Love is costly and romance is risky. When we walk by the Spirit and in obedience to Christ’s counsel, the risk is right and the cost is worth paying. But when we follow the deceits of our passions and ignore the way of wisdom, we embrace folly and endanger our souls.

After serving in youth and college ministry for almost a decade, I’ve seen too many young couples coddle open flames. I’m not the exception; despite great training from my parents, a preference for serious “courting” over the flippant “dating” culture around me, and an earnest desire to maintain purity, I too stumbled. In my own days as a bachelor, I edged too close to impurity and singed my own soul — and, when I realized this or that young lady was not the wife for me, and that it was time to put out the fires of affection, my clumsy attempts at damage control often snubbed the hearts of my sisters in Christ.

Dating can be a dangerous game. The pursuit of a good spouse is the pursuit of treasure. But we must not pursue “a good thing” (Proverbs 18:22) at the expense of the better thing (Luke 10:42). So, let me offer three warnings to help you date for the benefit of your soul.

1. Beware of Awakening Love

The shepherdess in the Song of Solomon gives a solemn warning to the young maidens of Jerusalem. The statement bookends the Song, stressing its didactic function in the book:

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
     that you not stir up or awaken love
     until it pleases. (Song of Solomon 8:4; see 2:7)

I hope you can feel the gaze of the shepherdess peering at you through those lines. If you are a single person (that is, if you are not yet married), these words are for you. Beware of arousing love before it is appropriate. Be disciplined to guard yourself emotionally, physically, and spiritually. “Love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave” (Song of Solomon 8:6).

Think of the fires that ravaged California in early 2025. The public was warned that, under the right conditions, even flicking away a cigarette butt can lead to devastation. In the same way, seemingly innocent acts of “love” can wreck your heart and soul — or that of another — if they are expressed at the improper moment or in the improper way.

Be particularly careful not to awaken love with physical touch. When I started dating the young woman who is now my wife, I told her we would not kiss until we were engaged. I later amended this to “until we are married.” I’m so glad I did. I wish I had made that same commitment in previous relationships. To kiss romantically is to blow on an ember of affection. Within a marriage, it will stir the coals and warm the home. Outside marriage, it will be wind on a cigarette in the California drought.

Also, be careful not to awaken love with your promises. Measure your words. I say this especially to young men, since young ladies often do not hear things the same way young men do. If a young man hears a young lady say, “I love you,” he will likely take that as an expression of emotion. But if a young woman hears the same, she probably will be tempted to take it as a statement of intention, a promise about the future. I made a commitment when I was young that I would say “I love you” (in the romantic sense) only to the woman I would marry. I’m glad I kept this commitment. When I told Brooke I loved her, she knew I was about to propose (and I was).

Young man, for the sake of her heart, hold back the flood of your emotions. Just because you feel it does not mean you have to say it. If you must, write it down and hold it. If this is the one for you to marry, good — you will have a present to offer on your engagement day. If not, good — you will have something to burn at your bachelor party.

Finally, be careful not to awaken love with your spiritual practices. Interweaving individual habits of grace while dating can lead to spiritual codependency. Don’t make your most basic rhythms of Christian discipleship dependent on or identified with the other person. You need to have habits of prayer, Scripture study, and worship that stay distinct from your romantic interest. Young men, remember that you are not her spiritual leader until you marry her. The best way you can support her spiritual health is not by being her discipler or accountability partner but by encouraging her to depend on Christ and to seek accountability with spiritually mature women in her church.

2. Beware of Assuming a Covenant

Which came first: the Facebook relationship status or the covenantal assumptions underneath it? The answer is probably irrelevant, since the current dating generation doesn’t use Facebook, but you probably do make the same assumptions. I smile when I ask a group of college students how many of them are single, and those who are dating don’t raise their hands. I’ll often ask, “Oh, so you’re married?”

When we talk about being “in” or “out” of a relationship, we are borrowing a covenantal framework, even if we don’t realize it. The implication of a covenant is that there are certain terms we’ve agreed to. There are commitments, expectations, responsibilities — and, yes, rights. That’s why some of you bristled when you read my suggestion not to kiss your girlfriend. You may think you have a right to her body, even if just the smallest portion.

But here’s a question: What type of relationship is the dating relationship? Is it a subcategory of marriage or of singleness? I think you’ll agree that it’s more like singleness. Until you are married, you do not have fundamentally different rights, responsibilities, or privileges simply because you are dating. You don’t have a claim on his touch, affection, or future plans. Your significant other may be significant, but her body is still other — as in, not yours.

