Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. And today we have an anonymous question in the inbox. Here it is, Pastor John. Pastor John, I've heard you say that while you were working on your doctoral dissertation about Jesus' command to love your enemies, you read a lot of scholars who argued against being motivated to love by the promise of reward.

And you said that this is simply unbiblical, that Jesus and the apostles motivate love all the time by encouraging us to pursue our own greater happiness. My question is, how then can that be love? How is this not just using other people for our own selfish ends? Didn't Paul say, "Love seeks not its own" in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 5?

Pastor John, what would you say to these questions? I think that this is one of the most important questions that can be asked in the Christian life. We really need to settle it, whether we're going to feel guilty for being motivated by the promises of joy in God's presence that he offers us as a motivation for sacrifice in this world.

This is absolutely huge. The Bible is full of commands to love people at cost to ourselves. We are often called to make great sacrifices in this world, even risking our lives or intentionally laying them down for others. If the Bible offers us motivations and incentives to do this by promising that there will be great reward because of it, and we think it's ethically inferior to be motivated that way, then we're going to turn away from the very strength that God offers us in the cause of love.

So that's serious. We're not dabbling on the edge of things here. We're talking about the very center of motivation for Christian living. Jesus said, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they should invite you in return and you be repaid.

But when you give a feast, invite the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you." And then he adds this, "For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." That's Luke 14, 12 to 14. Jesus didn't add that last promise for nothing.

It begins with the word "for," because you will be blessed in making sacrifices in this world to love others because you'll be repaid at the resurrection of the just. He intends for that to be a motivation, an incentive, a strengthening. We're not seeking payback here on the earth. That's the whole point.

It's costly to love others. It's thankless many times to love others. The payback is later, at the resurrection of the just. And yes, I did continually run into this kind of thing when I was working on my dissertation. I read scholar after scholar who said the opposite. I'll give you one concrete example.

I won't name him. I'll just give you the exact quote, and it's in his commentary on Luke 14 that I just read, and he says this, "The promise of reward for this kind of life is there as a fact. You don't live this way for the sake of the reward.

If you do that, you're not living in the new way, but the old selfish way." Now, I believe that is simply wrong, and not only wrong, but damaging, damaging to the cause of love. Jesus gave that promise of reward at the resurrection, reward at the resurrection of the just precisely to motivate us.

If that scholar were right, we would have to work to keep the promise out of our minds so that it wouldn't contaminate our motivation. But Jesus tells us to do just the opposite. In Acts 20.35, Paul is talking to the elders, and he quotes Jesus. One of the few places where Jesus is quoted outside the Gospels in Acts 20.35, he says this, "We must help the weak, remembering"—now, that's the word I'm fastening on, not forgetting—"remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Now, that scholar would say, "No, no, no, no.

You shouldn't be constantly remembering that as you try to do good to people. Remember that. It's more blessed. It's more blessed. You should forget that. Keep that out of your mind because, yes, it's true, but it's going to contaminate your motivation if you keep remembering it." So I'm going to go with Jesus here and not that scholar.

Jesus emphasizes, "Keep it in your mind. Remember, remember, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Keep the blessing in mind." And then he said in Luke 6.35, "Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." So in other words, just like Luke 14, don't expect payback now.

They're going to kill you, for goodness sakes. They're going to malign you and torture you and kill you, so expect trouble and affliction and ingratitude in this world, but oh, oh, remember, your reward will be great. Let that sustain you through it all. I think this is the explanation for what Paul meant.

The questioner asked about 1 Corinthians 13.5, what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13.5 when he said, "Love seeks not its own." That's the old King James Version, I guess. Love seeks not its own. It's a good literal translation. He did not mean that love should find no pleasure in or look for any pleasure from the beautiful act of love.

He meant don't look for that reward by using people for material gain or advancement in this world. He didn't mean ignore the promise of great reward in heaven, and the reason we know this from 1 Corinthians 13, not just from the words of Jesus, but from the very context, two verses earlier, Paul says, "If I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

I gain nothing. I gain nothing." The whole argument is you would be a fool to live in a way that gains nothing. And that's the exact point. You gain a great reward through giving your life for other people. So he's motivating love by long-term gain, not short-term profit, by manipulating people to get richer or to get famous or anything like that.

So C.S. Lewis, you know this, Tony. We love this quote from his great sermon, what's the name of the sermon? The Weight of Glory. The Weight of Glory, yes, that's right. The Weight of Glory. "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this has crept in through Immanuel Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak." I remember the first time I read that I thought, "Oh, unbelievable. I can't believe he's saying this.

This is so right." "We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." So the crucial question is, how is this love?

And I've got two short and I think simple and I hope compelling answers for why is it love to be motivated to love people, to sacrifice for people, give your life for people for the sake of reward? Answer number one, there is nothing morally inferior about looking for reward for our behavior provided that the reward is ultimately more of Christ as the supreme joy of our souls.

And the reason that's not morally inferior is that Christ is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied in Christ. The glory of Christ is at stake. It's simply not virtue. It's not an honor to Christ to say, I can imagine somebody trying to say this, "Well, I'm going to suffer for Christ and it makes no difference to me whether it leads to knowing and enjoying Christ better." That's not a virtue.

That's self-sufficiency cloaked as a sacrifice. It is right. It is a great honor to Christ to be motivated by a desire for more of him that comes through loving people. Here's the last one. This is probably the most important. It is loving to sacrifice for others with a view to reward, wanting reward, aiming at reward if our aim is that in being sustained by this reward of more of Christ, we win people to come with us into the reward.

That's the goal. That's the goal. And we can't do that if we don't love the reward. There would be nothing to welcome these people into, to entice them into, if we have stopped delighting in the very reward we get through loving others. So 1 Peter 2 says, "Conduct yourselves among the Gentiles in an honorable way, so that when they speak evil against you, they may see your good deeds." And then, I'm paraphrasing now, "Join you in glorifying God on the day of visitation." Our motive is never—mark this—our motive is never to return good for evil so that we get the reward and they don't.

Let me say that again. My motive in returning to someone good for evil is never, "I get a reward, you don't." I want them—my motive is in seeking to love them. I want them to join me. I want them to see in my very behavior the all-satisfying worth of Jesus Christ.

So my conclusion is never, never, never forget, but always remember, remember that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Your reward will be great in heaven. No matter the cost of love here, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just, and a great and wonderful part of that reward will be that in loving people like this, you will win many of them to join you in enjoying the reward.

Yes, precious motive for Christian charity. Thank you, Pastor John. And speaking of glorious themes in the Bible, J.I. Packer, in his magnificent book, Knowing God, wrote this, "If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child." Precious.

So just how key is the theme of sonship in our faith and in our Bibles? I'm going to call up Don Carson. He's going to explain, and that is on the podcast tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor, John Piper.

We'll see you tomorrow. 1. John Piper, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day