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Savor Christ in Every Psalm: The Joy of Singing with Jesus 15.7.2024 03:00

For the greater part of church history, Christians have viewed the Psalms through the lens of fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In particular, they have read the Psalms as the songs of Jesus — songs sung by Jesus in his life on earth, and songs in which the risen and ascended Jesus still leads his church in singing on earth.

Imagine you are sitting in a grand concert hall. On the stage is a vast choir, and in the center, one man conducts and leads the choir in song. You listen for a while as they sing psalms. Then the conductor looks at you and invites you to leave your seat, come on stage, and join the choir. And you do. You are converted from a mere listener to a singer. But you do not take the microphone.

Jesus Christ is the lead singer and conductor of the choir, which is his church through the ages. Jesus has the microphone. When you come to Jesus, you join his choir. You sing and say all your prayers and praises under his lead. You learn to sing the Psalms led by him.

Rather than just being an attractive fancy, this picture conveys something wonderfully true. The Psalter (the five books of psalms) centers on the figure of the Davidic king and is incomplete without the presence of “great David’s greater son,” the Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Moreover, Jesus the Messiah speaks not only the psalms of David, but — in one way or another — all the Psalms. The New Testament quotes and echoes the Psalms in such a way as to encourage this conclusion.

I have examined the reasons for reading the Psalms like this in the introductory volume of my recent Psalms commentary. Simply put, however, a proper theology of prayer and praise grasps that we can speak to God only in and through Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest who brings us to God.

Songs to Savor

Consider, then, some of the great benefits of reading the Psalms as the songs of Jesus. I paint these blessings with a broad brush, and not without acknowledging that there are puzzles to wrestle with. Some psalms, for example, pray for God to punish the wicked (the so-called imprecatory psalms), and sometimes psalmists confess their sins (notably Psalm 51). There are other complexities as well, for the Psalms are like a jewel with many beautiful facets. I have tried to address the puzzles in detail in my commentary, but here I offer some broad-brush blessings to savor as you sing the Psalms in and through Christ.

1. You can sing in tune with the gospel.

A Christ-centered reading of the Psalms grasps that these songs are saturated with the gospel of Christ. Without Christ, I read Psalm 1 and think, “I must try harder to be like this admirable man if I am to hope for his blessing.” Without Christ, Psalm 15 tells me that only if I perfectly do what is right can I hope to dwell in the presence of God. So, I must pray and try harder. Psalm 24 tells me that only when I have a pure heart will I ascend the hill of the Lord to stand in the presence of his holiness. So, I must pray and work harder to purify my heart.

Because I want these blessings, I must bend my zeal with unflagging effort to attain them (even though I can never succeed), just as the troubled Martin Luther did before his rediscovery of justification by faith alone through grace alone. (Incidentally, it seems likely that Luther rediscovered this ancient truth in the Psalms before he found it in Galatians, Romans, Hebrews, and elsewhere.)

But with Christ, I rejoice that, first and fundamentally, Christ himself is the blessed man of Psalm 1; Christ is the righteous man of Psalm 15; Christ has the pure heart called for in Psalm 24. It is Christ who fulfills the high calling of the Psalms, Christ who can sing them with perfect assurance, Christ who ascends to the Father, and Christ alone who brings me there. The Psalms set before us unnumbered blessings. Each one of them is yours and mine in Christ.

The same is true of my praises. “Every day I will bless you,” says Psalm 145:2. But I don’t. So — without Christ — I must try harder to raise my life of praise to a higher level. And of course, it will never be good enough. But when I grasp that Christ speaks these words to the Father and did exactly this every day of his life on earth, then I rejoice that I can praise in and through Christ, who leads the choir.

2. You can sing every line of every song.

A Christ-centered reading of the Psalms rescues me from having to pick and choose which parts of the Psalms I will make my own. When someone says, “I love the Psalms,” I want to ask, “Which psalms?” and “Which sections from those psalms?” It is all too easy to isolate the parts that resonate with my experience and the parts that bring me comfort, and then quickly skim over the other parts (of which there are many).

But God did not give us the Psalms mainly to resonate with us, but rather to shape us — to shape our desires, our delights, our affections, our hearts, our minds, our wills, our emotions. In Christ, I can read every verse of every psalm and discover its true and full meaning as Jesus Christ sings it and gives it to me to sing as part of his choir.