What you do have together is the covenantal responsibility to love and serve that is common to all who are united in Christ. You also share a research question: Would marriage be a wise choice for us? This question should soon turn into a hypothesis (which might be accompanied by a changed “relationship status”), which in time should become a theory and then eventually a covenant. (I don’t encourage drawn-out dating relationships or stretched-out engagements; both often assume a covenant that is not yet there.)

3. Beware of Isolation

Proverbs 18:1 says, “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.” So, don’t date behind closed doors. You’ll notice as you read the Song of Solomon that “others” keep getting parts in the production. These others support the couple, encourage them, and help them return to the right path during the rocky moments of marriage. These others serve as accountability for the godly couple. Hear me, Christian: You need others in your dating process.

We have a shallow understanding of household obligations today. I think that the parents, especially the father of the woman, would be wise to be very involved in a young couple’s dating relationship. When the guy asks for a blessing to marry, her dad should not have to shoot from the hip (metaphorically or otherwise) in giving his answer. A good dad searches for godly options and tests those who come calling. And the godly young couple does not resent him for it.

At the same time, not every young lady has a dad who understands, embraces, or is competent to fulfill his paternal obligations in this way. In this case, the young couple should still seek to honor her parents, but as far as protection, help, and counsel goes, they may need to rely more heavily on their local church. Not long ago, one of our church’s college students told me and my wife that, whenever a guy wants to date her, she’s going to have him sit down with me for an interview. I could not ask for a higher honor (and I’ve already started compiling the questions I plan to ask).

So, involve wise Christian others in your dating process. Invite spiritual fathers and mothers, and ask some trusted friends if they would embrace the spiritual gift of being the third wheel. I thank God for my friend and roommate, Michael, who loved me with the gift of presence and accountability (though I did not always enjoy it at the time!).

Be Aware of the Better Portion

The exhortations I have offered in this article are invitations to die to yourself for your own good and for the good of the one you date. This is not merely a requirement for dating; it is your daily responsibility once married. The way you date today is training you for the kind of spouse you will be tomorrow.

When I was single, I sold myself a lie. I thought that, if I remained a virgin, and especially if I married a virgin, and we were both committed Christians, then once we married I wouldn’t have to have self-control anymore. My wife would meet all my sexual desires and satisfy me completely. In other words, dam up your passions until marriage, and then (in the words of Treebeard at the battle of Isengard), “Release the river!”

Well, news flash: No one can meet all your desires. There are at least five reasons for this.

1. You are sinful.
2. You are broken.
3. He/she is sinful.
4. He/she is broken.
5. There’s other stuff to do. (This increases in proportion to the number of children you have.)

The point is this: Even in a healthy, Christ-honoring marriage, you will deal with much angst and frustration. So, don’t delay learning how to die to yourself and to be satisfied in the Lord. Whether we live or die, date or marry, Christ remains the better portion. Enjoy him above all else, even as you pursue his good gifts. If you do so, I can’t promise there will be no risks or costs to dating and marriage — but the risks will be right, and the costs will be worth it.

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Easter Sunday was a very bad day for Death.

Many godly men and women have found it fruitful to personify death and address it as a character in God’s story — Isaiah, Hosea, Paul, John, John Donne, John Bunyan, to name a few. Following in that long tradition, imagine for a moment what Easter Sunday meant to the ancient enemy of mankind.

“My God, into thy hands my soul I give.”
A man’s last breath, Death’s gain. His sting bit deep,
A deadly cross his bloody fang. Men live,
All under the sun, doomed to dusty sleep,
All hoarded up in his dark jaw. That maw,
With finish-cry, closed on the Son of God.
With glee, proud Death gulps, gluts, and gloats. All saw
His divine meal; hell riots in applause.

Poor Death, so soon you celebrate, yet you
By death have lost, a suicide by cross.
Dumb Death, men know gods don’t die. Forget you
What immortal means? He your gain, your loss.
His life breaks through your teeth, gives you the lie.
When he swallows up the key, Death, you will die.

Ages of Heyday

From the fall of Adam up until Easter morning, Death enjoyed ages of heyday. He had been granted universal reign over the sons of Adam (Romans 5:17). For millennia, Death feasted on men. Like Tolkien’s Ungoliant, Death devours all and remains ravenous.

