Growing up, August was a month for lamentation. It signaled the rapid approach of the school year and the end to summer’s leisurely days of wonder and adventure. The start of school, C.S. Lewis once quipped, teaches one to live by faith, “for at the beginning of each term, home and the holidays are so far off that it is as hard to realise them as to realise heaven” (Surprised by Joy, 42–43).

The end of summer should have heralded a new season of wonder and adventure. But as I experienced it, school disconnected learning from joy. It somehow separated education from what stirred in me when I experienced beauty in nature or found goodness in a hero or encountered a truth that changed what I believed. The discoveries in good books, earnest conversation, and long days exploring the woods near our home seemed, paradoxically, to be less valuable to my school. Of course, certain teachers brought glimmers of excitement, but on the whole, school was unsatisfying and incomplete. I felt tension between the joy of learning and the place where that was supposed to happen.

Only years later did I realize the incongruence arose from confusion about the ultimate end of education. What was school for?

Old School

There’s a hint to school’s purpose in the term itself. Our English “school” comes from the Greek scholē, or “leisure.” That origin may seem surprising, but in ancient times leisure wasn’t kicking back and watching Netflix or playing a round of golf. Leisure meant stepping away from ordinary work to observe the world and to contemplate the most important questions of life.

The study we refer to as science, the ancients called natural philosophy. They understood what many have since forgotten — that questions about gravity, planetary motion, animal husbandry, or agricultural productivity are intimately related to questions about God, human purpose, evil, and the like. To be a scholar was to set aside time to contemplate these transcendent realities — what was true, good, and beautiful. But not to contemplate alone.

Contemplation has never been a solo project. The joy of discovery was meant to be shared. Education (from Latin educatus, meaning “to lead or draw out”) was the process of discussing, cultivating, challenging, and inspiring one another in the joyful quest for truth. It reflected the fundamental reality that a student was not a vessel to be filled with facts but a soul to be drawn out in wonder and joy. Education required the dedication of both the student and the mentor, the latter guiding and exemplifying the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. For much of Greek and Roman history, this vision of deliberate education centered on cultivating moral excellence and shaping a person for the good (beatific) life. Such instruction was available only to a privileged few in the classical world, but it reflected a vision for life that predated even the Romans and the Greeks, originating in the garden itself.

True School

God instituted leisure from the beginning with a very specific purpose: that we might know him and enjoy him forever (Genesis 2:1–3; Psalm 37:4; John 17:21–23; 1 Corinthians 10:31). The heartbeat of Israel’s life was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). For this reason, the practice of Sabbath and the festal calendar required God’s covenant people to step away from ordinary work to consider his works, words, and world (Exodus 20:8–11; Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16:13–17; 31:9–13). The tribe of Levi was specifically commissioned to educate God’s people both in didactic instruction and in song (1 Chronicles 9:33; 2 Chronicles 17:8–9; Nehemiah 8:7–9). Thus, it is no surprise that the psalmists frequently express delight over the majesty and intricacy of God’s good creation (Psalm 8; 19; 104; 139). “Great are the works of the Lord,” Psalm 111 declares, “studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2).

In the New Testament, Jesus makes even more explicit the duty of loving God with our minds (Mark 12:29–31). The apostle John points to the triune God’s creation of the universe through the Son, who himself entered into creation as both God and man (John 1:1–5, 10, 14; Philippians 2:6–11). Nature indisputably points to his lordship, a reality that no man can deny (Romans 1:19–20). Paul brims with exultation over the sweep of Christ’s creative activity — that the eternally existent Son, the exact imprint of the Father, has created “all things . . . visible and invisible” and is so active in sustaining his work that “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17). Unlike the ancient Greeks or Romans, Christians understood that the universe was orderly and rational because a personal God designed and upheld it for his glory and their joy.

For millennia, this basic conviction fueled Christians in joyful study: in movements like monasticism with its preservation of ancient learning, in missional expansion with its language acquisition and translation, in the reform movement of the sixteenth century and its retrieval of doctrinal orthodoxy, in the seventeenth century’s Christian humanism and quest for discovery, in the scientific advancements of the long eighteenth century, and in the great technological and political developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All study, all scholarship, all education is for our joy in God — and therefore, school is ultimately about him.

New School

This is what I was missing during those frustrating years at school. The great disconnect was between education and its ultimate end. Universal public education was and is a remarkable blessing — one which the sixteenth-century Reformers and even our colonial Puritan forebears would have rejoiced to see. But unfortunately, the prevailing approach to school prioritizes important but inferior ends. It prepares students for making a living rather than making a life. It values crucial skills — mathematical competency, scientific reasoning, reading and analytical ability, independent thinking, strong written and spoken communication — but for the wrong ends. Modern education prizes workforce-readiness and responsible citizenship, which are instrumental, even noble, outcomes, but they’re not ultimate. The chief goal of education is a beatific vision, the good life: enjoying God and, in him, everything else.

If done rightly, school tunes our admiration of the One from whom and through whom and to whom are all things (Romans 11:36). “He is that Object to admire,” C.S. Lewis writes, “which is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all” (Reflections on the Psalms, 107–8).

We may be tempted to think that seminaries or Bible colleges are the only places where education is all about God. But in reality, all education is about God. Whether in grade school or graduate school, consider the wonders yet to be discovered in a world ringing with his beauty. If we have eyes to see it, then the start of school will be a cause for celebration.

