Are We Saved by Belief in God or by Delight in God?
00:00:00.000 | I hope you had a delightful Christmas weekend experiencing the peace of Christ in your life.
00:00:10.000 | And we are back to work with a really important question from Josh in South Carolina.
00:00:14.280 | Pastor John, in your book, God is the Gospel, you make this statement, "The gospel is not
00:00:19.680 | a way to get people to heaven.
00:00:21.600 | It is a way to get people to God."
00:00:25.520 | You then close chapter three saying, "If we do not see him and savor him as our greatest
00:00:30.560 | fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel."
00:00:36.080 | Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be
00:00:40.400 | justified and stand righteous before God and yet fall short of God being the object of
00:00:46.600 | their affection are not effectively justified by the gospel?
00:00:52.520 | How would you respond to Josh?
00:00:54.400 | Well, I am very, very thankful for this question because I have had others talking to me recently.
00:01:02.040 | I'm eager to clarify this, if I can.
00:01:04.920 | I know that the way I often talk about the nature of saving faith troubles some very
00:01:12.680 | good people who are faithful to the gospel.
00:01:16.360 | For example, I say things like, "Faith is being satisfied in all that God is for us
00:01:24.600 | in Jesus."
00:01:26.320 | I say that all over the place in the book Future Grace, the most prominent place where
00:01:32.000 | I say it.
00:01:33.000 | Now, in the places where I have said things like that, and I say them unrepentantly, I
00:01:41.640 | try to give many supporting Bible foundations for that definition.
00:01:50.440 | And we can't go into all those, but let me just mention one because it's going to relate
00:01:54.760 | to the answer here.
00:01:56.280 | Jesus said to them, John 6, 35, "I am the bread of life.
00:02:01.000 | Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst."
00:02:07.520 | So Jesus portrays himself as bread, and by implication water because he refers to thirst.
00:02:15.040 | And then he gives two parallel statements.
00:02:17.400 | "Whoever comes to me shall not hunger," and then parallel to that, "Whoever believes
00:02:23.080 | in me shall never thirst."
00:02:25.200 | And therefore, coming to Jesus so as not to hunger and believing in Jesus so as not to
00:02:33.400 | thirst are parallel.
00:02:36.360 | And I think they are referring to the same reality.
00:02:39.800 | Jesus is the bread that satisfies the hunger of the soul, and Jesus is the living water
00:02:46.480 | that satisfies the thirst of the soul.
00:02:50.560 | And coming and believing are virtually interchangeable in these parallel statements.
00:02:56.360 | And so coming so as not to hunger and believing so as not to thirst are the same.
00:03:07.560 | And therefore, it seems to me that Jesus is pressing us to see deeper into what believing
00:03:15.240 | really involves.
00:03:17.720 | Believing is a coming, not geographically, not physically, but a movement of the soul
00:03:24.880 | in thirst and in hunger for its deepest needs to be satisfied.
00:03:30.200 | That is a coming to Jesus for that satisfaction and finding it in him.
00:03:38.440 | That's what I think that verse teaches about the nature of believing, of faith.
00:03:43.440 | And I think it's all over the place in the Gospel of John that it means that.
00:03:48.800 | And therefore, I do believe that if we do not see and savor Jesus as the supreme satisfaction
00:03:59.360 | of our souls, we don't believe in Jesus in a saving way.
00:04:06.700 | Not because I'm adding anything to faith, like you got to believe to be justified, then
00:04:10.880 | you got to do something else to get to heaven or something like that.
00:04:13.560 | That's not the point.
00:04:14.960 | The point is I am pressing into faith in the New Testament.
00:04:21.280 | I'm pressing into numerous places in the Bible where saving faith is more than knowledge,
00:04:28.160 | more than agreement, and more than trust or receiving of a partial Christ.
00:04:37.040 | When I say faith is more than the receiving of a partial Christ, I mean faith includes
00:04:45.480 | not only receiving Jesus as Savior and receiving Jesus as Lord, but also receiving Jesus for
00:04:51.840 | what he really is, namely the supreme treasure of the universe.
00:04:57.360 | Or if you prefer to stay with the word Savior and Lord, I put it like this.
00:05:02.080 | I mean that faith receives Jesus as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord.
00:05:12.360 | And if you say that a person can be a Christian, born again, justified, heaven-bound, enjoying
00:05:20.360 | eternal life, a person can be a Christian and have a higher treasure than Jesus, I do
00:05:27.440 | not know what Bible you are reading.
00:05:31.000 | Jesus said, Matthew 10, 37, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy
00:05:39.320 | of me.
00:05:40.840 | Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
00:05:47.660 | Do we think he would say, "Well, it's not okay to treasure mother or father or son or
00:05:55.520 | daughter more than me, but it's okay to treasure your job more than me.
00:05:59.320 | It's okay to treasure your health more than me.
00:06:02.160 | It's okay to treasure your nation more than me.
00:06:04.680 | It's okay to treasure your reputation more than me.
00:06:08.040 | It's okay to treasure your life more than me."
00:06:11.440 | No!
00:06:12.760 | Where Jesus is not treasured above all things, he's not trusted with saving faith.
00:06:20.600 | Now, of course, I am deeply aware, both from the Bible and from John Piper's own experience,
00:06:30.280 | that the trusting and the treasuring of Jesus rise and fall in intensity from day to day.
