What kind of king saves the guilty? John Piper opens Genesis 49:8–10 to show that the Lion of Judah bears the guilt of his people.

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Why should we follow Jesus when life seems easier without him? Pastor John responds to a man questioning the cost of daily obedience.

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Pro-life activists around the US celebrated when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. After almost half a century of federally sanctioned abortions, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization seemed like a massive victory, finally promising to honor the unborn as image bearers.

Four years later, however, the fight against a culture of death continues. In the past, Roe v. Wade gave pro-lifers a common, united enemy. Dobbs hasn’t eliminated this enemy; instead, it has unleashed chaos among the states and fractured the battlefield into a decentralized conflict. Christians can no longer hold out for federal solutions. With the end of Roe, the war moved from Washington, DC, to our communities and backyards.

Culture of Death at the State Level

My home state of Minnesota has become one of the clearest battlegrounds in this fight. It is radically pro-abortion, ranking alongside New York and California in its policies. Minnesota has a constitutional right to abortion (Doe v. Gomez). In 2023, the Minnesota governor signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act into law, which further enshrined abortion access and limited the state’s regulation of abortion. Minnesota even provides protection for out-of-state abortion seekers, serving as an “Abortion Access Island” for the Midwest.

Future generations will be dumbfounded that we rationalized our way into murdering children in the womb. It is a sad world that accepts the killing of more than sixty million unborn children. It is a sad world where mothers and fathers permit the destruction of the very children entrusted to their care. The cost of abortion is immense. The guilt and emotional scars endure for a lifetime. Even if laws change, a greater danger remains present: the devaluation of vulnerable life made in the image of God. The problem is not merely what we permit but who we are becoming.

In the midst of such evil enshrined by the state, what are Christians to do? How do those committed to protecting life respond? How do we not lose hope and continue to labor for life when efforts across the country have fragmented?

Age-Old Battle

Although the battleground has changed, the struggle to protect vulnerable life is as old as time itself. Satan has wielded infanticide as a tool from the beginning. Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all the newborn males to slow Israel’s growth (Exodus 1:15–16). When this failed, he ordered all the people to cast every newborn baby boy into the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Imagine the terror of such state-sponsored infanticide. Pharaoh effectively deputized an entire nation to destroy Israel’s sons, seeking to extinguish God’s people before his promises could unfold.

Even God’s people were not immune to killing their own children. God repeatedly judged Israel for child sacrifice. Whether they sacrificed children to Molech (Leviticus 18:21) or burned their sons and daughters alive (Jeremiah 7:31), Israel participated in a culture of death, staining their own hands with innocent blood.

In Jesus’s day, the violence continued. Herod the Great channeled the wickedness of Pharaoh, ordering the murder of boys two years old and under in his attempt to eliminate the newborn King (Matthew 2:16–18). The callous killing of children has occurred from the beginning, often to eradicate God’s people and short-circuit his promises.

But nothing — not even the aims of the bloodthirsty — can thwart God’s will.

Five Ways We Fight for Life

It is easy to grow weary and discouraged when the laws, institutions, and momentum are moving in the wrong direction. Yet the God who prevailed over the plagues in Egypt and protected his Son from Herod’s sword still reigns over our statehouses and legal books. How do churches in pro-abortion states cling to this truth? How do we not lose heart and grow weary of doing good?

ACKNOWLEDGE

First, we acknowledge that it is indeed a war worth waging. God calls us to protect life (Exodus 20:13). Life is a divine gift to display God’s goodness and glory. As children are a gift from God (Psalm 127:3–5), pregnancy is not a disease to be eliminated but a blessing to embrace. Satan loves abortion because it devalues life and undermines God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. We recognize this is a spiritual battle against the forces of evil (Ephesians 6:12). Therefore, our primary enemy is not our political opponents but the spiritual forces of darkness that blind minds and distort God’s good design. This is a war worth fighting.

PRAY

Second, we pray. We pray as Jesus taught: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We pray for Christians to stand and fight for life. We pray for abortionists to become former abortionists. We pray for those guilty of abortion to repent, heal, and place their faith in Christ. We pray against a culture of personal autonomy at the expense of vulnerable life in the womb. We pray that people see they exist to glorify God with their lives and bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Consider gathering your church to pray for the unborn, for vulnerable mothers, against the culture of death, and for those working in pregnancy centers. We pray with hope because God changes hearts.