How does grace answer Adam’s curse? John Piper shows from Romans 5:12–21 how Christ’s obedience gives life.

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ABSTRACT: God introduced himself to Moses by a divine name, YHWH. This name appears in various translations as Jehovah, Yahweh, and the LORD, but it always suggests the doctrine of divine aseity. Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing the divine name, leading to the New Testament adopting a similar custom, referring to God and Jesus as “Lord.” Christians today need neither hesitate to pronounce the divine name nor reject the use of substitutes. Instead, translators and preachers would be wise to remain aware of the differences between God’s name and his titles as they help others to know him personally.

Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. (Daniel 2:20)

One of the first things Christians should know about the God of the Bible is that he has a personal name. The English word God is not a personal name; it is a common noun (like chair, mountain, or king). When it comes to human beings, we naturally differentiate them by name: John, Mary, Hannah. (We do not say, “Human #1, human #2, human #3.”) As Christians, we conventionally differentiate the true God of Israel from other gods in writing by means of capitalization (“God” vs. “gods”). But since our God is a personal being, we should also recognize that he bears a unique personal name. We should therefore be like the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, whom Moses anticipates will ask concerning their soon-to-be Savior, “What is his name?” (Exodus 3:13).

In the present essay, I examine the name of God as he reveals it to his people throughout redemptive history. After considering some of the different titles used for God and the gods, I discuss the name by which God reveals himself, the various ways the people of God have handled his name, and why considering God’s name remains important today, especially for the work of translating God’s word.

What’s in a Title?

Before considering the name of God, we need to distinguish further between personal names and titles (or epithets). For example, although the word Baal is popularly regarded as a name, it is strictly speaking a title (to be more specific, an epithet) of a particular Canaanite deity. In the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), the word ba^ʕal simply means “lord” or “master.”¹ The deity we refer to as Baal was in fact the storm god Hadad (or Haddu). The Canaanites commonly assigned to Hadad the epithet ba^ʕal (lord). In fact, in certain contexts, the word ba^ʕal could also mean “husband.” This semantic range allows Hosea the prophet to incorporate the word ba^ʕal in an ingenious wordplay: “In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ [^ʔîš-î = ‘my man’], and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal’ [ba^ʕl-î = ‘my lord’]” (Hosea 2:16). The prophet is castigating the religious syncretism of the northern tribes, which had shamefully blended in the worship of the true God with the false worship of the Canaanite deity Hadad.

Here we should note that the triune God of Scripture has many titles and epithets. Most famously, the incarnate Son of God is referred to as Christ hundreds of times in the New Testament. This is not a surname, as some surmise, but rather a highly significant title: Christós is a Greek word that means “anointed one,” and it is a direct translation of the Hebrew equivalent māšîaḥ (also meaning “anointed one”). He is called the Christ because he comes in fulfillment of the three major offices in the Old Testament whose occupants were specially anointed with oil (a form of consecration): prophets, priests, and kings.

Titles and epithets are usually brief, meaning-rich descriptors of persons. Biblical titles of God vary widely. For example, a title can be lengthy and specific: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Amazingly, this title of God is self-referential while including human beings (i.e., the God of the universe describes himself in relation with sinful creatures). A biblical title can also be cryptic and mysterious. For example, scholars still puzzle over what the Hebrew title ^ʔĒl Šadday (El Shaddai) means. It is usually rendered in English as “God Almighty,” but the real meaning of this ancient title remains unclear. Certain titles can also be largely restricted to one biblical author. For example, Isaiah’s favorite title for God, one that few others use, is “the Holy One of Israel.”²

These titles bear great theological significance for understanding who God is, especially as he relates to his people in covenant faithfulness. But they don’t in themselves represent his name.

God’s Mysterious Name

What, then, is the actual name of Israel’s God? In biblical Hebrew it is represented by a sequence of four consonants, the famous tetragrammaton: YHWH.³ This name occurs a total of 6,828 times in the Old Testament. Such a word is obviously unpronounceable in transliteration, since it has no vowels. These missing vowels must be understood in light of the ancient oral tradition of reading the Hebrew Bible.

Full vocalization of the biblical text was established relatively late by a group of Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes. These scribes ingeniously combined two ancient traditions (one written, the other oral) into a single composite text. For centuries prior to the Masoretes, Jewish scribes had meticulously copied and preserved the consonantal text of the Old Testament to an exacting standard. Alongside the written tradition, however, they maintained an equally rigorous and rich oral tradition of chanting the text (with all of its nuances and details). Unfortunately, their work took place more than a thousand years after the close of the Old Testament canon — in the final centuries of the first millennium AD.

By that time, the oral tradition had long eliminated the practice of pronouncing the divine name.⁴ This tradition dictated that in every one of the 6,828 occurrences of YHWH, a different word must be pronounced. Usually, the tradition stipulated the substitution of the Hebrew title ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord,” occurring in a specialized spelling that is reserved for the tetragrammaton (more on which below). The Masoretic scribes faithfully carried on this practice. In other words, whenever encountering YHWH in a text, the Jewish reader would read a completely different word. This interweaving of consonants and vowel points may be represented in the following simplified way:⁵

YHWH → Y-ĕ-H-ō-W-ā-H ← ^ʔă-d-ō-n-ā-y = Lord

In the Middle Ages, Christian Europeans apparently misunderstood the intent behind this compound representation and incorrectly inferred that God’s name was “Jehovah.”⁶ In many translations (including most English Bibles), however, this basic concept from the Jewish tradition is maintained. English translations, for example, generally represent the tetragrammaton as the word “LORD” in small capitals.⁷ The distinction between “Lord” and “LORD” is an important one to observe and explain to believers, since it enables the reader to distinguish between a title (Lord) and a personal name (LORD = YHWH). Furthermore, while it is appropriate to speak of YHWH as “Lord,” the converse is not true: Other “lords” (whether human or divine) are never equal to YHWH.

