I hope you had a delightful Christmas weekend experiencing the peace of Christ in your life. And we are back to work with a really important question from Josh in South Carolina. Pastor John, in your book, God is the Gospel, you make this statement, "The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven.

It is a way to get people to God." You then close chapter three saying, "If we do not see him and savor him as our greatest fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel." Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be justified and stand righteous before God and yet fall short of God being the object of their affection are not effectively justified by the gospel?

How would you respond to Josh? Well, I am very, very thankful for this question because I have had others talking to me recently. I'm eager to clarify this, if I can. I know that the way I often talk about the nature of saving faith troubles some very good people who are faithful to the gospel.

For example, I say things like, "Faith is being satisfied in all that God is for us in Jesus." I say that all over the place in the book Future Grace, the most prominent place where I say it. Now, in the places where I have said things like that, and I say them unrepentantly, I try to give many supporting Bible foundations for that definition.

And we can't go into all those, but let me just mention one because it's going to relate to the answer here. Jesus said to them, John 6, 35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." So Jesus portrays himself as bread, and by implication water because he refers to thirst.

And then he gives two parallel statements. "Whoever comes to me shall not hunger," and then parallel to that, "Whoever believes in me shall never thirst." And therefore, coming to Jesus so as not to hunger and believing in Jesus so as not to thirst are parallel. And I think they are referring to the same reality.

Jesus is the bread that satisfies the hunger of the soul, and Jesus is the living water that satisfies the thirst of the soul. And coming and believing are virtually interchangeable in these parallel statements. And so coming so as not to hunger and believing so as not to thirst are the same.

And therefore, it seems to me that Jesus is pressing us to see deeper into what believing really involves. Believing is a coming, not geographically, not physically, but a movement of the soul in thirst and in hunger for its deepest needs to be satisfied. That is a coming to Jesus for that satisfaction and finding it in him.

That's what I think that verse teaches about the nature of believing, of faith. And I think it's all over the place in the Gospel of John that it means that. And therefore, I do believe that if we do not see and savor Jesus as the supreme satisfaction of our souls, we don't believe in Jesus in a saving way.

Not because I'm adding anything to faith, like you got to believe to be justified, then you got to do something else to get to heaven or something like that. That's not the point. The point is I am pressing into faith in the New Testament. I'm pressing into numerous places in the Bible where saving faith is more than knowledge, more than agreement, and more than trust or receiving of a partial Christ.

When I say faith is more than the receiving of a partial Christ, I mean faith includes not only receiving Jesus as Savior and receiving Jesus as Lord, but also receiving Jesus for what he really is, namely the supreme treasure of the universe. Or if you prefer to stay with the word Savior and Lord, I put it like this.

I mean that faith receives Jesus as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord. And if you say that a person can be a Christian, born again, justified, heaven-bound, enjoying eternal life, a person can be a Christian and have a higher treasure than Jesus, I do not know what Bible you are reading.

Jesus said, Matthew 10, 37, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Do we think he would say, "Well, it's not okay to treasure mother or father or son or daughter more than me, but it's okay to treasure your job more than me.

It's okay to treasure your health more than me. It's okay to treasure your nation more than me. It's okay to treasure your reputation more than me. It's okay to treasure your life more than me." No! Where Jesus is not treasured above all things, he's not trusted with saving faith.

Now, of course, I am deeply aware, both from the Bible and from John Piper's own experience, that the trusting and the treasuring of Jesus rise and fall in intensity from day to day. Anyone who has read my books, especially the book, When I Don't Desire God, knows I don't have a perfectionist bone in my theological body, because I'd be a goner.

I am a sinner in need of grace every day, including the grace for my imperfect faith and my imperfect treasuring of Jesus as part of that faith. The issue is—not perfection—the issue is, have I set my face with as much of my heart and as much of my mind and as much of my soul and my strength as I can to treasure God in Christ above all things?

And I have more or less success just like believing rises and falls. The fact that—it's not a criticism of my view to say that treasuring Jesus rises and falls, and therefore you can't equate it with faith. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Faith rises and falls every day.

Justifying faith rises and falls every day. John wrote, "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who received him, who believed on his name, he gave the right to become the children of God." We become children of God through receiving Jesus.

That is, believing. That's what belief is. Belief is a receiving. It's a reception. And I am simply pressing the issue that comes out over and over again in the Bible, that to receive him as a forgiver of sins, to receive him as a guilt remover, to receive him as a door out of hell, to receive him as a healer of the body, and not to receive him as a treasure to satisfy the soul, is not to believe on Jesus.

Jesus is not honored, and the Father is not glorified, where he is welcomed only for his gifts and not for himself. So to answer Josh's question more directly, let me point to something strange in the way he worded his question. He says, "Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be justified and stand righteous before God, yet fall short of God being the object of their affection, are not effectively justified?" Indeed, I am.

But look what he left out. Did you notice he never mentioned faith? Faith is missing from that. I'm going to read it again just so you see it. "Are you saying that those who acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be justified and," and now right here, "you need to hear and receive him by faith," that should be there because that's how you're justified.

Faith is how you're justified, not just seeing your need. You're not justified by seeing your need. You're justified by seeing your need and then trusting him, receiving him as all you need, and that's totally missing, and so I don't know quite how to respond when it's totally missing, so I'm going to stick it in.

I'm going to say, here's the way his question, I think he really meant it. I think this was an oversight. "Are you saying that a person can acknowledge their need of Christ's propitiation to be justified and receive him by faith and thus stand righteous before God?" Are you saying that that can happen and a person not be satisfied in God or find God as his supreme joy and still be justified?

And my answer is that is an impossible situation. It cannot happen because receiving Jesus by faith is a receiving of Jesus, which includes a receiving of all that God is for us in Jesus, namely, he is our supreme treasure, as is writ large all over the Bible. I'm not adding anything to faith.

I am trying to define faith biblically so that it can have a transforming effect upon the world which it so desperately needs right now. And there is more there in the Bible about the nature of faith than is often seen. Exactly. This is exactly what we are all about at DesiringGod.org.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. That's our motto. And if all of this is new to you, that faith in Christ is treasuring Christ as your supreme treasure, I would invite you to take some time this week, even today, to get familiar with DesiringGod.org.

We have a lot of content that centers on this crucial theme. And if your heart resonates with the message of what Pastor John just described, we want to invite you to become partners with us in our work. First, we need your prayers. There's a lot of work to be done, and we feel needy for God's grace every day.

And of course, if you're not, please consider becoming a financial partner as well. You can do that by going to DesiringGod.org and look for the "Donate" button at the very top of the page. We need your prayers, and we need your partnership in this important work for it to go on.

And we are deeply grateful to God for you and to the many supporters that we have around the world. Thank you. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thank you for listening and for praying for us and supporting the Ask Pastor John podcast. God bless. Thank you for listening and for supporting the Ask Pastor John podcast.

God bless.