What’s the Goal of Our Union with Christ?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:07.840 | We talked about sonship with Dr. Don Carson last Friday.
00:00:12.000 | And Pastor John, a lot of people emphasize
00:00:14.920 | who we are in Christ as an important way
00:00:17.680 | to help us overcome our personal discouragements
00:00:20.080 | and triumph over personal sin struggles
00:00:22.560 | and to walk in fullness of joy, of course.
00:00:25.200 | But in your ministry over the years,
00:00:26.440 | you seem to strike a different note.
00:00:28.560 | You talk about God being the gospel
00:00:31.640 | or about enjoying God as our ultimate happiness.
00:00:35.200 | So how do you work with these two categories
00:00:37.760 | of number one, our identity in Christ,
00:00:40.840 | and number two, our enjoyment of God himself?
00:00:44.080 | How do you balance those two?
00:00:45.720 | - It is true and a great truth
00:00:50.320 | that we are, that who we are in Christ
00:00:55.640 | is often the motif of counselors
00:01:00.640 | to help liberate people.
00:01:02.560 | I think that's great, to help liberate people
00:01:05.680 | who are stuck in bondage to sin and depression
00:01:09.920 | and dysfunctional relationships and we wanna help them.
00:01:13.040 | Do you know who you are in Christ?
00:01:16.340 | I think that's great as far as it goes.
00:01:19.500 | We are perfect in Christ.
00:01:21.780 | We are loved in Christ.
00:01:24.080 | We are accepted in Christ.
00:01:27.120 | We are, yes, enjoyed by God in Christ.
00:01:32.120 | And by God's spirit, we are becoming in practice,
00:01:37.440 | in reality, what we are in principle in Christ,
00:01:41.680 | more and more beautiful, like Christ.
00:01:45.840 | I don't wanna underplay those unspeakable truths at all.
00:01:50.760 | The question for me is,
00:01:53.480 | is that the ultimate goal of our salvation?
00:01:58.000 | And the answer, I think, is no.
00:02:01.280 | Those things are true of us so that we may be freed
00:02:06.280 | from the despair of damnation
00:02:10.920 | and from the paralysis of despair
00:02:14.240 | and so have capacities suitable to approach
00:02:20.280 | and behold and enjoy God fully.
00:02:25.280 | Who we are in Christ is a means.
00:02:28.640 | It's a means, not an end.
00:02:31.440 | All of that to us and in us is meant to fit us
00:02:36.440 | to make God our all-satisfying end.
00:02:41.920 | Everything that happens to us,
00:02:43.480 | everything that happens in us for good,
00:02:46.040 | making, giving us a kind of identity,
00:02:48.520 | all of it is designed to make us the kind of beings
00:02:52.560 | who can see and enjoy God perfectly.
00:02:57.160 | And the tragic thing about modern self-oriented life,
00:03:02.160 | popular thinking, counseling, preaching,
00:03:04.280 | education, entertainment,
00:03:06.440 | is that it all leaves us without our ultimate treasure,
00:03:11.440 | our ultimate reason for being,
00:03:15.080 | namely to know and understand and perceive
00:03:18.720 | and experience and delight in God himself.
00:03:22.360 | God is subtly treated as a means
00:03:26.440 | to what we really finally want,
00:03:28.600 | namely I wanna be something, I wanna be someone.
00:03:33.280 | Now, this was really helpful for me to see.
00:03:36.240 | I'm able to affirm the whole scripture, I think,
00:03:42.120 | that speaks of who we are in Christ
00:03:44.240 | and delight in the truth of it.
00:03:47.440 | But if I stop there or if we stop there,
00:03:51.040 | I think we treat the end or the final goal of redemption
00:03:57.200 | or the ultimate thing in which we rejoice
00:04:00.640 | as something less than God, namely our own becoming,
00:04:05.440 | and we become idolaters.
00:04:07.800 | So the crucial question for me is
00:04:10.320 | where is my final happiness?
00:04:14.560 | The way I asked it one time in a passion talk at Passion
00:04:19.120 | was what's the bottom of your joy?
00:04:22.800 | Is it being something or someone,
00:04:25.680 | or is it God, seeing and knowing and admiring
00:04:29.560 | and enjoying God?
