back to indexIsn’t God Most Glorified in Me When I Am Most Self-Giving?
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Well, the place of our loving sacrifice in relationship to our delight in God is a point 00:00:10.160 |
of constant discussion when it comes to Christian hedonism. 00:00:14.220 |
So what glorifies God more, our self-sacrifice or our delight in God? 00:00:20.200 |
The question today comes from a listener named Kobe. 00:00:25.360 |
My question is why you emphasize our joy in God as more vital to what most glorifies 00:00:34.440 |
The greatest commandment is love, which sums up the whole law. 00:00:40.520 |
God is not joy, not in the same way as he is love. 00:00:46.160 |
Isn't it better to say God is most glorified in us when we are most self-giving and loving 00:00:53.680 |
I think I would respond by asking this question. 00:00:57.840 |
Which is more vital to a rainbow, colors or light? 00:01:04.620 |
Now, if you would have a hard time answering that question, maybe you would see why I would 00:01:12.840 |
have a hard time answering the question, "Which is more vital to glorifying God, love for 00:01:23.600 |
So let me see if I can unpack this illustration of the rainbow and then point to some biblical 00:01:31.760 |
passages that might shed light on what I'm trying to say. 00:01:36.500 |
I'm picturing a rainbow as the event of God being glorified, and I'm suggesting that the 00:01:45.120 |
colors of the rainbow correspond to loving God. 00:01:52.520 |
And I would go so far as to say that the colors in the spectrum of the rainbow—red, orange, 00:01:58.400 |
yellow, green, blue, violet—correspond to acts of the human heart which would constitute 00:02:06.220 |
loving God, like admiration, adoration, submission, treasuring him, desiring to please him, desiring 00:02:22.680 |
All of those acts of the heart, which are all more basic and more vital than any external 00:02:29.480 |
movements of the muscles or the body, all those acts of the heart are all what love 00:02:39.600 |
If we love him, we admire him and adore him and submit to him and treasure him and desire 00:02:50.800 |
Then in the analogy, I compare joy in God, not to the rainbow with its spectrum of colors, 00:03:05.440 |
Light is essential—we could use the word "vital" to use Kobe's word—light is essential, 00:03:15.520 |
is vital to all those colors and thus to the rainbow itself. 00:03:37.100 |
No joy in God, no desire to please him or be near him in a way that would honor him. 00:03:45.200 |
So I can't play off love for God and joy in God, because joy in God is what makes love 00:04:01.360 |
In other words, what I'm trying to do in Christian hedonism, which is what I call this 00:04:08.360 |
vision of reality that Kobe's asking about, what I'm trying to do in Christian hedonism 00:04:28.920 |
And I suspect that many people try to fill up the word, or they just default to filling 00:04:36.480 |
up the word love with meanings that are not biblical. 00:04:42.720 |
What does it mean when Jesus says to love God with all your heart, which is deeper than 00:04:50.800 |
all your mind, deeper than all your strength, deeper than all your soul, because it's the 00:04:57.480 |
affectional animating center of the soul or the person. 00:05:02.140 |
And I think a lot of people answer this question by defaulting to something like John 14, 15, 00:05:08.840 |
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments," and misread it by saying that love consists 00:05:18.480 |
in self-sacrificing bodily activity of commandment keeping. 00:05:23.360 |
Because he said, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments," which is emphatically 00:05:30.900 |
He distinguishes love for himself and commandment keeping. 00:05:36.840 |
He says, "If you love me, then you will keep my commandments." 00:05:51.800 |
Does not say love is keeping the commandments. 00:05:55.800 |
It says love is one thing, and if you do it, if you have it, then the commandment keeping 00:06:03.540 |
There's something prior, something internal, something massive and deep and distinctive. 00:06:11.040 |
When I read the Bible words, "Delight yourself in the Lord," Psalm 37, 4, "Be glad in the 00:06:18.300 |
Lord," Psalm 32, 11, "Rejoice in the Lord," Philippians 3, 1. 00:06:23.840 |
I hear God calling me, calling for a heart response to him that is essential to all other 00:06:38.240 |
