“We’re all horrible and wonderful and figuring it out.”

So said Harris Wittels (1984-2015), one of the team behind legendary US sitcom, Parks & Recreation. Indeed, humanity has spent much of its history trying to figure itself out. How is it that we can be capable of acts of stirring selflessness, and acts of unspeakable terror. What’s with that?!

Of course, the real mystery is that such extremes can be found within the very same person. As the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn so brilliantly observed:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

So how do we understand each other? How do we understand ourselves?

We try and do this in all sorts of ways: be it culture, nationality or class; be it Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Love Languages – and yet we’re all inescapably complicated beings.

How might the Bible help us?

I first came across the “three S’s” in the writings of Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF) faculty member, Michael Emlet. He calls us to remember that every Christian is simultaneously a saint, a sufferer, and a sinner. Personally, I’ve found this a really helpful set of ‘lenses’ for pastoral ministry. Emlet’s intention is to shape care-full pastoral care:

“People are complex. You and I are complex… How do we move toward one another in God-honoring ways? How do we love wisely in the context of everyday relationships and in more formal counseling settings?

However, I’ve found it helpful to add to Emlet’s three S’s with a couple of my own. These five lenses bring biblical perspective whoever we’re engaging with:

1. Splendour

Every human is made in the ‘image of God’. Psalm 8 describes how God has set humanity apart from the rest of creation, crowning us with a unique splendour and honour (8:5). We have a God-given dignity as those created to bear his image. We’re not just mammals or ‘bones and blood’.

This is immensely important to our Christian worldview – and a really significant lens to see people through. Someone’s value lies not in something we – nor any other human individual or institution – assign, nor is it something people are left to create for themselves. It derives from being a person made by God, formed at conception and continuing eternally, whatever someon’s mental or physical state

And that means we’re to treat each other with dignity and honour. Whatever someone has done, however insignificant they may be in the world’s eyes, they have a splendour.

One action point here is to aim to ‘celebrate’ each person. The evangelist Rico Tice says we should learn to share the gospel in this context:

“I also remember that they have been made in God’s image, and I want to celebrate them and enjoy how God has made them … [My wife & I] have a calendar for the year where we plan in opportunities to get to know [our neighbours] and celebrate [them]. For example, we’ll organise golf evenings and a trip to the summer fair, or a day out at a rugby match, where we are able to build commonality and find out all about them.”

2. Sufferer

We live in a fallen world, fractured and torn apart through sin – and groaning for the curse to be lifted. And that means that each of us will be suffering the effects of life in this broken world. As REM put it so perfectly, “Everybody hurts.”

Whether it’s through illness, natural tragedy, bereavement, or whether it’s as a victim more specifically of someone else’s selfishness and cruelty, we’re all sufferers. Every face you look out over at church; every person you walk past on the street; every person who serves you in the cafe or store. As a nineteenth-century pastor Ian Maclaren once said, “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

Of course, some of us are quick to reveal our suffering – speaking freely, perhaps bemoaning honestly. Some of us will show our suffering unintentionally, in fragility, resentment or distrust. Others of us will do as much as we can to keep things hidden (whether successful or not). Yet there’ll be relationship tensions, mental battles, hidden histories lying beneath the surface. There’s always so much that we don’t see.

Seeing each other through this lens helps foster a compassionate desire to understand, to serve and to empathise with people, which should cash out in our interactions, our preaching, and our care.

3. Saint

If someone is a believer in Jesus Christ, then they’re a ‘saint’. We tend to associate that word with Roman Catholicism and dead people, but it’s actually the English word used to translate the apostle Paul’s description of all Christian believers. You could equally translate it as ‘holy ones’ or ‘set apart ones’.

It’s pretty tragic, then, that the word is frequently ascribed to a special class of Christian ‘heroes’, as if being a ‘saint’ was something individualistic or referring to elevated status.

And so, just as Paul is eager to remind his Christian readers that their identity is found in Christ, so we should be quick to see fellow Christians through that lens. This person is someone loved by God from before the foundations of the world; who has been given a hope that goes beyond the darkest valley of this life; and who is in-dwelt with the regenerating Holy Spirit.

Once we see that it completely changes how we relate to that person. It also means we have a much better understanding of how we can encourage them.