PREACH

Third, we preach. We preach that every human being — from the embryo to the elderly — is made in the image of God. We preach against the horrors of abortion, euthanasia, and the minimization of human dignity. We show the people in our churches, from the Scriptures, how God views life. We lift their eyes to see their God-given purpose, value, and dignity. In our preaching, we invite those who have had abortions to repent and experience healing at the foot of the cross. We confront visitors and guests with the truth that abortion is evil and forgiveness is possible. We disciple Christians to see the value of life at every stage and age. We preach because truth renews minds.

PARTNER

Fourth, we partner with ministries and people doing on-the-ground work. Churches can partner with pregnancy centers and ministries that provide practical support to women and families. Or we can find ways to be involved in adoption and foster care and to come alongside families facing crisis. Every year, our church passes out baby bottles to support our local pregnancy center. When the bottles return filled with money, these funds provide ultrasounds, counseling, diapers, and life-saving support to pregnant women with few options.

Additionally, churches can celebrate life whenever possible. Our congregation announces births or adoptions to publicly welcome little ones into our church family. This small but significant practice celebrates God-given life. We partner because mothers need tangible support.

ENGAGE

Fifth, engage in the public and political spheres to advocate for life. Petition your local leaders to uphold the value of life. Pray, vote, and consider writing and dialoguing with your legislators so they hear your voice on this issue. We can build relationships with local leaders, attend town halls, write letters, make phone calls, speak persistently on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, and pray for those who represent us. We can make a biblical case for the dignity and sanctity of life and invite others to uphold these principles. We engage because laws teach.

A Vision of Victory

Imagine with me a society that views children not as burdens but as blessings. Imagine a world where no woman fears abandonment. Where fathers gladly embrace their responsibility as protectors. Where abortion clinics go out of business because their traffic has dried up. Where people don’t murder children in the womb but rather view them as gifts from God. Imagine a culture that instructs children to know, love, and treasure Christ. This is the world Jesus is ushering in through the transformative power of the gospel.

Pray that abortion would become increasingly rare. Pray for the church to disciple its members to value and cherish all life. Pray for a world where pregnancy centers have abundant resources to serve their communities, where foster care lists disappear because Christians rise up, and where the gospel takes root more and more within every heart and mind. Pray for a day when we remember abortion as a tragic chapter of history, and a culture of death gives way to a culture of life. And pray for the final day when these former things will pass away, and Christ will make all things new (Revelation 21:5).

Paul builds his case for unity in the Corinthian church by piling seven arguments on top of one another. How do those arguments fit together?

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When crisis hits, where do you run?

The first time trouble comes, many of us go straight to God. We echo King Jehoshaphat: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). Whether we encounter sickness, a relational conflict, or a dry spiritual season, God hears our cry and saves.

But where do you go when the same crisis comes back?

When a problem whips around like a boomerang, I often find myself running to God through the means he first used to help me. When sickness returns, I go back to the medicine that worked. When I offend a brother, I find a wise counselor. When I feel spiritually dry, I look for another conference. God met me with these tools once — why can’t I meet him there again?

In this article, I want to think through a subtle spiritual danger. Many of us mourn that we often worship the gift more than the Giver — I pray we all run from that idolatry. But sometimes we associate the gift with the Giver so closely that we think, If I want to reach God, I need to go through this gift. We want God, but we imagine we will find him only in traditional remedies, or in prayer meetings, or even in our favorite Bible passage. Pick your go-to solution. If it fails you, will God have failed you?

The Israelites once struggled with this. They turned a memory of God’s mercy into a vending machine of grace: an idol named Nehushtan, unique to the people of God. Come with me into Israel’s past and see how we try to incarnate God in the image of his gifts, and how God uses even Nehushtan for his glory.

Idol-Smashing King

Long ago, as the people of Israel were marching toward the promised land, they had a snake problem. God, in fatherly discipline, sent “fiery serpents” that bit and killed many (Numbers 21:6). When the people repented, however, God instructed Moses to make his own fiery serpent out of bronze and to lift it high. If anyone looked at it, he lived. God saved the Israelites from their sin and his wrath by grace.