A closely related blessing is that a Christ-centered reading encourages me to sing the Psalms as a member of Christ’s worldwide church. When I try to make each psalm speak directly to me, I struggle. But when I read a psalm as speaking for the whole church — what Augustine often spoke of as “the whole Christ, Head and members” — time and again, it comes into clear focus and makes sense. I no longer sing as a solitary individual but as a member of Christ’s body, his universal choir.

3. You can sing for joy in Jesus.

Another blessing is that the Psalms settle me into an assured faith in Christ and a glad enjoyment of his benefits. For example, the wonderful promises of Psalm 91 are given supremely to Christ, which is why the devil prefaces his quotation of this psalm by saying, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matthew 4:6). “If you are the Son of God, then this is promised to you.” Jesus declines to do what the devil says, but he implicitly agrees that these promises are his by right and he could act on them if he so chose.

So, I cannot delight in Psalm 91 as if it were written simply for me, because it wasn’t. And yet, mysteriously, in Christ these blessings are all mine.

4. You can sing centered on Christ.

Perhaps the greatest blessing of a Christ-centered reading is that it frees me from being imprisoned into thinking that the Psalms are all about me. No, they are not all about me! They are all about Jesus Christ in his flawless human nature and his incomparable divine nature. They revolve around Jesus, who sang the Psalms as a significant part of his life of faith and prayer and praise on earth.

I remember seeing on the wall of a church the words of Psalm 20:4: “May [the Lord] grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!” How wonderful, you might think. The Bible promises me all that my heart desires. Until you read the psalm and realize that Psalm 20 is a prayer for the king in David’s line. Ultimately, it is a prayer that Jesus will have his heart’s desire granted and that his plans will be fulfilled. And they will!

The Psalms are not all about me. If I think they are, I will end up disillusioned. But when I grasp that they are all about Christ, my heart lifts in joy that he is the blessed Man and I belong to him.

The Battle for Sexual Purity 15.7.2024 03:00

How does Satan use sexual desire against us? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens the Scriptures to show how Satan tries to convince us that his way is more satisfying than God’s.

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Will God Judge People for Being Born Muslim? 15.7.2024 03:00

Will God condemn someone for being born into another religion? Pastor John responds to a former Muslim deeply worried about her loved ones.

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What Is the Law of Christ? Galatians 6:1–5, Part 2 14.7.2024 03:00

What is “the law of Christ” — and how does our fulfilling of this law relate to justification by faith alone?

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What Makes God Happiest? Enjoying His Signature Joy 13.7.2024 03:00

I was wondering if I had discovered a new world.

Home from college after my freshman year, I was pondering what makes God happy. That spring I had read Desiring God and had my soul turned upside down for good. The book exposed how duty-oriented my approach toward God had been, and in the exposure, God’s Spirit opened the floodgates to delight in him, on the rock-solid foundation of the glory of God — since God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

After a few weeks of catching my breath, now I dared to take up what seemed to be the sequel, called The Pleasures of God (but found it more like the prequel). To that point, I had hardly thought deeply about human happiness. Now I found myself captivated by a theme I had not previously considered: what makes God happy. And I was finding that few things satisfy a human soul like meditating on the satisfactions of God.

Now, it’s one thing to ask, What makes God happy? It’s another to say, What makes him happiest?

Search through Scripture for the pleasures of God, and you’ll find many solid joys. He delights in his created world, and in all he does, and in his own renown. He delights in his people and in choosing them and in doing them good. He also delights in their prayers, and in their personal obedience and in their public acts of justice.

But lay those many divine delights side by side, and ask, What does God enjoy most? What makes him happiest? What is his signature joy? One clear answer emerges.

Ground Zero for God’s Joy

For starters, he is a God who was and is infinitely happy apart from his creation. His created world, and its history, is not the cause of his infinite bliss but its overflow.

At one level, the answer to our question of what makes him happiest is simply, Himself. God is not an idolater; he has no greater joy than God. He is supreme being — infinitely highest in value, glory, beauty, and blessedness (that is, happiness). And before anything else existed through his creative mind and hands, he was fully satisfied in himself. We rightly affirm, in simple terms, that God’s greatest happiness is God himself.