In other words, if you try to pick out a kind of heart response to God and call it love, 00:06:45.200 |
like admiration or adoration or submission or treasuring or desiring, none of those would 00:06:53.440 |
be authentic or God-exalting if delight in the Lord and gladness in the Lord and rejoicing 00:07:08.660 |
See what happens to adoration and admiration and submission and treasuring and desiring. 00:07:14.820 |
If you try to conceive of them in a heart that does not find God himself delightful 00:07:27.340 |
So my answer to the first half of Kobe's question, "Why does Piper emphasize joy in God as more 00:07:37.700 |
vital to what most glorifies God than love for God?" 00:07:44.940 |
My answer is, I don't play them off against each other because they are not two different 00:07:53.740 |
Loving God is the magnificent spectrum-laden rainbow that glorifies God, and the light 00:08:01.860 |
of joy in God is what makes the rainbow the rainbow. 00:08:07.060 |
So when David says, King David in the Old Testament, when he says in Psalm 40, verse 00:08:12.980 |
16, "May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. 00:08:19.820 |
May those who love your salvation say continually, 'Great is the Lord.'" 00:08:26.100 |
He is showing that rejoicing in God and being glad in God is at the essence of what loving 00:08:39.900 |
Now we don't have time to adequately answer Kobe's second question, namely, "Why does 00:08:45.260 |
Piper think that joy in God is more vital to glorifying God than loving people?" 00:08:52.140 |
After all, Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before others so that they may see your 00:08:57.220 |
good works," and those are clearly works towards people, love towards people, "that they may 00:09:02.220 |
see your loving good works towards people, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. 00:09:08.180 |
Oh, that we might all do more loving acts towards people that God might get glory. 00:09:16.260 |
Now my answer to that question that he just asked is basically the same as my answer to 00:09:29.260 |
There are many good works that do not please or glorify God. 00:09:34.220 |
Hypocritical good works, selfish good works, self-exalting good works, all kinds of good 00:09:40.780 |
works that do good for people that are sinful, don't have any God in them at all. 00:09:47.340 |
Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, I'm nothing. 00:09:51.660 |
Give away all I have to feed the poor and have not love, I'm nothing. 00:09:54.740 |
There are lots of good works that don't honor God. 00:10:02.180 |
And if I had time, I would argue, especially from texts like 2 Corinthians 8.2 and 9.7 00:10:10.860 |
and Romans 8.12 and Hebrews 13.17 and Micah 6.8, that—I would argue this—that God-exalting 00:10:19.420 |
love for people is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others. 00:10:28.980 |
So it would be wrong to think in terms of joy in God being more or less glorifying toward 00:10:36.620 |
God than love to people is glorifying toward God, because there is no such thing as authentic 00:10:46.540 |
God-honoring love for people without joy in God. 00:10:55.040 |
So bottom line, in my Christian hedonism, delighting in God, being glad in God, rejoicing 00:11:03.380 |
in God, being satisfied in God, all those biblical categories are not alternatives to 00:11:14.540 |
They are what makes love for God and love for people authentic, God-honoring. 00:11:22.420 |
So many great texts here to study in this discussion. 00:11:27.100 |
I would encourage you, if you mainly listen to this podcast in audio form or if you listen 00:11:31.660 |
through YouTube, when there's an episode like this one with a lot of key texts, you 00:11:35.420 |
can go to DesiringGod.org and find the full transcript of what was just said, and there 00:11:40.540 |
you can spend more time carefully studying and meditating through the texts that Pastor 00:11:48.860 |
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Well speaking of key scripture passages, is my body my friend or is my body my foe? 00:12:22.140 |
It's a question we must ask and it's a question we can answer with scripture. 00:12:27.620 |
And the question is up next on Monday when we return. 00:12:31.940 |
Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor, John