(upbeat music) - Two of your major themes, Pastor John, are God's sovereignty and the centrality of joy in God in the Christian life. How do these two topics relate? How is Calvinism connected to joy in God? - I love that question, Tony, I really do. I mean, these are two of the most precious and glorious things in my life.

I could talk about these all day long, which created a problem when I went to answer this with you. (laughs) I think I'm gonna need to break this into two, if I'm not mistaken. So you decide whether you wanna make this two or not, but there's two ways to answer this.

One is foundational about the very nature of God himself and how his godness, his free and independent sovereignty relates to our joy. That's the first one that I'll answer. And the second one that may need a second APJ is how God's sovereignty in this fallen world actually helps us fight for our joy in the face of enormous suffering and sorrow.

So let me tackle the first one and then we'll see how long it takes and we can go for a second if you want to. Here's how they relate. God's sovereignty is owing to his completeness as God. He has no needs. He depends on no one and nothing. All that he needs, he has in and of himself, and therefore he is infinitely happy in the fellowship of the Trinity.

So the love that the father has for the son and the son has for the father, this love is essentially joy because they're not lovingly enduring each other. Like there's no long suffering in the Trinity like there is for sinners outside the Trinity. They have an infinite pleasure in each other's perfections.

And therefore joy, and this is what just blows my mind and I love it, therefore joy is at the essence of God's godness. It is the foundation of his sovereignty. The reason God is free and independent and powerful outside God is that he is completely happy inside God. He has no needs and he's sovereignly independent because he's happy at the core of his being in his all sufficiency, his self-sufficiency.

And therefore when he creates the world, it's not owing to any deficiency in him. He didn't create out of need. He didn't create because he hoped that his creation would supply something that he was lacking. It was motivated by giving, not needing. And therefore, and this is the greatest news in all the world, is that therefore he spills over with his own joy in God.

God's creating the world is God's intention to share with creatures in his own image the very joy that he has in himself. That's what he wanted to share. So when you read in John 17, the prayer of Jesus, what he desires for us at the end of that prayer is that we would be with him where he is to see his glory that God had given him and that we would love him with the very love that the Father has for the Son, which is I think what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is really all about.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father. And oh for the day, Tony, oh for the day when we'll be done with sinning and the joy that we have in God will be the kind of joy that he really designed for us to have.

And therefore, our joy is not marginal to the reason for the universe. This is what's so mind-boggling when people say, oh I think joy is just icing on the cake of Christianity and really it's all about commitment and obedience and if joy comes, that's nice, and if it doesn't, that's okay.

That's just crazy. It's right at the heart of what the universe, who God is and who we are. So we were created to share in God's joy, in God, and he made us to do this, and here's the last piece of this big answer. He made us to do this in such a way that when we are most satisfied in him, he is most glorified in us.

So you can see why I'm a Christian hedonist, why I've spent all my adult life trying to think through the meaning of joy in a world like this. When we are thrilled, when we are most satisfied in all the perfections of God, we show those perfections to be precious to us, to be our treasure.

We highlight them and lift them up and magnify them, and that's why the universe was made. So if you ask me, Tony, what's the relationship in the big picture between the sovereignty of God and joy, I would say in God, joy is the ground, ground of his sovereignty and the overflow of his sovereignty.

Because he is perfectly happy, he is independent and free and needs nothing and sovereignly works on behalf of others, and when he does that, what he's working for is our joy in him, and so there's this great circle of enjoying God and glorifying God. - Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

If you have a question, please email those to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)