Why I Chose ‘God Is Most Glorified’ Not ‘Christ Is Most Glorified’
00:00:00.000 | A podcast listener named Kent writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I have a question
00:00:09.400 | about word choice in your motto, 'God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied
00:00:14.340 | in Him.'
00:00:15.340 | I know you've thought and prayed extensively about each word to convey the proper message,
00:00:20.080 | but I'm wondering why you didn't choose the word 'Christ' in place of 'God'
00:00:24.040 | or 'Him.'
00:00:25.440 | What I like most about your ministry is that Christ is central to everything you preach
00:00:29.440 | and there's no confusing the God you glorify with any other God of this world.
00:00:33.900 | But without using 'Christ,' the above phrase loses specificity and could be referring to
00:00:38.280 | a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or other God.
00:00:41.920 | Why not include 'Christ' in the motto?"
00:00:44.000 | Well, I am always happy and eager to clarify the meaning of my favorite slogan, "God
00:00:51.680 | is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."
00:00:54.720 | So let me make four very brief comments and congratulate Kent.
00:00:59.360 | I mean, I just totally agree with what he's saying and maybe this will give him perspective
00:01:05.000 | on how I think.
00:01:06.680 | Number one, I very often in speaking do use the name Christ and I often say, "Christ
00:01:14.880 | is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."
00:01:19.280 | And I do this because of Philippians 1, 20 and 21, where Paul says his eager expectation
00:01:25.440 | and hope is that Christ would be magnified in his body, whether by life or death, for
00:01:30.640 | to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
00:01:33.000 | And I argue from the very structure of that text that fundamental to my Christian hedonism
00:01:39.080 | is that Christ and His magnificence is shown by Paul's counting Him an all-satisfying
00:01:48.400 | gain when he loses everything and dies.
00:01:52.400 | So yes, yes, yes, at the very root of my slogan is a text that makes Christ the center of
00:02:00.120 | it.
00:02:01.120 | Number two, when I say God, I have in mind the Trinitarian God usually when I say that.
00:02:07.360 | Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
00:02:08.680 | So I don't mean to say God instead of Christ when I say God is most glorified in us.
00:02:15.680 | Number three, often, this is maybe the most unusual point, often in the New Testament
00:02:22.720 | the word God is used as shorthand for God the Father, and there is a certain priority
00:02:30.800 | given to the Father in relation to the Son which might warrant the prominence of the
00:02:38.400 | word God in the slogan.
00:02:40.120 | And here's what I'm thinking about, Philippians 2, 9.
00:02:44.200 | "Therefore God has highly exalted Christ and bestowed on Him the name that is above
00:02:49.280 | every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and
00:02:54.200 | under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of
00:03:01.760 | God the Father."
00:03:03.920 | So the exaltation of Jesus over every name is for the glory of God.
00:03:10.160 | You see the kind of ultimacy or priority given to God the Father in that text.
00:03:15.240 | Or 1 Corinthians 15, 28.
00:03:17.800 | "When all things are subjected to Christ, then the Son Himself will be subjected to
00:03:23.800 | Him the Father who put all things in subjection under Him that God may be all in all."
00:03:30.520 | And it's another kind of prioritization or ultimazize, whatever that word would be, making
00:03:35.960 | ultimate of God the Father.
00:03:39.960 | And one last text on this, Philippians 1, 9-11, this prayer.
00:03:44.120 | "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment,
00:03:52.360 | so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of
00:03:58.760 | Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness that come through Jesus Christ to the glory
00:04:05.880 | and praise of God."
00:04:06.880 | So you see the structure again from chapter 2.
00:04:10.640 | So it is in a profound sense right for us to think of God the Father as the one for
00:04:18.640 | whom Christ has accomplished all His work.
00:04:22.920 | Not at all minimizing the ultimacy of Christ's glory as the perfect image of the Father's
00:04:29.680 | radiance.
00:04:30.680 | And number four, in common parlance, and this may be the reason why years and years
00:04:38.720 | ago I started saying God instead of Christ.
00:04:41.520 | In common parlance in the world and in the broad church, not necessarily just evangelical,
00:04:49.280 | the word God sounds more all-encompassing and ultimate than Christ.
00:04:56.960 | Now rightly understood, that's not true.
00:04:59.040 | It shouldn't be.
00:05:00.480 | Jesus is Lord of all.
00:05:02.440 | But in ordinary public language, if you want to say something that sounds global or universal
00:05:09.040 | or cutting across all groupings and all religious enclaves, God's statements have that effect
00:05:16.840 | more than Christ's statements or Jesus' statements.
00:05:19.840 | And so it just depends on what's the context, who's your audience, what kind of impact
00:05:24.440 | or connotation do you want the statement to have.
00:05:27.840 | One more point, finally I agree with Kent.
00:05:31.280 | He's right that in our day of religious pluralism, especially the prominence of Islam, the prominence
00:05:39.480 | of Christ needs to be highlighted more often than it used to be.
00:05:45.740 | So I think in recent years I have felt exactly what Kent has felt, and I have tried, and
00:05:54.020 | perhaps now his question will help me try more, try to be explicit and clear that the
00:05:59.920 | glory I'm talking about is the glory of Christ as the great expression of the glory of God.
00:06:09.280 | So let's be alert to our audiences, let's give Christ the honor, do his name, and sometimes
00:06:18.640 | say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and sometimes clarify
00:06:24.560 | explicitly that Christ is most magnified or glorified in us when we are most satisfied
00:06:31.840 | in him, just as Paul teaches in Philippians 1.
00:06:35.080 | Thank you, Pastor John, that's very good.
00:06:38.640 | And we love talking about this because we love proclaiming Christ as we repeat over
00:06:43.460 | and over again, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and we
00:06:48.800 | do this every day at DesiringGod.org.
00:06:51.320 | Visit the site to find decades of our work and thousands of books, articles, sermons,
00:06:55.400 | and other resources to flesh out this theme, and it's all free of charge to you.
00:07:01.000 | Well all of us need to change something in life, and many of us want to change something
00:07:05.980 | about ourselves.
00:07:06.980 | So what is the single key to breaking free from life's ruts?
00:07:11.720 | The answer is simple, it's profound, and John Piper will explain tomorrow right here on
00:07:16.000 | the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:07:17.920 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
00:07:19.520 | [music]
00:07:20.520 | [music]
00:07:21.520 | [music]
00:07:21.520 | [music]
00:07:22.520 | [music]
00:07:22.520 | [music]
00:07:23.520 | [music]
00:07:24.520 | [music]
00:07:25.520 | [music]
00:07:26.520 | [music]
00:07:26.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]