But whether one uses YHWH, Jehovah, or LORD, the fact remains that this ancient Jewish practice led to widespread ignorance about the exact pronunciation of God’s name.

Nevertheless, a few pieces of evidence allow us to approximate the basic form of the sacred tetragrammaton. To begin with, the abbreviated form Yāh (representing one half of the full form YHWH) is attested 49 times in the Old Testament (primarily in the Psalms). It appears that the Jewish oral tradition did not alter the original pronunciation of this word. This appears to indicate that the first vowel in the tetragrammaton had a certain /a/ quality. Famously, this abbreviated word also occurs in the universally recognized exclamation “hallelujah” (a transliteration of the Hebrew halĕlû-yāh, “Praise YHWH!”). Furthermore, the names of numerous individuals in ancient Israel (from kings to prophets to commoners) featured an abbreviated form of the tetragrammaton. One well-known example will suffice: The Hebrew name of the prophet Elijah means “YHWH is (my) God” (^ʔēlî-yāhû).

Additionally, ancient Greek transcriptions of some Hebrew words, including the tetragrammaton, have been known to scholars for some time. For example, the early church father Clement of Alexandria, in his work Stromata, briefly mentions the tetragrammaton in the context of a discussion of the ancient Israelite high priest on whose turban was inscribed the divine name. Clement transliterated this name in Greek letters as IAOUE and explained that it meant “He who is and who is to come.”⁸ The letters OU in this context likely represent the sound /w/, which means that the more recently popularized rendering “Yahweh” is a plausible reconstruction for YHWH.⁹ We must remember, however, that this form still remains something of a scholarly reconstruction.¹⁰

A Theologically Rich Etymology

The meaning of this divine name is most directly hinted at in Moses’s famous encounter with the God of Israel in Exodus 3. One of the most basic challenges facing this reluctant servant of the Lord (who had grown up in the court of Pharaoh) was his ignorance of the name of the God of his fathers. Amazingly, when Moses speaks to him, God not only gives a name for himself but also provides a strong indication about the actual meaning of the tetragrammaton:

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am [^ʔehyeh ^ʔăšer ^ʔehyeh].” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” (Exodus 3:13–15)

There are numerous things to consider from this brief passage. Notice that in his first response, God appears not to directly answer Moses’s question (at least not in the way that we might expect). The phrase “I Am Who I Am” is not an ordinary name, to say the least. Yet notice the small capitals in the ESV translation. This is a claim from the translators that this very phrase is intimately linked with the tetragrammaton YHWH (which is also rendered in small capitals).

Notice further that in his second response, God uses an abbreviated form of the phrase (“I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you”) as though it were the subject of its clause (and thus, an ordinary noun or proper name). In this class of Hebrew verbs, grammatical person (whether first, second, or third) is indicated by a set of prefixes. Contrast the first-person form ^ʔe-hyeh, “I am” (verse 14), with the third-person form yi-hyeh, “he is.” The latter is very similar in sound to the tetragrammaton (with only one spelling difference: YHYH vs. YHWH). Though a full account of all the sound changes involved cannot be given here, it is likely that the name “Yahweh” means something like “He is.”¹¹ This meaning makes it a powerful piece of scriptural evidence for the classical Christian doctrine of divine aseity. The God of the Bible simply is eternally self-existent, and all other things are contingent on him for their being.

This foundational passage of Scripture and its powerful theological message echoes throughout other parts of God’s word. One particularly striking example has been noted in Hosea by Gary Schnittjer. Recall that the prophet was instructed by God to marry Gomer, an unfaithful woman, in order to illustrate the persistent unfaithfulness of God’s covenant people, Israel. The third child that Gomer gave birth to was named “Not My People” because, as God explained, “Call his name Not My People [lō^{ʔ ʕ}ammî], for you are not my people [lō^{ʔ ʕ}ammî], and I am [^ʔehyeh] not your God” (Hosea 1:9). Recall the language of Exodus 3:14: “I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you.” The repetition of the same verbal form in Hosea 1:9 appears to be an allusion to the former. Essentially, God is telling Hosea’s people: “I am not your I Am.”¹²

Another example comes from the New Testament. In Revelation 1:4, John uses somewhat awkward Greek to signal to his readers that grace and peace come to them from the eternal God himself: “Grace to you and peace from Him Who Is And Who Was And Who Is To Come.” The ESV text has been modified here with these capitals to give the reader a sense of the original and also to suggest a subtle allusion to Exodus 3:14. The eternal, self-sufficient God who appeared to Moses at Sinai is the same God whom the apostle John simultaneously references and describes to the seven churches.

