(upbeat music) - Well, is holiness the fight against sin or is holiness the fight for joy in God? It's a very good question from a listener named Kendall. Hello, Pastor John, a group of guys and myself have been reading through your book, "Desiring God." Awesome book, thank you for it.

My question in overcoming sin and temptation, the strategy most of us attempt to employ is to fight it, overcome it, outpower it and outwill it. But after reading the first few chapters of your book, I'm wondering if our job as Christians is not to fight against something, but to fight for something else, namely joy and pleasure in God.

My heart was created to be pleased, so when I fight against sin, am I unwittingly fighting against my own nature to find pleasure? I understand that sin offers a certain level of satisfaction and pleasure, so to fight against it with no better satisfaction in view is to deny my own humanity, but to fight for pleasure in God as a means of overcoming sin and temptation affirms my desire to be pleased and reorients my desire to its proper place.

So should we fight against sin or instead should we fight for pleasure in God, which will in turn kill our sin? What would you say, Pastor John, to Kendall? - Maybe the most important thing to say to Kendall is this, put every question like that through the sieve of the Bible.

When you pose an either or question, be sure to ask, does the Bible treat these as either or? So the last way he asked the question I think was, should we fight against sin or instead should we fight for pleasure in God, which will in turn kill our sin?

So if you walk into a question assuming an either or like that, when it's a both and, you will force the Bible to say what it doesn't wanna say. So in this sense, I want to say as clearly as I can, the Bible does not say we should choose between fighting against sin and fighting for pleasure in God.

What it says loud and clear and scary forceful is that we should with all our might fight against sin, like cut off your hands and gouge out your eyes if you have to, to not sin, in order that we might kill the very thing that prevents us from having pleasure in God.

So instead of asking, should we fight against sin or should we fight for pleasure in God? I think we should ask, how do we go about fighting against sin so that the outcome is a deep and lasting pleasure in God and then avoids sin without such a battle? So just to make clear from the Bible, my strong emphasis on the negative side of fighting against sin, consider these texts, Colossians 3, 5, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion." Romans 8, 13, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Or 1 Corinthians 9, 26, "I don't run aimlessly.

I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body. I pommel my body, keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified." Ephesians 4, 22, "Put off your old self." Titus 2, 11, "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions." Romans 6, 13, "Do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness." Matthew 5, 29, "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

Better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." So there's no question that we should fight against sin. And this is surely part of what Jesus meant when he said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." But, Kendall is absolutely right in pointing out that this negative battle will never suffice in the pursuit of holiness and godliness and Christ-likeness and a life of sacrificial love.

Jesus pointed out that if you drive out a demon and leave the house swept and cleaned, seven more demons are gonna come home. Negative struggles never suffice to provide power for godliness. And C.S. Lewis threw this door open for me 50 years ago with this quote. Very familiar for anybody who's read "Desiring God." "The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.

We're told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ. And nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find when we do so contains an appeal to desire. 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.

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 when he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." In other words, telling ourselves no when tempted by sin is simply one strategy of making possible for our souls to feel what a holiday at the sea is like spiritually.

If Jesus offers himself to us as a all-satisfying treasure, and between us and Jesus, the devil is presenting himself to us as an angel of all-satisfying light, well, we need to run him through with the sword of the Spirit and kill the temptation, not as an end in itself, but so that we have access to Jesus who is all-satisfying.

Here's the way Paul put it in Philippians 3, 7. "Whatever gain I counted as loss, whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." And here's the way Jesus put it when he talked about self-denial in relationship to the kingdom.

It says, Matthew 13, 44, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up, and then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has." Now that's self-denial, right? You sell all that you have and buys that field.

So in the end, such a deal, right? You sell all that you have, which looks like self-denial to the world, and you gain the kingdom of heaven and everlasting, eternal, supreme joy, such a transaction. We can joyfully sell everything because of the value of Christ. One more example because of what love really is in Hebrews 10, 34.

"You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." So the reason they could joyfully accept the plundering of their property, that's self-denial, that's loss, that's the willingness to sacrifice, is because they felt a superior value of what they had in Christ, which means the main battle for love is a battle, like Kendall says, a battle for falling in love with the treasure given by God and which is God.

So yes, many times we will meet the enemy of temptation with the resounding, "No, get out of my life. You can't have me." And we will do that first because we've tasted the superior value of Jesus. And because we want more of Jesus. Amen, self-denial in service to our eternal pursuit of more and more joy in Jesus.

This is brilliant. Thank you, Pastor John. Podcast listeners out there, have you read the book "Desiring God"? If not, I would encourage you to do it, find some friends and go through it. The book is titled "Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist." It's available at Amazon or wherever quality theology books are sold.

Thanks for listening today over at our online home. You can explore all 1,250 of our episodes, scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, and send us a question of your own. Go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. So how did John Piper become a Christian hedonist himself? It is a really good question.

It's a fascinating story. And we're gonna hear the 10 stages or the 10 steps of that story when we return on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)