Well, how is my obedience connected to my joy? It's a question today from Jonathan. "Hi, Pastor John. I'm a seminary student in South Africa. My question is about Christian hedonism. What a deep and powerful thing enjoying God is, which God used greatly in my conversion. After a couple of years, however, my joy in God grew very dim.

Not only my joy, but also my contentment and prizing of God above all else. A most joyful state, but it disappeared. This is especially true when I fall into sin. I feel that sin blinds me to who God is, and thus I don't enjoy Him for who He is because I can't see Him for who He is.

Is that true? And how much of our joy in Christ is only achievable and possible in a state of robust obedience to Christ?" Pastor John, what would you say to Jonathan? I'm going to say things a little differently than Jonathan, but first let me affirm his insight, namely, that when we are living in disobedience to Christ, our joy in Him will be minimal or nonexistent, depending on the depth and duration of the disobedience.

That's true. So you might say, "Our greatest enjoyment of Christ can only be enjoyed, can be had in a robust state of obedience." I think that's true. But I think it's important to penetrate into the relationship between obedience and joy a little more deeply instead of simply saying, "If you obey Jesus, your joy will be greater." Because if we leave it at that, we won't really see clearly what the nature of obedience is and its relationship to joy in Christ.

I would ask Jonathan, or anybody, "Do you think that obedience to Jesus is distinct from enjoying Jesus?" In other words, is it accurate to think of obeying Him as one thing and then as a result of doing that, this other thing happens called enjoying Him? It's really not like that.

Why not? Well, first, because we are commanded to enjoy Him, "Delight yourself in the Lord" (Psalm 37:4) and elsewhere, "Rejoice in the Lord." So that obedience to that command is enjoyment of God, not just a cause of enjoyment. And second, because all Christ-honoring obedience is rooted in our treasuring Jesus, our enjoying Jesus, so that it wouldn't be accurate to say that enjoying Jesus is only the result of obedience when in fact it's part of obedience and the cause of obedience, or the root of obedience.

So what Jonathan is saying is not at all wrong. It's only half, or maybe a third, of the picture. He's stressing that the utterly necessary truth that whenever we are walking in disobedience, our joy is going to be limited or canceled, that's true. And you can see it especially in John 14, 21-23, where Jesus says, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." In other words, there's a correlation between our loving Jesus and keeping His commandments and the clarity and sweetness of the manifestation that we have of Jesus and the Father in our hearts.

"I will manifest myself to him," Jesus says, "as he is loving me and walking in fellowship with me and keeping my words." Those manifestations of the preciousness and sweetness and power and reality and presence and beauty and worth of Jesus will be forfeited when we are loving other things more than Jesus and not keeping His Word.

That's true. That's the truth that Jonathan is seeing and emphasizing. He has experienced the loss of joy and of the intimate, sweet manifestations of Christ to his soul because he's walked in sin. That's true. That's what will happen. But there's another side to this, which if we miss it, there will be no way out for Jonathan.

How's he going to get out of this? If he thinks simply in terms of, "I've got to obey so that I can enjoy," if that's the only way he's thinking, he'll never get out. Because seeing Jesus as satisfying and experiencing Him as precious is the pathway to obedience, not just the result of obedience.

You can't obey first in order to enjoy if the enjoyment in Him is the path to obedience. If we treat obedience as something that you do first and then all joy in Jesus follows, we will have turned obedience into a work of the law or a legal external performance that has in it no Christ-exalting worth and therefore will not result in true enjoyment of Jesus.

All Christ-exalting, all gospel-rooted obedience is the obedience of faith, Romans 1:5. It comes from faith. Obedience comes from faith. And faith is a seeing and savoring of the truth and beauty and worth of Jesus in the gospel. Therefore, faith, specifically what Paul calls in Philippians 1:25, the joy of faith is the root of all Christ-exalting obedience, not just the fruit.

So by all means, Jonathan, cease from all the outward actings of sin. Cease, but let the main battle of your life be not just against outward actions that have to change, but mainly against inward blindness that needs to be overcome with fresh glimpses of the glory of Christ. Then the new obedience will not be a tribute to your willpower, but a tribute to the beauty of Christ that has broken the power of the deceitfulness of sin.

Jonathan has been walking in disobedience because of the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3:13, Ephesians 4:22, "Sin is telling lies to him. It is saying that the path of disobedience will produce more pleasure." It won't. It's a lie. The pleasures are fleeting, Hebrews 11:25. They are shallow. So the battle to be fought in Jonathan's heart, in all of our hearts, is not just how to stop doing bad things so that we can enjoy Jesus.

No, no, no, no, no. But how to stop believing false things. The answer is, by all means forsake bad behaviors, but mainly the battle is, look to Jesus. Look to all that God is for you in him and pray for eyes to see his all-satisfying beauty and worth so that you rest in him and are so satisfied that the root of sin is severed and you walk in obedience.

Beautiful. Well articulated. Thank you, Pastor John. And thanks for listening to the podcast over at our online home. You can explore all of our episodes in our archive of about 1,300 episodes to date. There you can see a list of our most popular episodes, read full transcripts, and submit questions you might be wrestling with yourself.

For all that, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And speaking of joy in Christ, the entire goal of the Ask Pastor John podcast is to make you happier in Jesus. But can this podcast actually kill your joy? When I read this question from a podcast listener, I thought, wow, we need to address this one, Pastor John.

This is the question on Friday when we return. Can this podcast kill your joy in Jesus and how? I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.