Connecting the Old and New Testaments

The strong tradition of avoiding the pronunciation of the divine name likely emerged during the intertestamental period, for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious. The Jewish Talmud recounts a tradition dating back centuries relating to a certain Simeon the Righteous, a high priest in the early Hellenistic period. Numerous miracles were said to have occurred among the people because of him. Yet upon his death, the tradition states, his fellow priests were no longer willing to bless the people by uttering the sacred name of God. This coincided with the disappearance of miraculous signs, which may be interpreted as an understanding that divine revelation had ceased among the Jewish people.¹³ The Jewish Mishnah (third century AD) illustrates the culmination of this long trend: “These . . . have no share in the world to come . . . the one who pronounces the Name with its letters” (Sanh. 10.1).

Most significantly, this avoidance had a far-reaching impact on the earliest and most significant ancient translations of the Old Testament — the Greek Bible popularly called the “Septuagint.” The standard practice in the Greek Bible was to render the tetragrammaton with the Greek word kýrios, “Lord.”¹⁴ Recall that the pre-Masoretic Jewish reading tradition required the substitution of the word ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord,” wherever the tetragrammaton was found. It is therefore almost certain that both traditions have the same source, which originated early in the Second Temple period.

When the New Testament Scriptures were written, a majority of citations from the Old Testament made use of some form of existing Greek versions that had been circulating in Jewish communities, sometimes for centuries.¹⁵ The convention for rendering the tetragrammaton as kýrios thus made its way into the New Testament. This phenomenon also extended to other parts of the New Testament that were not citations from the Old Testament. For example, the first occurrence of kýrios in the New Testament is at Matthew 1:20, which imitates the Old Testament (Greek) idiom with the phrase ángelos kýriou, “angel of the Lord.”

Yet without a doubt the most fascinating feature of kýrios in the New Testament is the fact that the majority of its 719 occurrences have Jesus as their referent. This amazing linguistic feature is built into the very fabric of the New Testament and can be encountered on virtually every page. Multiple New Testament authors exploit this usage of kýrios in various ways to give readers a sustained and powerful argument: Not only is Jesus Christ “Lord”; he is in fact YHWH. Often both truths about Christ intersect in a single passage. For example, in his famous Carmen Christi (“hymn of Christ”), Paul speaks in captivating language about the lordship of Jesus Christ:

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord [kýrios], to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9–11)

The identity of Jesus Christ becomes all the more astonishing when one realizes that Paul is citing directly from Isaiah, who describes the God of Israel with similar language:

Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD [YHWH]? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall [confess to God].’” (Isaiah 45:21–23)¹⁶

Paul is powerfully affirming all that Isaiah had affirmed. YHWH is the one true God and the only Savior of mankind. He alone is worthy, and all who are on earth will one day bend their knee and confess him as Lord. The man Jesus Christ, then, is not an upstart god or a rival savior. He is the God of Israel and her only Savior.¹⁷

The Name of God in the Church of God

How should Christians regard the tetragrammaton? This question has become particularly relevant in recent years, with some advocating for a more widespread usage of the reconstruction “Yahweh,” especially in Bible translation.¹⁸

First, believers should not suppose that uttering the name “Yahweh” is sinful or even inadvisable. Such attitudes partly originate from unhelpful misunderstandings about the commandment against taking God’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7). In fact, this commandment has little to do with merely pronouncing God’s name. Rather, it is concerned with the way that a believer’s actions and behavior can either glorify or bring dishonor to the name of God. In short, although the word “Yahweh” remains a scholarly reconstruction, there is nothing theologically wrong about attempting to speak this word as the name of God.

The deeper issue relates to the legacy of the ancient Jewish practice of substituting “Lord” for the tetragrammaton. Some regard this as an unhelpful superstition and therefore one that should be fully abandoned in the church today. This consideration is especially relevant in the case of Bible translation, since the tetragrammaton occurs thousands of times in the Old Testament. One encounters various strategies when examining translation practices in various world languages. Some translations employ a type of transliteration (for example, approximating the historic form “Jehovah,” or perhaps “Yahweh” in more modern translations). Other translations, such as most English versions, adopt the historic Jewish tradition inherited in the New Testament and substitute the title “LORD.” Yet other versions merely default to a translation of “God” or perhaps use a modifier (such as French l’Éternel, “the Eternal One”). It must be noted that not all translations are consistent in their practices, and some in fact combine multiple options.

The practice of translation, especially that of Bible translation, is a highly complex activity that requires translators to factor in multiple considerations, including, but not limited to, (1) fidelity to the source text; (2) readability in the target language; (3) sensitivity to a host of contextual, pragmatic, and historical factors; (4) an awareness of the target readership, including their prior history with previous translations as well as their intended use of the current work. Given the precedent established by the New Testament, however, it does not seem that the substitution of YHWH with “LORD” should be regarded as straightforwardly impermissible.

Ultimately, any translation strategy will be unsatisfactory to some degree. For example, the consonantal sequence ^ʔDNY adds significant difficulty in consistently rendering the tetragrammaton. Minor adjustment of the vocalism yields three main options: (1) ^ʔădōnîy, “my lord” (a singular, human lord; cf. Genesis 23:6); (2) ^ʔădōnay, “my lords” (plural, human lords; cf. Genesis 19:2); (3) ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord” (used exclusively in reference to Israel’s God). The latter (^ʔădōnāy) occurs hundreds of times in the Old Testament, yet is not easily identifiable in translation, since it does not feature the consonants of the tetragrammaton (YHWH).

