I have the questions. We’ll see if we can get through these and maybe even have some from the floor. These are ones that you wrote here.

When Peter speaks of suffering, what kinds of suffering is he referring to? In other words, is there a kind of suffering that is unique to the Christian, or is the focus on suffering that everyone experiences and the issue is our response?

I’d have to comb through carefully with this question in mind, but I think virtually all of Peter’s references to suffering are suffering brought about by the circumstances of being a Christian rather than cancer or a car accident.

Now, having said that and wanting to be fair to the text, the question remains, are there principles in responding to that suffering that also are obligatory or helpful in relation to all suffering? Let’s say I walk home and have a heart attack or have a stroke and half my body is not useful anymore, or walk out in front of a car and get hit and can’t walk anymore, or somebody throws acid at me and I can’t see anymore, whatever. All those are kinds of suffering that people go through. Will 1 Peter help with that?

My answer is yes, this book is filled with things that would help you suffer. But if you force me to go to texts that deal with all kinds of suffering, I would go to Romans 8. Romans 8:18–25 is my go-to text for universal suffering that refers to everything that futility has brought upon the fallen world — from floods to volcanoes to pestilence and disease and famine and nakedness. Anything that brings misery into the world or into a human life is dealt with in Romans 8:18–23. The principles there are that the same way that we bear that suffering, we bear persecution.

Don’t think that when you’re reading a text that only deals with persecution, that it’s not relevant for your other kinds of suffering. I’ll give you just one simple example. If you read a text that tells you to rejoice in suffering — “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:13) — you might say that only applies to persecution, so I can’t rejoice when I get cancer or I can’t rejoice when these other kinds of things happen to me.

That would be wrong. Think of it this way. Paul took heart from the fact that he was thrown in prison for his faith, but what if in prison he gets an infection? There’s vermin down there in the dungeon and they get in his skin, and the rest of his life, he struggles with intermittent fevers and rashes. Is that a disease like cancer or is that suffering for righteousness’ sake?

So my answer is yes. I think 1 Peter is almost entirely talking about, and maybe entirely talking about, persecution. But I think it is all relevant to how we respond to God’s sovereign dealings with us in our varied sufferings.

Oh, no. I just thought of chapter one verse six. It says:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

There’s no specification there for those various trials. It’s like gold being put through fire, whatever the fire happens to be. Thank you, Lord, for that little reminder.

How would you suggest that children look at the book? How can we teach them that there’s more to see than they are seeing?

I don’t know what age you’re talking about — two year old, three year old, four year old, five year old, 10 year old? But you’re the parents and you understand your kids. At every stage of learning to read, I think there are ways to help them attend more carefully to what they read. Probably, you use the kind of books where they can circle things, and you might tell them, “Circle the main person in this page.” And that would just train them to look for things.

But my guess is more naturally, the way you’re going to teach your kids how to see is by modeling what you see and asking them questions. So they read Run, Spot, Run — I don’t know if they read books like that anymore — and you ask them, “What was Spot doing? Did he do it fast? Did he do it slowly? Why did he do it?” And in asking your students questions, two, three, or four questions about sentences they just read, you train their minds to ask questions about sentences. They wouldn’t have even thought of the difference between running and walking. If the child was four, you might say, “What’s the difference between running and walking?” You might think, “That’s a stupid question,” but what you want is for them to articulate the obvious. What would they say? They’d probably say, “Well, running is fast and walking is slow.” You would say, “Good. You get an A on that one.” It’s not an insignificant thing to have the child see the obvious and be able to articulate the difference.

In seminary classes, one of the biggest issues is rushing to answer a question before you’ve defined your terms. There’s two sides that are conflicting because one says this and one says this. The conflict resolves itself as soon as you define the terms, and nobody’s pausing to do it. Well, that’s a habit that you might teach your kid by asking them questions about what obvious words mean. What is the moon? What is the difference between a cat and a dog? That would be a little more challenging, wouldn’t it? I wonder what they’d say. Dogs are nice. Dogs are Christ-like.

