Pastor John, let's talk about the Puritans and personal holiness. One of the great points that they see in Scripture is this connection between happiness and holiness, and they obviously developed this in their theology of who God is. His happiness and his holiness are all interconnected. And then they worked that out in the Christian life so that in the end, to be perfectly holy would be to be perfectly happy.

Pastor John, how would you articulate this connection between happiness and holiness? I'm going to come at it a little differently, because the longer I have thought about Christian hedonism, and God being most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, the more careful I have become in talking about the relationship that way.

And here's what usually doesn't get said when that relationship between holiness and happiness is being described. I think happiness is part of holiness. So that if you try to describe for me what it means to be a holy person, leaving out happiness in God, so that I will, in response to that holiness, become happy in God, you can't do it.

You can't do it. There is no such thing as holiness minus happiness in God. Happiness in God is the, I'll risk it, essence of holiness. So step back and let me define my understanding of what God's holiness is. And we had a whole conference on holiness and sanctification here last year, and I tried to develop this, but I think God's holiness is God's supreme value, being supremely valuable, the most glorious, valuable, precious being in the universe, and His acting in ways that accord with that supreme value.

That's His holiness. So God infinitely delights in His infinite delightfulness, because otherwise He'd be a liar. He'd be unrighteous. And so His holiness is being infinitely delightful and delighting infinitely in His infinite delightfulness. That's His holiness. Now our holiness is then seeing and agreeing with and treasuring that. That we see God as infinitely valuable, infinitely precious, infinitely worthy of trust and delight and admiration and praise, and we not only see it, but we savor it, we trust it, we treasure it, we embrace it, we enjoy it, we're satisfied by it, and we act in accordance with our esteeming Jesus above all things.

And that's our holiness, which means once you set things up like that, oh, you've just defined the essence of holiness as seeing God as infinitely valuable and savoring God as infinitely valuable, and then everything flows from that. But now your question still is valid because there is-- happiness is like a spiral in the Christian life, I think.

You see God, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." So you see God and you're blessed by it. You're blessed by that beatific vision, especially in Christ, in the cross, loving you, dying for you, rising for you. You see that, and joy floods your soul because of what you see of God.

That seeing enables you then to do things that God says we ought to do, like love your enemy. When you love your enemy, that fruit circles back and makes you happy. There's a happiness of conscience that when you-- what is Paul saying in Romans 14? "Blessed is the man who does what he has nothing against." He only does what his conscience doesn't command.

So when you lay down your head at night, having acted in ways that your satisfaction in God has enabled you to do, there is another level of happiness that comes, a kind of a circling or a spiraling up of happiness, and that happiness then increases your your joy in God, and that frees you to do more acts of love, and that makes you happier.

When we say God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him, we are saying, therefore, the essential warfare of holiness or sanctification is the warfare to be satisfied in God. It's a fight to see Him as beautiful and to savor Him as beautiful. That is the number one fight.

So if you take pornography, or theft, or desire for applause, any of those sins, the fundamental way that you sever the root of those sins is by striving for the power of a superior satisfaction, namely in God. Thank you, Pastor John. You can find Pastor John's conference messages on this theme at DesiringGod.org by searching for the titles "Prelude to Acting the Miracle, Putting Sanctification in its Place," and the message "Act the Miracle, Future Grace, the Word of the Cross, and the Purifying Power of God's Promises." You can find those and thousands of other free resources from John Piper at DesiringGod.org.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. you you