Yet in some cases, this distinction can be exegetically significant. For example, consider the famous Psalm 110. The psalm begins with two distinct “lords” being identified: “A Psalm of David. The LORD [YHWH] says to my Lord [^ʔădōnîy = human lord]: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Psalm 110:1). Since we know from the superscription that David is speaking, we infer that YHWH is conversing with David’s superior (given that David calls him “my Lord”). This human Lord is described in lofty language for the next few verses, and YHWH himself promises great things for him.

Once we reach verse 5, however, we read the following: “The Lord [^ʔădōnāy] is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.” The unique vocalization in the Hebrew of this “Lord” can mean only one thing: YHWH and David’s Lord have switched places! Previously, YHWH had commanded that David’s Lord be situated at his right hand (the place of honor). Now it is apparently YHWH who is located at the right hand of David’s Lord.

This dramatic feature of the psalm can only be understood from a careful study of the Hebrew vocalization. And without a greater and more widespread knowledge of God’s word in the original languages, these truths will not impact the people of God as mightily as they otherwise could.¹⁹

At the end of the day, no single translation decision can satisfactorily accomplish all that God’s people need to know about God’s name. Instead, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers that God has given to the church throughout its history labor diligently to equip the saints (Ephesians 4:11–12). They impress upon God’s people the profound truth that their God and Savior has a name. Moreover, this name communicates something of his unequaled nature — that he is the eternal, self-sufficient, and everlasting God. And lastly, they teach the saints that the Lord Jesus Christ truly is that same God of Israel, come in the flesh to rescue his own.

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The war against abortion did not begin with the now-overturned 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. From the church’s earliest days, church fathers taught “life for life” restitution for the death of an unborn child (Exodus 21:23–25) and cited David’s praise for God forming “my inward parts . . . in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Theologian Tertullian described abortion in AD 200 as the surgical extraction of a child from the womb in “violent delivery.” Where ancient society often discarded the life of an unborn child (or abandoned an unwanted newborn), the church cared for orphans and widows.

Even in America, Roe v. Wade did not mark the beginning of the battle against abortion. As I show in The Story of Abortion in America, the growth of urbanization and prostitution led to a huge rise in the number of abortions during the years prior to the Civil War — and a corresponding increase in pro-life activities.

A journalist in 1847 reported a conversation between a doctor and an affluent young woman seeking an abortion to “save herself from disgrace.” Asked how she would choose an abortionist, the young woman picked up a copy of the New York Herald, Manhattan’s most popular newspaper, and pointed to a thinly veiled ad for pills that should not be taken “if pregnant.” That was high society.

On the other end of the social ladder, one public health doctor estimated that sixty thousand prostitutes were in business nationwide — and without effective birth control, many had abortions. Rich or poor, thousands of women killed their children to protect their reputations or income. Others did so in the belief — in those days without photographs or much knowledge of fetal development — that their babies weren’t quite human until “quickening,” when mothers could feel their child moving in the womb.

Pro-life doctors tried to end the perception that early abortion was no big deal. Horatio Storer pushed his colleagues in the young American Medical Association to form a Committee on Criminal Abortion. In 1859, it declared abortion to be “no simple offense against public morality and decency, no mere misdemeanor, no attempt upon the life of the mother, but the wanton and murderous destruction of her child.”

Throughout the next decades, many of the most effective teachers of that truth were women.

Heroines for Life

The woman-to-woman educational effort began in the 1850s with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female to receive a medical degree in the United States. In her book The Laws of Life, she pleaded with women to

look at the first faint gleam of life, the life of the embryo. . . . The cell rapidly enlarges. . . . Each organ is distinctly formed. . . . It would be impious folly to attempt to interfere directly with this act of creation.

Blackwell said female doctors bridged public and private, “occupying positions which men cannot fully occupy, and exercising an influence which men cannot wield at all.”

In the 1860s, Dr. Anna Densmore French gained permission from the New York City Board of Education to use school property to teach schoolteachers about fetal anatomy. Densmore said, “Women would rarely dare to destroy the product of conception if they did not fully believe that the little being was devoid of life during all the earlier period of gestation.” She showed step-by-step that “life processes were going on from the very beginning of embryonic development.”

In the 1870s, Dr. Rachel Gleason directly addressed those who said, “Quickening is not till the four-and-a-half month, and so abortion before that time is no sin.” She responded, in lectures and in Talks to My Patients, “True, that is about the time that the mother becomes conscious of motion, but [the child] lives, moves, and grows just as truly before as after, only the motions are so slight as not to be appreciated.”

In the 1880s, Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham shot down the quickening doctrine in Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. She wrote, “Many women have been taught to think that the child is not viable until after quickening. [But] when the female germ and male sperm united, then is the inception of a new life.” She challenged abortionist logic in frequent lectures:

The life of the babe in her arms is to the mother more precious than all else. . . . By what false reasoning does she convince herself that another life, still more dependent upon her for its existence, with equal rights and possibilities, has no claim upon her for protection?

In the 1890s, Dr. Prudence Saur hit the lecture circuit with her book Maternity: A Book for Every Wife and Mother. Every pregnant woman, Saur said, must remember that

the embryo is alive and hence quick from the moment of conception, [as] modern science has abundantly proven. It follows, then, that this crime is equally great whether committed in the early weeks of pregnancy or at a more advanced period in the life of the fetus.