What’s the role of the Holy Spirit in looking at and understanding the Scriptures?

Marshall said several people ask this kind of question. It’s an absolutely excellent question because I know that technology is here and we do a lot of thinking and talking. The role of the Holy Spirit is absolutely indispensable at multiple levels. Unbelievers can see many things in the Bible without the Holy Spirit. They can even write books about the Bible that you might get some insight from that you didn’t see. So at the level of structure and repetition and pattern and explanation they might see much. However, I don’t want to say, therefore, that the Holy Spirit doesn’t function at the level of seeing. I think he does, but it’s not his main work.

I think the Holy Spirit’s main work is to move the heart to the kind of hope-filled humility that is responsive to the beauty and the truth of what is there, so that you see things that unbelievers don’t see because you see them as they really are, namely, valuable or horrible. Hell is horrible. Heaven is precious. Jesus is glorious. Those are seeings that you don’t do without the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “I will send [the Comforter] to you” (John 16:8), and he said, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). That means he will open the eyes of people to see Christ’s glory. He will make Christ appear glorious in the eyes of people. So the massive work of the Holy Spirit is to incline you to submit and incline and say yes to the truth of the Bible, and to be thrilled with what’s thrilling in the Bible.

The affectional and volitional dimension of seeing is only possible because of the Holy Spirit, because we’re dead without him. We’re dead in our trespasses and sins. I will not incline to what the Bible says without the Holy Spirit, and I won’t rejoice in what the Bible says without the Holy Spirit, which means the Bible will have zero saving effect on me without the work of the Holy Spirit.

But I want to go back and end where I started. If I’m preparing for a sermon and I cannot figure out a text — I don’t know how this relates to this, and I don’t get it — I ask God to show me. And hundreds of times, I look back at the end of the day and I realize, he did it. He didn’t whisper it. He never has whispered anything to me. I hear God in the Bible, and he whispers sweet things to me, really sweet things. This morning, he said, “For My own sake, I remove your transgressions.” That’s Isaiah 43:25. David and I read the same pace through the Bible. He said that to me as clear and better than if he had whispered it. Because if he had whispered it, it might be the soup that I had last night or the devil. God speaks in the Bible powerfully and preciously.

When I say, “Show me, Lord, show me,” I don’t close my Bible, go out in the backyard, and wait for the revelation. I don’t do that. I keep my Bible open and I ask him. And very often, in a most miraculous way, at least it feels that way to me, he directs me to read something else that sheds light on this. I think, “Yes, that’s it! I get it.” So the Holy Spirit is indispensable for a Christian reading of the Bible. We should praise him.

There are a bunch of questions about marriage and the roles of wives and husbands. Let’s take a couple of these and see.

What about a wife who knows the Bible better than her husband, and therefore, would be wiser about how they should live or what they should do?

That’s a good question. I would guess that’s true in most marriages. Not all, but lots. Women have the reputation of being more spiritually inclined, more prone to go to church, more prone to be in prayer meetings. Men flop around and don’t get their act together spiritually. There are a lot of marriages like this, I’m sure. I’m assuming that they’re both Christians in this scenario. We can talk about another one in a minute. And the husband may or may not recognize this. I suspect he does recognize it. So what does he do? I think that’s the first question.

If Jesus knocks at your door because there’s a marriage problem, I think if Noël answers the door and Jesus comes to do some marriage counseling at our house, you know what the first thing he’d say to her is? “Is the man of the house here?” That’s what he’d say. He would say, “We’ve got to deal with him first, and then we’ll work on this marriage here. But John Piper is responsible here, so I’m talking to him first.”

So I think the man should say, “What should I do here? My wife reads better, she is smarter, wiser, and knows more theology. What should I do?” He knows her. He lives together with her according to knowledge. And he figures out, how do you lead a woman like this? Because it’s written on him, I believe, and he’s called to be the head, according to Ephesians 5, that he should lead. There is a way to lead a woman who’s way less educated than you, and there’s a way to lead a woman who is way more educated than you.