Centuries after the wilderness generation, Hezekiah became king. Rulers before him had worshiped every false god they could find, but they’d also wanted to keep God in their back pockets (see 2 Kings 16:14–15). So, when Hezekiah took the throne, he destroyed the idols popular among the people, along with all their sneaky ways to get to God — including a surprising one:

He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). (2 Kings 18:4)

What happened? On one hand, maybe Nehushtan was an idol with its own little mythology. But on the other hand, it was the statue “that Moses had made” — and if Moses made it, maybe the people thought it had special significance to Moses’s God. Perhaps God had a snake-shaped hand, so to speak. If God was going to help them today, surely he would do it with the same statue he used centuries ago.

Moses’s bronze snake was a symbol of God’s salvation. Yet the people of Israel started acting as though God needed this snake in order to save — as if God’s saving power had taken on bronze flesh and dwelt among them. The statue became Nehushtan, an incarnation of God’s saving power.

Hezekiah was right to smash that statue. But whom do we most often resemble in this story — the people or Hezekiah? When the same crisis comes a second time, where do we run?

Reject the Almost-God

Remember: It’s right to enjoy God’s gifts, because we want to enjoy God in his gifts. And it’s mature to solve simple problems with known solutions — we honor God by learning from that first crisis. But just as it dishonors God to ignore him because we already have his gifts, it dishonors God to treat his gifts as vending machines for his grace.

How do we know if we’ve found a Nehushtan to stand in for God? Three questions can help us test our hearts.

First, have I forgotten the power of prayer? We don’t have to pray for three hours (or seven days, or thirty years) before using one of God’s gifts, but true worshipers use God’s gifts prayerfully. As we eat, we give thanks (1 Timothy 4:3). As we work, we depend on him (Colossians 1:29). And as we encounter the same struggle as yesterday, we pray to the God who loves to give “strong support” to those who trust him (2 Chronicles 16:9).

Second, what does my heart expose about my hopes? In a crisis, when do we start to calm down — when we pray or when we talk it through with a friend? If we refuse to accept peace from God until we use our favorite gift of God, that gift may have become an almost-God in our hearts. And what happens when the old method doesn’t work? If we grow angry that our first solution failed, we may want a simpler God than we have.

Finally, whom do I trust? If God leads us to take a different path, we cannot trust the gift that once worked more than the God who made it work. When Moses struck a rock in the wilderness, water gushed out (Exodus 17:6). Later, when God told him to speak to the rock rather than to strike it, Moses trusted the old solution — and it cost him the promised land (Numbers 20:11–12). Trust the God who stands behind every gift.

When we face crisis, God often uses tools to help us. But those gifts are not God. They cannot save by themselves. Just as rain falls only when God tells it to (Amos 4:7), my medication works only when God puts his healing power behind it. Our go-to gifts are not an invitation to have joy without God, nor are they the key to access his joy. He is our only joy.

Lifted Up

Nehushtan makes one final appearance in the Bible, centuries after Hezekiah destroyed the original.

It was nighttime in Jerusalem. After the crowds had gone home, Jesus saw one last man approaching: Nicodemus, a local ruler. Nicodemus wanted to know where Jesus got his power. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to look at him and live. Jesus explained his unearthly way of salvation:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14–15)

This is the way to treat Nehushtan: as a pointer to the true Savior. Just as God saved the Israelites by a snake on a pole, he will save you by the Son of Man on a tree. That serpent statue saved a few Israelites, once. Jesus can save anyone, forever.

Just as God used a pill to heal your sickness, so Jesus will heal you completely (Psalm 103:3). Just as God used good counselors to reconcile you to your brother, so Jesus will bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18). Just as God used a prayer retreat to quiet your spirit, so Jesus will give you peace (John 14:27). God’s gifts show us God’s ways — but only Jesus shows us God himself. Just as . . . Jesus will.

Love the Greatest Gift

None of God’s gifts can satisfy like our Maker. And none of God’s gifts can fully show us the invisible God except his greatest gift, the Son (Colossians 1:15). To make certain of this, God has decided that lesser gifts eventually go sour.

Sometimes remedies don’t work. Sometimes a conference isn’t enough. And sometimes even your favorite passage of Scripture will seem cold and dead until you turn to the God who spoke it. Every gift will point to Jesus — either by working and showing off his saving power, or by failing and proving that Jesus, not Nehushtan, is the true way to God.

