Was Jesus a Christian Hedonist?

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00:00:12.560 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Today we close out

00:00:15.920 | the week with a question from a longtime listener named Chris. Chris writes in

00:00:18.880 | Simply to Ask This. "Pastor John, is Jesus a Christian

00:00:23.600 | hedonist, and if so, what would be your primary proofs

00:00:27.120 | from Scripture?" Well, he asks quite simply, and I answer

00:00:31.520 | quite simply, yes, without the slightest hesitation.

00:00:36.960 | Jesus lived to glorify his Father

00:00:41.840 | by enjoying him as the sustaining power in all his suffering, and by

00:00:50.000 | seeking to enjoy him forever on the other side of the greatest suffering,

00:00:55.520 | and by means of the greatest suffering. So that's what I mean

00:00:59.440 | by being a Christian hedonist, and to boot, he taught us to be motivated in the

00:01:05.920 | same way. So here are some of the texts

00:01:10.560 | to consider. In his final great high priestly prayer, John 17, he says,

00:01:17.680 | "Father, I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work you gave me

00:01:21.680 | to do. Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory

00:01:27.280 | that I had with you before the world existed."

00:01:30.400 | So he was pursuing this restoration of the fullness of glory

00:01:37.600 | and joy in his Father's presence, and then he prays for us that we will

00:01:43.680 | become part of it. In verse 24, "Father, I desire

00:01:48.480 | that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see

00:01:54.160 | my glory that you have given me before, because you love me before the

00:01:58.240 | foundation of the world." That's what Jesus was

00:02:02.560 | referring to, I think, when he said that one day we would

00:02:08.400 | enter into the joy of our Master. His consummated joy with the Father

00:02:16.080 | would one day be ours. That's what he was pursuing, and that's

00:02:20.880 | what he wants us to pursue. And we see this confirmed

00:02:25.440 | explicitly in Hebrews 12.2. We are to,

00:02:29.920 | it says, "Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who

00:02:36.960 | for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,

00:02:44.080 | is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." That was the power that

00:02:48.400 | brought Jesus through his suffering, the joy

00:02:51.920 | that was set before him. It's not a defective motive to be sustained

00:02:59.520 | by the hope of joy on the other side of, and as a result of, your obedience in

00:03:07.280 | suffering. That's not a defective motive. To call it defective, like so many

00:03:12.720 | philosophers have, is to indict the Lord Jesus with

00:03:17.280 | defect. And then he told us to make

00:03:23.280 | this joy in God our top priority. That's what the command to love God

00:03:30.240 | with all the heart means. We don't enrich God with our heart

00:03:34.560 | when we love God with all our heart. Our hearts are enriched by him. That's

00:03:39.280 | what loving God with all the heart means. He becomes our supreme treasure. So when

00:03:45.120 | Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God

00:03:50.080 | with all your heart," he means find God to be your heart's

00:03:58.000 | total satisfaction. What else could he mean?

00:04:01.680 | Find his beauty and his glory and justice, his goodness,

00:04:05.760 | his truth, everything there is about him. Find that to be

00:04:09.920 | your heart's treasure. That's what love God with all the heart

00:04:15.200 | means. And then he underlines this when he says in Luke 10 20,

00:04:20.000 | "Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you."

00:04:23.760 | So the disciples had just come back, and God had used them to cast out

00:04:27.680 | demons and set people free, and they were thrilled at the power God had given them.

00:04:32.560 | And Jesus says, "Don't rejoice in this, that

00:04:36.320 | spirits are subject to you. Rejoice that your names are written in

00:04:41.360 | heaven." In other words, beware of even having ministry triumphs

00:04:49.280 | as a competing joy in your heart alongside your joy of being there

00:04:56.400 | with God in heaven. Make God your supreme

00:05:01.040 | joy even higher than the joy of ministry joys,

00:05:05.040 | indeed the basis of all ministry joys. And then to underline this, he warned

00:05:12.320 | us against a kind of self-pity when we make sacrifices for him.

00:05:20.320 | I just remember when I first saw this years ago, where he had just got done

00:05:25.200 | sending the rich young ruler away and saying how hard it is

00:05:28.720 | to enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter pipes up

00:05:32.240 | and says, "See, we have left everything and followed you."

00:05:39.600 | In other words, we've kind of made some sacrifices here, Jesus, so

00:05:44.000 | we're not in that category. And Jesus' response to him is amazing,

00:05:48.480 | and I wish I could hear his tone of voice, you know, like, "Come on, Peter."

00:05:52.080 | I'm not sure what his tone of voice was, but here's what he said.