For example, I remember this one clearly because it was real. A couple in this church came to me. She had some college and he dropped out of school in the eighth grade. I don’t want to tell you what he did. Let’s just call him a plumber. He was just a craftsman. He worked in the trades. They came to me with marital issues. And he just threw his hands up and he said, “You talk about leadership and you talk about all that. I can’t lead this woman. She reads faster than I do and reads better than I do. She does everything better than I do.” I said, “I don’t believe that you can’t lead her.” She had talked to me, and she wanted him to lead. And so I said, “Do you have devotions at night?” He said, “No, not really. I feel so self-conscious because she can read and I just stumble through.”

They had three kids. I said, “Okay, can you do this? Can you say, “Hey kids and Mary, let’s have devotions.” The word let’s is the word of leadership. Who says “let’s” most often? I told him to say, “Let’s have devotions.” And they all would come into the living room. Then he could say, “We’re going to start having devotions every night right after supper. Your mom here has a super duper education, and she’s a great reader and I’m not, so I’m going to tell her to read.” So he gives the Bible to Mary and says, “Why don’t we read the Gospel of John? You can read as much as you want and then I’ll take over.” I was just asking him, “Can you do this?” And then when she’s done, you can say, “Jim, why don’t you thank God for what Mom just read, okay? And then I’ll pray.” It’s over. She’s thrilled.

That’s a teeny little glimpse about how you adjust to giftings and you adjust to competencies, but you don’t let competencies define headship and leadership. There’s something about maleness and femaleness, regardless of competencies in this relationship. A woman doesn’t want to take over. I don’t think a godly, Spirit-filled woman wants to assume that role, no matter how many graduate degrees she has. She wants her man to step up and say, “Let’s.” SHe wants him to say, “Let’s talk about the kids,” or, “Let’s talk about finances,” or, “Let’s figure out vacation,” or, “Let’s plan the summer.” If she’s always having to say “let’s” and he’s just dragging and dragging and dragging, she’s not going to like that. If she is wiser, he will discern that she’s wiser, and he will invite her wisdom all the time. That’s doable. These things are very, very delicate. There’s a dance to headship and submission with two very different people with very different giftings, but it doesn’t vanish because it’s complicated.

It’s fairly clear what Scripture calls a wife who is married to an unbeliever to do. Being married to a rightly ordered believer is also fairly clear. But what about a professed believer who acts and carries himself as an unbeliever?

I suspect there are many, many sad women in that situation, as well as sad husbands. I know. I saw some here last night who have wives who live as unbelievers while professing to be a believer. Now, the question that has to be raised here for practical application is, how serious are these behaviors that you’re calling “living as an unbeliever”? If it’s adultery, you get one answer. If it’s spending four hours in front of the television every night, you get another answer. Those are not in the same plane for how you deal with them. If he’s a believer living in egregious sin, he needs church discipline. This is painful. When a family member says to the pastor, not the first thing she does, “My husband does this and this, and he is a member of this church, and it’s against the affirmation of faith, or it’s against the church covenant.” That’s pretty radical for her to go to the church like that, but it might be necessary.

But first, she’s going to pray for him. That’s a given. She’s going to do what 1 Peter says. In other words, I think the principles of 1 Peter 3:1–6 apply to a believer who’s disobeying the Word just like an unbeliever who disobeys the Word. She will try to win him by her conduct. And she will talk to him as far as she can, and she will need great discernment as to when that is over because she’s going to turn into nag. Why was the word nag invented? The word nag was invented because suggestions can become excessive and repetitive and counterproductive. You need a wise woman who discerns when my wise suggestions are now called nagging, and therefore, going to drive him further away.