Only God can heal our bodies. Only God can meet our needs. Only God can be our joy. And only Jesus leads us straight to him. So let’s shatter the snake together and seek the God who satisfies.

Our first parents lost their game of hide-and-go-seek with the Lord after they sinned. They ate, hid from God, and covered themselves with fig leaves. It took one stroll through the garden for the Lord to discover, question, clothe, and expel them. They didn’t get away with it.

If we need any further proof that we all descend from this couple, here we find the uncanny resemblance with how we deal with our sin. We children of Adam love to hide and cover. The garments we make are most colorful, the excuses most creative, but the result is always the same — we are found out. He sees our nakedness behind all the leaves. He hears all our whispered sins and promises one day to proclaim them from the housetops.

Proverbs joins in concert with the rest of Scripture: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper” (Proverbs 28:13). Reader, do you believe this? Let me ask it a different way: Is there any sin you are now hiding? Is there any sin you are now practicing? Is there any darkness hidden from your friends, your family, and (you hope) your God? Are you deceiving yourself into believing that there is anything — even sin locked away in the heart — that will really be kept secret? Do you think you will win this dangerous game with God and prevail in the end?

Whoever conceals his sin will not prosper. What do you do with your sin? Do you bury it, cover it, clothe it? Do you excuse it, overlook it, try to cancel it with good works? When forced to face it, do you explain why it’s not that bad, or why it’s not your fault, or why the blame belongs somewhere else, perhaps with the woman or Satan — or God? What did you do the last time you sinned? Do you and I have the humility to own our faults? Do you possess enough fear of God and faith in the gospel of Christ to regularly confess before God and others?

When was the last time you revealed your sin with a broken heart and naked honesty? When was the last time you asked your wife for forgiveness? When is the last time you told your children you were sorry? When was the last time you really felt that what you did was unacceptable, worthy of death — a cruel ingratitude against your heavenly Father? When was the last time you were distressed for preferring sin to your Savior, or for grieving his Holy Spirit, whom you resisted in carrying out your wrongdoing?

I offer these questions to you because they convict me. Am I a revealer of my sin or a concealer of it? I would like to meet the man who does not need to memorize Proverbs 28:13. Let us reflect upon it together to aid our memory and our souls.

Terms of Mercy

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,
     but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. (Proverbs 28:13)

Here we find the terms of receiving forgiveness from God.

Terms for mercy? At first, this sounds like a contradiction. Mercy is entirely undeserved. We cannot earn it. We cannot work hard enough to obtain it. It is of heaven, and we, of earth. It must be brought to us. Man could sooner reach up and snatch a star from the sky as lay hold on mercy from God of his own initiative.

And yet, the Giver of mercy articulates conditions for securing and enjoying his mercy. He will not have his grace abused. The sinner will receive in God’s way or leave empty-handed. God does not lie about the price of forgiveness to inflate the numbers of professed converts. He does not lower the standard for repentance, like we sometimes do in evangelism. He makes it clear from the beginning that he will not bestow mercy upon sinners concealing their sin. How does someone conceal their sin? The text warns us of two ways.

1. Refuse to confess.

Maybe you confess some sins, just not your favorites. You put the lesser sins to death but spare the king, sacrifice the maimed sheep but keep the dearest in the fold.

Or maybe you drag some vermin into the light, just not the ones that make you look really bad. Some sins present as very dignified, more upper-class than those grimy ones sold in the back alleyways by sinners that look the part. Different sins bring varying degrees of shame. And so, you confess some sins but keep quiet about the ones that will leave too damaging an impression. Or maybe you only expose sins that other people have already confessed. If others struggle with it too, it doesn’t seem as scary to admit. You don’t want to be the only one.

To cover sin is to leave it unconfessed, partially admitted, or mostly attenuated. To uncover sin is to confess it — first to God, and then to others whom it concerns. Again, this verse is about receiving mercy. Those unwilling to confess are unwilling to be forgiven on God’s terms. To refuse confession is to prize our reputations over reconciliation, our pleasures over pardon, our fandom over freedom. Are there any sins in your life you are not confessing?