Solomon forces us to stare unblinking into the insatiable jaws of Death:

What happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. . . . All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20)

As Macbeth puts it, “All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.” And until Easter, when Death swallowed the living, both sinner and saint were left in a sepulchral silence (Psalm 88:10–12; 115:17; Ecclesiastes 9:10). Solomon names this a great evil and makes us reckon with the dominion of Death so that we long for his defeat:

It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil. . . . This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event [death] happens to all. . . . They go to the dead. (Ecclesiastes 9:2–3)

Like a razor-sharp sickle, Death levels all men. No matter how high they grow, all fall the same. Men live . . . doomed to dusty sleep. Under the sun, all march toward Death. The wages of sin leave all hoarded up in his dark jaw. His appetite knows no bounds, and, among the sons of men, God gave it no boundaries (Romans 5:12).

That is, until Death tried to devour more than a man.

Death’s Deadly Gain

Good Friday was Death’s best day. What a triumph the cross must have seemed to him. The man who had the gall to call himself “the resurrection and the life” gobbled down without resistance. A man’s last breath, Death’s gain.

To all outward appearances, Jesus died rejected by God and scorned by men. We know he bore God’s wrath on behalf of his bride. We know he willingly shouldered the terrible mantle of the sins of his elect — from that unkind thought you had yesterday to the horrors of wars, from the smallest lie to the largest fraud, all our envy, anger, violence, hatred, lust, and pride since the history of the world, every instance of the infinite variety of our idolatry. We know Jesus bore the iniquity of us all and suffered the penalty we deserved. But to his foes and onlookers . . . well, his was a swift and terrible end. A brief candle quickly put out.

Even those words “It is finished” must have seemed like a limp surrender, a bloody white flag over a black field (John 19:30). Surely with glee, proud Death gulps, gluts, and gloats over his divine meal. This man is the hope of humanity? Bottom’s up to this Lord of life. He goes down like all the others.

Hell riots in applause. They celebrate the long lore of a coming Death-eater swallowed in a moment (Isaiah 25:8). I’m reminded of a scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan is laid on the stone table, gagged, shorn of his mane, bound hand and foot, surrounded by his enemies. The White Witch taunts him as her whetted knife falls. And pandemonium breaks forth. Death dances on the corpse, thrilled with his new prize.

Empty as the Tomb

But then the table cracks. The stone is rolled away. The tomb looms empty. The living cannot be found among the dead.

Poor Death, so soon you celebrate. You launched your victory parade prematurely. You printed the championship merch before the final score. You proposed a toast while the Trojan horse stood within your walls.

Good Friday, Death’s greatest victory, proved to be his worst defeat. A suicide by cross. He failed to reckon with Jesus as fully man and fully God. Dumb Death, no matter how wide you open your mouth, you can never digest immortality. You bit off more than you could chew. Jonah will always end up on the shores of life.

And yet, Easter was a very bad day for Death not merely because he failed to keep down one man. A couple men had escaped his clutches before (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11), but neither of those fugitives loosened his grip. Jesus did. He broke Death’s grip. As the firstfruits from the dead, he acts as an emetic for Death. The Lord of life hallowed and plundered Death’s hoard. Poor Death.

Like all the rulers of this age, Death failed to reckon with the cosmic consequences of crucifying the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). He your gain, your loss. What Death acquired through Adam, he lost to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:21–22). The Resurrection gives the lie to Death’s universal dominion (Romans 6:9). As an old hymn puts it, “Death cannot keep its prey; Jesus tore the bars away.” He broke Death’s teeth from the inside so that Death can no longer hold those who have faith in him. Christ is King of the living and the dead (Romans 14:9).

True, Death has not yet been fully defanged. He can still draw blood. We still mourn the effects of his maw. But we no longer fear to face him. He is impotent to cut us off from the Love that moves the sun and stars (Romans 8:38–39). His jaws now open onto life. Thus, in the wake of Easter’s triumph, we can whisper the taunt that we will one day shout: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54–55).

The Death of Death

Yet it gets even worse for Death (and thus, better for us). Easter was not his worst day; the empty tomb foreshadows his final bankruptcy. When Jesus descended into Death’s gullet and broke back out through his teeth, he emerged holding the key to Death’s fate. Our risen King tells us,

Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. (Revelation 1:17–18)

Easter is not only the day of Death’s defeat; it is also the day that Death was doomed to die. One day, the One who triumphed over Death will do away with him altogether. “Death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4). The One who allowed himself to be swallowed by Death “will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8). When he swallows up the key, Death, you will die.

Easter was a very bad day for Death, but his worst day is yet to come. One day, the Lord of life will complete the victory he began with the empty tomb. Poor Death.

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Many eyes saw a man being crucified. Some saw a criminal. Others, a blasphemer. Few, a king.

All saw blood and torment, torture and death — slow and horrible. Eyes huddled around the horror; man mocked the one who came to save him.

