Don, if you’re going to complain and feel sorry for yourself, stay home, but if you want to live like a Christian, you go to the next one and look for the loneliest, most isolated person in the entire room and make it your business to befriend him. Otherwise, shut up and stay home.” With a mother like that, who needs counselors?

Of course, I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about (I’m the son of a cockney, and my father is Irish), but the next meeting I went and remembered what she said, and I looked around for the loneliest, most isolated, droop-mouthed individual I could find, and in three more meetings, I was viewed as one of the leaders.

Partly, it’s a question of an entire orientation of life (isn’t it?) whether you’re going someplace to be fulfilled or to serve others, and the same is true in your prayer life. If the aim of your prayer meeting is to feel good, to go away feeling as if you’ve been blessed, recharged, hyped up, or you’ve had a worship experience, the name of the game is selfishness. That’s what it is. Unmitigated selfishness with a few evangelical texts tagged on for good measure, for proper praying seeks the others’ good. It seeks God’s glory and it seeks the good of those for whom we pray.

Therefore, in this instance, when Paul is praying in some way he might have some means of strengthening the faith of these Christians, whether by sending a Timothy or a Titus or whether by going himself, if there are obstacles in the way that God himself would remove them, “If in some way I can help you, I will do it. Meanwhile, I pray constantly,” he says. “Every time I pray, I pray that I might in some way strengthen your faith and fill up what is lacking.”

Do you have that sense of obligation toward the Christians in your college? You are call reps. Is that what you concede your job to be? Is that all of our jobs, to seek one another’s good for Christ’s sake? It ought to drive our praying. It’s an orientation to people that is nothing more than what it means to love one another for Christ’s sake.

C) Paul prays for an overflow of love amongst the Thessalonians.

Verse 12: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.” The Lord, here, is almost certainly the Lord Jesus. “May the Lord Jesus do this,” he says. Literally, “May the Lord enlarge you and make you abound in love.”

This enlarging language can be quite colorful. Paul uses it again in 2 Corinthians 6. Listen to this language in 2 Corinthians 6, verses 11 and 13. “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you.” We have enlarged our hearts to you. Verse 13: “As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.” In other words, this notion of enlarging the heart has to do with a breadth of spirit, of perspective, of emotional generosity.

What is it that Paul is after here? It’s quite remarkable that after receiving so little basic Christian instruction, what he prays for them is not, “May your basic Christology be sound and stable,” or “May your understanding of the doctrine of the atonement be deepened,” or “May you have a proper grasp of biblical eschatology.”

I’m sure those would all have been good prayers, and perhaps, on some occasions Paul prays them, but what he prays for frequently for Christians, not least these fledgling Christians, is, “May your love increase. May the Lord Jesus himself make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else just as ours does for you.” This language is very important, and we need to look at it a little more closely.

First of all, he says, “… your love overflow for each other and, then, for everyone else.” There is a sense in which the first-century church had a much greater sense of its own self-identity as a community than we do today. We tend to be individualists, perhaps worse in North America with a Wild West tradition. The man without a name who comes in and cleans out the bad guys single-handedly. This rugged individualism of the Western world affects us in Christian thought and life as well.

If we ever start to nostalgize about revival, we tend not to think corporately; we tend to think of a Whitefield or a Wesley. We tend to think of a Spurgeon or a Hal Harris. We think of an individual who is a great hero, but in the first century, when a person became a Christian, he or she did not become a Christian in complete isolation.

Becoming a Christian was viewed as moving out of one community (the lost community, the community of this age, the community of this world, the community in rebellion against God) and moving into the messianic community (the community of the new age, the community of the Spirit). Baptism was a mark of this transfer of community.

Paul says elsewhere in Colossians, chapter 1, for example, “God has transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” The very notion, therefore, of the church was of a new community, an eschatological community. Thus, when Jesus describes the characteristic mark of the church on the night before he was betrayed in John, chapter 13, he says, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” There is no sense of a kind of lone-ranger Christianity.