In the 1900s, Dr. Jennie Oreman spoke of her “firm determination not to tolerate abortion.” She argued for challenging patients and not despairing if they nevertheless had abortions: Doctors could “control a part of the evil, though not by any means banish it. . . . Our duty as physicians is to be strong and firm in our ‘no.’ Practical moral sympathy is what the world needs, and not a flimsy sensual sympathy which is not altruism.”

Mary, Champion of the Unborn

One doctor, Mary Gould Hood, bridged the decades. The daughter of a country pastor, she graduated in 1874 with seventeen others from Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In Minneapolis, she helped to found the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers. Hood also practiced at the Northwestern Hospital for women and children, which had an all-woman medical staff and an all-woman board of fifty directors.

After moving to Boston, her popular lectures were published as a book, For Girls and the Mothers of Girls: A Book for the Home and the School Concerning the Beginnings of Life (1914). In it she introduced the first moments of fetal anatomy:

The two cells unite, and become one, much as two drops of water, when they come into contact, merge into each other and become one drop. Thus the two cells, which in their origin come from two different beings, unite to form the new cell, which will result in a completely new and different human being. . . . What experience can be more sacred, or more marvelous, than that of the mother who understands that a new human has begun within her?

Hood, like other doctors, pushed back against the notion that life begins at quickening: “This phrase gives undue importance to the first feelings of the mother, for life has been present for eighteen weeks.” Hood also described how children quicken the mother:

Only yesterday there came to me a letter from a young mother who has two babies — one very young, and the other not able to walk. She writes, “There is always something to do for one or the other baby — but I was never so happy in my life.” Motherhood brings with it cares and responsibilities, but it also brings the greatest of earthly joys.

Woman to Woman

Sadly, the influence of pro-life female doctors decreased through much of the twentieth century. In 1890, the United States had fourteen women’s medical colleges, and Boston alone had 210 women doctors (18 percent of all physicians in the city). Many women were such impressive students that some formerly all-male medical schools went coed. For example, by 1893, 19 percent of students at the University of Michigan Medical School were female.

Ironically, the opening of those doors in Michigan and elsewhere contributed to the closing of eleven of the fourteen women’s schools by 1904. Then came the backlash, as medical schools shunted women into nursing, decreasing their influence in the medical world. Only after 1970 did the number of female doctors bounce up once again.

Today, about two of every five actively practicing physicians in the US are female. Many women are members of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Women lead thousands of pregnancy resource centers, post-abortion counseling groups, and many other activities that their pro-life predecessors would esteem.

These women each practiced medicine and truth-telling, providing care for mothers and sharing their wonder in God’s work at conception. Before the sonogram or ultrasound, they believed God watched each embryo while he formed him or her in secret (Psalm 139:13). Like the Egyptian midwives, their fear of God over public pressure saved lives (Exodus 1:17). And today, we desperately need more women to speak to women.

If God has given you children, join Mary Hood and thank him for the great earthly joy of motherhood. Also look for opportunities in your church or local community to serve mothers in crisis, such as by offering transportation or childcare for ultrasounds and prenatal appointments. Abortions by pill continue to increase, leaving many women isolated during and after their choice. Women in your mom’s group or Bible study may carry deep guilt from an abortion. Perhaps a woman like you could grieve with them and offer to walk through counseling.

And above all, please pray along with me that God will raise up even more Elizabeth Blackwells and Mary Hoods.

Why does the same gospel message offend some and delight others? Because the message of Christ crucified lands only on those whom God has called.

Watch Now

Every August in the United States, nearly twenty million college students go back to campus.

Go back. It’s an interesting phrase.

Go back sounds like the language of retreat, regression, or returning to where you once were. Sadly, that’s exactly what many people expect the college years to do. Students go back to school — and go backward in their walk with Christ.

The college campus is sometimes portrayed as a graveyard for faith. Stories of students walking away from Christianity are common enough that it hardly surprises us to hear a recent graduate say, “I no longer believe.”

But what if that doesn’t have to be your story? What if going back to campus becomes the very thing God uses to launch you forward?

Think of a slingshot. Before a stone moves forward, it first goes back. In the same way, what if returning to campus could become the means God uses to deepen your faith rather than diminish it? What if you stepped onto campus this fall with the expectation that God intends to use this semester to launch you forward in your relationship with Jesus?

Instead of allowing college to send your faith six feet under, let’s pray that God sends it eighteen inches — from your head to your heart. Let’s believe that this can be a season where, like the apostle Paul, you “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). That is our prayer for you as you start a new semester — not merely that you would know more about Jesus but that you would know him more personally.

To help you take a step in that direction, we’ve curated three back-to-school resources so you can grow forward as you go back.

As one student prepared to leave for college, she asked Pastor John a question that countless freshmen have wondered: How do I stay close to God amid all the distractions and temptations of campus life?

Pastor John’s five pieces of counsel won’t answer every specific question you’ll face, but they’ll provide the kind of biblical foundation that will help you navigate almost every situation. While all five principles are worth revisiting throughout the school year, the first and last stand out to me as particularly helpful.

The first is a call to adopt a wartime mentality. While campuses are busy preparing residence halls, class schedules, and welcome-week activities, Scripture reminds us that someone else is preparing as well: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Rather than producing fear, this perspective fuels vigilance and reminds you why daily communion with Christ is not optional but essential. When you prepare for the spiritual battle ahead, you’ll find fresh motivation to cultivate a vibrant devotional life.

