J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life

by Paul E. Miller

Overview

Do we have the wrong map for the Christian life? 

Life's inconveniences, disappointments, and trials can leave us confused, cynical, and eventually bitter. But the apostle Paul traces out the path of dying and rising with Jesus—what Paul Miller calls the "J-Curve"—as the normal Christian life. 
The J-Curve maps the ups and downs of daily life onto the story of Jesus. It grounds our journeys not in some abstract idea but in union with Christ and his work of love. Understanding our lives in light of the J-Curve roots our hope, centers our love, and tethers our faith to Christ.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433561597
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	06/24/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Paul E. Miller (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is executive director of seeJesus, a global discipling mission that mentors through seminars, cohorts, and interactive Bible studies. He is the bestselling author of A Praying Life and J-Curve. Paul and his wife, Jill, live in the Philadelphia area and have six children and fifteen grandchildren. Listen to the Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller podcast or learn more at seeJesus.net.

Paul E. Miller (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is executive director of seeJesus, a global discipling mission that mentors through seminars, cohorts, and interactive Bible studies. He is the bestselling author of  A Praying Life and  J-Curve. Paul and his wife, Jill, live in the Philadelphia area and have six children and fifteen grandchildren. Listen to the Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller podcast or learn more at seeJesus.net.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

"I Will Never Do This Again"

The J-Curve and How It Helps

Caring for someone affected by multiple disabilities is never boring. Life is generally pleasant, but at any given moment, you are seconds away from disaster — a part of your brain is always on. So to give my wife, Jill, a break, I decided to take our disabled daughter Kim with me on a speaking trip.

On a Friday in January 2001, Kim and I headed to the Philadelphia airport for a trip to Florida. We had two suitcases and a large box with "seeJesus" written on the side. As soon as we parked, Kim rummaged through the carry-onbag, only to discover that Jill had not packed the recorded book that Kim wanted. She began a low-level whine, one we've considered patenting and selling to CIA interrogators. Forget water torture; just play this tape of Kim and your prisoner will be putty in your hands.

When we got to the bus stall, I told Kim we had to wait for the bus, and her whining grew louder and more irritating. Everyone was looking at us. I glanced down at my box, wondering if there was any way I could hide the big "seeJesus" sign. I looked like a religious nut.

When the bus arrived, I had a horrible thought: "How will I get all this luggage and Kim on the bus at the same time?" I decided to help her on first, then return for the luggage. As I was getting on with the luggage, much to Kim's delight, the back door closed on me. Her well-honed sense of humor kicked in, and she grinned broadly as she watched me shouting at the bus driver while being crushed by the door.

The ride to the terminal was uneventful — Kim is fine as long as she is moving. But when we got to the check-in area, we found a line that wrapped around the terminal. Knowing we'd never make our flight if we got in that line, I headed up the escalator, luggage and Kim in tow. As soon as we got to security, our line merged with another, forming one very long line — and Kim began whining again. Fortunately, she is adept at moving quickly in lines. She stands so close behind people that she bumps them. It's uncomfortable for them, but they see she's disabled and often let us go ahead.

When we got to the scanners, Kim wouldn't put her speech computer on the conveyer belt. She started arguing with the security person, typing out, "It's my voice." I yanked her "voice" out of her hand and put it on the belt, and she restarted her whining. Of course, security was suspicious of my "seeJesus" box, so a particularly scrupulous guard scanned it meticulously.

Once through security, we had twenty minutes before our gate closed. I checked the screen. We were in the wrong terminal. We were in Terminal C, but our flight was in B. There was no way we'd make it. I threw myself in front of one of the carts that carry people around and begged for a ride. The driver agreed and whisked us away, but as we came down the long ramp of Terminal B, we got stuck behind a man on his cell phone. Our cart was emitting a loud, persistent beeping, but the man did not pick up his excruciatingly slow pace. As Kim saw me getting tense, she started to smile again.

We made it to the plane, and after settling into our seats, my shoulders relaxed as I hooked Kim up to her audiobook. Then the flight attendant came by and told Kim to turn off her electronic devices. Kim turned off her audiobook, but refused to turn off her speech computer. I reached over and shut off the device — and Kim resumed her whining. A few minutes later, the captain announced, "We have eleven planes ahead of us, so it will be fifteen minutes before departure." Even though she could not see the line of planes, just knowing we had to wait led Kim to a complete meltdown. I started to say, "Kim, if you don't stop, we aren't going to Disney," but that was one of my reasons for taking her on this trip, so I swallowed my threat. Helpless and embarrassed, I said to myself, "This was a mistake. I will never do this again."

