Did Paul and Moses Prioritize Mission over Joy in God?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, both Paul and Moses said that they would rather be personally damned in
00:00:09.000 | order for others to be saved by way of a trade. So doesn't this imply that their
00:00:13.720 | vision of mission was higher in their priority list than their personal and
00:00:18.000 | eternal joy in the presence of God? In other words, didn't Paul and Moses
00:00:21.760 | prioritize mission over joy in God? It's a great question and it comes from Josiah
00:00:27.600 | in Michigan. "Dear Pastor John, when I first heard of Christian hedonism I was
00:00:31.360 | put off. I recognized that with God the concept of altruism breaks down, but I
00:00:36.760 | still considered it virtuous for the biblical examples of Moses and Paul.
00:00:39.960 | Moses, while trying to make atonement for the sins of the Israelites, the golden
00:00:43.960 | calf, offers to God the option of blotting himself from the book of
00:00:48.160 | salvation rather than fully punishing the people." That's in Exodus 32. 32. "And the
00:00:53.680 | Apostle Paul said he wished he were accursed and cut off from Christ for the
00:00:57.840 | sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, the unbelieving Jews." That in
00:01:02.840 | Romans 9.3. "As I work through your book Desiring God, I have become more fond of
00:01:07.680 | the theology but still don't see how it works with the above two passages which
00:01:12.200 | seem altruistic. My question is how could a Christian hedonist with a properly
00:01:17.800 | ordered mind accept eternal separation from his greatest delight for the sake
00:01:24.120 | of achieving some other end? Aren't Paul or Moses suggesting a personal end in
00:01:29.720 | which the salvation of the lost, not God himself, is their highest concern?" No, I
00:01:38.040 | don't think that is what Paul and Moses are suggesting, namely that the salvation
00:01:45.000 | of the lost has a higher value to them than the glory of God. I don't think so.
00:01:51.080 | Let me deal directly with Paul and his words in Romans 9.2 and 3 since I
00:01:58.560 | think they are more difficult than the words of Moses in Exodus because they
00:02:06.240 | have a direct reference to damnation, not just death. Paul is talking about his
00:02:14.720 | love for his Jewish kinsmen and says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
00:02:19.840 | in my heart, for I could wish," we'll come back to that wording, it's very important,
00:02:24.840 | "I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of
00:02:31.840 | my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh." Here's the problem. Christian
00:02:37.200 | hedonism, my view of the Christian life, says that we ought to aim at maximizing
00:02:47.240 | our eternal joy in God in everything we do. In God is our supreme treasure, our
00:02:54.160 | supreme value, and we should seek this eternal joy in God's presence even if it
00:03:02.240 | means selling all that we have, giving it to the poor, being persecuted for
00:03:07.040 | righteousness sake, returning good for evil in this life with no hope of any
00:03:12.880 | reward in this life for all the good that we do, and finally dying through
00:03:17.080 | torture or nameless in a strange foreign land. Yes, whatever it costs, we're going
00:03:24.400 | to pursue our joy in God maximally forever. And in Romans 9.3, Paul expresses
00:03:30.440 | his willingness, it seems, to be damned for the sake of his Jewish loved ones. He
00:03:36.720 | says, "I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the
00:03:43.040 | sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh." And the ESV
00:03:47.160 | translation of the imperfect Greek tense of the verb "could wish," "I could wish," and
00:03:55.720 | that tense implies incomplete action, which I think is a very good translation
00:04:04.560 | here. "I could wish" implies that something is standing in the way of Paul carrying
00:04:12.640 | through this wish, and the action is still in process and can't get through.
00:04:20.640 | "I could wish," namely, his willingness to be cut off from Christ. It's hindered and
00:04:26.760 | can't be carried through. Indeed, it can't. God is not the kind of God that damns a
00:04:33.440 | man for loving God's reputation and lost people. So being damned because you are
00:04:40.920 | supremely loving is not going to happen. That's not the universe that God created
00:04:46.280 | and runs. Here's the problem. The problem is Paul's apparent willingness that if he
00:04:55.680 | lived in a universe like that, he would be willing to be cursed and cut off from
00:05:01.040 | Christ. And so the question is, is that acting as a Christian hedonist? Is his
00:05:06.840 | heart responding like a Christian hedonist? So let me try to put myself—this
00:05:11.920 | is what I've done—to try to be as honest with myself and my theology as I
00:05:16.400 | can be, I try to put myself in Paul's place. So here we go. I'm going to imagine
00:05:21.000 | myself before God in this situation. Suppose I were standing before
00:05:27.040 | the Lord with my wife, whom I love very much more than anybody else on the
00:05:31.880 | planet, and suppose God says to me, "One of you may enter heaven to be with me
00:05:41.040 | forever. Only one. And the other to hell. And John, you choose. You choose which it
00:05:51.600 | will be, yourself or your wife, Noelle." Now, this is a very dangerous hypothetical
00:05:58.320 | situation to imagine, because it will never exist, the Lord does not put us in
00:06:06.680 | that situation. It would be virtually blasphemous for him to be putting us in
00:06:11.280 | that situation, and he does not send any person to hell who values him so highly
00:06:17.080 | and loves others so deeply as to put their fellowship with Christ above his
00:06:21.440 | own. But even though this hypothetical situation is dangerous, Paul seems to go
00:06:28.040 | there. He is doing this to make it as clear as he can to his Jewish kinsmen
00:06:35.000 | how much he loves them and wants their eternal good. So I've tried to be as
00:06:39.760 | honest as I can be in answering the Lord's question, "You or your wife, which
00:06:45.640 | will it be, Mr. Christian Hedonist?" And I believe my answer would be, I hope and
00:06:51.000 | pray my answer would be, "Let her into heaven." As I have tried to get inside my
00:07:00.040 | head at that moment, imagine what would go through my mind. It would go something
00:07:06.280 | like this. If I say, "Let her go to hell and let me enter heaven," everything in me
00:07:15.520 | as a lover of Jesus and all that God is for me in Jesus, everything in me would
00:07:23.280 | want to curl up in a ball and groan and scream and chew my hands with shame.
