Gospel Prism

I have been asked a number of times since Brian’s death, “Are you okay?� And my answer has been consistently, “Yes.� People seem to wonder how I can still minister during such a time. Can I still care for others who are sick, visit people in the hospital, help others cope with some of the struggles in their lives, rejoice in the things that bring joy in others’ lives, even as I mourn the loss of Brian. And still the answer is the same, “Yes, I can.� The reason is that my calling as a Christian and then as a pastor and then as a member of the Body of Christ is to suffer with those who suffer and to rejoice with those who rejoice (1 Corinthians 12).

In some way, I have the privilege and responsibility to reflect, even though that reflection is quite marred by my own self-centeredness and sinfulness, the very nature of God in caring for His creation. Think of what God must face each day. John Piper describes God’s vast array of simultaneous empathies this way:

God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says he will), even though among those ten million prayers some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time—in fact are always coming to him with no break at all?

Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?

Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. And what he has told us is that there is a sense in which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.

God is an unfathomable God. His thoughts overwhelm ours, making ours infinitesimally small in comparison (Isaiah 55:8-9). If our God hears the world’s pleas with all of its joys and sorrows, and since I am called to be His ambassador to this world, then I too must display God’s glory in both celebrating with the joys of a new birth or a couple to be married while at the same time burying a loved one and mourning his loss with my aunt. And the complexity of such times helps me to see how good and gracious and caring and loving and sovereign and supreme the God that we worship is. He is a God who is both perfectly just in doling out eternal punishment to those who reject Him and at the same time perfectly gracious and loving and seeing His Son bear the punishment for those who rejected Him, but those He saved through Christ. As Chris Tomlin sings about, “This is our God and this is the One we are waiting for.