Many parents quietly wonder if they are helping too much or not enough. These 10 biblically wise principles can guide you in raising adults who are confident, capable, and accountable.

Walking with Jesus to the Cross: A Scripture Reading Plan for Lent

Did God Create Hell?

Imagine you’re working on a minor home repair and you need a knife, a Phillips screwdriver, and a flathead screwdriver. Thankfully, you have a multi-tool in your pocket. When you need the knife, you open that tool and then close it when you’re done. When you need the Phillips screwdriver, you open it and close it when you’re done. And when you need the flathead screwdriver, you open it and close it when you’re done. Each tool is opened one at a time and used for a specific purpose or need. If we’re not careful, we can portray the triune God this way too. It’s easy to fall into what we might call a “divine multi-tool” theological error. This happens when we separate the persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—into three distinct actors. Father, Son, and Spirit are individual “divine tools,” so to speak, with their own unique set of powers and skills. They act individually in accordance with those skills and powers, but when they do so, they’re still part of the “divine multi-tool” team. Ultimately, they work together to finish the final project: defeating sin and Satan. But this isn’t who God is or how he acts. Rather than describing God in such a way that the three persons work together, even if in harmonious ways, we should be careful to say all his works are one work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let’s examine how we should rightly think about God’s actions as unified (one work) so we can avoid thinking about God’s actions as three different actors doing something collectively (working together). ‘Divine Multi-Tool’ Error This error often rears its head while we attempt to describe divine action in the story of salvation presented in the Gospels. It sounds like this: While the Father is presiding over events (by himself), the Son is acting them out (by himself). While the Father is pouring out his wrath (by himself) onto the Son at the cross, the Son is experiencing that wrath. And, occasionally in the narrative, the Spirit does something too (by himself), like anoint Jesus at his baptism. But, unlike a multi-tool, the triune God isn’t a single collection of separate tools with individual purposes held together by an external mechanism and often working together on particular projects. Instead, the triune God always acts as one. Doctrine of Inseparable Operations “Divine multi-tool” theology separates the persons of the triune God into three distinct individuals who act independently of one another, even if they always act in harmony with one another. This amounts to an error called tritheism (“three gods”). It’s rooted in a denial of, or at least a lack of attention to, a crucial doctrine related to the Trinity: the doctrine of inseparable operations. This doctrine states that the external works of the Trinity are undivided. Every act of God is an act of the one triune God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and therefore every act of God is an act of Father, Son, and Spirit. It cannot be an act of only one or two of the persons to the exclusion or negligence of other persons. Inseperable operations is grounded in Scripture and is crucial for an orthodox and biblical affirmation of the Trinity. Every act of God is an act of Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus’s crucifixion is a good illustration of both the temptation toward the “divine multi-tool” theological error and the better, orthodox doctrine of inseparable operations. Crucifixion as Test Case Let’s begin with the key question: Which person of the Trinity sent Jesus to the cross? An obvious answer is that God the Father sent Jesus to the cross. And this is correct—Jesus attributed his impending crucifixion to the Father’s will (Matt. 26:39), and we can also rightly appropriate texts like Isaiah 53:10 (“It was the will of the LORD to crush him”) and Acts 2:23 (“This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God”) to the Father. But it isn’t only the Father who sends Jesus to the cross. If we left it at that, we’d have a “divine multi-tool” problem, in which only one person of the Trinity (the Father) performed a particular action (the providential oversight of the crucifixion). More fundamentally, we’d have a biblical problem: The other two divine persons are also said to send Jesus to the cross. The Bible tells us, for instance, that the Son sent himself. Or, to quote Jesus regarding who is sending him to his crucifixion, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18). Notice that Jesus is speaking of his own divine authority to both send himself to the cross and raise himself from the dead, an authority that is necessarily divine. Finally, the Spirit sent Jesus to the cross. For instance, according to the author of Hebrews, Jesus offered his blood on the cross “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14). The Spirit’s agency in Jesus’s actions was crucial to the cross’s enactment and effectiveness. Scripture tells us that all three Trinitarian persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—sent Jesus to the cross. This wasn’t an act performed by one divine person, the Father, that affects another divine person, the Son. The divine persons weren’t “working together,” doing different things and working toward the same goal. Instead, the act of sending Jesus to the cross, just like any other divine act, was one work of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One Work, One God We could multiply these examples from Scripture as they relate to other actions of the triune God—creation, providence, revelation, salvation, judgment, and so on. Every act of God is the one act of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity isn’t “working together,” but instead the triune God acts in one work for everything he accomplishes. All three Trinitarian persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—sent Jesus to the cross. Why does this matter? For the same reason that anything having to do with God’s identity matters. Because it’s about who God is—the triune God who made us, the triune God who saves us, and the triune God we worship. Because he is one, his acts are one—the one work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And because of who he is and what he does, we worship him and him alone.