Again, when Paul prays in Ephesians, chapter 3, the wonderful prayer, the second petition runs like, “That you who have been rooted in the love of God may have power together with all the saints to grasp how long and wide and high and deep is the love of God in Christ Jesus.” It’s not that you as an individual may have that, but you together with all the saints.

In that sense, then, Paul wants Christian love to work out in the community. He wants the community to stand out as the community of God’s love on earth, so he says, “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other …” First of all in the community. Then he says, “… and for everyone else.” That is equivalent to what is elsewhere said, “Do good to all men but especially to the household of faith.”

What is at stake again is the sense that there is a new community and all of our love for the outside emerges as the overflow of our experience of God’s love for us communicated within the community. We learn to pray for love for one another and that this, then, might overflow to the outside.

Here is the death of all mere professionalism. Here is the death of merely argumentative evangelism. Here is the death of merely keeping up appearances. Here is the vital mark of the church. Here is breath from God himself. “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.”

D) Paul prays that they may be blameless and sinless.

Verse 13: “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.” [Audio cuts off]

You come a little close to the biblical way of looking at things so that love has to do with your gut or, in the Old Testament, your kidneys. In older English versions, you often find the word reins. In French today, le rein, or bowels of mercies. Can you imagine a young man saying to his beloved, “I love you with all my kidneys”? The heart is not the equivalent simply of the mind in Scripture. Rather, the heart, in Scripture, is the entire inner being. It is your will, your mind, your affections, where you make your decisions. It is what is at heart. You.

When Paul says, “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy,” he’s saying, “May he strengthen your priorities, your resolve. Not just your emotions in the modern sense of heart, nor simply your mind as if it’s only a question of your intellectual grasp of the truth, but may he strengthen your priorities, your resolve. May he strengthen your whole personality so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with his holy ones.”

That is a constant concern of Paul. In Philippians 2, he says, “We must become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the universe.” Again, 1 Corinthians 4, “God will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time, each will receive his praise from God.”

Paul wants us to be blameless in God’s sight, not blameless in one another’s sight. In God’s sight, remembering the Lord’s return when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. That is what Paul prays for. The question is.… When was the last time you prayed this for yourself, for the people in your CU group, for your church, for Christians in this country?

What does it mean, then, to pray fervently and biblically with people in view? Last week, we examined certain foundations in prayer, an orientation toward the end, living with eternity’s values in view, remembering that Jesus is coming back, and that we must give an account to him. Tonight we see that turns, finally, on praying for people, for individuals. Next week, we’ll turn to concrete, practical lessons in prayer.

It is important to understand our praying must be at the personal level. Do you have in your CU group any international-class obstreperous bores, really awkward types? You wish they’d transfer to Oxford. Is it not the case sometimes, when we pray, we are covering up a whole nest of bitterness and sins and resentments even within the group when Jesus tells us, quite frankly, we will not be forgiven unless we forgive?

Did you know, historically, almost all revivals have begun in the first stages by people confessing their faults and their sins to one another in brokenness and love at prayer meetings? “To love above with those you love, undiluted glory; to live below with those you know, quite another story.” The danger of focusing on the eschatology we looked at last week and forgetting there are people out there is that we think of the Christian system merely in the abstract and forget, at the end of the day, we pray for people, we love people, and we witness to people.

You who are call reps, you would like to be call reps, and you who are not call reps and don’t have any intention of being call reps, have you taken it upon yourself to pray for every Christian by name in your college? Regularly by name, thinking through what signs of grace there are in each Christian’s life and thanking God for those signs of grace.

Thinking through, as best you can, where there need to be further signs, where there needs to be further growth and praying for those things for Christ’s sake and for the good of his people out of love, especially for those whom you find obstreperous. That is simply normal Christian living, praying the Lord of the church that he would pour out his blessing on the church. The church being you and me. Let us pray.