Yet Scripture unfolds even more. God is not only one but three. So, at another level, the answer to our question is, His Son. The eternal Son is ground zero for God’s pleasure, his first and foremost joy. No thing and no one makes the divine Father happy like his divine Son. This Son — eternally begotten, perfectly reflecting all divine excellencies, the full panorama of the Father’s perfections — has fully pleased and delighted his Father from all eternity. And he also entered into history to “add to,” as it were, his Father’s already infinite delight.

Delight in His Eternal Son

Before tracking God’s delight in his Son in time and space, consider God’s first and foremost delight in the eternal Son. Jesus’s baptism, at the outset of his ministry, is a stunning introduction to the world of the Father’s greatest joy. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use the language of pleasure and delight (Greek eudokeō, “to be well pleased, to take delight”), as in Matthew 3:17:

Behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (also Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22)

At this point, no doubt, the Father is well-pleased with the human life of his divine Son, but here at the inauguration of Jesus’s public ministry, we see back through three decades of sinless humanity, to endless ages of divine perfection. The voice sounds from heaven, echoing the timeless Wisdom personified in Proverbs 8, lines the church has long connected to her Lord:

When he established the heavens, I was there; . . .
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
     then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight. (Proverbs 8:27–30)

There has never been a time when the Son was not, nor when the Son was not his Father’s delight. “God’s pleasure in his Son,” writes John Piper, “is the pleasure he has in the breathtaking panorama of his own perfections reflected back to him in the countenance of Christ” (The Pleasures of God, 174). And long before the Son came as the long-anticipated Messiah, and long before there were even earthly days, the Son was daily his Father’s great joy.

In fact, it was this very delight — Father in his Son, and Son in his Father — that spilled over in the creation of the world and history, with the Father, overflowing with joy in his Son, appointing him heir of all things, and creating the world to give it to him (Hebrews 1:2).

Delight in His Incarnate Son

The Father’s eternal delight in his Son led not only to the gift of creation but also to its glory. That is, the world and its history glorify the Son as both rightful owner and rescuing hero. The Father sent his Son into the created world to be its Lord and Savior. And it pleased him to do this: “In [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things” (Colossians 1:19–20).

Having sounded the Father’s pleasure at Jesus’s baptism, Matthew also mentions God’s delight in his “servant” as Jesus goes about his ministry of teaching and healing.

Many followed [Jesus], and he healed them all. . . . This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.” (Matthew 12:15–18)

Now the connection with Isaiah is explicit. Jesus also is the long-awaited “servant” of Isaiah 42, the one “in whom [God’s] soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1–4). In fully human flesh and blood, and anointed with the fullness of God’s Spirit, the Son’s human life and ministry make his Father smile with delight. And Jesus knows it, and himself delights in it. He says in John 8:29,

He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

Few joys rival the delight of a son in knowing that he pleases his father. And this Father is God. Such a life as Christ’s is ultimate freedom: delighting to do what delights God.

Also, the transfiguration underscores the Father’s delight in his incarnate Son. On the mountain with Peter, James, and John, Jesus is transfigured before them: “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2). Moses and Elijah appear and are talking with him. Then the voice of God’s delight in his Son again rings out, clarifying who is Lord of, not peer to, Israel’s greatest prophets:

This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. (Matthew 17:5)

Peter himself would write in his second epistle of being eyewitness to this majesty. His telling also centers on the Father’s declaration of delight in his Son (2 Peter 1:17–18).

Delight in His Crucified Son

Given this signature divine pleasure — the Father in his Son, infinite in greatness and depth for all eternity, and extended into the world in the incarnate life of Christ — how jarring is it to rehearse the prophecy of Isaiah that “it was the will of the Lord to crush him” (Isaiah 53:10)? And God’s willing here is typically under-translated in our English. Twelve times in Isaiah and throughout the Old Testament, this Hebrew word (ḥā·p̄êṣ) is rendered “delight in” or “take pleasure in.” The unnerving claim in Isaiah 53:10 is that the Father delighted to crush his Son.

How could this be so? How could the Father, whose signature joy is the life of his Son, not only permit but delight in the death of his Son and the horrors of the cross? Elsewhere I’ve answered at greater length, but here let’s capture a few key aspects of this surprising and revealing delight.

