Does God Want Me to Be Happy or Holy?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, does God want me to be happy or does God want me to be holy?
00:00:08.000 | Which is the priority? Such a question is really, really important
00:00:12.000 | to address. This time it comes in the form of an email from a listener named Megan.
00:00:16.000 | Megan writes, "Hello Pastor John, I'm with you when you say that Christian hedonism says
00:00:20.000 | my happiness is not at odds with God's will for me. But what about the dark
00:00:24.000 | seasons of trials? In those seasons it seems my happiness
00:00:28.000 | is not as significant as God's intent to grow my holiness.
00:00:32.000 | How would you describe the pains of trials in light of Christian hedonism
00:00:36.000 | and God's desire for my joy?"
00:00:40.000 | If human life, apart from Christ and salvation,
00:00:44.000 | consisted in zero happiness,
00:00:48.000 | and God's goal were to bring us from the condition
00:00:52.000 | of zero happiness to great happiness in God,
00:00:56.000 | I suspect God would not need to
00:01:00.000 | introduce any hardship into our lives, any discipline,
00:01:04.000 | in order to bring us to the experience
00:01:08.000 | of supreme happiness in Him. But that's not
00:01:12.000 | the real world. Human life, apart from Christ
00:01:16.000 | and salvation, does not consist in zero
00:01:20.000 | happiness. It consists in a thousand experiences
00:01:24.000 | of God-less happiness. When Peter
00:01:28.000 | describes the pre-Christian life among the Gentiles
00:01:32.000 | in his day, he says it consists in sensuality,
00:01:36.000 | passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties,
00:01:40.000 | and lawless idolatry. In other words, the world outside
00:01:44.000 | Christ abounds with what Hebrews 11:25
00:01:48.000 | calls "the fleeting pleasures of sin."
00:01:52.000 | So when God saves us and brings us
00:01:56.000 | into relationship with Christ and declares us
00:02:00.000 | righteous, justifies us in union with Him
00:02:04.000 | through faith, He's not working with
00:02:08.000 | people who have zero happiness and need
00:02:12.000 | to be given some. He's working with a person, with people
00:02:16.000 | who have a thousand experiences of pleasure and happiness that are
00:02:20.000 | not rooted in God, do not flow from a sight of God's
00:02:24.000 | glory, are not abounding with thanksgiving to God for His goodness,
00:02:28.000 | do not reflect the character of God and His holiness,
00:02:32.000 | which means—this is amazing, I never thought of it
00:02:36.000 | quite this way before—which means that through
00:02:40.000 | conversion, God now has in
00:02:44.000 | His family, in His house, children who
00:02:48.000 | are deeply contaminated, all of us
00:02:52.000 | deeply contaminated with the world from which He is
00:02:56.000 | saving us because we still find
00:03:00.000 | so much pleasure outside God and His ways
00:03:04.000 | and His will. So Ephesians 4.22 says,
00:03:08.000 | "Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life,
00:03:12.000 | and is corrupt through deceitful
00:03:16.000 | desires." In other words, the process of
00:03:20.000 | sanctification, the process of becoming holy
00:03:24.000 | is the process of ceasing to have
00:03:28.000 | sinful desires and growing
00:03:32.000 | in our enjoyment of holy desires.
00:03:36.000 | Or, to put it another way, holiness is the
00:03:40.000 | newness of the human heart that no longer
00:03:44.000 | finds sin and self more desirable
00:03:48.000 | than God and goodness. To become holy,
00:03:52.000 | to be sanctified, is not
00:03:56.000 | something different than becoming happy
00:04:00.000 | in God. Sanctification
00:04:04.000 | is precisely the divine work
00:04:08.000 | by which we are weaned off the
00:04:12.000 | pleasures of the world onto the pleasures of God.
00:04:16.000 | So when Megan says—this is important—
00:04:20.000 | when Megan says, "In these seasons of
00:04:24.000 | darkness and hardship, it seems my happiness
00:04:28.000 | is not as significant as God's intent
00:04:32.000 | to grow my holiness,"
00:04:36.000 | this shows a serious confusion
00:04:40.000 | about what holiness is. She is
00:04:44.000 | treating holiness as one thing
00:04:48.000 | and her happiness as another thing.