Another thing she might do — and here again, I think real honesty rather than subtlety is better — is just to say, “Joe over here has a group that you could be a part of. Would you want to be a part of that? I would just love to see you flourish with those guys.” He might say “bug off”, or he might say yes, but it’s not wrong for her to plead with him to consider something like that. She might invite him to attend things, to go to things. How you behave in a situation like this is just so delicately discerning. You need great discernment. But I think the principles from 1 Peter 3:1–6 apply to that kind of situation with some changes.

Do you think the doctrine of the new birth, so often taught in 1 Peter, makes the practice of the sinner’s prayer in evangelism unacceptable?

No. However, I need to probably define my terms, because then we have an argument. Let’s talk about what we’re talking about. What is this? I gather that what’s behind the question is that God is sovereign and he comes in great mercy to a person dead in their trespasses and sins, and by a miracle, quickens spiritual life so that the eyes are opened, and the cross and Jesus and the way of salvation are seen as compellingly true and beautiful and irresistibly attractive, and you believe.

Now, that’s just a description. I didn’t say other things that are happening there. I didn’t say anything about who was speaking the gospel to you when you saw it like that. Or were you just reading the Bible? I didn’t say anything about, what were they saying to you? I didn’t say anything about whether the first inclination of your heart was to cry out in a sinner’s prayer.

I take “sinner’s prayer” to mean something like helping someone find words to put their faith in Jesus. So you say to them, “Wouldn’t you want to believe? Wouldn’t you want to trust Christ, having heard the gospel that I’ve just spoken to you?” And suppose they say, “Yes!” Now what do you do? Do you say, “Well, go home and do that”? You might. I’ve often said that in general groups. You share the gospel, you hope people are being converted, and you tell them, “Go home and deal with God. Get on your knees. Deal with God.” I think most genuine conversions probably happen like that. But my, it would be the most natural thing in the world to deliver this baby. Be a midwife all the way. It’s coming. Go find a birthing room. You can say, “Why don’t we pray?” And you put it into words.

I am disinclined to give people words. I am. I don’t think it would be dead wrong. I just say, “You’ve heard the gospel. You’ve heard what it means to believe. Just tell him. Tell him right now. Tell him what you feel about your sin. Tell him what you feel about your fear. Tell him what you feel about Jesus. Tell him whatever. Talk to him right now. If it raises any questions, I’ll help you. Let’s pray.” And then you listen, and you catch on to whether they are anywhere near saying the kinds of things that show they have an understanding of the gospel.

I want to be more intentional with people, not less intentional. I’ve often said I think we worry so much about thinking, “Boy, I sure hope an opportunity comes to share the gospel. I sure hope it comes. I sure hope it comes.” I kind of want to say, make it come! Invite them out to lunch. Just invite them out to lunch and say, “Could we go out to lunch and share some really important things about what we believe? I’ve got something I love about God and about Jesus I’d love to share with you. I’ll bet there’s things in your life that you’d love to share with me.” Just make it happen. Of course, you’re asking permission. You’re not forcing it at all. I think that’s what we get so worked up about. We think, “Will it be appropriate if you’re not invited?” Ask for the opportunity. And then if it goes as far as a prayer, that would be wonderful.

So no, I don’t think the sovereignty of God bringing a person to life is in any way contradictory to what that person says when they come to life. Because they’re not praying at that moment for God to cause them to be born again, they’re praying to put their trust in Jesus. You may or may not have taught them that the only way they’re able to do that is because they’ve been awakened by God.

What should submission look like in a dating context? How do we learn and grow together without crossing emotional and spiritual boundaries?

Those sound like two very different questions. I think the role of men and the role of women have appropriate demonstrations everywhere. In a relationship that he’s dating and possibly moving towards a more serious relationship, he would show what kind of husband he’s going to be by the initiatives he takes. I think it would be the most appropriate thing if he took the initiative to say, “I think we should pray together,” or “I think we should read the Bible together.” It should be like that rather than her feeling, “I wish he were more spiritually alive and aggressive. I wonder how he’ll respond if I suggest that we pray together.”