Some today think that life under the new covenant means forgiveness without conditions. Such will remind us that we are in fact Protestant. Let Rome play pretend in their boxes all they want; we cast off those shackles long ago. Yes, we reject priestly absolutions and the confessional, but we do not reject confession. We believe in forgiveness being unmerited but not unconditional. The same condition of confession meets us at the end of our Bibles: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Confession of sin is necessary to obtain mercy from God. Not because it earns mercy. Not because God is late to the scene of the crime and needs to know exactly what happened. But because we need confession. We need to admit what happened to God and to ourselves, and we need to be led afresh to the scarred hands of our Savior, who purchased forgiveness for us. A life of confession is for our good, not God’s. If we were more astonished by our sin through confession, we’d be more astonished by God’s grace through Christ.

2. Refuse to forsake.

Yet sin can be concealed in another fashion. This one less emphasized and more costly than the first. “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

More people would rather confess sin than forsake it. If caught in the act or “tired of falling,” they might acknowledge it — for a season. But they do not leave it for dead. They tattle on it from time to time but don’t have the heart to abandon it. They wag a finger at it for tearing up the carpet but keep its kennel in the basement. They do not truly desire to forsake sin, and so they do not finally obtain mercy.

Again, this remains a New Testament condition: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Our light-walking — meaning our grace-fueled efforts at walking in holiness and forsaking the shadowy ways of sin — is a condition for true fellowship with believers and for Christ’s blood cleansing us from all sin. We do not make ourselves forgivable, but our walk provides evidence that Jesus’s blood has already canceled the penalty and power of sin in our lives, and continues to do so. Not perfectly in this life, but still powerfully.

Are you confessing and forsaking your sin? Turning away from transgression is the beating heart of true repentance.

Meager Terms, Tremendous Mercy

You may need to confess and forsake a sin many times in your life. Like a hornet, it keeps following you. You must swat it away by the Spirit’s power for years before you’re truly and finally free. But you will be increasingly free. Grace will empower you to leave your sin by the side of the road and drive away. Again and again. Some sins will fade in the rearview completely and be seen no more in this life. Others will finally vanish from view only when we see Christ face to face.

Until then, beloved, keep confessing and keep forsaking your sin. Do not conceal it. To do so is akin to concealing a stab wound from the doctor, or capital crimes from a judge offering full clemency. Christ has died; you can confess. Christ has risen; you can forsake. Again, this is for our sakes: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19–20).

I wouldn’t wonder if you refused to expose and relinquish sin if no possibility of exoneration existed. But full forgiveness is available on these meager terms: Confess and forsake your sin. Trust in Christ’s death on your behalf, and follow him into newness of life. How can you delay plunging yourself under such a waterfall of mercy and cleansing your stained soul with Christ’s spilled blood? Do not linger another moment in iniquity. Cast it from you, and run back to your Father’s house, for he will run more rapidly toward you, in mercy.

What if betrayal becomes rescue? John Piper opens Genesis 37 to show how God turned Joseph’s suffering into salvation.

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Deep suffering can drive us away from true hope and comfort. But our Father waits to gather us back to himself.

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Growing up, August was a month for lamentation. It signaled the rapid approach of the school year and the end to summer’s leisurely days of wonder and adventure. The start of school, C.S. Lewis once quipped, teaches one to live by faith, “for at the beginning of each term, home and the holidays are so far off that it is as hard to realise them as to realise heaven” (Surprised by Joy, 42–43).

The end of summer should have heralded a new season of wonder and adventure. But as I experienced it, school disconnected learning from joy. It somehow separated education from what stirred in me when I experienced beauty in nature or found goodness in a hero or encountered a truth that changed what I believed. The discoveries in good books, earnest conversation, and long days exploring the woods near our home seemed, paradoxically, to be less valuable to my school. Of course, certain teachers brought glimmers of excitement, but on the whole, school was unsatisfying and incomplete. I felt tension between the joy of learning and the place where that was supposed to happen.

Only years later did I realize the incongruence arose from confusion about the ultimate end of education. What was school for?

Old School

There’s a hint to school’s purpose in the term itself. Our English “school” comes from the Greek scholē, or “leisure.” That origin may seem surprising, but in ancient times leisure wasn’t kicking back and watching Netflix or playing a round of golf. Leisure meant stepping away from ordinary work to observe the world and to contemplate the most important questions of life.