00:04:52.000 | She's treating holiness as
00:04:56.000 | one thing which God pursues through dark seasons,
00:05:00.000 | and that's exactly right, and she is treating happiness as a
00:05:04.000 | separate thing which God seems to be neglecting in those seasons
00:05:08.000 | of darkness. That's not the way the Bible sees holiness
00:05:12.000 | and happiness. Holiness—now, this is the most
00:05:16.000 | important sentence—holiness is the condition
00:05:20.000 | of heart in which God is our
00:05:24.000 | greatest happiness. That's holiness. The unholy
00:05:28.000 | heart is the heart that finds
00:05:32.000 | God boring or offensive
00:05:36.000 | or false. The holy heart sees God as its
00:05:40.000 | supreme treasure and is supremely satisfied in God, and when we're
00:05:44.000 | perfectly holy, we will have perfect satisfaction
00:05:48.000 | someday in heaven. So, when
00:05:52.000 | Hebrews 12 describes the discipline of God
00:05:56.000 | toward his children—like she conceives it, she's right—the aim
00:06:00.000 | is to make them holy, and it says, "God disciplines
00:06:04.000 | us"—this is verse 11—"God disciplines us for our good
00:06:08.000 | that we may share his holiness.
00:06:12.000 | For the moment, all discipline seems painful
00:06:16.000 | rather than pleasant,
00:06:20.000 | but later it yields the
00:06:24.000 | peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who
00:06:28.000 | have been trained by it." Now, notice a couple things. The holiness
00:06:32.000 | he is pursuing through this discipline is a
00:06:36.000 | peaceful fruit. That means a sweet,
00:06:40.000 | restful, pleasant fruit. That's
00:06:44.000 | the goal. And when he says the discipline seems
00:06:48.000 | painful rather than pleasant, he's
00:06:52.000 | not suggesting that the discipline doesn't hurt. It wouldn't be
00:06:56.000 | disciplined if the spanking didn't hurt. He's pointing
00:07:00.000 | to the fact that the outcome really
00:07:04.000 | is pleasant and not painful.
00:07:08.000 | That's the goal. The goal of holiness is supreme
00:07:12.000 | pleasure in God that breaks the back of all the
00:07:16.000 | fleeting pleasures of sin, severs the root of all
00:07:20.000 | those other pleasures so they lose their power and they don't control us
00:07:24.000 | anymore, and we walk in sweet obedience to Jesus because
00:07:28.000 | he has come to satisfy our hearts, which is why James
00:07:32.000 | says, "Count it all joy, brothers,
00:07:36.000 | when you meet various trials," because you know that the testing of your faith
00:07:40.000 | produces steadfastness, and why Paul says
00:07:44.000 | we rejoice in our sufferings. Why?
00:07:48.000 | Knowing that the suffering produces endurance, and the endurance produces
00:07:52.000 | character, and character produces hope, which is of joyful
00:07:56.000 | motion. So, my answer to Megan's final question—here's
00:08:00.000 | her final question—how would you describe the pain of
00:08:04.000 | trials in light of Christian hedonism
00:08:08.000 | and God's desire for my joy? And here's my answer.
00:08:12.000 | That the pain of all the
00:08:16.000 | trials in the life of God's children is indeed
00:08:20.000 | aimed at their holiness. Yes, that's true,
00:08:24.000 | because holiness consists precisely in
00:08:28.000 | the heart's forsaking the fleeting pleasures
00:08:32.000 | of sin and growing in the enjoyment of the
00:08:36.000 | permanent pleasures of God. That's what sanctification
00:08:40.000 | is. That's what God is doing in the hard seasons.
00:08:44.000 | And the reason God puts such a high premium on the pleasures
00:08:48.000 | that we have in God, even at the cost of great
00:08:52.000 | pain to us in the dark seasons of our life, is that no
00:08:56.000 | other pleasures can satisfy us eternally, and
00:09:00.000 | no other pleasures can glorify God forever.
00:09:04.000 | Amen. Amen. Sanctification is the divine work by
00:09:08.000 | which we are weaned off the pleasures of the world
00:09:12.000 | and onto the pleasures of God.
00:09:16.000 | Such a great and important line. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening
00:09:20.000 | at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
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00:09:36.000 | podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, I'm your host
00:09:40.000 | Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Friday with something. I'm not quite sure what
00:09:44.000 | it is, but we'll be back, and we'll see you then. Thanks for listening and sending in those
00:09:48.000 | great questions. Keep them coming. We'll see you next time.
00:09:52.000 | (end)
00:09:56.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]