“Jesus, I’ll follow You everywhere.”
“Jesus, I give You everything.”
“Everyone else will bail, but I won’t. I’m in this thing. I burned all my ships.”
“Lord, You have my heart and my life. I’ll die for You.”
So many of Peter’s declarations like these[1] have, in some shape or form, spilled from so many of our lips—in private prayer, in desperate cries, and sometimes in our Sunday morning choruses, whether we realize what we are singing or not. “Take the world, just give me Jesus!” But only pressure can reveal the fortitude within, and we are often weighed only to be “found wanting.”[2] We can hardly handle losing our ability to gather for Sunday services through the COVID-19 pandemic; I wonder how often we make the kind of bold, bombastic claims—full of our utmost sincerity—that so often came out of Peter’s mouth. And I wonder how often Jesus looks over at us with the eyes that “looked at and loved”[3] the rich young ruler who wouldn’t part with his credit card, the same eyes that “turned and looked at Peter”[4] when the young disciple realized he lacked the weight to hold the balances when pressure came.[5]
We may, like Peter, expect something in our peers to cave. We may suppose hardships will come. But when we look a decade down the road, or a few decades, or just the hours between now and the rooster’s cry at the coming dawn,[6] we typically don’t write our futures with suspicion of our own failures. And in the brutal wake of our own implosions, we almost never handle ourselves—or others—the way Jesus does. He is our “great High Priest”[7] who gave Himself to experience life as we live it so He can sympathize, and “deal gently”[8] with us in such a way that we may “come boldly to the throne of grace” when we need help.[9] When we need help—like when we are up to our eyeballs in compromise. When we are in the “far country” rolling in the pig sty.[10] And we can know He will receive us—even run to meet us—when we do. As Dane C. Ortlund so poignantly wrote in Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers:
With whom does [H]e ‘deal gently’? Those of reasonable and moderate failure, surely—reserving a harsher response for the bigger sinners?
A careful reading of the text does not allow us to conclude this. ‘He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward.’ The ignorant and wayward are not two kinds of milder sinners. No, this is the writer’s way of including everyone. In the Old Testament—and remember how richly and pervasively built out of the Old Testament this letter to the Hebrews is—we find that there were basically two kinds of sins: unwillful and willful, or accidental and deliberate, or as Numbers 15 puts it, unintentional and ‘within a high hand’ (Num. 15:27-31). This is almost certainly what the writer to the Hebrews has in mind, with ‘ignorant’ referring to accidental sins and ‘wayward’ referring to deliberate sins.
In other words, when Hebrews 5:2 says that Jesus ‘can deal with the ignorant and the wayward,’ the point is that Jesus deals gently and only gently with all sinners who come to [H]im, irrespective of their particular offense and just how heinous it is. What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to [H]im.
This incredible insight perhaps helps us digest the offensive confidence David had when he wrote Psalm 18. After a year and a half of deliberate compromise, his house of cards collapsed on his own head—and jeopardized the lives of an entire community who had yoked themselves to his integrity and leadership. He and his men—who had joined him in their lowest conditions, beset by debt, depression, and discontent[11]—left one morning with all the world before them as it had been: perilous, but protected. David had pledged superficial allegiance to the enemies of Israel, only to use the conditions as a cover to continue fighting for Israel—all while (and due to) hiding from her lunatic King Saul, who was hunting David down like he had no other job to do. But they arrived home three days later to find Ziklag in ashes— raided and razed by the Amalekites (who themselves were still alive due to Saul’s disobedience), left in worse conditions than a long-forgotten ghost town.[12] Their wives were gone. Their children were missing. They had lost everything but their own breath. David just about lost his own life. His men were, understandably, livid. While they were picking up their stones, he went to the One he’d been ignoring for the better part of two years:
“Shall we go after them?”
“You shall.”
“Will we get our families back?”
“You’ll get everything back.”[13]
Pause in the text for a moment; David was young once, and thoroughly sincere. He carried his harp through years under the unforgiving sun of the Judean desert, writing prayers he crafted into songs. We sing many of them still today.[14] And God, who inhabits eternity and dwells in unapproachable light,[15] saw this young boy and plucked him from the back hills of Bethlehem[16] to promote him to the highest office in the land. He used him as a precedent and prototype of both the Merciful One to come and the mercies available even to us.[17] And then David got a little older. Adulthood was difficult. His marriage was strained. His life was threatened. And all the promises he thought he once received felt further than the sun. So he settled—he didn’t outright abandon the Lord. He just kinda abandoned the Lord. Prayed a little less. Sang different songs. Sanctified the story just enough to get his buddies to go along with it. Leaned just a little less on the Everlasting Arms and just a little more on a fortitude of his own making.