For one, the Father does not only delight in the Son’s death. He wills it, yes, and delights in it, yes, but he also looks in righteous anger on his Son’s mistreatment and murder. This is history’s worst miscarriage of justice. No man ever deserved death less than the sinless Son of God. The cross is history’s greatest sin, a violent and horrendous affront by sinners on God himself. In one sense, the Father indeed is righteously furious. Yet still, in it all, he sees his Son’s faith and obedience, and he rejoices. Why?

MANY SAVED

Surely one pleasure he had in view was the rescue, and God-glorifying pleasure, of the “many” whom the Son saves (Isaiah 53:11–12). The cross is good news to the sinner who hears in it the invitation of God’s rescue from eternal misery. At bottom, the good the gospel offers to sinners is the ultimate good of having God himself and sharing in God’s own joy. Such a Father rescues his children not reluctantly but gladly. He delights to save his people.

GLORY VINDICATED

Surely another pleasure God had at the cross was his Son’s love for his Father and his glory. As Piper writes,

The depth of the Son’s suffering was the measure of his love for the Father’s glory. It was the Father’s righteous allegiance to his own name that made recompense for sin necessary. So when the Son willfully took the suffering of that recompense on himself, every footfall on the way to Calvary echoed through the universe with this message: The glory of God is of infinite value! The glory of God is of infinite value! (Pleasures of God, 176)

REDEMPTION ACHIEVED

So too, the Father delighted in the magnitude of his Son’s achievement at the cross. Make no mistake, the cross is an achievement — the single greatest achievement in the history of the world, and one whose full magnitude we have only begun to grasp. We will celebrate it forever in our praises. When God delights in the death of his Son for sinners, he delights in his Son achieving the single greatest feat in history, making the worst Friday to be Good, making the horrible cross to be wonderful.

Which leads, finally, to the pleasure of the Son in being crushed.

SON SATISFIED

Jesus did not go to Golgotha against his will. Certainly, just about everything human in him recoiled from what lay ahead, and yet in the garden, he looked the horror and humiliation in the face, and looked through it to the reward — and “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Even Isaiah foresaw this seven centuries before: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). The Son himself delighted to see his people saved, he delighted to see his Father honored, and, knowing his Father would raise him, he delighted to have his Father reward his achievement with the seat in heaven at his right hand.

So, the Father’s delight in the cross of his Son is not apart from his Son’s own delight in it, nor is it apart from the certainty of his Son’s resurrection.

Our Delight in Jesus

What difference does God’s signature happiness make for us? I close with just two of the many.

First, what greater confirmation could there be for our own signature delight than that of God himself? If the Son — eternal, incarnate, crucified, glorified — is the first and foremost delight of his Father, why would we not train our own best thoughts and longings on him? If Jesus is the focus of God’s foremost delight, how could we dare treat him as worthy of anything less than ours? And how hopeful might we be for truly finding what our souls long for as we take our cues from God himself?

Second, if the Father’s delight in his Son undergirds and leads to the extension of grace to sinners, then how secure might we be in this gospel? God didn’t only accomplish the gospel through his Son, but it pleased him to do so. God delights in the gospel. It makes him happy. In fact, it is an extension of his signature happiness. The happy God is securely happy about his Son dying (and rising) to save us. How secure, then, can we be in this gospel!

Salvation in Christ is not based on a whim or accident. The gospel is not a divine concession. It is a divine delight. God designed it, ordained it, arranged it, and it pleased him to do it. And neither Satan nor sinful man can change that.

Heaven Remembered: Learning to Long for Home 12.7.2024 03:00

Have you ever wondered why we don’t think about heaven more? In fact, if heaven is all that Scripture says, how do we manage to think about anything else?

Observing this tension, C.S. Lewis wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else” (The Problem of Pain, 149). In other words, all our longings find their true home in heaven. And yet, if we are honest, we spend far more time thinking about almost anything else. Why?

I suspect we don’t think much about heaven because we don’t think well about heaven. Until we learn to think well about heaven, we won’t think more about it. But if we learn to think well — ah, then it will be impossible to avoid thinking more. We must learn to rightly imagine heaven.