The final principle is a call to humble dependence. Pastor John reminds you that self-sufficiency cannot empower the Christian life. Instead, he urges you to turn everything you read, hear, hope for, and fear into prayer. You have a good and generous Father in heaven who delights to answer the desperate prayers of his children.

This back-to-school article, written in 2013 by Marshall Segal, feels as timely today as the day it was first published.

Segal offers five foundational truths to help you honor Christ in every part of campus life. What I find especially refreshing, however, is Segal’s attention to the classroom itself.

Much Christian content written for students understandably focuses on life outside the classroom — avoiding temptation in the dorms, navigating relationships, or making wise decisions on the weekends. Don’t get me wrong; those conversations matter deeply. But you’ll also spend countless hours sitting in lectures, reading textbooks, and writing papers. You need a biblical vision for those moments too, and Segal provides one.

He reminds you that education is about far more than earning a degree or chasing grades. Every lecture, every chapter, and every assignment is an opportunity to better understand God’s world and learn to think Christianly within it. As he writes, “If we’re going to apply God’s word to the world, we need to know the world God has made.”

As you return to campus this fall, let Segal remind you that following Christ isn’t something you set aside when class begins. The classroom itself is one of the primary places where God intends to shape your mind, humble your heart, and prepare you for a lifetime of faithful service.

Nearly one out of every three freshmen never makes it to sophomore year. Simply surviving college is no small achievement. But Alex Chediak has a much bigger vision for your time on campus. He doesn’t just want you to survive. He wants you to thrive.

What I appreciate most about this brief article is that it gives you a compelling vision for who you can become. Too much advice for college students comes from a defensive playbook: Avoid this. Run from that. Don’t go there.

Chediak doesn’t ignore the defense. But the heart of his counsel is refreshingly proactive. From the moment you step onto campus, he urges you to pursue two things that will shape the rest of your life.

The first is to walk with the wise. Don’t wait until you’re isolated to look for godly friendships. From your very first days on campus, find a faithful local church, show up at a campus-ministry gathering, and ask God to lead you to what I like to call a “2:22 Crew” — friends who join you in fleeing youthful passions and pursuing righteousness, faith, love, and peace (2 Timothy 2:22).

Once you’re rooted in a faithful Christian community, Chediak challenges you to see college as a training ground for the future. Whether you’re sitting in a classroom, gathering for a dorm Bible study, or worshiping with your local church, God is using this season to prepare you to be a force for good in this world.

For resources on specific questions and everyday college life — like “Should I drink alcohol?” “What should I study?” “How far is too far in dating?” or “Why am I so anxious?” — visit the Joy on Campus page, a collection of articles and podcast episodes specifically curated to serve college students.

Do you delight to fear God?

The servants of the Lord on earth do. The saints before the throne of God do. Even Jesus does.

Scripture makes it clear that, for those in right relationship with God, the fear of God is a particular kind of delight in God, a full-proof pleasure that ruins us to the allurements of sin and leaves us in quaking awe before the King of all things. To fear God is to be fully alive. It is the treasure of the saints (Isaiah 33:6; Proverbs 15:16).

Yet so often Christians treat the fear of God as if it were a relic of Old Testament piety, as if God were to be feared then but now all fear is gone. To many, the fear of God is the equivalent of a drizzly, gray autumn day. But this is not the picture we find in Scripture.

I want to entice you toward the fear of the Lord. Holy fear is a delight we dare not neglect. It is not only the beginning of wisdom; it is also the chief reward of the difficult discipline of joy. So what is the fear of God?

Awestruck Adoration

Scripture differentiates holy fear, the fear of the saints before God, from the fear of unbelievers. Those who have not hidden themselves in Christ should be terrified at the prospect of his wrath (Revelation 6:15–17). They are right to be afraid of God. But those in Christ are safe from eternal condemnation and wrath (Romans 8:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). As we’ll see, they are not afraid of God, but they do fear. We can summarize this holy fear in three statements.

1. Holy fear is the fitting response to seeing God in his majesty.

Fear is the fitting response to the full-orbed revelation of God. Surprisingly, when the saints experience the fear of God in Scripture, it is most often in response to God’s goodness, grace, and mercy, rather than his judgment and wrath. Consider Psalm 111. In this poem, the psalmist studies the great works of God. There is no hint of judgment or wrath in this psalm, only overwhelming greatness and goodness. And yet, the poet concludes his tour of God’s works by saying, “Holy and awesome [fearful] is his name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:9–10).

We see this pattern throughout Scripture (e.g., Jeremiah 33:8–9; Hosea 3:5; Luke 7:14–16). As God’s people witness the greatness of his grace, mercy, and majesty in his works, the fitting response is holy fear, which is a kind of quaking wonder in the face of his staggeringly good glory. This fear causes us to dread departing from such goodness, violating it in any way, or belittling it by preferring something else. Thus, holy fear, in awe of God and aware of his fatherly discipline, acts as a bulwark against sin and folly (Romans 11:20).