It’s been nearly four years since I retired from my lead-pastor role to serve in a global church ministry. Yet most every week I’m seeing, hearing, or learning something that I might do differently or better or not even at all if I returned as a lead pastor. These insights sometimes lead to regrets. Amid pastoral regrets, I’m reminded that my standing with God is unchanged by my performance. Fifty years of ministry regrets deepen my reliance on God’s grace. Even now, they lead to God-shaped change and serve as a means of growth. Let’s consider some common categories of pastoral regrets. Heart Issues Life is about the heart in relationship to God and others. Fittingly, the older we get, the more we see areas of weakness and need. We recognize times when we’ve neglected spiritual disciplines and failed to value relationships in the church body. We think of paltry attempts to wrestle with sin issues and lameness in furthering friendships. As one dying man told a pastor friend, “The closer I get to heaven, the more I think about the little things”—referring to sins he brushed off earlier in life. As a septuagenarian, I’ve often replayed that interaction, conscious of my life’s brevity. No doubt, when I consider the grace and love shown to me by my Savior, a brief essay won’t cover the areas I wish I’d done differently. So let me identify three heart issues that ring in my mind. First, I regret being too quick to give my opinion instead of listening compassionately to a brother or sister. It’s easy to bruise the reed and crush the smoking flax instead of being like Jesus, who welcomes the weary and burdened to give them rest (Matt. 12:20; 11:28–30). Pride in my opinion, along with self-importance, often drove the quick advice I offered without feeling the weight of a fellow struggler. Second, I regret my lack of patience with church members needing gospel transformation. Rightly, I wanted to see Christ formed in those I shepherded. But even as that kind of transformation has taken time in my own life, I’ve been impatient toward others. This exposes a failure to rely on God’s grace to transform. Theologically, I knew my words couldn’t transform anyone. Only by Word and Spirit can appropriate maturity and change take place. But that didn’t conform to my schedule. At the root of my impatience lay my unbelief in the sufficiency of God’s power and the wisdom of his providence. At the root of my impatience lay my unbelief in the sufficiency of God’s power and wisdom of his providence. Third, I regret not learning the joy of divine providence early in life and ministry. By God’s grace, I’ve limped along in learning lessons of God’s wise, mysterious, and good providence. But how often I drooped when I should have been joyous in knowing that “my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ . . . so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head” (Heidelberg Catechism). The flock needed to see my example of resting in God’s faithfulness. Savoring God’s providence sustains perseverance. Ministry Practice By practice, I mean the activities and engagements foundational to public ministry. We don’t just show up to preach, counsel, encourage, or shepherd without regular practices that feed and sustain us to serve others. First, I regret not spending more time meditating on the Word in personal devotions and sermon preparation. As a teenager, I spent several days over Christmas break on a survival trip with a dozen friends. Teenage boys without food creates misery. When we divided small game between us, there was only a tiny portion for each. I remember sucking on a bone for hours to get every drop of nutrition out of it. That’s what meditation does. You keep sucking the juices of the gospel to satisfy and sustain your soul. Later in my ministry, meditation on the Word enriched my life and preaching. But I think of how many years I rushed from text to exegesis to homiletics to pulpit without sucking the juices out of the text to discover its deliciousness for my soul. Second, I regret not praying more fervently and with greater dependence on the Lord. Yes, we all regret neglecting prayer. But this neglect exposes a lack of dependence on the promises in the gospel. It breeds self-reliance, or what might be termed a mechanical spiritual life. We go through motions, live nice lives, and do our jobs, but show little God-dependency flowing out of the redeeming work of Christ. Fervent prayer relies on what God can do. Pulpit Ministry I’ve preached thousands of sermons through the years. But I’m still learning about this “primary task . . . of the Christian minister,” as Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it. If it’s primary, it’s worth a lifetime of wrestling and digging to improve how we communicate the written Word through this God-appointed means—and doing so in the Spirit’s power. If a pastor gets to the end of his life and thinks he has no more room to improve his preaching, he’s an arrogant and shameful man. Two regrets among many stand out. First, I regret not being more focused in preaching to prepare my flock for heaven. In the last few years of pastoring, our oldest church member called me. His health had declined, and his mind had begun to slip. He didn’t have long in this world. We had a sweet conversation about the effects of the gospel and the joy of heaven. When I got off the phone, I wept profusely. I couldn’t stop. My wife thought something terribly wrong had happened. I waved my hand to let her know I was OK, and with halting speech told her, “I finally realized that all these years of pastoring, my biggest responsibility has been to prepare people for heaven.” I finally realized that all these years of pastoring, my biggest responsibility has been to prepare people for heaven. I’m not referring to simply preaching sermons on heaven. Rather, the hope and longing of seeing Jesus face-to-face must be paramount in how I apply the sermon. That longing affects our daily walk. Are there other applications? Yes, certainly, and we mustn’t neglect them. But in worship gatherings, we need to build the homing device of eternal hope that we’re preparing to meet Jesus. Second, I regret not making clearer gospel applications in the Lord’s Supper. For the last third of my ministry, times at the table became sweet, savoring moments of the sermon coming home with gospel power. But for the other two-thirds, I neglected to lead my flock to taste and experience the body and blood of Jesus in gospel application (John 6:52–58). The supper brings home the mystery of the gospel with simplicity, using the senses to magnify the beauty and power of the Savior’s love, redemption, and promise. When we lead it perfunctorily, we neglect this ordinance gift to the body of Christ, where our senses engage to receive the fruit of Christ’s saving work. I’m still learning. Regrets motivate me to diligently press on, knowing that one day I’ll see Jesus face to face, and he’ll wipe every tear from my eyes. Then, no more regrets.