9 Limits
Humility is more persuasive than pride. Patience is more powerful than irritated impatience. A gentle answer is more transformative than loud and angry reactions. A willingness to listen does more good than the demand to be heard. Forgiveness is more powerful than bitterness. Love produces an infinitely better harvest than hate. Peacemaking does more good than warmongering. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
The Bible is clear that there are things you can do to function as one of God’s tools of change. You can behave in ways that garner opportunities to be heard. If you believe that there is such a thing as God, that he has given us such a thing as truth, that there are such things as the forces of evil and falsehood, then you should want people to know what is true and what is false. You should care about your community and your culture and what it believes. You should care about the hearts, souls, and lives around you. You should not retreat into your safe little Christian cocoon, with your small circle of echo chamber friends. You should be involved in the world around you, and you should be involved in the unending conversation that God intends to mature and purify his church. In the Bible, opting out is nowhere presented as an option.
Yes, you should be involved with the character and commitments that Scripture calls you to, but what I am about to say next is very important. In all of your activism, as a child of God you need to quickly and humbly admit your limits. You and I have the power to change the heart of no one. If you could change the heart of another person by the sheer power of your logic, or skill with words, or stubborn persistence, or force of your personality, or fearfulness of your threats, or power of your position, or size of your influence, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the indwelling presence of the Spirit would not have been necessary. You and I are never the creators of change. We are only ever instruments in the hands of the one who alone has the power to create the only kind of human change that lasts—change of heart. If you forget or deny your limits, you will end up doing and saying things you should not do or say and, in so doing, fail to create the change you had in mind. Assigning to yourself the power and control over other people that only God has never results in anything good. The more I examine social media, the more I am convinced that much of the toxic insanity that lives there is the fruit of people denying or forgetting their limits.
If you want to rise above the toxic reactivity that is so harmful to the conversations of the surrounding culture and the Christian community, you have to start by humbly admitting your limits. We all tend to forget our limits and proudly try to do what only God can do. Perhaps as a parent you’ve fallen into thinking that raising the volume of your voice can change one of your children’s hearts. Maybe your forgetfulness causes you to be comfortable with proudly destroying the logic of someone you’re trying to win. Or perhaps you’re tempted to buy someone’s loyalty or rein someone in by a threat. In each of these examples, you have assigned yourself the ability to do what only God can do, that is, change the content and character of another person’s heart. It never produces, in any lasting way, what we hoped it would produce.
It is vital that all of our reactions, interactions, and responses to one another are shaped by a humble confession of our limits. I think if we all were to do this, much of the toxic reactivity that stains the Christian conversation would be gone. So, permit me to define what I mean by our limits by running through the catalog of limits all of us have and will continue to have until we are in the forever that is on the other side.
Having a perspective informed by the gospel is incredibly helpful here. Yes, we have been declared perfectly righteous because of the righteous life and acceptable sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. We positionally stand before God as righteous, but we are not actually perfectly righteous. We are in the process of becoming actually righteous. By the power of God’s sanctifying grace, we are all in process. This means that sin still remains, with its moral impurity and its tendency to rebel. We don’t always think in godly ways. We don’t always desire what God desires for us. Our motives are often a mix of what is pure and what is impure. We are still capable of pride, hatred, and greed. There are moments when sin seems more attractive to us than obedience. We suffer from pockets of spiritual blindness and the inaccuracy of self-understanding that results. This means the war for the rulership of our hearts still goes on.
So, our spontaneous impulses will not always be right. The desires that direct what our fingers do on the keypad will not always be pure. We will be tempted to use words as weapons rather than as tools of grace. We will have times when we will be quick to speak but rather slow to listen. We will be capable of being seduced into thinking that judgment is better, when mercy is what is needed. We will be tempted to point out in others what we have tolerated in ourselves. We will be tempted to find greater joy in a takedown than in a loving moment of rescue. We will be tempted to look at those who disagree with us as enemies rather than members of our family. We will be tempted to assume we are right, while we judge the insights and motives of others. We will be tempted to personalize what is not personal and to respond out of personal hurt. As long as sin lives inside of us, we are all susceptible to these temptations, so reminding yourself that you have not arrived, that you have not graduated from God’s school of grace, and that you still need his forgiving, rescuing, and empowering mercies is very important. May every reaction be shaped by a confession of limited righteousness.