If you were there to survey the wondrous cross, what would your eyes have seen? Barbarity, agony, defeat. Your eyes would have seen Jesus, a great teacher, disarmed by the rulers and authorities, stripped and humiliated, the Pharisees’ plots triumphing over him. You would have wept to see a dismal Friday, a tragic Friday. “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).

But the eyes of another world saw otherwise, as if they watched a different scene entirely. Heaven beheld God as “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).

Never have witnesses told such different stories.

We need to see Good Friday through heaven’s eyes. Colossians 2:15 provides the lens to see as the beings of heaven saw, how the Lion of the tribe of Judah “conquered” at the cross.

Disarmed

He disarmed the rulers and authorities.

They took our Lord’s clothes. Stripped his disciples from him. No more whips in the temple. They bound his hands and took him away. This the world saw.

But heaven saw Satan, demons, and the forces of darkness lined up single file, tied, and shipped off. These unseen “rulers and authorities” were disarmed as a surrendered army. Disarmed of what?

God made [us] alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13–14)

The malevolent accusers’ mouths, shrieking for our condemnation, were stopped. Trespasses were forgiven. The long record of his people’s crimes, the terrible list of Satan’s works, his successful temptations and deceits over entire lifetimes — gone, nailed by the Father to his Son’s cross. They were disarmed of accusations, receipts, evidence — weapons formed against your soul that apart from this day would have certainly prospered. The Lord bore our sins in his body on the tree. He became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The Father placed upon him the iniquity of us all. Lust, vanity, unbelief, hatred, murder, greed — all his people have ever done — everything that could ensure the soul’s damnation, God stapled to his Son on that tree. The Father once and for all condemned sin in Jesus’s flesh so that we might exclaim, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died” (Romans 8:33–34).

When justice stood against you, when Satan would ensure you wouldn’t get away with it, Jesus climbed up the cross to pay it all. The spears and arrows of the enemy were not stolen; he was not disarmed by theft. Instead, all his ammunition was emptied upon the man who hung upon the cross.

Disgraced

He put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Men saw Christ bloody, naked, disfigured, and disgraced. Pilate bid them, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5).

Heaven saw the devil and all his troops exhibited, displayed, and put to open shame. God bid them, “Behold his enemies placed under his feet!” God did not just disarm demonic armies; he disgraced them in Christ at the cross.

In the spiritual realm, it was they who were made to bear the purple robes, the crown of thorns, the spit, and the slapping. They were made to be naked and paraded up the hill with their crosses on their back. And there, upon Golgotha, their skulls were crushed for all of heaven to view.

The verb meaning “to put to open shame” (deigmatízō) is used elsewhere only in Matthew 1:19 of Joseph. Donald Macleod boasts in the contrast:

When [Joseph] learned that Mary was pregnant he wanted to divorce her quietly, so as not to “expose her to public disgrace.” But public disgrace was precisely what God wanted for the forces of darkness. (Christ Crucified, 247)

God didn’t want to divorce Satan from our souls quietly. He planned to make a scene.

Consider also the word-picture behind “triumphing over.” Paul employs the same language of “triumphal procession” to capture an army returning home in victory, leading a caravan of captives enchained behind them (2 Corinthians 2:14).

Macleod again:

Now, in Paul’s final picture, [Satan] and his demons are part of God’s victory parade. The Crucified One marches in triumph through history, Satan tied to Christ’s victory car, his bedraggled army in chains, half-dragged, half-running in view of the whole moral universe, on their way to execution (Jude 6). (247)

At the cross, the foolishness of God outwitted the wisdom of evil; the weakness of God overcame the enemy in all his power. As with Haman, God took Satan’s instrument of death and hung him upon it, triumphing over him by the cross.

The Good Friday We Could Not See

What do you see at the cross?

Many eyes saw a man crucified that day. Men saw the downfall of a miracle worker. Natural eyes saw only defeat.

But the eyes of faith see the overthrow of beasts and monsters and devils. There, through death, the fiend Satan is destroyed (Hebrews 2:14). There, a people are separated from their sins as far as the east is from the west. There, a people are saved from the wrath of God.

Christ conquered at Calvary. No one took his life from him that day. He laid it down for his sheep to pay for their crimes. Christ was divinely active at the cross; do you believe this?

Do you see the cross as Calvin does?

There is no tribunal so magnificent, no throne so stately, no show of triumph so distinguished, no chariot so elevated, as is the gibbet on which Christ has subdued death and the devil, the prince of death; nay more, has utterly trodden them under his feet.

Oh, see Good Friday through heaven’s eyes! See Satan disarmed, disgraced, defeated. See God’s people’s trespasses nailed, paid, forgotten. See Christ’s glory manifest, radiant, unending. See him come, see him die, and see him conquer.

