A podcast listener named Kent writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I have a question about word choice in your motto, 'God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.' I know you've thought and prayed extensively about each word to convey the proper message, but I'm wondering why you didn't choose the word 'Christ' in place of 'God' or 'Him.' What I like most about your ministry is that Christ is central to everything you preach and there's no confusing the God you glorify with any other God of this world.

But without using 'Christ,' the above phrase loses specificity and could be referring to a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or other God. Why not include 'Christ' in the motto?" Well, I am always happy and eager to clarify the meaning of my favorite slogan, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." So let me make four very brief comments and congratulate Kent.

I mean, I just totally agree with what he's saying and maybe this will give him perspective on how I think. Number one, I very often in speaking do use the name Christ and I often say, "Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." And I do this because of Philippians 1, 20 and 21, where Paul says his eager expectation and hope is that Christ would be magnified in his body, whether by life or death, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And I argue from the very structure of that text that fundamental to my Christian hedonism is that Christ and His magnificence is shown by Paul's counting Him an all-satisfying gain when he loses everything and dies. So yes, yes, yes, at the very root of my slogan is a text that makes Christ the center of it.

Number two, when I say God, I have in mind the Trinitarian God usually when I say that. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So I don't mean to say God instead of Christ when I say God is most glorified in us. Number three, often, this is maybe the most unusual point, often in the New Testament the word God is used as shorthand for God the Father, and there is a certain priority given to the Father in relation to the Son which might warrant the prominence of the word God in the slogan.

And here's what I'm thinking about, Philippians 2, 9. "Therefore God has highly exalted Christ and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." So the exaltation of Jesus over every name is for the glory of God.

You see the kind of ultimacy or priority given to God the Father in that text. Or 1 Corinthians 15, 28. "When all things are subjected to Christ, then the Son Himself will be subjected to Him the Father who put all things in subjection under Him that God may be all in all." And it's another kind of prioritization or ultimazize, whatever that word would be, making ultimate of God the Father.

And one last text on this, Philippians 1, 9-11, this prayer. "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness that come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God." So you see the structure again from chapter 2.

So it is in a profound sense right for us to think of God the Father as the one for whom Christ has accomplished all His work. Not at all minimizing the ultimacy of Christ's glory as the perfect image of the Father's radiance. And number four, in common parlance, and this may be the reason why years and years ago I started saying God instead of Christ.

In common parlance in the world and in the broad church, not necessarily just evangelical, the word God sounds more all-encompassing and ultimate than Christ. Now rightly understood, that's not true. It shouldn't be. Jesus is Lord of all. But in ordinary public language, if you want to say something that sounds global or universal or cutting across all groupings and all religious enclaves, God's statements have that effect more than Christ's statements or Jesus' statements.

And so it just depends on what's the context, who's your audience, what kind of impact or connotation do you want the statement to have. One more point, finally I agree with Kent. He's right that in our day of religious pluralism, especially the prominence of Islam, the prominence of Christ needs to be highlighted more often than it used to be.

So I think in recent years I have felt exactly what Kent has felt, and I have tried, and perhaps now his question will help me try more, try to be explicit and clear that the glory I'm talking about is the glory of Christ as the great expression of the glory of God.

So let's be alert to our audiences, let's give Christ the honor, do his name, and sometimes say God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and sometimes clarify explicitly that Christ is most magnified or glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, just as Paul teaches in Philippians 1.

Thank you, Pastor John, that's very good. And we love talking about this because we love proclaiming Christ as we repeat over and over again, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and we do this every day at DesiringGod.org. Visit the site to find decades of our work and thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources to flesh out this theme, and it's all free of charge to you.

Well all of us need to change something in life, and many of us want to change something about ourselves. So what is the single key to breaking free from life's ruts? The answer is simple, it's profound, and John Piper will explain tomorrow right here on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.