And in the incredible kindness of Jesus, David’s counterfeit confidences imploded. He wasn’t even there to fight the raid off. The Lord has His ways of making His points. Yet David had the audacity to reach right back to Heaven’s ear and ask for advocacy. To ask for backup. To turn around and say “With the pure, You have shown Yourself pure.”[18] This would be insane if not for the Righteous One becoming our filth, to swap with us in what can only be called The Greatest Exchange.
With confidence in the fresh promises of God, David led his angry and very determined men to get their wives and kids back. By the end of the next day, they’d recovered everyone and everything they’d lost—and more. David and his men plundered their thieves; more importantly, they did not rebuild Ziklag. The hand of God restored the boy He brought out of Bethlehem’s backhills, but He did not restore his folly. Remarkably, this was the moment the Lord began to bring His promises over David’s life to pass. Before the story closes, Saul’s life was brought to a bloody end. His sons were slaughtered. His crown was up for grabs. And God put it on David’s head.[19] Art Katz put it this way:
“There is something about failure that does a deep, necessary work in the human soul like nothing else can. The fact that we have not experienced failure is more likely a statement that we have not had apostolic intention...Peter also failed dismally, but a great apostle came forth from that humiliating failure.”[20]
Jesus is with us and alongside us “until the end,”[21] and loves us to that extreme extent[22] with something more robust than simple, emotional affection. His love bears all things, endures all things, and doggedly believes and hopes for the best things. This is what carries us through the fractures of our failures and implosions of our own ego. This is what meets us on Galilean shores with breakfast around a fire.[23] This is what silences all our own confusion and “How could you?!” accusations ringing in our ears with just one question:
“Do you love Me?”[24]
This is what is meant to mark us; to be known for how we love each other, because of how we emulate how He loves us.[25] When we fail, we run to Him. When others around us fail, we are the first to rush to the scene and carry the wounded to the throne of grace—so fulfilling the Law of our Slaughtered King.[26] We “restore in a spirit of gentleness,”[27] because we are restored by the gentle hand of the meek and lowly King.[28] We “consider ourselves, lest we be tempted,”[29] knowing any failure could be the story of any one of us. And we do not “rejoice in iniquity”[30] or revel in someone else’s insufficiency so we can echo the accuser while we rub their faces in their failures. We “rejoice in the truth,”[31] and wash each other’s muddy messes off with the water of the Word[32] that speaks something better than Abel’s blood.[33] He will get us to the finish line; all we have to do is look at and lean on Him.[34] When eternity meets us and we “shine like the stars in the Kingdom of our Father,”[35] we will still sing David’s song. And the throng of the redeemed standing on the glassy sea will forever declare to the One who bought us with His blood, saved us from ourselves, and made us breakfast on the beach of the Galilee:
“I love You, O LORD, my strength…Your gentleness has made me great.”[36]
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Matthew 19:27; 26:30-35; John 6:68
[2] Daniel 5:27
[3] Mark 10:21
[4] Luke 22:60-61
[5] Luke 22:62
[6] John 13:38
[7] Hebrews 4:14
[8] Hebrews 5:2
[9] Hebrews 4:16
[10] Luke 15:12-15
[11] 1 Samuel 22:2
[12] 1 Samuel 30:1-3
[13] 1 Samuel 30:8
[14] Some of David’s Bethlehem-era songs likely include Psalm 8,19, 29, and possibly Psalm 151 (a piece included in the Septuagint and some Dead Sea Scrolls, but is not included in the biblical canon).
[15] Isaiah 57:15; 1 Timothy 6:16
[16] 1 Samuel 16:1-13
[17] Isaiah 55:3
[18] Psalm 18:20-30
[19] 1 Samuel 31:1-2 Samuel 2:11
[20] Art Katz, Apostolic Foundations, 1999. Art Katz Ministries.
[21] Matthew 28:20
[22] John 13:1
[23] John 21:1-12
[24] John 21:9-19
[25] John 13:35; 15:13
[26] Galatians 6:1-2
[27] Galatians 6:1
[28] Matthew 11:29
[29] Galatians 6:1
[30] 1 Corinthians 13:6
[31] ibid.
[32] Ephesians 5:26; Hebrews 3:13
[33] Hebrews 12:24
[34] Hebrews 12:1-2
[35] Daniel 12:3; Matthew 13:43
[36] Psalm 18:1,19