The next day, Saturday, as I reflected on my reaction, I realized I'd forgotten the J-Curve, the idea, frequently articulated by the apostle Paul, that the normal Christian life repeatedly re-enacts the dying and rising of Jesus. I call it the J-Curve because, like the letter J, Jesus's life first went down into death, then up into resurrection.

Just like the earthly life of Jesus, the J ends higher than it starts. It's the pattern not only of Jesus's life, but of our lives — of our everyday moments. When Kim and I were sitting in the back of the plane, I thought everything had gone wrong. No, the apostle Paul says, the J-Curve is the shape of the normal Christian life. Our lives mirror Jesus's. In the diagram below you see Jesus'sJ-Curve and our present J-Curves.

Keep in mind that Jesus's J-Curve atones for our sins; ours don't. His is once for all — we have multiple J-Curves that echo his. (For the sake of clarity, when I use the term J-Curve by itself I'm referring to our presentJ-Curves.) As we shall see, our J-Curves each have their own unique cadences, but they all

1. enter some kind of suffering in which evil is weakened or killed;

2. weaken the flesh and form us into the image of Jesus;

3. lead to a real-time, present resurrection.

Dying and Rising on the Way to Florida

As I reflected on how our travel disaster was the beginning of a J-Curve, our trip went from a lifeless gray to vibrant and multicolored. Like Jesus, I experienced a death followed by a resurrection. The two are inextricably intertwined. Friday's trip left me drained and weary (dying), which created a spirit of humility as I taught on Saturday (rising). On Saturday, I was in front of a group of people who were listening to my every word. I'm thankful they were such eager listeners, but being at the center of people's praise is potentially toxic. I'm prone to the leadership sins of overtalking and underlistening, so Friday's dying was God's gift to inoculate me against the pride lurking behind success and popularity.

The work of love that happens in a J-Curve exposes our hearts in unexpected ways. On Friday, in front of three different crowds (at the bus shelter, in the security line, and on the plane), I was far too concerned with how I looked. In fact, my desire to hide my "seeJesus" box at the bus shelter showed I was ashamed of him. The sign was dead-on — see Jesus in his humility; don't run from his path of weakness. In fact, that's the message of this book.

Resurrection has multiple faces. After that Florida trip, I told Kim I'd give her $50 for letting me interview her at a Young Life banquet in Washington, DC. As I interviewed her about our Florida trip, she giggled, smacking her head at all the funny parts of the story. It was a delight to watch her. After the interview, I stepped aside so she could take her speech computer off the podium and sit down, but she didn't budge. Instead with 250 people listening, she typed out on her speech computer, M-O-N-E-Y. In other words, "Dad, show me the money!" How's that for a resurrection?

The Right Time to Rediscover the J-Curve

The "collapse" Kim and I went through on our Florida trip is a microcosm of the cultural collapse Western civilization is going through. The rising tide of unbelief and the lure of secular liberalism touch almost every Christian home. Fifty years ago, we called the occasional child who walked away from the faith a black sheep. Now almost every Christian home has children walking away from the faith.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. A young wife, "Sarah," from a healthy church confided to a friend of mine, "I think I've outgrown my marriage." That's something you might say about an immature boyfriend, but Sarah said she had "outgrown" her sacred vows to her husband. She used therapeutic language to mask her betrayal.

Sarah's feelings operated at the center of her decision making. Almost certainly, Sarah encountered some immaturity in her husband, instinctively discarded the biblical morality she grew up with ("Be faithful in marriage"), and reached for the central moral vision of our age, which I'll call feelism. By making "How does it/you make me feel?" our moral grid, feelism makes faithfulness — the glue of life — almost impossible. Feelism drives emotions to the center, distorting and amplifying them in the process. As we'll discover, the J-Curve not only balances our emotions but helps them come alive.

Our world is increasingly filled with people like Sarah who have inhaled the spirit of this age. To quote William Butler Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," "the centre cannot hold." So how does the church survive and even thrive when the world is going crazy from the care of the sacred self? As we shall see, there's no better time than now to rediscover what Jesus's dying and rising means. That's why I've written this book, to help prepare the bride, the wife of the Lamb, for suffering.

The J-Curve not only balances our emotions but helps them come alive.