In a dating relationship, I think of initiative, protection, and provision. That’s an illustration of initiative. What I mean by protection is my story about walking between here and Maria’s Cafe. If a guy jumps out with a knife and threatens the two of you, you don’t push her in front, even if she has a black belt. You step in front, and when he knocks you down, she can finish him off. But manhood does not fail to step up, even if he’s incompetent. And by provision, I mean he pays at Maria’s, at least he offers to. And if he forgot his wallet, he’s okay with her paying. But he steps up. He doesn’t say, “Should we split it?” If I were her, I’d say, “Sure, we can split it. But what does that mean?” That’s what I’d feel. Maybe I’m old-fashioned. I don’t know. I’d think, “Pay up. Show that you protect and provide and take initiative. If you don’t have enough money, get a job.”

You mentioned Sarah submitting to Abraham, even to the point of entering a harem. Do you really believe it was wise for her to submit in this instance? Shouldn’t she have called him out and knocked some sense into him? He was being an idiot. How do we, as wives, know when to submit or not submit in cases like these? Couldn’t it potentially lead to abuse if we obey like Sarah did?

Yes, it could, and it’s a valuable question for that reason. My guess is that Sarah, in that culture, had no choice. I doubt that there was a way out of this situation. I don’t think the point of that story is her submission. I think the point of that story is Abraham’s sin, to show that even though he was called of God, he sinned. Whether she could have called him out or not we don’t know. And I don’t even know if she did call him out. The story is not a full story. So let’s deal with reality rather than forcing anything on Sarah there.

The first answer to the question when you don’t submit is when you are asked to sin. Any request or demand from a husband to a wife that she sin is rejected because of a superior submission to Christ. He is her Lord, and this man is a sub-lord, and anytime the two lordships conflict, there is no question which one holds sway. Christ holds sway. However, I would qualify that by saying there’s a way to do that submissively and there’s a way to not submit submissively. It shows your heart.

If you have the heart that is precious to God, a quiet and gentle spirit that fears nothing on the planet, including this husband, you probably won’t get in his face with a feisty, “No way, you idiot!” But rather, you will say, “You can’t ask me to do that. I so want to honor your leadership. But this, I cannot do. You know I can’t do this because Jesus has said this.” To affirm the fact that she wants to be led, that it is her heart’s desire to want this man to lead in such a way that she can happily follow is a right way to be submissive, while she’s also saying, “No. I can’t go there. I can’t be dishonest like that. I won’t sign that contract. I’m not going to sign that.” Or there could be sexual stuff or some kind or an economical ripoff, and she’s not going to go there.

I think the last part of this question about abuse is if a husband is abusive, and you’ve got all kinds of levels right up to killing — a husband that’s negligent and a husband that’ll kill you, and everything in between. I think the first thought of a woman should be, “I must get him help. And the men of my church must step it in here.” At least in my leadership in the church, I want to say as soon as there is physical abuse, the authorities have to be there. They have to be included. That’s just the law and I think it’s a good law. What’s not law but needs to happen is the church needs to be there on this guy’s case, protecting her, and getting between her and him, and dealing with him. I don’t know what the law’s going to do, but we’re going to deal with him. The law may put him in jail, and it may not, but we’re going to deal with him spiritually. So I think a woman’s recourse is that the men of the church become protectors alongside the legal authorities if it’s that kind of level.

Not to minimize at all those who have the worst kind, my guess is that most women who deal with that deal with neglect, harshness, and flares of temper. She needs great wisdom as to how to pray for him, how to help him get help, and so on. But all of us live in relationships that are less than ideal. If it’s not physical abuse, I doubt that she should walk away. But rather, she should find ways to return blessing for reviling. That’s pretty unacceptable these days because people feel a right to happiness in marriage, and if they’re not getting it because their husband is mouthy or neglectful, they can just ditch him. But I don’t think that’s the way Jesus treats us, nor should we treat each other in marriage that way. But I’m going to always go after the guy and say, “You can’t do that. You can’t treat her that way, especially if you’re in this church. If you’re a member of this church, you get the help you need in order to treat her with honor as the weaker vessel.”