How can you be sure you’ll endure to the end? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Romans 1:6–7 and points to a covenant love that will not release those Christ has purchased.

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“Maundy Thursday,” what a name. A strange name.

The word maundy is unfamiliar. And when we do trace out its meaning, we find ourselves on the brink of a profound misunderstanding.

Our best guess is that maundy is from the Latin mandatum, meaning “command.” On this Thursday, the night before he died, Jesus strapped on a servant’s towel and washed his disciples’ feet. In his command to follow his example, Jesus charged the disciples to have a self-humbling, sacrificial heart of love toward one another:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

Here we find ourselves on the cusp of the misunderstanding: On Maundy Thursday, Jesus does issue a striking new command for us to love one another. But as we remember that Thursday night, our love is hardly the proper emphasis.

Old Command Made New

In one sense, the love-command is not new. Centuries before, God had called for neighbor-love: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). In Jesus’s own ministry, when a Pharisee asked him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Jesus answered, first, love for God and, second, love for neighbor. No one knew better than Jesus that the command to love was not new.

What’s new at the Last Supper is that Jesus says to love “just as I have loved you.” His demonstration of love is new, and will be new. God himself in human flesh enacting love, like Jesus will show love on Good Friday, is emphatically new.

The main point of Maundy Thursday, then, is not our love. That will come in time: Jesus will rise and send his Spirit, he will change and warm selfish hearts, and he will see that new desires take root in us and find life in tangible acts of love for each other. But first, Jesus will love us in the single greatest act of love the world has ever known.

We will seek to echo his love, but this Thursday is foremost about Jesus daring to tread ground where he could not be followed that he might show his love for us. Foot-washing is a tiny anticipation. The climactic act will be the cross.

So, do we bring anything to this Maundy Thursday?

Two Vast, Spacious Things

Celebrated poet George Herbert (1593–1633) writes in his Maundy Thursday poem “Agony” of “two vast, spacious things” we find as Jesus prays in the garden and hangs on the cross: his love and our sin. These are the twin focus of the stunning gospel summary in Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

“Who would know sin?” asks Herbert, and then he invites us to Gethsemane.

See there “a man so wrung with pains,” such that his hair and garments drip with beads of panicked sweat. Some mere spectator may sympathize with his manifest anxieties and fears. But a redeemed sinner sees his Savior, and feels himself pulled through the page, drawn through the screen, summoned into that garden of agony.

Even if this emotional pain is no longer the sinner’s to suffer, it is the sinner’s to know himself, in part, responsible. “Sin,” says Herbert, “is that press and vice which forces pain to hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.” We are here in Gethsemane: as sinners.

Jesus would not be racked with this agony of soul apart from the sin of his own people. My sin. Your sin, if you call him Lord. We will not know the depths of his love without recognizing the horror of our sin.

“Who knows not Love?” Herbert then asks. Now, the dark of Thursday night breaks into the black of Friday. And the poet paints with the color red.

First is Friday’s terror: Christ on the cross. He is pierced, and the “juice” flows:

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

Then comes Sunday’s joy: gathered at the Table, enjoying the cup of life because Jesus took the cup of death. We delight in sweet wine, because he drank death to the dregs for us.

Our Weak Flesh, His Willing Spirit

“Maundy Thursday,” as we may call it, brings us to the limits of our discipleship: We follow Jesus, but like Peter and John, we can follow only so far. He is our supreme example; rightly do we seek to imitate him — till Maundy Thursday comes, with its great moment of separation.

Jesus rises from dinner in that upper room and walks where only he can walk. Now we cannot follow his every step. In Gethsemane, we too find our spirits willing and flesh weak. If we’d been there, we’d have fallen asleep too. Or worse. Surely, we would have fled with his first disciples, if not sooner.

Jesus goes to the cross where we cannot go. He dies for us in a way that we cannot die for him, or for anyone else.

As the Cross Comes Near

In this near approach to the cross, our zeal to imitate him stops in its tracks, and wonders. However much we feel like Peter, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37), however noble our pledge of allegiance, Jesus answers, “Will you lay down your life for me? Where I am going you cannot follow me now” (John 13:36, 38).

Yes, Jesus gives us his love command. Then he goes by himself from Gethsemane to Golgotha to do what we cannot replicate, even as we hope to imitate his self-sacrificial heart.

But Maundy Thursday is a night not of imitation but of separation. This is not a day to dream about our actions, but to stand in awe of his. We marvel at two vast, spacious things: the sin of our own hearts and the love of our dear Savior.