4. Sinner

The Bible is clear that evil does not just happen in the world around us. It flows out of the heart within us. We all turn away from God and live with ourselves as our own gods. We fail to love God and love our neighbour. This means our greatest problem will always be that we need to be reconciled to our Creator. And therefore the greatest way of loving someone will be to point them to Jesus Christ.

I remember a mentor in Christian ministry once plainly telling me, ‘Never be surprised at the sin someone is capable of’. Of course, when we really look into our own hearts, we begin to understand this. We can deceive each other – and we deceive ourselves.

From time to time there are debates about whether or not it is biblical for Christians to still think of themselves as sinners. Of course, it is right that we think of ourselves in our ‘new nature’ (as above), but we are – as Martin Luther famously put it – ‘simul justus et peculator’, i.e. at the same time righteous (through faith in Christ) and a sinner.

Viewing through this lens means we’re not naive about each other, nor about ourselves. It fosters personal humility and a deep love that is willing to challenge. We’ll lovingly speak God’s truth to each other – the truth of the gospel – and put ourselves in relationships where others can do the same for us.

5. Stranger

This is the last ‘lens’, and perhaps it’s the one that pastorally I can most overlook. We’re all different, and so that means we’re all strange to each other. Sure, we’ll identify with some people more than others, but we’ve all still got a whole inner world known only to us (and – if we’re honest – not even fully known to ourselves). Even the closest friendship or most intimate marriage will always have degrees of ‘strangeness’.

Why’s this important? Because so often we can perceive difference as black and white, right and wrong. I remember spending half a year living in a foreign country with a fellow Brit; we ended up coming up with a catch-phrase for when we came up against cultural differences: “It’s not wrong, it’s just different”.

I first heard this ‘strangeness’ alluded to by John Piper in a passing sentence in his book, This Momentary Marriage. When talking about the need to demonstrate forgiveness and forbearance to each other, he explains:

“…there is going to be conflict based on sin and strangeness (and you won’t be able even to agree with each other about what is simply strange about each other and what is sin)…” [my underlining]

Not everything that winds you up or irks you about someone is sin. We’re all strange – and if you don’t think you’re odd, then just ask someone to live with you for a week. Seeing through this lens will mean we’re more ready to be patient, more willing to understand, and more prepared to hold our own opinions lightly.

–

So, how do you understand yourself? How do you understand your neighbour, your spouse, or the person you’ve just met.

Every relationship is a journey of discovery – but as we learn to see another person, I hope these five lenses together give us a biblical perspective that is compassionate, faithful, and nuanced.

We recently preached through Genesis 1-11 at Grace Church Barrow – over nine consecutive weeks. One of our convictions as a church is to be shaped by God’s word – and I think key to that is expositional preaching. To use David Helm’s definition, that is “empowered preaching that rightfully submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of a biblical text.” We don’t use the Bible to simply argue for our own hobby-horses or as proof-texts for our agendas, but we work hard to listen to and communicate and apply the meaning of each part of Scripture, convinced that the Spirit of God has given us each book of the Bible for a reason.

For me as a preacher of God’s word, it was a really formative experience. Obviously here’s hoping it was also spiritually fruitful for those listening and engaging with God’s word, but, as part of my own formation, I tried to jot down a few personal reflections that I wanted to hold on to. I hope they may be of some interest to others considering preaching this portion of God’s word:

1. Genesis 1-3 are fundamental for a reason.

   In a nine-week series on Genesis 1-11, we took four weeks over chapters 1-3. I think part of the lesson with them is don’t try to be too clever. Don’t miss the wood for the trees. State the obvious, even if you’re working hard to find new ways to ‘pack the punch’. The Bible alludes to and quotes Genesis 1-3 all over the place for a reason. As preachers we’ll probably be overly-sensitive to feeling too familiar with these passages, but we shouldn’t assume that familiarity is necessarily shared. In other words, give these opening chapters their rightful place.

2. Trace the Seed, Cheer for the Seed, Long for the Seed.

   I think I may have got this from Bruce Waltke’s brilliant commentary. The promise of an offspring of woman (3:16) who will crush the serpent has to be a big deal for Genesis’ overall story. It means that with every turn of the page and every new baby born in that line, there’s huge anticipation. Will this be the one? And it’s been amazing to show how this thread of promise runs all the way to Jesus, the God-given serpent-crusher. The author wants that sense of expectation and longing, so we need to feel that and follow that tension through Genesis as we preach it.