00:05:55.520 | Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or

00:06:02.160 | brothers or sister or mother or father or children

00:06:06.480 | or lands for my sake and the gospel's who will not receive back

00:06:10.880 | a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and

00:06:16.560 | children and lands, yes, with persecutions and in the age to

00:06:20.400 | come, eternal life." Now, what's the point of that? The point

00:06:26.240 | is, Peter, come on, Peter, do you think, do you really think

00:06:32.560 | that in making the sacrifices you have made, you struck some kind of bad deal

00:06:37.760 | that should cause you to have any element of self-pity at all? You've

00:06:42.720 | exchanged one house for hundreds, you've exchanged one life for eternal

00:06:47.680 | ages of life. Now, that's pure Christian hedonism in telling Peter,

00:06:54.880 | "Stop feeling sorry for yourself in following me in spite of all the

00:06:59.280 | suffering that it's going to cost you." And then finally, I would say,

00:07:04.720 | Jesus motivates us over and over

00:07:09.280 | by appealing to the joy that comes to those who treasure Jesus enough to

00:07:15.520 | suffer loss in this world for the greater joy that is

00:07:19.840 | is set before him. Just listen to these and see whether or not this is not

00:07:24.400 | pure Christian hedonistic motivation when Jesus talks like this.

00:07:28.800 | Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies and do good and lend,

00:07:35.200 | expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." In other

00:07:41.840 | words, in this life, don't expect anything back. You're just

00:07:45.120 | going to have trouble in this life, but oh, will your reward be great. So press on

00:07:49.920 | in loving your enemies because your joy is going to be

00:07:52.880 | full along this path and at the end of this path especially.

00:07:57.280 | Or Luke 14, 13, "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame,

00:08:03.360 | the blind, and you will be blessed because they

00:08:07.040 | cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."

00:08:14.880 | So how's he motivating us to love the poor?

00:08:18.000 | He's motivating us to love the poor because

00:08:21.040 | our joy at the end of the line, no matter what it's cost us in this life, is going

00:08:25.120 | to be overflowing. And if we love the poor, well, maybe we'll

00:08:29.360 | be able to take some of them with us as we go, which is why this is

00:08:33.040 | not mercenary to be motivated this way. And then he says in Matthew 6, 19,

00:08:39.120 | "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and

00:08:42.960 | where thieves break in and steal." In other words, that's a stupid way to

00:08:46.720 | invest in your life. "Rather," verse 20, "lay up for yourselves

00:08:51.840 | treasures in heaven." Be rich in heaven. Try to be rich

00:08:55.680 | there, "where neither moth nor rust destroys nor thieves break in

00:09:00.320 | and steal." How do you do that? How do you lay up for yourselves treasures in

00:09:04.160 | heaven? Luke 12, 33, "Sell your possessions,

00:09:09.040 | give to the needy, and thus provide yourselves with money

00:09:13.680 | bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does

00:09:17.040 | not fail, where no thief approaches, no moth destroys."

00:09:21.760 | So, clearly, we're to make big sacrifices in this world, which proved to be no

00:09:27.040 | sacrifice at all, because it's investment in our

00:09:30.080 | treasures going bigger and bigger and bigger

00:09:32.320 | in the age to come. And then the most familiar statement of all, perhaps,

00:09:38.560 | from Acts 20, 35, one of the few quotes from Jesus

00:09:42.000 | outside the Gospels, "It is more blessed, more satisfying, more happy,

00:09:49.360 | more contentment producing when you lay your head down on the pillow at night." It

00:09:52.960 | is more blessed to give than to receive. So that's pure

00:09:58.320 | Christian hedonism. So my answer is yes, Jesus was a Christian hedonist. He is

00:10:04.720 | today a Christian hedonist, I would argue. That could be another

00:10:08.160 | another APJ. The best one ever, Jesus was the best

00:10:14.240 | Christian hedonist who ever existed, both in his own motivation

00:10:18.480 | and in his teaching about motivation. He lived for the glory of his Father

00:10:24.880 | by being satisfied in his Father in living

00:10:28.160 | and dying. He was sustained by the joy in this life that he had with his

00:10:34.880 | Father, would have with his Father in full, and he sought the fullness of

00:10:39.440 | pain-free joy on the other side of the cross, and that's what got him

00:10:44.400 | through. And in all of this, he taught us, he taught us how to live and how to

00:10:50.480 | suffer for the joy that is set before us in

00:10:54.320 | God. Man, did he ever. Thank you, Pastor John,

00:10:57.840 | and thank you for the question. Chris, please email your questions to us

00:11:02.160 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Thank you for making the podcast a part

00:11:07.040 | of your day. You can find our audio feeds in our

00:11:10.080 | episode archive, and you can reach us through email

00:11:12.320 | all through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:11:15.760 | So what does it mean to pray the Bible? What is that ancient

00:11:22.800 | practice? What does it look like, and what does it look like for us today? We

00:11:26.080 | have a question queued up on this on Monday, and Pastor John will explain, and

00:11:29.520 | not only will he explain, he'll also model this for us on air as well.

00:11:33.840 | I'm your host Tony Reggie. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on

00:11:36.720 | Monday.

00:11:40.160 | you

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Was Jesus a Christian Hedonist?

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