00:07:32.360 | Everything in me would want to run away and hide from the face of the Lord. There
00:07:39.520 | are no dreams of everlasting joy. No, no, no, no. There would only be everlasting
00:07:46.040 | shame for John Piper. This is not heaven. This is no sweet communion with Christ
00:07:52.720 | forever and ever. This is moral horror to live with myself with that. Not only that,
00:08:01.240 | but when I ponder, on the other hand, the possibility of seeing Noel absolutely,
00:08:08.480 | utterly, sinlessly whole, never again to feel pain or depression or sorrow, but
00:08:17.760 | only breathtaking happiness and radiance in the presence of Christ greater than
00:08:24.880 | she has ever known, everything in me says, "That would be a glorious sight. Oh, how I
00:08:34.000 | would love to see that sight. That sight would make my soul explode with
00:08:41.480 | gladness." In other words, if I chose for Noel to be damned, heaven would be hell
00:08:50.800 | for me, and if I chose for her to be saved, my hell-bound heart would sing in
00:08:58.180 | the flames. Heaven's joy of love would be with me in hell, which means that heaven
00:09:06.520 | would not be heaven, and hell would not be hell. It is impossible that heaven be
00:09:13.800 | filled with hellish shame, and that hell be filled with heaven's joy, and I
00:09:20.080 | suspect that precisely this impossibility is why Paul wrote Romans 9:3 with the
00:09:28.160 | exact wording that he did. "I could wish." He thought it through. "I could wish that I
00:09:37.320 | myself were accursed and cut off from Christ," or literally, "I was wishing, but
00:09:44.400 | the impossibility of the hypothetical situation made the wish unfulfillable."
00:09:49.520 | The wish cannot be carried through in a world where the God of the Bible exists.
00:09:55.240 | So the upshot seems to be this, it's kind of surprising. Paul's willingness to be
00:10:01.120 | cut off from Christ for the sake of his Jewish kinsmen, like my willingness to
00:10:05.680 | be cut off from Christ for my wife's salvation, is rooted precisely in the
00:10:12.600 | commitments of Christian hedonism. I shrink back from the heaven of moral
00:10:19.000 | horror where I would experience eternal shame, and I embrace hell where my
00:10:27.280 | conscience is clear and the joy of my wife's salvation makes me glad. In fact, I
00:10:33.560 | would argue that it is precisely the impulses of Christian hedonism that make
00:10:38.680 | Romans 9:3 work the way it does. Christian hedonism believes passionately
00:10:44.680 | the words of the Lord Jesus that when we face a painful sacrifice of love, we
00:10:49.800 | should remember it is more blessed to give than to receive. That's what was
00:10:53.640 | happening at that moment, remembering that, imagining that, tasting that.
00:10:57.760 | Christian hedonism shrinks back with loathing from the selfishness that kills
00:11:04.200 | that blessedness. Therefore, Christian hedonism drives Paul to flee from the
00:11:11.000 | remorse and self-loathing and horrors of conscience and divine disapproval that
00:11:17.480 | would come to him if he chose his own rescue over the rescue of his kinsmen. So
00:11:23.400 | my conclusion is, Romans 9:3 is not the Achilles heel of Christian hedonism.
00:11:30.960 | Christian hedonism is the key to Romans 9:3. Incredibly sobering thoughts here,
00:11:37.720 | Pastor John, thank you. And thanks for sending in your toughest Bible questions,
00:11:41.640 | especially as they relate to joy. We really appreciate them. Well, at our
00:11:45.820 | online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn, you can explore all
00:11:50.240 | 1,200 plus of our episodes to date. You can scan a list of our most popular
00:11:54.680 | episodes, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And of
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00:12:02.040 | the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, does God want
00:12:06.440 | me to be happy, or does God want me to be holy? It seems by mentions in Scripture
00:12:12.320 | that God is more concerned with our holiness over our happiness. So how do
00:12:17.400 | happiness and holiness relate? It's an incredibly vital question, and it's on
00:12:22.040 | the table next time. I'm your host Tony Ranke. We'll see you back here on
00:12:24.880 | Wednesday.
00:12:27.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]