3. Don’t rush over the Genealogies.

   Especially in chapter 5 and chapter 10, it can be tempting to hot-foot through the lists of names and generations in order to get to seemingly ‘meatier’ parts of the narrative that we think might ‘preach’ better. But these are a key part of the narrative. Showing that even these parts of Scripture have a Spirit-given purpose – and that actually they help to make the author’s overall argument – is crucial for the preacher’s task. The humbling reality of our mortality cries out to the reader throughout chapter 5, with Enoch’s ‘exception to the rule’ a glimpse of something more. Likewise, the repetition of division in chapter 10 shines a light on the devastating events of chapter 11.

4. Enjoy the unfamiliar as well as underlining the essentials.

   For me as a preacher, Genesis 4-5 and 9-11 were unfamiliar ground, especially in contrast to 1-3 and the account of Noah in 6-9. Preaching these sections was therefore particularly invigorating for me – and hopefully that ‘freshness’ rubs off on others too (so long as it’s not so fresh that it’s just non-sensical, right). Seeing the contrast between Eve’s two ‘birth announcements’ at the book-ends of chapter 4 was personally fascinating for grasping the impact of that chapter. Similarly, reflecting on the contrast between humanity ‘building a name for themselves’ at Babel (and the way this summarises so much of Genesis 3-11) and then God graciously making Abraham’s name great in 12:1-3 was striking to see.

5. Flag up the obvious questions but don’t patronise the author.

   You can’t walk through Genesis 1-11 without bumping into events that make you raise an eyebrow or two. A talking snake; people living for six hundred years; Cain having kids – but with who? So it would be odd not to acknowledge these, and it’s helpful to explore some potential explanations, as was said in this helpful training video. And yet I think we can sometimes forget these incidents would have sounded strange to Genesis’ first readers too (presumably first generation Israel being led by Moses to the promised land). Therefore, given that the narrator of Genesis doesn’t seem to bat an eyelid as he recounts them, it’s important not to assume with chronological arrogance that they must be more problematic to us than the first readers.

6. Harness the power of a long-running visual aid.

   I guess this could work for all sorts of books of the Bible and teaching series, but finding a ‘sticky’ visual aid or illustration that relates to the key purposes of the passages can really help tie different sermons together. I think there was more work to do here, but even the title of a series can help do this. We called our series ‘Firm Foundations’, trying to articulate the sense that these chapters lay a solid framework, a trust-worthy perspective, on how we’re to view the world. Similarly, in the middle of our venue, a working mens’ club, a glitterball hangs from the ceiling. It seemed an apt way to capture humanity’s calling to ‘image’ God’s character to the world, and the tragic way this calling can be corrupted.

7. Just do it! 

   Finally, what would be one of my main lasting reflections from preaching through Genesis 1-11? Just to do it. What an outlook-shifting piece of literature! What a foundational portion of Scripture to walk through as a church family! As is often pointed out, these eleven chapters are effectively the opening act for the whole of Scripture. Without them very little in Genesis 12 – Malachi 4 (arguably the second act of Scripture) makes any sense. Without them we see a smaller Christ and a smaller gospel. Do it!

Since January our church family has been spending time in the New Testament book of Titus. I think this little gem has been really good for us in our context – and so helpful for me personally. Here’s five reasons why…

1. The goal of planting is godliness.

Of course, on one level the ultimate goal of anything is God being glorified – but you can emphasise that in such a way that it ends up meaning nothing. In Titus, the apostle Paul’s goal seems to be ‘godliness’. He begins by explaining his own apostolic role as “furthering the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness” (Titus 1:1). In other words, he proclaims the apostolic gospel – the promise of the hope of eternal life – and he fully expects that it will lead to changed lives, i.e. people reflecting the revealed moral character of God: “self-controlled, upright and godly” (2:12). When you’re planting a new church, the pressure can be to think your aims are to establish a meeting, or put yourself on the regional map, or make a name for yourself in the community. But having godliness as the ultimate goal puts these aims in perspective. Of course, this will look messy and will feel uncomfortable. We inevitably resist changing and our churches will feel like construction sites. But lives that are taking on board God’s truth and are being changed into his likeness bring God glory.