00:04:32.040 | One of them does not cancel out the other.
00:04:35.920 | That's so crucial to say.
00:04:37.280 | I don't want anyone to hear me say
00:04:39.400 | that I'm canceling out the preciousness
00:04:41.760 | or the importance of becoming or being.
00:04:46.400 | It is a glorious truth that we will be like Christ,
00:04:51.400 | that we will share his glory,
00:04:54.560 | that we will shine like the sun, Jesus said,
00:04:58.040 | in the kingdom of our Father.
00:04:59.400 | We will sit on the throne with Jesus, it says in Revelation.
00:05:04.320 | We'll rule the nations.
00:05:05.520 | We're gonna judge angels.
00:05:07.920 | You can't say anything greater about us
00:05:11.960 | except to call us God, which the Bible's not going to do.
00:05:16.320 | All of this is true and gloriously true
00:05:19.480 | and has not been revealed to make us sad.
00:05:23.600 | We shouldn't read those statements and say,
00:05:24.920 | well, yeah, John Piper said not to get
00:05:26.920 | too excited about those.
00:05:28.800 | Are you kidding me?
00:05:30.080 | You haven't begun to feel as excited as you should be
00:05:34.320 | that one day you're gonna judge angels,
00:05:36.320 | one day you're gonna rule nations
00:05:37.920 | and sit on the throne with Jesus and shine like the sun.
00:05:40.080 | I mean, your emotions haven't even begun to rise
00:05:43.200 | to the point of excitement about those things.
00:05:46.640 | But the question is, is that the sweetest ground of my joy
00:05:51.640 | or is God the ultimate and sweetest ground of my joy?
00:05:57.880 | And I think if we get them backwards,
00:06:00.760 | we're gonna hurt ourselves and not just dishonor God.
00:06:04.880 | Our souls are not made to find ultimate joy in the words,
00:06:09.880 | "Well done, good and faithful servant."
00:06:14.840 | I mean, Seuss Lewis wrote a great sermon
00:06:16.960 | that that's the weight of glory.
00:06:18.460 | And I wanna say, amen to hear those words.
00:06:21.720 | I'm sure a few things will make me cry like those words,
00:06:26.120 | that anybody could regard John Piper's paltry ministry
00:06:32.640 | and service of the King of Kings as a well done
00:06:36.320 | will be beyond measure in value except for one thing.
00:06:41.320 | We're not made to find ultimate joy in being glorious,
00:06:47.960 | in having done a great job.
00:06:51.240 | We are made to find ultimate joy in God.
00:06:54.320 | God is the infinite value in the universe.
00:06:57.360 | Nothing rises to the level of God's worth.
00:07:01.320 | We were made to see and savor ultimate worth.
00:07:05.120 | All the glorious things in us ultimately fit us for that.
00:07:10.120 | That's what glorification is.
00:07:12.960 | I'll say that again.
00:07:13.880 | That's what glorification is,
00:07:16.640 | being what we must be in order to maximally enjoy God
00:07:21.640 | in the fullest way forever.
00:07:24.020 | - That is glorious.
00:07:26.000 | God is the gospel and that is,
00:07:28.720 | he is the sweetest thing in the universe.
00:07:31.600 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that wonderful reminder.
00:07:34.840 | And this concludes episode number 899,
00:07:38.520 | 899, which means tomorrow we're gonna hit episode number 900
00:07:43.160 | in the podcast series, which is just incredible.
00:07:45.560 | And when you do a podcast like this one for so long,
00:07:48.320 | and especially with the topics that we talk about,
00:07:51.320 | where we tackle the breadth of theological dilemmas
00:07:54.160 | and we wrestle with so many serious ethical questions
00:07:56.960 | and things in the news,
00:07:58.560 | it raises the question of whether or not
00:08:00.000 | we can overthink the Christian life.
00:08:02.240 | And if we can, how so?
00:08:04.880 | Tomorrow I'm gonna ask Pastor John that very question.
00:08:08.320 | Thanks for listening to the podcast.
00:08:10.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:10.960 | We'll see you tomorrow.
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