Our Father, we confess with shame that our prayers, not least the most energetic and fervent of them, can quickly become another form of narcissism. Forgive us, Father, when we have become so interested in our own spiritual well-being we have forgotten how important it is to die daily to self that we may live with Christ and serve our fellow believers and this generation where you have placed us.

We pray for one another this evening. Father, in the quietness of this moment, fill our minds with the needs and the concerns, the joys, the hurts, the sins, the sorrows, the laughter, the tears of our friends and help us to pray for them, to thank you for them. We thank you for all that other Christians have taught us. We thank you for signs of grace in Christians in our colleges.

We thank you the same God who worked through the Thessalonians works in men and women today, but we pray, Lord God, we may see the church not as an abstract institution but as your messianic community, that which you have purchased with the blood of your dear Son and so love one another that, throughout the university, whether people agree with us or not, they will say, “At least those Christians love each other. At least those Christians care for each other. At least those Christians pray for each other.”

Grant, therefore, the entire Christian community here may be, as it were, a kind of out-post of heaven in anticipation of what will be in the new heaven and the new earth, and thus, a bold witness to all around us. We pray, too, that we may be blameless and pure on the last day, strengthened in our hearts, in our resolve, in the very core of our personalities to please you, to live with eternity’s values in view, to hate sin, to cherish what is right and clean and good, to despise everything that smacks of spiritual mediocrity, and to cleave to what is good and clean and honoring to your dear Son.

Lord God, have mercy upon us. Forgive our sins. Cleanse us from resentments and bitterness. Make us quick to confess our sins to one another and to ask one another for forgiveness, understanding you will not forgive those who do not forgive. So fill us with your love that we will discover our highest joy is in finding the fruit of your Spirit in those around us for whom we have prayed, to whom, in some measure, we ourselves inevitably minister for good or ill. This we ask for the praise of Jesus and his peoples’ good. Amen.

We probably have a few moments for questions. Then I believe we’re going to sing. When there aren’t questions, it means one of two things. Either I’ve been so terribly obscure nobody knows what to ask or I’ve been so terribly simple everything has been so explained there was no challenge, so you just have to ask a question. There’s a third possibility. That’s because everyone is so nervous they’re waiting for somebody else to go first.

Male: You seem to stress love within the Christian community quite a lot. Is that right as opposed to loving the outsider?

Don: The question was, “You seem to stress love within the Christian community quite a lot. Is that right as opposed to loving the outsider?” In fact, there are some people who argue, for example, John’s gospel is inferior to the Synoptic Gospels on precisely that ground. John’s gospel says, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Whereas, in Matthew, for example, we’re told to love our enemies. Isn’t that far better? Far higher?

What I would want to stress, what I was trying to get across but perhaps inadequately, is you must not pit those two against each other but understand there is a different focus in each case. There is a sense of identity in the New Testament, an identity for Christians. We are a community, and that is largely lost in the modern world because of our individualism, at least in the West. It’s not lost in some parts of the world.

Within that framework, there are many, many, many passages that stress the love Christians must have for each other. It’s for the brotherhood. Thus, for example, in 1 John, the one who loves the Father must love also the Father’s children. It’s understood not the father of all who are created but the Father of all those who are born again. That’s the context in 1 John 5.

Or the John 13 passage I already cited. There is a sense in which there is a love to be displayed in the Christian community before a watching world. At the end of the second century, Tertullian, one of the church fathers, said, “Even the pagans commented on how the Christians loved one another under persecution, under threat, under stress. Behold how they love one another!” That became one of the reasons why the church mushroomed so quickly even under persecution.

One of the later emperors, in fact, had to say the Christian community was not only supplying the needs for all of their own poor but for half the poor of the empire as well. Having said that, it’s not a kind of narcissistic love, “You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours,” or “I love you; you love me,” a kind of Christian Masonic lodge. That’s not what’s at stake.