2. Leaders/planters/elders must be being changed by God’s truth themselves.

Basically this is the first point, but pushed home for me as a pastor-teacher, which is the expectation Paul lays out in Titus 1:5-15. And that’s a wake-up call. God’s goal for me is to be changed, transformed, sanctified. Again, it’s so easy for my ‘to do’ list to be getting meetings in the diary, preparing teaching, working on the website. But more important than all of that is my own holiness. I remember reading Bonar’s famous little biography of the Scottish minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843), who himself nails this with his famous line: “My people’s greatest need is my own personal holiness.” Maybe we first read that and can think it almost egotistical. Isn’t this to fall into the trap of thinking God can’t do stuff without me? Well, of course he can do stuff without us. But that’s not actually the danger here. After all, that’s not the opposite of me growing in godliness. The opposite of me growing in godliness is me “claiming to know God, but by my actions denying him” (2:15). That was the disastrous situation in the churches in Crete into which Titus was given his mission. And so Titus was to be an example of everything that Paul expected in the church community, in order that – unlike the church as it had been prior to the letter – those who opposed Titus would ultimately be ashamed as they had nothing bad to say about him (2:6-8).

3. Keep the gospel on repeat.

I’ve written before about how it’s been so helpful to think of these past three and a half years as ‘planting the gospel’, rather than planting a church. I think Titus underlines this. It’s the truth that leads to godliness, and this truth is articulated in Titus as the message of God’s grace and kindness, shown in the first appearing of Jesus Christ (2:11-14; 3:4-7). So the gospel isn’t simply a message we hear when we first put our trust in Christ. As Tim Keller has said, it’s not just the ABC of the Christian faith, it’s the A to Z. Why? Because it’s this message of grace that trains us to live the godly lives that are so important in Titus (2:12). And so we must keep the gospel on repeat. That’s what Paul is getting at when he tells Titus to ‘stress these things’ (3:8; 2:15), and conversely why not getting distracted by ‘foolish controversies’ is so important. Keep the main thing the main thing. And I’ve found it particularly challenging to see that holding fast to the gospel is actually part of the list of moral qualities needed in a church leader. Maybe we scan through the list in 1:6-9 and think that the first three verses are about morality and the last is a competency issue. But it makes far more sense that the requirement to “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that [the leader] can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” is just as much about integrity and godliness as everything else in the list. Which in turn underlines that there will be a temptation to shirk from it. So keep the gospel on repeat.

4. It doesn’t have to be either/or when it comes to ‘blessing the community’ vs ‘gospel proclamation’.

Whilst godliness is obviously at the heart of the apostle Paul’s aims for the church in Crete, there is another goal in mind too. Paul repeatedly stresses that godly lives will make the “teaching about God our Saviour attractive” (2:10), an idea reworded earlier (2:5,8). Like a beautiful wedding dress adorning the splendour of the bride, so our lives adorn the message we believe. The ultimate focus is not on the dress, but the bride. In other words, our godly lives show off the gospel. One of the key adjectives to describe these lives of godliness in Titus is doing or loving ‘good’ (1:8; 2:3,7,14; 3:1,8,14). Godliness is not some pious, inwardly-focused posture that turns its back on the community around us. No, it’s a generous pouring out of goodness as we realise afresh how the Fountain of Goodness has poured out his triune kindness upon us. And if it’s keeping the gospel on repeat that transforms us, then more gospelling should lead to more communal goodness. I heard one preacher put it like this, “social action is personal godliness worked out in society”.

5. Our ordinary lives and the different situations into which we find ourselves are intrinsic to the mission, not an obstacle working against it.

To put it another way, godliness is always done in context. Paul especially unpacks how the different seasons of life we’re in mean will mean we all have different and crucial parts to play (2:1-8). And that means that your age and stage of life is no barrier to God’s plan for gospel growth. Likewise, as employees (2:9-10) and citizens (3:1-2) we are called to live in a way that accords with ‘sound doctrine’, trusting that as we do so, we present a way of life that is compelling – and in turns points people back to the gospel. Perhaps sometimes we can think of our workplaces as an obstacle to God’s mission – as if what is really useful is what we do at church or amongst Christians. Likewise, perhaps the relationships and families we’ve been placed in can seem a different sphere to where God is at work. But this is to miss out on the wonder that God uses the way we go about our ordinary lives to showcase a gospel that has redeemed and set apart a people eager to do good (2:14).

What about you? Have you spent time in Titus recently? What things hit home for you?