The Heaven Satan Loves

One of the main reasons we do not think well is because Satan hates heaven and wants us to do the same. Randy Alcorn explains, “Some of Satan’s favorite lies are about Heaven. . . . Our enemy slanders three things: God’s person, God’s people, and God’s place — namely, Heaven” (Heaven, 10–11). Satan is the father of lies, and some of his most damning lies involve the life to come.

Satan promotes the floaty no-place of Far Side cartoons, where ghostly figures sit on clouds strumming harps. This image, built on gnostic (anti-body) assumptions, induces utter boredom, and so Satan loves it. Saints may enjoy a bodiless heaven now, but it will not always be so. Satan knows no body-soul creature could be fully content to spend endless ages like that. And there’s the point. If Satan can get us to buy into a heaven unearthly, ghostly, or (God forbid) boring, we won’t think about heaven. And if we don’t think about it, why would we tell others or orient our lives toward it?

That final vision of heaven is an illusion, a dark enchantment cast by an envious Satan to extinguish our excitement about heaven. We don’t long because we don’t look, and we don’t look because we have believed lies. So, we must learn to banish this hellish hoax by thinking biblically about God’s place.

More Real, Not Less

Paul was a man who thought well about God’s place, and so it dominated his thoughts. In Philippians alone, Paul says, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23) — a Christ-centered way of saying, “I long for heaven.” Later, he says we are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20). And he describes his whole life as a sprint toward a finish line: “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14).

That “upward call” is the heavenward call — the summons to come higher and higher. Like the saints in Hebrews, Paul desired to reach “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). The hope of heaven consumed Paul. Why? Because he thought well about heaven.

When our thoughts run in biblical tracks, we begin to understand that the joys of heaven will be full and deep and exuberant — pleasures enormous! We will not float as disembodied spirits strumming harps for eternity (however that works). Heaven will brook no boredom. It will be more solid, not less — more physical, more tangible, more diamond-hard, more real than anything we experience now. And yet, everything we experience now helps us imagine what is coming.

This, but Better

Paul himself teaches us how to think about heaven when he says, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). From these verses, we may infer that paradise will be better than the best things we experience now, better even than the wildest joys we can imagine.

Now, I take Paul’s statement as a challenge because it means I can look at every good thing now and every good I can envision, and I can say of it, “Heaven will be this, but better.” You can learn to think well about heaven by enjoying all the good things in this life now, lifting them as high as your imagination can go, and saying, this, but better. After all, the best things now serve as a mere taste test, as echoes of the music or bright shadows of the far better country to come.

Let me apply this way of thinking well about heaven to three of the best gifts God gives now.

1. This Body, but Better

In heaven, we will enjoy new bodies. Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Secular propaganda leads us astray on this point and tries to make us more “spiritual” than God. But he made our bodies. As a master artist, he judged them very good (Genesis 1:31). He took a body for himself — and by taking, forever hallowed. When God became man, he definitively declared the permanent goodness of the body. No approval could be more final than the incarnation.

And so we will enjoy both souls and bodies for eternity — new bodies, better bodies, bodies like Jesus’s right now, bodies with glorified senses, bodies without disease or pain, bodies that can run with joy, work without exhaustion, see without glasses, live without aging — or better! And so when you enjoy your body at its best now in holy eating and sleeping and sex and running and sports and singing and hugs and work and laughter, think to yourself, this body, but better.

2. This Earth, but Better

Biblically speaking, when we talk about our eternal heaven, we mean the new heavens and the new earth. In the end, heaven is not the opposite of earth; heaven is earth redeemed and remade and married to the new heavens. As Alcorn says, “Heaven isn’t an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator King” (Heaven, 13).

Oh, what good news for those homesick for Eden! God created us to enjoy God’s presence with God’s people in God’s place. An earthly place with glorified trees and garden mountains, with unfallen culture and undiminished art, the taste of chocolate and the smell of bacon, with majestic thunderstorms and soul-stirring apricity — the warmth of the sun in winter. One day, paradise lost will become paradise regained and remade into a garden-city.

The new earth will be just that — new. Like our new bodies, we will recognize it. It will be free from the bondage of corruption and the ravishes of sin, but it will not be utterly different. When God renews this earth, no good will be finally lost, no beauty obscured, no truth forgotten. And so, every time you glimpse the gigantic glory of God here, think to yourself, this earth, but better.

But of course, the place is nothing without the person.

