Sharing Your Own Soul

Excerpt from John Piper "On Sharing Your Own Soul"


"1. What Is It to Share Your Own Soul?

It is NOT just sharing the gospel. "We were eager to share not only the gospel, but also our own souls." You have not shared your own soul when you have only shared information—even the most valuable information.

It is NOT just working hard for someone. Verse 9 [2 Thessalonians 2] says this is part of what Paul gave of himself: "For you remember our labor and toil." But this is not the heart of Paul's self-giving. Notice verse 17: "But since we were bereft (literally: "orphaned") from you, brethren, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face." These are the words of a friend, not an employee. The giving of his soul was not just information and not just work.

When you share your soul, you let a person in to see what is really there. You do not conceal your true feelings about things. A shared soul is a shared passion or a shared fear or a shared guilt or a shared longing or a shared joy. Where the gospel flourishes, people share their own souls—their joy and guilt and fear and longing and passion.

You can see Paul doing that in the first three chapters of this letter. In 2:17 he shares his great desire to see them. In 2:20 he says that they are his joy. In 3:5 he shares the intolerable burden it was in Athens not knowing how they were doing: "When I could bear it no longer, I sent that I might know your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labor would be in vain." In 3:7 he speaks of the comfort of his soul and in verse 10 he shares his deep longing to see them face to face.

We would do well to ask whether we are writing or speaking that way to anyone. Is the gospel flourishing in your life?

Are you sharing your own soul with anyone?

2. How Does the Gospel Cause This to Happen?

We can see in 2:7 and 8 at least two things that moved Paul to share his own soul with the Thessalonians.

2.1. First, when the gospel flourishes, it makes a person gentle. Verse 7: "We were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children." The gospel imparts a nurturing spirit to those who believe. The closest thing Paul can think of to describe what the gospel does to the heart when the gospel flourishes in it is the tender-heartedness of a nursing mother with her suckling child. True gospel gentleness begets a holy intimacy. It inclines the soul to share itself with other believers.

2.2. Second, when the gospel flourishes, it gives a person sweet affections and kindly feelings toward other believers. Verse 8: "So, being affectionately desirous of you . . . you had become very dear to us." We hear a lot today about love being a decision or an act. So you can act in a loving way even when you are feeling out of sorts with someone. Well, that's true as far as it goes. But it is not all that happens when the gospel really flourishes.

The gospel causes believers to feel affection for one another. Someone may say, "Well that's just Paul's response to the gospel. He must have been an emotional sort." No, both Paul and Peter command all Christians to experience affection for fellow Christians. Romans 12:10, "Love one another with brotherly affection." (This represents two Greek words: philadelphia, which means brotherly love, and philostorgoi, which means loving with strong affection.) Christians should have a heart for each other, not just a dispassionate commitment to do good. 1 Peter 1:22, "Love one another earnestly from the heart." Not just love each other with dutiful deeds and decisions, but EARNESTLY, FROM THE HEART!

When the gospel flourishes, it has the same effect on the heart as a great tragedy like death. Those of you who have ever been sick enough to think that you might be dying know what I mean. When the world starts to pass away before your eyes, some things become extraordinarily precious—like fellow believers, even ornery ones. Brothers and sisters that were annoying, or frustrating, or unreliable, or homely, or callous—somehow now in the face of death, their abrasive oddities are turned to precious imperfections, like the torn doll, or the moldy scrapbook, or the crib in the attic covered with dust.

"Everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ has crucified the flesh" (Galatians 5:24). And so where the gospel flourishes, people live in the constant presence of death and resurrection. Their minds and hearts return again and again to the terrible and wonderful realities of death and life. And so we live on the brink of eternity and we look at each other with a kind of constant wistfulness and there arises in our hearts again and again the sweet affections of some long farewell or some wonderful reunion.

Where the gospel flourishes, there are sweet affections and kindly feelings for our comrades in the cause of Christ. And where there are sweet affections, people share their own souls. "