I have just been through a year-long experience of limited knowledge. Throughout the last year I wrote a book about twelve core gospel doctrines. My focus was not just to define and explain these wonderful truths but to delineate how they are meant to shape everything we do and say. This project proved to be a deeply humbling experience. First I was confronted by how much easier it is for me to teach these truths than it is for me to live them. But one particular thing confronted me again and again and caused me to cry out for help again and again. I came to see how much I didn’t know about what I know. God’s truth is a bottomless ocean of glory. You and I can swim deeper and deeper for the rest of our lives and never come close to reaching the bottom. In fact, we will dive into the oceanic glory of God’s truth for all eternity and never reach the bottom. So, we all need to humbly abandon our prideful theological-always-rightism and willingly confess that we do not know everything. We need to be willing to interact with one another with the heart of a student, always willing to learn new things or sharpen our understanding of what we already know. There are too many theological know-it-alls on Christian social media, trolling the sites looking to parade their doctrinal prowess by mockingly correcting the theological observations of a brother or sister in Christ. These are not sweet pleas made out of love for God’s truth; these are prideful takedowns made out of love for self.
But we need to consider something else here. Being an expert in one area of thought or endeavor does not mean you’re an expert in all. If you’re a pastor, a ministry leader, or a serious Bible student, you may have come to a place of theological expertise, but it’s vital to remind yourself of the limits of that expertise. You probably shouldn’t be pontificating about epidemiology, social theories, political philosophy, science, medicine, or other fields outside of your particular area of knowledge and experience. We all need experts in our lives. No one is the overarching expert on everything. It is painful to watch brothers and sisters, some of them people of influence, speaking authoritatively about topics of which they have no training and little expertise. It’s tempting to think you know more than you know, and it’s tempting to react in ways that are less than helpful to people who you think don’t know what you think you know. Much of the toxic reactivity we encounter would go away if we would confess that we must be committed to a student way of living and if we would remind ourselves to stay in our lane of training and expertise. Humbly admit the limits of your knowledge and the narrow focus of your expertise every time you are tempted to post an opinion or interact with the opinions of others.
My dear wife, Luella, and I have had a transformative experience over the last several years. It has been one of those experiences that confronts you with how big God’s world is and how limited your experience of that world is. We didn’t need to travel across the world to be faced with the limits of our life experience. We only needed to travel a few miles from our home in Center City Philadelphia. We began to attend a church that has a Black pastor and about 80 percent Black attenders/members. It has been a wonderful eye-opening and heart-humbling experience. If you deny the limits of your experience, you will tend to assume your experience is everyone’s experience, and because you make this assumption you don’t ask, investigate, or learn about how different another person’s experience is from yours. All kinds of misunderstanding and hurt result when I assume that you and I share experiences when we do not. As Luella and I listened to the experiences of our Black brothers and sisters, as we invited them to tell their stories, and as we allowed our assumptions to be confronted, we realized how wrong so many of our assumptions had been.
Yes, there is so much human stuff that we all share and so much gospel stuff that all Christians celebrate together. But growing up as a White boy in Toledo, Ohio, and growing up as a Black boy in inner city Philadelphia are simply not the same. I was confronted again and again with how wrong my assumptions had been and came to regret many of the judgmental things I had thought or said over the years that assumed a similarity of experience. We need to be better at entering the world of others with a humble heart that loves others enough to want to listen with a hunger to know and understand. We need to value the stories of others because we believe in and worship the one who is the author of those stories. So much of the toxic reactivity of social media is fueled by a prideful assumption of similarity of experience and defensive responses to people who say their experience has been vastly different from ours. Pastor, the women in your church do not have the same experience of your church that you have or even that the other men have. You should be willing to listen to the experiences of women in your church. Moms, your children do not have the same experience of your family that you and your husband have. It’s important to make safe places for your children to candidly talk about life in your family. Boss, your workers do not have the same experience of your company that you have. Financially secure people do not experience life the same way the poor do. Sick people experience life very differently from those who are strong and healthy. Before you react, how about lovingly asking yourself, “Who is this person that I’m reacting to, what has her life been like, and what is going on in and around her right now?”