00:06:41.680 | Anyone who has read my books, especially the book, When I Don't Desire God, knows I don't
00:06:47.840 | have a perfectionist bone in my theological body, because I'd be a goner.
00:06:53.800 | I am a sinner in need of grace every day, including the grace for my imperfect faith
00:07:04.000 | and my imperfect treasuring of Jesus as part of that faith.
00:07:08.880 | The issue is—not perfection—the issue is, have I set my face with as much of my
00:07:19.000 | heart and as much of my mind and as much of my soul and my strength as I can to treasure
00:07:23.600 | God in Christ above all things?
00:07:28.960 | And I have more or less success just like believing rises and falls.
00:07:35.540 | The fact that—it's not a criticism of my view to say that treasuring Jesus rises
00:07:42.000 | and falls, and therefore you can't equate it with faith.
00:07:44.120 | Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
00:07:46.200 | Faith rises and falls every day.
00:07:49.400 | Justifying faith rises and falls every day.
00:07:53.800 | John wrote, "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
00:08:00.680 | But to all who received him, who believed on his name, he gave the right to become the
00:08:06.600 | children of God."
00:08:08.620 | We become children of God through receiving Jesus.
00:08:13.680 | That is, believing.
00:08:14.680 | That's what belief is.
00:08:15.920 | Belief is a receiving.
00:08:16.920 | It's a reception.
00:08:20.280 | And I am simply pressing the issue that comes out over and over again in the Bible, that
00:08:28.280 | to receive him as a forgiver of sins, to receive him as a guilt remover, to receive him as
00:08:35.600 | a door out of hell, to receive him as a healer of the body, and not to receive him as a treasure
00:08:45.040 | to satisfy the soul, is not to believe on Jesus.
00:08:50.520 | Jesus is not honored, and the Father is not glorified, where he is welcomed only for his
00:08:59.600 | gifts and not for himself.
00:09:02.800 | So to answer Josh's question more directly, let me point to something strange in the way
00:09:10.020 | he worded his question.
00:09:12.680 | He says, "Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be
00:09:22.120 | justified and stand righteous before God, yet fall short of God being the object of
00:09:30.480 | their affection, are not effectively justified?"
00:09:34.400 | Indeed, I am.
00:09:36.920 | But look what he left out.
00:09:39.160 | Did you notice he never mentioned faith?
00:09:42.480 | Faith is missing from that.
00:09:43.640 | I'm going to read it again just so you see it.
00:09:45.640 | "Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be
00:09:52.040 | justified and," and now right here, "you need to hear and receive him by faith," that should
00:09:58.640 | be there because that's how you're justified.
00:10:00.440 | Faith is how you're justified, not just seeing your need.
00:10:02.560 | You're not justified by seeing your need.
00:10:05.000 | You're justified by seeing your need and then trusting him, receiving him as all you need,
00:10:11.920 | and that's totally missing, and so I don't know quite how to respond when it's totally
00:10:15.960 | missing, so I'm going to stick it in.
00:10:17.760 | I'm going to say, here's the way his question, I think he really meant it.
00:10:22.000 | I think this was an oversight.
00:10:24.240 | "Are you saying that a person can acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be
00:10:29.280 | justified and receive him by faith and thus stand righteous before God?"
00:10:37.760 | Are you saying that that can happen and a person not be satisfied in God or find God
00:10:45.200 | as his supreme joy and still be justified?
00:10:50.720 | And my answer is that is an impossible situation.
00:10:54.380 | It cannot happen because receiving Jesus by faith is a receiving of Jesus, which includes
00:11:03.720 | a receiving of all that God is for us in Jesus, namely, he is our supreme treasure, as is
00:11:09.960 | writ large all over the Bible.
00:11:12.840 | I'm not adding anything to faith.
00:11:15.800 | I am trying to define faith biblically so that it can have a transforming effect upon
00:11:21.480 | the world which it so desperately needs right now.
00:11:25.760 | And there is more there in the Bible about the nature of faith than is often seen.
00:11:31.120 | Exactly.
00:11:32.600 | This is exactly what we are all about at DesiringGod.org.
00:11:37.000 | God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
00:11:41.040 | That's our motto.
00:11:42.040 | And if all of this is new to you, that faith in Christ is treasuring Christ as your supreme
00:11:47.120 | treasure, I would invite you to take some time this week, even today, to get familiar
00:11:52.360 | with DesiringGod.org.
00:11:54.080 | We have a lot of content that centers on this crucial theme.
00:11:57.840 | And if your heart resonates with the message of what Pastor John just described, we want
00:12:02.240 | to invite you to become partners with us in our work.
00:12:04.840 | First, we need your prayers.
00:12:06.400 | There's a lot of work to be done, and we feel needy for God's grace every day.
00:12:09.680 | And of course, if you're not, please consider becoming a financial partner as well.
00:12:14.400 | You can do that by going to DesiringGod.org and look for the "Donate" button at the
00:12:18.360 | very top of the page.
00:12:20.100 | We need your prayers, and we need your partnership in this important work for it to go on.
00:12:24.680 | And we are deeply grateful to God for you and to the many supporters that we have around
00:12:30.160 | the world.
00:12:31.160 | Thank you.
00:12:32.160 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:12:33.160 | Thank you for listening and for praying for us and supporting the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:12:37.440 | God bless.
00:12:37.940 | [END]
00:12:39.940 | Thank you for listening and for supporting the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:12:41.940 | God bless.
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