3. This Joy in Jesus, but Better

As Christians, we enjoy Jesus now. That’s what it means to be a Christian. We seek to enjoy Jesus in everything and everything in Jesus. But in heaven, our joy in Jesus will increase. It will grow deeper and sweeter. It will bloom and blossom. Our happiness will expand forever in every conceivable way. Why? Because we will see Jesus face to face. Our King will dwell with us bodily. We shall behold the Word made flesh.

This was the hope Job harbored amid his suffering:

I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
     yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
     and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
     My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)

Job fainted for the beatific vision, which will undoubtedly be more than physical but not less. If this hope of heaven is yours in Christ, then one day you, with the saints of all ages, will bask in the smile of Jesus himself. Our new knees will bow on a new earth, and we will join in the cosmic praise of Christ with new tongues. Can you imagine that?

Fullness of Joy

If you can, you are beginning to think well about heaven. You are learning to anticipate the place where God will satisfy all our longings with the pleasures at his right hand. When we finally set foot in the far green country, everything good we ever wanted — the longings we have cherished since childhood, the desires we downplay as adults, the yearnings that visit us in the silent moments and echo endlessly in our hearts, that sweet something we have searched for, reached for, listened for, hunted after — God will satisfy all. My whole being — body and soul — will cry out, “This is what I was made for. Here at last, I am home!”

Friend, we cannot hope for what we do not desire, and we cannot desire what we have not imagined. Therefore, let’s exercise our imaginations — our Bible-saturated, Spirit-empowered, Trinity-treasuring imaginations — to think well about heaven.

Heaven will be like this, but far better.

Satan’s War Against the Word 12.7.2024 03:00

Satan hates to see God’s word take root in our hearts. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper turns to Mark 4:1–20 to expose the devil’s goal of snatching the word from those who hear it.

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How to Restore a Sinning Saint: Galatians 6:1–5, Part 1 12.7.2024 03:00

Christian love is not passive. When love sees a brother or sister caught in sin, it does not shrink away but confronts in order to renew and restore.

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The Reformed Bride: Margaret Baxter’s Unyielding Love 11.7.2024 03:00

In 1655, a wealthy and godly widow, Mary Hanmer, moved to Kidderminster, a remote town in the west of England, in order to sit under the ministry of Richard Baxter. He was one of the finest preacher-pastors of the age. Under his ministry, Kidderminster had been transformed. Homes characterized by drunkenness and violence became places of joyful praise. Mrs. Hanmer was eager to benefit from his preaching and zealous to serve in this rural community.

The situation was different for her rebellious teenage daughter, however. Margaret was initially appalled by the poverty and dreariness of life in Kidderminster, and she had no spiritual appetite for Baxter’s ministry. Yet here began a story that would turn this young woman from Margaret Hanmer to Mrs. Baxter, a wife of unyielding piety.

Living for Self

Sixteen-year-old Margaret had suffered immensely during the civil wars that tore England apart from 1642 to 1651. When she was just five, the family castle where she lived was burned to the ground, some men of the family were killed, and she was stripped and threatened.

Now that peace prevailed, Margaret wanted to enjoy herself. But she came from a higher social class than any of the inhabitants of this rural weaving community. There was no company or social life! She deliberately dressed as splendidly as possible in order to distinguish herself.

Mrs. Hanmer was distressed by her daughter’s disregard for spiritual realities. But at least Margaret now attended a church that proclaimed the gospel. After all, Baxter always preached “as a dying man to dying men.” He agonized in prayer for those who heard his preaching, and he diligently visited every home in his parish, urging individuals to turn to God.

Despite herself, Margaret began to experience profound conviction of selfishness, pride, vanity, and disregard of God. This conviction marked the beginning of her transformation from a rebellious teenager to a devout follower of Jesus.

Living for God

As Margaret’s attitude softened, she repented of looking down on the poverty of her neighbors. She began to take time to read the Bible and pray, and she recorded her new desire to live for God. Her private journal, discovered after her death, contained the “self-judging papers” written when she was twenty. She noted, for example, “ten marks of the person who has the Spirit of Christ” (In Trouble and in Joy, 54). For each of the ten marks, she also recorded her own sin and lamented that she did not yet have the Spirit of Christ.