Let’s take one or two questions from the floor and then we’re going to stop. Back there.

Earlier, you concluded at the end of chapter three that God wills that sin be, yet himself does not sin. I agree. So although I believe that’s a synthesis that is biblically true, if the Bible would not teach both of those things, we would logically deduce something else about God’s character. Logic would lead us astray. I have friends that have real intellectual struggles with this. They’re in classrooms that are teaching very different things about the goodness and sovereignty of God, and how those things relate. Although this is a mysterious reality and it’s biblical, and it’s real, and it’s true, do you have any principles or resources on how to rightly, logically, biblically, and worshipfully navigate that reality that God ordains sin but does not himself sin.

Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will is the resource for the most serious tackling of it that I’ve read. I found it enormously helpful when I was your age, Mike.

Number two, I don’t think that it would be a valid, logical inference from God’s sovereignty over sin to the fact that he is a sinner in that sovereignty. I don’t think that’s what logic demands. It’s what experience seems to say; that if you’re involved in evil happening you must also be evil. But given that God is God and may have ways of bringing about causes without himself being implicated in the culpability of the cause, that’s a logical possibility. So Edwards is the one who will be the most helpful there. The distinctions that he makes are the difference between a person being physically unable to do a thing or morally unable to do a thing. But it would take us, I think, too far here to get into that.

I have two ratio questions, I guess, related to your personal morning Bible reading. You started off the conference putting up a painting and saying, “Let’s observe this thing.” So I guess if you put the Bible as an art gallery, you could either go the route of entering it into it and walking around a room for 20 minutes — maybe the M’Cheyne reading plan is the comparison — or you could take it painting by painting every day. What is the balance between those two things that you take to your personal Bible reading?

And then the second ratio question is, in the same way that you feel oppressed by approaching apologists like John Frame, I and many people in here might be oppressed by approaching the Bible the same way that you do in our personal devotional reading with the same kind of structures or training or kindling that you would bring to that. And so is 10 to one a good ratio for all believers in all levels of maturity or is that something to work up to? Because if knowledge brings new affections and ignorance doesn’t, then am I just approaching this in danger of being ignorant?

Let me start with the second one and then go back to the first. No, I don’t think 10:1 is the ideal, and I think people are different with different gifts. I just think there’s some people that find reading so excruciatingly difficult, and therefore, maybe listening to the Bible on tape would be what they should be doing rather than giving it up. But that’s hard to stop. It’s hard to constantly stop and meditate.

Secondly, I think there are some people that are not wired or gifted in a way that they’re going to look at that painting and see all that Ms. Roberts saw, and therefore, it wouldn’t hurt if they read art history alongside looking at the art more than I would maybe, or at least more than I care to. So you should be freed up, not oppressed, by varied devotional strategies for insight into the Bible. Always say, “I want to understand the Bible. I want to know what God said.” And if reading Don Carson’s For the Love of God alongside those texts every morning sets you on fire, read it. Read it. Read devotionals and what other people have seen. So don’t take that 10:1 as “I’m a failure because I’m at 5:1,” or whatever, in relation to looking at the Book versus looking at other books.

Regarding the first question, I don’t have a workable answer because I don’t know in my own self. The question is about driving the shaft deep versus reading broadly, and the answer is both. So what proportion? In my own life, I go back and forth. Morning by morning, I may go back and forth. We all need to know the broad terrain of the Bible, so we need to read through the Bible, the whole Bible. And we all need to stop and think because we don’t ever get anything if we don’t stop and drive a shaft down. Regarding which to do when and for how long, know yourself. Know yourself and what’s fruitful for your life. What is moving you to love God more? What helps you love God more and be radical in your obedience and be sold-out for him? You just have to know yourself. And if you know you’re doing stuff and it’s not helping at all, do something else. Try something else.