Can We Love Both God and Pleasure?
00:00:00.000 | Why can't we love pleasure and love God at the same time?
00:00:08.600 | Paul seems to assume that we can't, and it's a text that confuses a podcast listener
00:00:12.760 | named Gabriel, who writes in to ask this.
00:00:15.240 | Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for Ask Pastor John.
00:00:18.260 | My question is about that phrase in 2 Timothy 3:4, "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers
00:00:24.780 | of God."
00:00:26.160 | Has this established a dichotomy between seeking pleasure and seeking God?
00:00:30.840 | If so, why is it impossible to do both?
00:00:33.700 | Why can't we love pleasure and love God at the same time?
00:00:38.100 | Pastor John, what would you say to Gabriel?
00:00:39.680 | It is about time that we get this question.
00:00:42.000 | I mean, we are Christian hedonists, and there's a text just crying out for attention.
00:00:47.020 | So let's put the text in front of us.
00:00:50.080 | Here's what he says, 2 Timothy 3, 1-5, "In the last days there will come times of difficulty.
00:00:55.900 | For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient
00:01:02.900 | to parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control,
00:01:09.700 | brutal, not loving, good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit," and here it comes,
00:01:16.060 | "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but
00:01:23.580 | denying the power."
00:01:25.380 | Avoid such people.
00:01:27.580 | Now Gabriel is certainly right to flag this text as something that needs special attention,
00:01:34.580 | especially from a Christian hedonist like me.
00:01:37.900 | Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
00:01:43.660 | Is this then not an indictment of Christian hedonism, which says we should pursue our
00:01:52.780 | fullest and lasting pleasure in God no matter what it costs?
00:01:58.860 | That's what I believe and have devoted my life to arguing for and trying to live.
00:02:04.820 | Gabriel wants to know, can't we pursue pleasure and God?
00:02:10.340 | Can't we love pleasure and God at the same time, which Paul seems to say, "No, you can't."
00:02:16.140 | So what we have to do with a text like this is not turn away from the text and start making
00:02:24.860 | up our own views about pleasure and about God, but stay with the text and let Paul tell
00:02:31.300 | us how he's using his words, namely the word "pleasure" and the word "God" in particular.
00:02:40.700 | Paul is clearly treating them as competitors for our affections, for our love.
00:02:49.540 | Loving pleasure rather than loving God.
00:02:53.340 | He's treating God as an object of our love, and he's treating pleasure as an object of
00:03:01.740 | our love.
00:03:02.740 | And when you think of them that way, pleasure is clearly being perceived as an idol, an
00:03:09.420 | alternative to loving God.
00:03:13.540 | That's the way Paul is setting it up.
00:03:16.140 | Paul is not asking the question whether, looked at another way, God might be our pleasure.
00:03:23.140 | He's not asking that.
00:03:24.380 | He's not talking about that.
00:03:26.460 | If God is our pleasure, then pleasure can't be in competition with God, but pleasure is
00:03:34.500 | virtually the same as our love for God.
00:03:37.660 | So Paul is using the word "pleasure" as an object of delight, not an act of delight.
00:03:48.580 | Mark that.
00:03:49.580 | That's so important to get our categories clear.
00:03:52.420 | He's treating the word "pleasure."
00:03:53.700 | He's treating the reality of pleasure as an object of our delighting, not the act of our
00:04:00.900 | delighting.
00:04:01.900 | If pleasure is an object of delight, something we delight in, then it competes with God,
00:04:09.540 | and we have to choose God above pleasure.
00:04:12.820 | But if pleasure is viewed not as the object of delight, but the act of delighting, then
00:04:20.500 | God can be the object of that delighting.
00:04:23.700 | He can be our delight, be our pleasure.
00:04:27.420 | And in that sense, pleasure and God would not be in competition at all.
00:04:32.560 | But that's not the way Paul is thinking here.
00:04:35.860 | Paul is thinking here of pleasure as a physical or psychological sensation that we crave more
00:04:45.980 | than we crave God.
00:04:48.360 | And in this sense, pleasure has to become an idol, and we must choose between pleasure
00:04:54.420 | and God.
00:04:55.740 | So let me tell two stories that illustrate what I think Paul is getting at.
00:05:01.820 | I remember—here's the first story—I remember over 20 years ago interviewing Sam Crabtree
00:05:09.540 | as an executive pastor candidate for Bethlehem.
00:05:13.820 | He's been at Bethlehem ever since.
00:05:16.300 | In the interview, he said something that made me love and admire him and his insight.