It comes as no surprise then that holy fear is the exuberant song of the saints before the throne of God in Revelation 15:

Great and amazing are your deeds,
     O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
     O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
     and glorify your name? (Revelation 15:3–4)

They sing fear and glory in response to God’s amazing deeds. It comes as no surprise, then, that Solomon concludes his exploration of God’s ways and gifts to man with this:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Literally, this is “the whole of man” — the heart of what we were made for. But what about “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever”? Which is it: Fear and obey or glorify and enjoy? Rightly understood, there is no contradiction here. In calling us to fear God, Solomon (just like the poet of Psalm 111) invites us into the same kind of astonished enjoyment of God that most glorifies him, which is the chief end of man. When we are awake to God, we cannot help but be thrilled with God. And God in turn is thrilled with our thrill (Psalm 147:11). Fearing God and glorifying him are not two pursuits in Revelation 15:4; they are one. Our God looks good when his people respond to him in the heightened joy of holy fear.

2. Holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration.

For the saints, the fear of God is not the same as being afraid of God (see Exodus 20:20 for this contrast). Instead of distancing us from God, holy fear attracts us to God. It fits us to be friends with God (Psalm 25:14). As we see the overwhelming goodness and greatness of God, we balk at the thought of straying from the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13, 19). We turn from sin to him to be satisfied (Job 28:28; Proverbs 16:6). Yet this fear endures forever, growing deeper and fuller long after we are free from sin and its consequences (Psalm 19:9).

In this sense, the fear of God is a particularly poignant kind of joy in him. Thus, Nehemiah calls God’s servants those “who delight to fear your name” (Nehemiah 1:11). Perhaps the most important passage for understanding this holy fear comes in Isaiah 11, which is a prophecy about the coming Messiah:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
     and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
     the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
     the Spirit of counsel and might,
     the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. (11:1–3)

Notice the Holy Spirit, the great Comforter, is called the Spirit of the fear of Yahweh, and God’s Messiah will delight in this fear. This fear cannot be terror or dread or else he wouldn’t delight in it. This is our King’s thrilled pleasure in his Father. It should come as no surprise that the fear of God is an explicit blessing of the new covenant, for we have this Spirit within us so that we may share in Christ’s own tremendous joy in God (Jeremiah 32:38–40).

For the saints, as for Christ, holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration; it keeps us fixated on him. The word fear qualifies the kind of affection we should have in the presence of God. In his book Rejoice and Tremble, Michael Reeves explains how holy fear relates to love and joy:

The living God is infinitely perfect and quintessentially, overwhelmingly beautiful in every way: his righteousness, his graciousness, his majesty, his mercy, his all. And so we do not love him aright if our love is not a trembling, overwhelmed, and fearful love. In a sense, then, the trembling “fear of God” is a way of speaking about the intensity of the saints’ love for and enjoyment of all that God is. (Rejoice and Tremble, 52)

In other words, fear specifies the kind of love and joy we should have for God.

An acronym may help draw these first two points together:

F — Focus: Holy fear is the proper response to seeing the glorious goodness of the great God.
E — Evaluate: Holy fear rightly evaluates the worth of God as the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty.
A — Adore: Holy fear is the adoring response of a child to his heavenly Father, an affection that draws the saints toward God.
R — Revere: Holy fear is the experience of awe and trembling thrill in the presence of a Being who is overwhelmingly holy, just, and good.

Holy fear begins by focusing on God and evaluating his worth and results in the affectionate response of adoring and revering him.

3. Holy fear is the foundation of all wisdom and happiness.

We all know the mantra of biblical wisdom: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In other words, awestruck adoration is the foundation of true wisdom, which is the ability to see and respond to God’s designs in the world. As Solomon says, “The wise person has his eyes in his head” to see the patterns of God’s ways in the world (revealed in his word) and go with the grain of reality (Ecclesiastes 2:14).

But why is the fear of the Lord the foundation of wisdom? Because without an awestruck awareness of God, you don’t know the most fundamental thing about anything. Watch almost any nature documentary, and you’ll find assiduous study paired with laughable folly. Have you heard charming, sophisticated voices like David Attenborough’s marvel at the design of some animal, and then attribute that great work to natural selection? They see the wondrous works of God but do not fear the God behind the wonders. If you don’t marvel that all things are from him and through him and to him, you can never be wise.

Moreover, awestruck adoration is also the foundation of happiness. Psalm 112, a poem celebrating the wonderful well-being of those who practice awestruck adoration, begins,

Happy is the man who fears the Lord,
     who greatly delights in his commands. (112:1)

Here we see another dimension of the happy man: He fears God. Holy fear is the foundation of his happiness. And that fear is explained as delight in God’s words — great delight. This is not lukewarm affection for God but delight that threatens to burst the bounds of our capacity, like a flooded river buffeting a flimsy dam. To fear God is to be alive in the fullest sense — to be happy and wise and to tremble before the majesty of our King.

Invitation to Fear

Given the way many Christians orient toward the fear of God, as a gray and dreary thing, a wet blanket on our otherwise warm affections for God, it is easy to be left asking, Do I dare to fear God? But if we take seriously how the Bible speaks about holy fear as a pleasure to God, as the blazing affection of awestruck adoration, as the bedrock of wisdom and happiness, the better question is, Do I dare not fear God? Reeves reveals the stakes in no unclear terms:

The living God is not moderately happy but fearfully happy, and when we have [holy] fear, we enter into the joy of our Master. (Rejoice and Tremble, 59)

So, do you delight to fear God? How could you dare do otherwise?