Around this time, Margaret fell critically ill. Many in the community fasted and prayed that her life would be spared, and God remarkably answered their prayers. On her recovery, Margaret listed seven “great mercies” for which she wanted the church to give thanks. She also sent in several urgent prayer requests. She wanted greater humility, a tender conscience, power to resist temptation, and meekness to endure whatever other trials God might send her way.

In addition, Margaret made a secret “covenant with God” and a series of resolutions discovered only after her death. She wrote,

I here now renew my covenant with Almighty God, and resolve, by his grace, to endeavour to get and keep a fresh sense of his mercy on my soul, and a greater sense yet of my sin. (59)

Living to Serve Others

In 1660, Charles II was restored to the throne; thus, the Established Church of England was restored too. With the change, Baxter moved to London to try to influence the Church in a more biblical direction.

Mary Hanmer had moved to Kidderminster solely to sit under Baxter’s ministry. With no reason now to stay, she and Margaret also moved to London. But within a few months, Mary died, leaving Margaret alone.

Up to this time, Baxter had not considered marriage. He believed that if a minister served devotedly, he would not have the capacity to meet family demands. But then the 1662 Act of Uniformity, which demanded that clergy repudiate their Puritan distinctives, forced Baxter out of ministry. With his justification for celibacy removed, he married Margaret on September 10, 1662. He was 47; she was 23. He now had no means of making a living, and she had independent wealth. Gossips had a field day.

But Margaret was overwhelmingly happy. She would face persecution and uncertainty alongside her husband, but she and Richard enjoyed true partnership in the gospel. They shared a passion for offering Christ to needy sinners. She also took care of the practicalities of everyday life, freeing Richard for his writing ministry. He admired her wisdom and often consulted her judgment:

She was better at resolving a case of conscience than most divines that ever I knew in all my life. I often put cases to her, which she so suddenly resolved, as to convince me of some degree of oversight in my own resolution. (48)

Margaret was delighted to pour her financial resources into giving away good literature and helping the needy. She and Richard opened their home to neighbors in order for Richard to informally share the word (an illegal activity, but they did it anyway).

In June 1669, Richard was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. Margaret insisted on joining him in prison, and a kind jailer allowed them a room of their own. They were released early but then had to find accommodation outside London due to the notorious Five Mile Act, which prohibited Nonconformist preachers from coming within five miles of any place where they had previously ministered.

In 1672, the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which eased the situation for Nonconformists. For the remaining years of Margaret’s life, she supported and encouraged Richard in his ministry. She used her wealth to hire buildings where he could preach and even paid for the construction of meeting houses.

Eternal Life

Throughout their nineteen years of married life, both Richard and Margaret suffered ill health. Both consciously lived in the light of eternity.

Back in 1647, Baxter had endured a serious illness. During that time, he wrote The Saint’s Everlasting Rest, in which he urged his readers to set aside time each day to meditate on heaven:

Go away into a private place, at a convenient time, and put aside other distractions. Look up towards heaven. Remember that your everlasting rest is there. Meditate on its wonder and reality. Rise from sense to faith, by comparing heavenly with earthly joys, until you are transformed from a forgetful sinner, and a lover of the world, to an ardent lover of God. . . . Meditate until your heart is weaned away from earth to heaven, until you are taken up with the delight of walking with God.

Margaret would be the first to enter her “everlasting rest.” After twelve days of intense illness, she died on June 14, 1681, at just 42 years of age. Richard was desolate. He immediately wrote a memoir of his wife, lovingly describing her devotion to God.

Richard honestly reflected on Margaret’s proneness to anxiety and fear and her often perfectionist, sometimes obsessive, tendencies. She drove herself to the limit. Her desire to serve overtook her strength and, in the end, both body and mind gave way under the strain. But he celebrated her compassion for the poor and needy, as well as her zeal to reach those who did not know Christ, as a shining example for others to follow. She was always popular with neighbors due to her cheerful and pleasant demeanor.

Baxter’s testimony to the devotion and godliness of his wife is so powerful that the Baxter marriage has often been lifted up as an ideal for others. Over three hundred years later, Margaret remains a woman to admire and emulate.

On Repetitive Worship Songs 11.7.2024 03:00

“For his steadfast love endures forever” appears 26 times in Psalm 136. What might we learn from this psalm about the right kind of repetition in worship?

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