But this is not a book on coping with suffering. My goal is to draw you, the reader, into the dying and rising of Jesus — to reset your sense of the normal Christian life, freeing you from cynicism and despair. Inhabiting the J-Curvepromises to transform your entire vision of how you engage life, freeing you from the world of resentment, touchiness, and just plain old grumpiness, and inviting you into Jesus's world, a world rich with joy, hope, and love.

We will pay attention to two cultural lenses that prevent us from living the J-Curve: the lenses of the manager and the therapist. For example, the manager looks at my flight with Kim and says, "You should have left more time for traveling with Kim" (true), "It's not wise to combine too many things like speaking and caring for Kim" (possibly), and "You should have brought someone to help you" (yes, I did that the next time). The therapist tells me, "You need to do something for yourself" (true), then asks, "Do you have a problem with anger?" (yes, Kim brings out the best and the worst in me) or "Have you thought of putting Kim in a home?" (no, she's God's gift to us; plus she's one of my best friends). Both the manager and the therapist have pieces of wisdom, but they miss love. Because they play it safe, they miss life in all its richness. They miss that not only was God resurrecting my soul and saving me from pride during my trip with Kim, but also that my mini-death gave Jill amini-resurrection. That's how love works.

When I felt ashamed and frustrated with Kim, I mirrored the state of the church. I'd forgotten the J-Curve. Just as Martin Luther rediscovered justification by faith in the early 1500s, we need to rediscover the J-Curve in today's rising storm of unbelief and evil.

Like a diamond, each facet of the J-Curve refracts the light in a slightly different way on the wonder of Jesus's death and resurrection. In the upcoming pages, we will journey with the apostle Paul as he lives and teaches the J-Curve in his writings and his life.

You might think I'm overstating the importance of the J-Curve. But the apostle actually writes more about the J-Curve than he does justification by faith, which is his focus in Romans and Galatians. But the J-Curve dominates Philippians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans 6 and 8, Colossians 1 and 3, and Ephesians 1, and it is modeled in Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, and Acts. Beginning with Philippians, we'll focus on Paul's J-Curve writings.

When I explained the J-Curve to a group of pastors, they wondered why they'd never heard it before. One said, "I guess we are more focused on the theological than the practical." I said, "No, our theological vision is too narrow." My goal is to add to our Romans/Galatians lens a neglected Pauline lens: the J-Curve.

At each point, our understanding of the J-Curve and how it transforms our everyday life, even our emotions, will become clearer. Here's an overview of what we'll cover:

• Part 1, "Discovering the J-Curve," introduces the J-Curve and explores the relationship between the J-Curve and three great truths of the Reformation: (1) the flesh, (2) justification by faith, and (3) union with Christ. The lack of integration of the J-Curve with these truths has led to theological imbalance and thus weakness in how we do life.

• Part 2, "Dying with Jesus," is where we begin to follow the path of the J-Curve down into death and then up into resurrection. Part 2 gives an overview of three different types of J-Curves, then takes a deeper look at the repentance J-Curve, where we put to death our sins, and the suffering J-Curve, where outside suffering leads us into dying with Jesus.

• Part 3, "The Descent of Love," explores the love J-Curve, where love leads to suffering, by looking at Jesus's descent of love. We examine the DNA of love — humility and incarnation. By DNA, I mean a deep structure that permeates the whole. We also look at the danger of getting stuck in dying and making an idol out of humility.

• Part 4, "Rising with Jesus," focuses on the resurrection side of the J-Curve. We watch Paul look at life through a resurrection lens. He creates a tapestry of love as he embodies Jesus's dying and rising in his and his coworkers' lives. We follow Paul in his travels to discover insights into the art of living life in the dying and rising of Jesus.

• Part 5, "Forming a J-Curve Community," shifts our focus from the individual to the community. Paul uses the J-Curve to reshape an entire community into the image of Jesus. We descend into the nitty-gritty of life in the ancient world as Paul uses the J-Curve to relentlessly confront a culture that has kept the gospel from forming a true Jesus community.

Because this book is about the gospel in everyday life, I've intertwined my own stories with those of others — Luther, Mother Teresa, and Joni Eareckson Tada. But our main focus is on the apostle Paul's journey for Jesus and intoJesus. Along the way, we'll encounter leaking Dixie cups, bench-warminghockey players, a sheep named Ed, and a host of everyday problems. These stories don't illustrate the J-Curve; they embody it, with the goal of helping you retell your stories in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. To "embody" simply means that you give a tangible or visible form to an idea.

Welcome to our pilgrimage into the wonder of the gospel!

