Becoming a Christian is an awakening. It's an awakening to the pervasiveness of sin. It's an awakening to the subtleties of the evil. It's an awakening to our need of Christ. And it is also, in a strong sense, an awakening to the meaning behind all of the realities of life.

Without grace, the world desensitizes us. And it dulls our spiritual vision, and it numbs our spiritual needs, and it breeds a spiritual ignorance within us. So in Christ, we are brought to life, given a tender heart, and given new levels of sensitivity when it comes, even to the pains of life.

In a recent sermon in Milwaukee, at the Campus Outreach 2015 New Year's Conference, John Piper addressed Paul's testimony in 2 Corinthians 6, verses 8-10, where Paul writes about his suffering in these pairs when he writes, "Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet well-known, as dying and behold we live, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything." Building off of Paul's descriptions, here's what John Piper said.

People see us as impostors, but in spite of that, we are real. We are virtually unknown in the Roman Empire. Nobody's. But in spite of that, we are well-known by the one person in the universe who matters. Third, we're dying, our bodies are wasting away, but in spite of that, our eternal life in Christ is untouchable.

Fourth, we are punished, but in spite of that, God hasn't seen fit yet to take us home. Fifth, we're sorrowful. We're sorrowful about sin and misery and pain in this world and in ourselves, but in spite of that, our joy is unshaken and constant. Sixth, we are poor. We have little wealth in this world, but in spite of that, we make many rich with the one treasure in the universe that counts more than anything.

And lastly, we're nothing compared to the lovers of this world. We have nothing. In spite of that, we are heirs with Christ of the Father's estate, which means we own everything. That's the way it works, right? Are we together? In spite of these things, these things stand, which shows that the emphasis is on the second half of all these pairs here, including sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

The joy in the Christian's life is the rugged thing, the durable thing, the lasting thing, and the sorrow is not the main thing. It's just the real thing. One of the most amazing things about becoming a Christian is that awakens you to more sorrow. You come to Christ and you're not naive.

You suddenly wake up to pain. Of course, there's pain for unbelievers, but they don't have any sense of how big it is, how horrible it is, how long it can be. To be a Christian is to be awake to cancer and birth defects and profound mental disabilities and divorce and child abuse, including abortion and terrorism and earthquakes and tsunamis and racial hostilities and prejudices and white-collar crime and sex trafficking and poverty and hunger and a thousand daily frustrations that make life very hard.

Every Christian is increasingly sensitized to these things. The gospel brings life, right? And living things are awake and alert and touchable by other things, which means welcome to Christ and greater sorrow. I don't have a lot of patience with Christian ministries that sell Jesus with the promise that he'll make life easier.

He doesn't. I promise you. He makes it real. He makes it eternal. And he makes the joy in it indomitable and invincible. But so do your sorrows rise. Come to Jesus and learn how to weep. The world doesn't know how to weep for lost people. They are one. They don't even believe in it.

They don't believe in hell. They don't see to the bottom of anyone's pain. They see pain. They feel pain. But they don't see to the bottom of it. Christians are the saddest people in the world and the happiest. Do you feel that? I'm getting this from 2 Corinthians 6, verse 10, "Sorrowful yet always rejoicing." Not sequential.

Simultaneous. Do you hear it? Sorrowful yet always in, in, under, around, sorrow, joy. There isn't any other kind in a not yet saved world. Right? If you think, "I've got to have all the sadness out of my life. I've got to get all the sorrow and brokenness out of my life.

Then I might be happy." You won't have any. You will never get all the sorrow and all the brokenness out of your life. The more you love, the more you hurt. So I love this phrase. I love it. I don't want to be sad. Frankly, I hate sorrow. I hate it.

I don't want to cry. I don't want to cry. I don't like crying. And I can't control the phone calls that come. The doctor's report. The 9-year-old missionary kid who fell on Christmas Day, bumped her head and died. We know those people. So the gospel brings life. And with life comes sensitivity to reality.

And reality is really sad in a not yet saved world. Amen. That was from John Piper's sermon on December 29, 2015, titled "One Passion," delivered at the Campus Outreach 2015 New Year's Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can find the full message on our site right now. For more information about the podcast or to send us your favorite John Piper sermon clip, please send us an email with the details of where we can find it.

Connect through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, tomorrow we hear from a podcast listener who wants to know, "What assurance do we have that the human fall into sin will not repeat in heaven?" I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper.

We'll see you tomorrow.