00:05:25.100 | We hired him.
00:05:26.100 | I love Sam.
00:05:27.100 | He's still wise.
00:05:30.600 | He said that he worries about some churches which in their worship services seem to be
00:05:38.220 | "loving, loving God more than loving God."
00:05:43.060 | Let me say it again, because it struck me—that's why I remembered all these years later—he
00:05:49.500 | was concerned that in some worship services people seem to be "loving, loving God more
00:05:57.860 | than loving God."
00:05:59.460 | So a person might say he's taking pleasure in God in worship, and that would be good,
00:06:07.060 | but he might slip over into taking more pleasure in the pleasure of taking pleasure in God
00:06:14.940 | than in really taking pleasure in God.
00:06:17.380 | And we all know this danger, right?
00:06:19.260 | We can slip into loving the emotional music, or slip into the emotional fellowship, or
00:06:24.140 | slip into the various physical and psychological sensations that attend a focus with God, while
00:06:31.100 | God himself slowly disappears.
00:06:35.620 | The beauty of his character and the beauty of his ways just drop out of our consciousness.
00:06:42.540 | That would be a religious form of the kind of thing Paul is concerned about here—loving
00:06:49.220 | pleasure rather than loving God.
00:06:52.180 | Now, here's the second story.
00:06:54.140 | It's an even more pointed illustration, I think.
00:06:58.100 | Soon after Noelle and I were married, I read a book about sex in marriage, and it made
00:07:04.740 | this amazing statement that I had not thought of before, but ever since have considered
00:07:11.420 | it just stock, beautiful, glorious, obvious wisdom.
00:07:16.140 | It said, "One kiss after sexual climax is worth a thousand kisses before sexual climax."
00:07:26.820 | Whoa!
00:07:27.820 | Now, why would that be?
00:07:30.420 | It's because all the kisses of foreplay are ambiguous.
00:07:36.820 | They might be owing to strong affections for your spouse as a cherished person, or you
00:07:46.980 | might have gotten so caught up in the love of pleasure, the sensations, that the kisses
00:07:55.000 | have no connection with the preciousness of the person and are only expressions of sexual
00:08:02.060 | abandon and sexual sensation.
00:08:05.300 | But after sexual climax, when there are no overpowering physical sensations carrying
00:08:14.460 | you, but only the preciousness of the relationship, then a tender, eye-to-eye, heartfelt kiss
00:08:25.800 | says, "You are more precious to me than all those sensations.
00:08:33.880 | And if I had to choose, I would choose you.
00:08:38.600 | You.
00:08:39.600 | You, Noelle.
00:08:41.220 | Not mainly the sexual sensations that you give me, but you are my cherished treasure."
00:08:48.280 | Now, that is, I think, what Paul is getting at in relation to God.
00:08:54.680 | Remember, it says—this is amazing—it says in verse 5 of 2 Timothy 3 that these people
00:09:02.000 | have an appearance of godliness while they are loving pleasure more than loving God.
00:09:10.700 | But in fact, they are being sustained not by the power of godliness, not by the power
00:09:17.120 | of the beauty of God's person and the preciousness of his fellowship; they're being sustained
00:09:23.960 | by the secondary pleasures of being part of the Christian community.
00:09:28.680 | So the answer to Gabriel's question is, you can't love pleasure and love God when
00:09:36.720 | pleasure is conceived as an alternative object of your affections luring you away from a
00:09:46.360 | superior delight in God.
00:09:48.800 | But you can pursue pleasure and pursue God at the same time if God himself is your pleasure.
00:10:00.040 | Amen.
00:10:01.080 | That is a good, clarifying word on this text.
00:10:03.600 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:05.160 | And thank you for joining us.
00:10:06.160 | If you have not subscribed to Ask Pastor John, consider doing so in your favorite podcast
00:10:09.800 | app in YouTube or in Spotify for our episode archive, or submit a question of your own,
00:10:14.680 | even a sharp question like Gabriel sent us today.
00:10:17.400 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:22.200 | Well can alcoholics anonymous help a Christian break their bondage to addiction?
00:10:28.120 | Well it has in the life of one listener named Tanya.
00:10:31.080 | So what role can social programs play in really helping to bring genuine change to the Christian
00:10:35.840 | life?
00:10:36.840 | That's the question up next time.
00:10:38.240 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:10:39.240 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:10:41.040 | Have a great weekend.
00:10:42.280 | [END]
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00:10:44.780 | 2.
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00:10:46.780 | 3.
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00:10:47.780 | [BLANK_AUDIO]