CHAPTER 2

"I Take Your Place"

The Substitutionary Nature of Love

The Sunday after Friday's plane trip to Florida, I took Kim to Disney World. We just missed the tram, which meant a brief wait. With Kim whining in the background, I called home to see how Jill was doing. Our daughter Ashley answered, "Every five minutes Mom says, 'I can't believe how quiet it is without Kim.'" I got death and Jill got resurrection. Substitution is the heart of love.

Every great love story has substitution in it. For instance, in Les Misérables, when Jean Valjean steals the bishop's silverware, the police return him to the bishop to confirm the theft. The bishop, in a breathtaking triumph of love, assures the police that the silverware was a gift, and he even scolds Valjean for forgetting to take the silver candlesticks. Much to the disgust of the police, who know the bishop is covering for Jean, the bishop gives Jean the last of his silver, the candlesticks. The bishop substitutes his silver for Valjean's freedom. That's the structure of love.

Filling Up What Is Lacking in Christ's Afflictions

My discovery of the J-Curve began in the late 1980s after I'd written a course on how the gospel applies to our lives. I noticed the apostle Paul didn't just preach the gospel, he relived it. This passage from Colossians 1:24 and others like it caught my attention:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "J-Curve"
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Copyright © 2019 Paul E. Miller.
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All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Illustrations 13

Part 1 Discovering the J-Curve

1 "I Will Never Do This Again": The J-Curve and How It Helps 17

2 "I Take Your Place": The Substitutionary Nature of Love 25

3 Marketing the Self: What We Do Instead of the J-Curve 32

4 Liberating the Self: The Foundation of the J-Curve 41

5 In Harvard: Union with Christ Comes Alive 51

6 In Sports or In Christ? How Location Changes Everything 59

7 It's All About Who You Know: Knowing Jesus in the J-Curve 65

8 Missing Justification by Faith: The J-Curve without Justification 70

9 Missing the J-Curve: Justification by Faith without the J-Curve 75

Part 2 Dying with Jesus

10 Dying to Self: Understanding Different J-Curves 87

11 A Cascade of Love: Weaving J-Curves Together 93

12 Life at the Bottom of the J-Curve: Making Sense of Persistent Evil 100

13 Living in the Borderland: How to Thrive in a Broken World 108

Part 3 The Descent of Love

14 Love Loses Control: Discovering the Shape of Love 119

15 The Art of Disappearing for Love: How the Incarnation Defines Love 129

16 Recovering a Vision of the Good: The Wonder of the J-Curve 137

17 Celebrating Christ Bearers: Rediscovering Hidden Saints 143

18 The Hinge of the J-Curve: Understanding the Will 150

19 The Four Steps of Love: Re-enacting Jesus's Descent 155

20 The J-Curve Calms a Quarrel: Creating a Path to Reconciliation 160

Part 4 Rising with Jesus

21 Discovering the Power of Resurrection: What Makes the J Go Up? 167

22 Repersonalizing the Resurrection: Discovering the Forgotten Half of the J-Curve 176

23 Looking through a Resurrection Lens: The J-Curve Transforms Our Vision of Life 186

24 The Secret of an Irritation-Free Life: The J-Curve Cures Grumbling 193

25 Resurrection Realism: The J-Curve Protects Us from Cynicism 199

26 Delaying Resurrection for Love: Saying No to Good Desire 205

27 Becoming Human Again: The Emotional Life of the J-Curve 213

28 The Art of J-Curve Living: Dying and Rising in Twenty-Four Hours 223

29 Seeing the Big Picture: Multiyear Dying and Rising 233

Part 5 Forming a J-Curve Community

30 The Power of Weakness: How the J-Curve Defeats Tribalism 245

31 The Spirit at the Center: Learning Wisdom Down Low 257

32 Love Treads Softly: Entering the Complexity of Love 265

33 Leadership Goes Low: Re-enacting Jesus in Community 274

34 Keeping Jesus Pure: The J-Curve Divides the Community 284

35 Jesus: The Ultimate Party Crasher 289

36 The Beauty of a Jesus Community: Including the Distant Outsider 298

Conclusion 305

Afterword 308

Acknowledgments 313

General Index 316

Scripture Index 324

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“I can’t express how refreshing I have found this book to be. I’ve been studying these themes of union with Christ, dying and rising with him, and growing in likeness to him for many years in Scripture and in academic writings. What I’ve been missing is a book with the practical, real-world focus that Paul Miller has captured so powerfully. The examples he uses from everyday life, from the lives of ‘ordinary saints,’ and from his own life make it so easy to envision what these gospel truths look like in practice. More than once I thought to myself, ‘This one sentence will be worth the price of the book!’ I can’t wait for this book to come out because I would like my whole church to read it.”
—C. D. "Jimmy" Agan III, Senior Pastor, Intown Community Church, Atlanta, Georgia