The study we refer to as science, the ancients called natural philosophy. They understood what many have since forgotten — that questions about gravity, planetary motion, animal husbandry, or agricultural productivity are intimately related to questions about God, human purpose, evil, and the like. To be a scholar was to set aside time to contemplate these transcendent realities — what was true, good, and beautiful. But not to contemplate alone.

Contemplation has never been a solo project. The joy of discovery was meant to be shared. Education (from Latin educatus, meaning “to lead or draw out”) was the process of discussing, cultivating, challenging, and inspiring one another in the joyful quest for truth. It reflected the fundamental reality that a student was not a vessel to be filled with facts but a soul to be drawn out in wonder and joy. Education required the dedication of both the student and the mentor, the latter guiding and exemplifying the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. For much of Greek and Roman history, this vision of deliberate education centered on cultivating moral excellence and shaping a person for the good (beatific) life. Such instruction was available only to a privileged few in the classical world, but it reflected a vision for life that predated even the Romans and the Greeks, originating in the garden itself.

True School

God instituted leisure from the beginning with a very specific purpose: that we might know him and enjoy him forever (Genesis 2:1–3; Psalm 37:4; John 17:21–23; 1 Corinthians 10:31). The heartbeat of Israel’s life was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). For this reason, the practice of Sabbath and the festal calendar required God’s covenant people to step away from ordinary work to consider his works, words, and world (Exodus 20:8–11; Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16:13–17; 31:9–13). The tribe of Levi was specifically commissioned to educate God’s people both in didactic instruction and in song (1 Chronicles 9:33; 2 Chronicles 17:8–9; Nehemiah 8:7–9). Thus, it is no surprise that the psalmists frequently express delight over the majesty and intricacy of God’s good creation (Psalm 8; 19; 104; 139). “Great are the works of the Lord,” Psalm 111 declares, “studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2).

In the New Testament, Jesus makes even more explicit the duty of loving God with our minds (Mark 12:29–31). The apostle John points to the triune God’s creation of the universe through the Son, who himself entered into creation as both God and man (John 1:1–5, 10, 14; Philippians 2:6–11). Nature indisputably points to his lordship, a reality that no man can deny (Romans 1:19–20). Paul brims with exultation over the sweep of Christ’s creative activity — that the eternally existent Son, the exact imprint of the Father, has created “all things . . . visible and invisible” and is so active in sustaining his work that “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17). Unlike the ancient Greeks or Romans, Christians understood that the universe was orderly and rational because a personal God designed and upheld it for his glory and their joy.

For millennia, this basic conviction fueled Christians in joyful study: in movements like monasticism with its preservation of ancient learning, in missional expansion with its language acquisition and translation, in the reform movement of the sixteenth century and its retrieval of doctrinal orthodoxy, in the seventeenth century’s Christian humanism and quest for discovery, in the scientific advancements of the long eighteenth century, and in the great technological and political developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All study, all scholarship, all education is for our joy in God — and therefore, school is ultimately about him.

New School

This is what I was missing during those frustrating years at school. The great disconnect was between education and its ultimate end. Universal public education was and is a remarkable blessing — one which the sixteenth-century Reformers and even our colonial Puritan forebears would have rejoiced to see. But unfortunately, the prevailing approach to school prioritizes important but inferior ends. It prepares students for making a living rather than making a life. It values crucial skills — mathematical competency, scientific reasoning, reading and analytical ability, independent thinking, strong written and spoken communication — but for the wrong ends. Modern education prizes workforce-readiness and responsible citizenship, which are instrumental, even noble, outcomes, but they’re not ultimate. The chief goal of education is a beatific vision, the good life: enjoying God and, in him, everything else.

If done rightly, school tunes our admiration of the One from whom and through whom and to whom are all things (Romans 11:36). “He is that Object to admire,” C.S. Lewis writes, “which is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all” (Reflections on the Psalms, 107–8).

We may be tempted to think that seminaries or Bible colleges are the only places where education is all about God. But in reality, all education is about God. Whether in grade school or graduate school, consider the wonders yet to be discovered in a world ringing with his beauty. If we have eyes to see it, then the start of school will be a cause for celebration.

How does grace answer Adam’s curse? John Piper shows from Romans 5:12–21 how Christ’s obedience gives life.

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