Today we field a fairly technical question about whether or not our happiness is moral. It's a question from a listener named Eric. "Hello Pastor John, this podcast is a tremendous gift to me. I've listened from my conversion until now in seminary." That's incredible, Pastor John. We've been doing this for the duration of someone getting saved and entering seminary.

Eric continues, "I have a question regarding happiness. What would you say to this line from theologian John Frame? Only persons and their actions and attitudes can be good in a moral sense, but happiness is a condition or a state of affairs, so it can be considered good only in a non-moral sense." That's from the Doctrine of the Christian Life, pages 91 and 92.

He goes on to say this, "There are many things that human beings value more than pleasure. One example is sacrificing one's life to save the life of another. If we define pleasure so broadly as to include all other values, including self-sacrifice, then it loses its meaning. It doesn't distinguish pleasurable from non-pleasurable activities." That's page 93.

My immediate reaction to this was, "That's not right. Piper and Edwards and Augustine all say that pleasure is what we all desire most, and it is a moral good that God commands our joy," in Philippians 3.1, "Rejoice in the Lord." But then Frame surprised me in the next chapter by saying this, "For Scripture, duty and happiness are not opposed, but in the long run reinforce one another." That's page 101 of Frame's book.

That seems more in line with Christian hedonism, namely that our happiness and God's glory are not two separate things, but we must seek them both together. My question for you, Pastor John, is this. Am I misunderstanding Christian hedonism? Is happiness a non-moral good, or is it a moral good?

Pastor John, what would you say to Eric? It is very risky and unwatched to criticize a great Christian thinker on the basis of a sentence or two that I don't see in context. John Frame is a great and sound and helpful theological guide, and my guess is that if he and I had time, he and I would discuss this and we probably would be pretty close in the end.

So what I'm going to do then, since this is such an important question, is take these statements and Eric's question and use them to illustrate two very important principles in answering such questions, as well as give my answer along the way. So the first principle is this. Before you disagree or agree with anyone, be sure you have a clear sense of the definitions of the terms they are using as they're using them, a definition that they would agree with.

Otherwise, you'll talk right past each other in your argument. It happens over and over again. You can watch it in the internet. You can watch it in conversations. So let's take Frame's main statement. Here it is. "Only persons and their actions and attitudes can be good in a moral sense, but happiness is a condition or state of affairs, so it can be considered good only in a non-moral sense." So the term "persons," I think, clear enough, I think we know what persons are, so I'll skip that one.

What about the term "actions"? Actions can be good in a moral sense, he said. Does he mean, I would ask, bodily actions, namely the mere movement of muscles and the electronic and chemical processes that trigger the muscle contraction that moves when you hug somebody or give them a finger?

Or does he mean actions of the soul, volitions, decisions, choices? Surely soul actions, choices, can be morally good, but mere muscle movements? Well, he would probably say—this is why we need to talk—not mere, no, not mere, he would say muscular actions insofar as they are triggered by volitions can be morally good or bad.

I would say, yes, yes, okay, good, got that clarified now. And the combination of choice and movement of muscle make the movement good or bad. It isn't movement of muscles or actions, legs or shoulders or arms or hands or facial expressions, smile, frown, those movements are not in themselves evil or good, they are evil or good insofar as they are triggered by, carried by, expressing volitions that are good or bad.

What about the word "attitudes"? He says attitudes can be good in a moral sense. Well, what is an attitude? He must consider it different from happiness. Hmm, okay, that helps a little bit. Now, what's an attitude? I assume he means perhaps the fruit of the spirit, like patience, that be an attitude, kindness, in other words, dispositions of the soul not yet turned into action that incline a certain way to good or bad.

And then he calls happiness a state of affairs, which can't be good morally, but only non-morally, like having a sore throat, I suppose, is non-morally bad, but being in good health is non-morally good. He's free to define happiness that way. I assume it's something like that. We just need to be aware that's what he's doing.

If happiness is in that category in this sentence, namely it's like getting rid of a headache, of course then we need to decide how the Bible uses the term if we're going to talk about biblical meaning for happiness. So that's the first principle. I'm just illustrating what I have to go through when I deal with what I read or what people say.