It’s, rather, the kind of love Christ has for us, which is fundamentally self-denying. It is a recognition that we are a new community, we are a new brotherhood, we are a new family, but that very same reality forces us, then, to love outwardly as well. Hence, you get this kind of statement (the one that’s reflected here in 1 Thessalonians 3), that your love may abound more and more toward each other and toward everyone else. You get the same sort of thing where we’re supposed to do good to all men but especially the household of faith.

The two are not set antithetically. It’s recognizing there is a Christian community which is the subset of total humanity. The love within the Christian community is not supposed to be narcissistic that hates the outside. A Qumran, for example. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell of a hermitic community by the Dead Sea in the time of Jesus where their documents openly say, “Love one another, and hate the outsider.”

There is no hint of that in the New Testament. It’s, “Love one another and let it bubble over to embrace everybody, especially your enemies,” but it starts with the inside. It cannot possibly be, “Love your enemies, but hate your brother.”

Male: Jesus says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Where does self-love start and self-denial kick in?

Don: The question is, “Jesus says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Where does self-love start and self-denial kick in?” Part of the problem, it seems to me, is a great deal of popular psychology is concerned about this question of self-love, and all kinds of studies have sought to show, for example, the person who abuses his children has likely been abused himself. He has been an abusee before he has become an abuser.

Very frequently, men and women whose early days have been spent in homes where they were neither loved nor disciplined come up in due course unable to give or receive love. All kinds of evidence shows, for example, if a girl is brought up without a father who is both strong and loving she will be unable to give and receive love acceptably in her own marriage. Similar studies have been done on score after score after score.

As a result, a lot of popular psychology, including Christian psychology, stresses the importance of self-love. “If you can accept yourself, it’s the first step to maturity.” Because we have come to absorb a lot of this popular psychology, this way of phrasing things, then when we hear the command of Jesus, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we start preaching it like, “First, love yourself. Then you are free to love your neighbor.”

I don’t think the Bible begins anywhere near that point. I think that’s a complete misunderstanding. Rather, the assumption of the Bible is that you do love yourself, and therefore, you ought to love your neighbor to the same measure, but doesn’t this fly in the face of all contemporary psychology has taught us? A lot of it very useful studies.

It seems to me the categories are different. They’re focused in a different direction. A lot of this so-called lack of self-love is, in fact, another form of perverted self-interest. When we say, for example, we abuse our children because we ourselves have been abused, when we’re thrashing our little tyke within an inch of his life, isn’t it a kind of, nevertheless, self-interest? “I’m so angry with him because he has invaded my time and my turf, because he’s not doing what I want, because he won’t stop his crying?”

It becomes even this lack of self-love, in the psychological sense, is, in fact, another form of profound selfishness. The irony is, when a person is mature in Christ and understands he has been loved by Christ and can accept himself because God has accepted him for Christ’s sake, then he’s also free to deny himself. A voluntary choice. “I deny myself for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of others.”

If you seek self-love in order to set a standard for loving your neighbor, you will never love your neighbor (it will always be mere professionalism), but if you come to understand who you are and accept yourself, not because you’re such a wonderful person but because Christ loved you despite what you are, if you come to accept yourself within that framework, you have all the maturity and more that modern psychology talks about.

Then the standard is not, “Love yourself with all your heart and, out of that, love others.” The standard is, “Accept yourself before the Lord because God has accepted you in Christ Jesus.” Unless God accepts you, you have nothing. Within that framework, despite the fact I’m a sinner, I come to know God has loved me anyway. I come to delight more and more in the love of God.

In fact, the last prayer of the series (unfortunately, I won’t be here, but I’m sure Mark Ashton will bring it out) is that wonderful prayer in Ephesians, chapter 3. “That you might have power to grasp the limitless dimensions of God’s love for you.” Not that your love might increase, but that you might grasp his love for you.

Out of that framework, you are secure enough, then, to say, “I then deny myself as Christ denied himself. He denied himself that I might live. I deny myself that others might live.” Thus, Christian love becomes simply an imitation of Christ’s love. It seems to me that is the biblical framework in which Paul is operating when he’s talking about love.