I am in the process of doing a series of weekly five-minute videos on Proverbs. In each video I summarize one of the many wisdom themes that are developed in this amazing portion of God’s word. I have been blown away by the depth and glory of the wisdom of God’s wisdom. And it has ignited in me a deeper passion for being truly and functionally wise than I have ever had before. The Bible has so much to say about wisdom, not only what wisdom is but also how wisdom lives. People tend to confuse knowledge with wisdom. I was a seminary professor for twenty years. By the time my students got to my classroom, they had acquired tons of knowledge, but few of them were truly wise. How do I know this? When I would ask them to apply their body of knowledge to specific situations through the means of a case study, most often they couldn’t do it. They had no trouble passing doctrinal exams, but applying those doctrines to the difficult situations of life in this fallen world was a different story.
This is what wisdom is and does. Wisdom is the ability to apply the truths of God’s word with specificity to the situations, locations, and relationships of daily life. Knowledge is a way of thinking. Wisdom is a way of living. Knowledge meditates on what is true. Wisdom decides what is right to do. Knowledge is a commitment of the heart and mind to a body of truths. Wisdom is a commitment of everything you are and have to a way of living. Knowledge surrenders your conceptual abilities to the revelation of God. Wisdom surrenders your life to his will, his way, and his glory. Wisdom can’t exist without knowledge, and knowledge is incomplete until it is applied by wisdom. Biblical knowledge was never meant to be an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is wise, godly living. Wisdom understands that every insight, every command, every truth, every principle, every doctrine, and every promise of Scripture carries with it a culture for our everyday living. Wisdom understands that you do not know what you know until you can live what you know.
Now here’s what’s important about the acquisition of wisdom. Becoming wise is never an event but rather a lifelong process. We all need to be humbly willing to admit that when it comes to wisdom, we are all in a constant state of becoming. Praise God that I am wiser than I once was and thank God that I will one day be wiser than I am now. You and I will never journey to the furthest boundaries of the wisdom of God, no matter how long we walk with him. And the fact that I am still in the process of becoming wise means that I am still capable of being a fool. Again and again, as I look at social media sites, I read the comments of people who assume that they are quite wise, while at that very moment they are reacting in ways that are quite foolish. Wisdom is humble, wisdom is kind, wisdom answers softly, wisdom is patient, wisdom is understanding, wisdom is generous, wisdom is forgiving, wisdom is just, wisdom loves mercy more than judgment, wisdom values character and God’s honor over winning the day, wisdom doesn’t hunt for enemies but makes many friends, and wisdom never flaunts its wisdom.
Admitting that you are not yet wise all of the time and in every way and confessing that you are still capable of acting the fool before you react is a habit many of us need. The toxic reactivity that we seem to encounter every day is driven by faux wisdom. It is a pride of knowledge coupled with a skill in communication that masquerades as wisdom; but it does not do what wisdom would or produce what wisdom could. It often claims to defend God’s truth, but in a way that does not give him honor. It claims to love God, but treats brothers and sisters as enemies. Wisdom that lacks patient humility and forgiving love is a form of “wisdom” that is not wise. God graces us with his wisdom and by grace works to make us wise. We should all remember the words of Proverbs 4:7–9:
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.
Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.
She will place on your head a graceful garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.
Live, react, respond, and pray as a wisdom-needy person. It will change how you act, react, and respond, and it will produce a harvest of good fruit.
In my ministry I have been confronted with the limits of my gifts. I am thankful for the gifts God has given me, but I am aware that I am not gifted in every way or for everything. I have been gifted by God to teach, preach, counsel, and write, but I am not an administrator. So I have surrounded myself with people who are smarter than me, and I try to tell them again and again how much I value, respect, and appreciate each one of them. I could not do what God has called me to do without their work, advice, counsel, and direction. This is how God meant it to be. None of us has been designed to function independently. Each of our lives is a community project. Each of us is dependent on the contribution of others in order to be what we’re supposed to be and do what we’ve been called to do. The word picture that the apostle Paul uses for this is the physical body (1 Cor. 12). Each part of the body is dependent on every other part of the body. Each part must do its part for each part to be able to do its part. No part of the body functions properly in isolation. This means that a humble admission of the limits of gifts and a humble dependency on and thankfulness for the gifts of others are prerequisite if the body of Christ is ever going to function as God intended.
If you believe in divinely intended interdependency, then you don’t burn relationships to make a point. You don’t turn into enemies people who are not your enemies. You don’t publicly mock someone you should respect. You don’t divide into adversarial tribes. You don’t dismiss the contributions of others. You never do anything with the intention of harm. You won’t be quick to question a person’s character or judge his motives. You won’t value digital followers more than friends. If you embrace the limits of your gifts and the need you have for others, then you will treat others, personally or online, with respect, appreciation, thankfulness, and love. You will be quick to listen and slow to react. You will disagree in a way that strengthens relationships. You will invite people in and receive their contributions with gratitude. None of us have it all and all of us need one another. The conversation on social media would be radically different if we all believed this and responded to one another as if we did.
When Steve Jobs made mobile screens ubiquitous, the entire culture of the world changed. We now carry in our purses and pockets a tool so incredibly powerful that forty years ago the thought of such a thing would have been seen as science fiction. With our mobile devices came the internet, and with it came Google, email, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and tens of thousands of apps that command our time and attention. We go nowhere without these powerful and seductive devices. They greet us in the morning and they put us to sleep at night. They are a constant distraction, interrupting everything we do. Our mobile devices are powerful instruments for good, but they control us too much. Incessant mobile connectivity tricks us into thinking that we need what we don’t actually need and that we have to do things that we really don’t have to do. Nothing has changed human culture more dramatically in the last decade than these devices. All of our lives have been reshaped by their power.
Here’s why this is important. By God’s good and wise design, you and I have only a limited amount of time. You will never get ten days in a week or thirty-two hours in a day. You and I do not have the option of living beyond the limits that God has set for us. So if something comes into your life that is powerful, attractive, and seductive and eats up a lot of your time, the time will be taken from something else in your life. If your job takes more and more of your time, then it will eat into your family time, your friendships and fellowship time, or your ministry time. This is true of our powerful media devices and the social media sites that seem to magnetize and captivate us. The hours we spend scrolling take time away from our wives, our children, our devotional time, our time with brothers and sisters in Christ, and on and on. When it comes to the huge amount of hours spent on social media, time invested is time stolen. I am persuaded we get sucked into the toxicity that is around us because digital culture has become too valuable to us. In those moments when we could be investing in the various things God has called us to, we are thinking about things we don’t need to think about and being tempted to respond in ways that we should not. May the presence of your phone with you all the time be a physical warning of the limits of your time. May we all learn to say no and renew our commitment to invest in things that God says have lasting value.
We all live with a variety of limits that God, in his wisdom, goodness, and love, has set for us. It never is a good thing to attempt to live beyond those limits. With peace of heart we can stay inside of those limits because we know the one who has set them for us and we know that all of his ways are right and true. The boundaries he has set for us are protective boundaries. They keep us from being tempted to try to do what only he can do or to say things that we should not say. It is important to remember that God is constantly doing for us, through us, and in us what we are too limited to do for ourselves or others. So before you post a reaction or text a response, stop and remember the limits of your righteousness, knowledge, experience, wisdom, gifts, and time. In the end, you will thank God that you did.
Do You Believe? 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021).