I want to be sure to define your terms in your way so that I can either agree or disagree. And it's not easy to do that often. Second principle. Instead of getting entangled in complicated philosophical conceptions, go to the Bible as quickly as you can to find some clear statements about the very meaning, the very thing, the very reality you are arguing about.

It's wonderful, amazing how the Bible enables us to cut through so much fog in our arguments with people if we have a few clear biblical statements that shed light on what we are arguing about. Now, Frame is right. Surely he's right to say that if we treat the word pleasure so broadly that there's no difference between pleasurable and non-pleasurable activities, language loses its meaning.

That's right. That just is self-evident. Now, the question is, does that settle the issue over whether happiness or pleasure can be a moral good? So we turn quickly to the Bible. That's what I do anyway. First we find a verse that helps us appreciate the distinction. I want to frame the absolute benefit of the doubt here with a text like this, 2 Timothy 3:4.

Paul says, "There will be evil people, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." Now, for a Christian hedonist like me, that's a jarring statement because it makes love for God look like an alternative to the desire to experience pleasure. So we step back and we say, "Okay, I'm not God.

I am not the Bible. I'm not the final authority. The Bible is the authority, and I will adjust my thinking to the Bible. That's what we should do." So what does the Bible mean? It means here pretty much what Frame means. Pleasure is very often used in the narrow sense of physical gratification, sensations of bodily satisfaction, like a back rub or sexual arousal or getting high with drugs and alcohol or caffeine or scratching an itch.

It is indeed possible to want these physical sensations more than we want God. It is possible to make a God out of physical satisfaction. And I suppose that's what Frame is getting at here. He is saying that if you try to take that meaning for pleasure and spread it over everything in life, then you have to drop the word "pain" out of your vocabulary because pleasure understood in this narrow way is the opposite of pain.

And you can't say everything ought to be pleasurable because that would rule out the existence of anything like pain if you define pleasure the way Paul does in 2 Timothy 3:4 and the way Frame is. However, what Eric is very aware of in his question is that the Bible does not treat happiness and pleasure and joy, which are often used interchangeably in the Bible, as mere states of affairs that have no moral significance.

Now we're getting close to the problem. And the easiest way to see this is to notice that happiness or delight or gladness or pleasure are regularly commanded in the Bible as a Christian duty. Psalm 100, "Serve the Lord with gladness." 2 Corinthians 9, "God loves a cheerful giver." Philippians 4, "Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice." Psalm 37, "Delight yourself in the Lord." Hebrews 13:17, "Pastors, do your ministry with joy because if you'd groan in it, it will be of no advantage to your people," and on and on and on.

And then we noticed that just like patience is a fruit of the Spirit when we were defining the word attitude, so is joy a fruit of the Spirit. So if one is a gift and can be a moral good, why not the others? And I think they are. I think joy is a moral good as Paul is using it in these contexts where he commands it or calls it a fruit of the Spirit.

So my conclusion is that if you define joy or happiness or delight or gladness biblically, all of them are moral. That is, they are evil or good, depending on whether they are grounded in and reflecting the greatness and beauty and worth of God. It's possible to have gladness in evil, and that's not good.

But gladness in God is a moral good. It is sin to find your greatest happiness, delight, gladness, joy in created things. And it is virtuous or morally good to find your greatest happiness, delight, gladness, or joy in God. I don't think John Frame would disagree with that. I hope not.

I think when he rejected happiness as a moral good, he meant something more akin to physical pleasure than to spiritual attraction to God's glory. So is happiness a non-moral good, or is it a moral good? Defined biblically as the positive experience of treasuring God above all, it is a moral good.

Very good. Thank you, Pastor John. And Eric, thank you for the detailed question. We really appreciate it. And thank you for listening. You can send us your own question like Eric did, or you can search our 1600 past episodes that we've released to date, or you can subscribe to the podcast.

You can do all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Up next, a very good question about prayer. We know from scripture that a husband who is harsh with his wife will have his prayers ignored by God. We see that in 1 Peter 3.7. But is that principle at play more broadly? That's the question on Monday.

Do all of our sins hinder our prayers? That's a great question. It's the topic up on Monday when we return. And I am Tony Reinke. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime pastor and author John Piper. We'll see you on the other side of the weekend.