“I love this book. I feast on Miller’s emphasis on resurrection. I’m enthusiastic about his stress on union with Christ; there’s more to the gospel than justification. But the J-Curve community (part 5) seems best to me. This is a wonderful, bigger, more Jesus gospel! It’s much-needed, and Miller’s style is just right, building on scholarly contributions but with personal experience and examples of others. It’s just what you need to equip you for gospel living in our crumbling Christian culture.”
—D. Clair Davis, Emeritus Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary

“This wise and readable book shows how the beloved doctrines of justification and union with Christ shape the thoughts, words, emotions, and actions of believers. I highly recommend this book for everyone who pursues gospel-driven discipleship.”
—Dan Doriani, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary

“A masterly treatment of the Christian life from a biblical perspective. It takes full account of the absorption with self, the preoccupation with appearance, and the individualism that characterize our age to present a biblical model of living that is both liberating and joy generating. I hope this desperately needed, countercultural approach to life will begin to impact worldwide Christianity more and more.”
—Ajith Fernando, Teaching Director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka; author, Discipling in a Multicultural World

“Paul Miller’s earlier book on prayer, A Praying Life, had a profound impact on how I understood prayer and reshaped how I taught it. To date I consider it the most important book written in our generation on the subject! I am delighted to see him turn his attention to another misunderstood and forgotten subject—the power of new life that comes from reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Paul has a way of taking profound truths and making them accessible, and in this book you’ll see why—because he lives them. This is not a book of theological posturing, it is simply a guide written by someone who has walked the path and wants to show you how you can also.”
—J. D. Greear, Pastor, The Summit Church, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

“I enjoyed this book on many levels. The apostle Paul tells us that believers have died and been raised with Jesus. Paul Miller helps us discover what this looks like in everyday life. His teaching rings true and will be helpful to many.”
—John M. Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy Emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary

“Nothing is more important for the gospel and for our lives as Christians than the reality of our union with Christ as Scripture teaches us about that union. Paul Miller is to be commended for seeking to apply that teaching to issues of discipleship.”
—Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary

“Paul Miller has carefully observed Jesus. He has carefully observed how the work of grace unfolds in the apostle Paul’s life and in his own life. Take time with this book. You will become a deeper, wiser, truer person. You will become more humble, more joyous, more purposeful. And you will walk more steadily in the light.”
—David Powlison, Late Executive Director, Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation

“I own my prejudice with respect to my excitement about Paul Miller’s new book, J-Curve. Written with the glory and grace of Philippians 2:5–11 at its core, Miller has given us a most accessible, timely, and theologically sound introduction to life in Christ. Miller has always been known as a great lover of the gospel and a master illustrator, and both are on display in copious measures in J-Curve. This book shows us how to live by the rhythms of the gospel at the pace of grace. A life of union and communion with Jesus has never seemed more beautiful and practical.”
—Scotty Smith, Pastor Emeritus, Christ Community Church, Franklin, Tennessee; Teacher in Residence, West End Community Church, Nashville, Tennessee

“‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ What was Jesus asking us to do—or be? How does it play out in everyday life? These questions are intensely practical from the moment I wake up in the morning. And that’s why I love Paul Miller’s new book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life. Never have I read a more practical work on how a Christian can flourish through deep affliction. This book will revolutionize the way you look at your sufferings and your relationship to Christ. If you’re craving a life with your Savior that utterly transforms, this book is your best hands-on guide.”
—Joni Eareckson Tada, Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center

“The footnotes and shrewdness of this book point to an author who has read widely and pondered deeply. The stories and real-life focus of this book reveal an author who has paid a high price—the laceration of his ego—to begin to learn not only the power of Christ’s resurrection but the fellowship of his sufferings. And a healing, fruitful, even joyful fellowship it is! In just three dozen brief and engrossing chapters, Paul Miller helps the reader see what’s missing in many of our Christian lives—namely, they are sub-Christian! This book demonstrates how faith in Christ can more nearly attain its God-intended goal of a 24/7 immersion in Christ and expression of Christ-like love. Integrating the cross with the resurrection in an unusually graphic and encouraging fashion, this book is sure to not only challenge but also change many lives.”
—Robert W. Yarbrough, Professor of New Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary