Sad Pastor Jack

I really think I’m going to end up re-reading this book at least once a year:

It’s that good.

Let me share another excerpt with you:

SAD PASTOR JACK

Although Jack wasn’t raised in a believing home, he has loved God from his earliest teen years. A serious and bright student, Jack quickly came to realize that he was called to serve as a pastor. It was to this end that he went to college and seminary. Upon graduation and marriage, Jack landed in full-time ministry, but over time he grew discouraged; he understood deep truth but found himself unable to live out that truth, and that is still where Jack finds himself today.

He is frequently snappish and judgmental with his wife and people in the church office. He continually feels bad about his behavior and tries to control himself, but even when he is able to avoid outbursts, he still fumes inwardly. When he reads (or preaches on) passage about how we are to love one another, the law enslaves, crushes, and terrifies him. He feels guilty, and his guilt causes his anger and faultfinding to grow.

The guiltier he feels about his lack of love, the more unloving he becomes. He labors to become more loving and patient, to punctiliously fulfill the law, but still his anger and self-condemnation crowd out all his good intentions. If you ask Jack how he would characterize his faith, he could tell you all about justification by faith and progressive sanctification. He knows all the right answers, but he has forgotten the gospel …

What does Jack need? Does he need medication? Does he need someone to tell him that the church abused him? Does he need to learn to love himself so that he can love his neighbor? No, of course not. Okay then, but does he need to simply put off anger and put on kindness? Yes, he needs to do this, but not before he has soaked himself in the truth about what Jesus Christ has already done on this behalf. He needs to refocus his mind continually on the truth that God loved him and sent his Son to be the propitiation for his sin. Until he does that, until the joy of the Lord becomes his strength, the biblical mandate to love his neighbor will be just as out of reach as it always has been, and just as condemning to his already guilt-ridden conscience.

Jack’s life is changing now because he has committed himself to constant fellowship with other pastors who are mentoring and counseling him to see himself in the light of the gospel. They are reminding him of his true identity. Jack is a sinner, but he is also loved immeasurably. Being with other brothers who both confess their sins and lovingly confront his anger and faultfinding is helping Jack to avoid his old habitual self-condemnation. He is learning to encourage himself with words of grace from the gospel. Because he is beginning to realize that he is irrevocably loved and welcomed, his slavery to the law has no more power to condemn or terrorize.

His friends are teaching him to see that the hours he spends in self-recrimination are not only wrong but also futile. Sadness won’t impel obedience; only love and joy can do that. Like the Israelites who were commanded to afflict their souls only one day and then rejoice for a week, for every one day Jack spends looking at his sin and failures, he is to spend a week rejoicing in God’s mercy and provision. Although the thoughts of God’s love for him used to make him only more ashamed and guilty, now God’s love for him serves to bolster his joy …

In one sense, we are all just like Jack.