Last week we talked about the challenge of why our theology does not change our lives quickly, at least not as fast as we wish it would. We also talked about the expulsive power of a new affection, that those new holy affections we have for God help push out of our lives the fallen desires that we have for sin still yet within us.

But from those topics emerges another related question, namely this one. Realistically speaking, how changed will my desires become in this life? The question is from a listener named Emma. Pastor John, hello, I think I understand Christian hedonism. By the sovereign grace of God in regeneration, God gives me new desires that align with his desires.

This includes a new delight in what most delights God, which is himself. Amen and amen. But boy do I sure struggle with a ton of desires within me that are not God honoring. So how in the world can I be sure God has given me new holy desires when I so often feel inundated by my old unholy desires?

Even Jesus seemed to be more motivated in his earthly life by future joy, Hebrews 12 2. So how much desire victory is realistic and normative in the Christian life inside this fallen flesh and inside this cursed planet? Pastor John, what would you say to Emma? So Emma asks two questions as I'm hearing it.

How can I be sure that I have been given new holy desires? And this is really a question of how can I be sure I have been born again because that's what the new birth does. It gives us these new God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered desires. And the other question she asks is how much desire for God and victory over contrary desires, sinful desires, is realistic or normative for the Christian life?

So let's go about answering these two questions this way. Let's describe how the New Testament pictures the desires of the person who has been born again and the kind of battle this introduces into the person's life. And then see if the answers to Emma's questions don't flow from this description of the new birth and what comes with it.

Before we're born again—and I mean born again by the Spirit of God, through the Word of God—before we're born again, the Bible describes us as natural persons, meaning we don't have the Holy Spirit and therefore we do not have the spiritual ability to see the beauty of Christ and his gospel for what it really is or the ability to feel them for what they really are, namely precious.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Christ and the gospel are foolishness, folly, unreal, boring to us until we are born again and we're no longer natural people but supernatural people.

We've been made children of God, inhabited by the supernatural Holy Spirit. Now here's how that happens and the effect of it. 2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7 go like this. God, who at the beginning in creation said, "Let there be light," has now in our hearts shown—same kind of miracle—shown to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ but we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

In other words, God overcomes—this is what happens in new birth—God overcomes our blindness, our deadness to the glory of God in Christ. He shines into our heart with a spiritual—not a physical—but a spiritual light and the result is that we see—Paul calls it the eyes of the heart—we see the glory of God in Christ as a treasure.

The word "treasure" is used by Paul in verse 7 to describe what he's talking about when it happens. We have this treasure—the one I just referred to back in verse 6—when we saw the glory of God in the face of Christ. We have this treasure in jars of clay.

That's our mortal bodies—these fragile, sickness-prone, depression-prone bodies of ours. But the key thing is that the effect of this miracle of sight—seeing Christ and his gospel as beautiful as they really are—the effect is that we now know Christ as a treasure. He's not boring, he's not foolish, he's not mythological anymore.

He's a treasure. Our desires, therefore, our preferences, our pleasures are transformed by discovering that what we once thought was foolish, unreal, boring, is now the most precious reality in the world. That's the fundamental change at new birth. So Jesus describes this transformation like this. This is Matthew 13, 44.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found." That's the point of conversion, the point of new birth. He found, he covered up, and then in his joy—because that's what happens when you have your eyes open to a treasure—in his joy, he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field.

And then Paul describes it like this in Philippians 3:8. "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." So the effect of the new birth is that we are made alive spiritually by God with the effect that we now see Christ and his gospel as our supreme treasure.

We prize him, we love him, we treasure him and enjoy him, are satisfied in him more than in our former dearest pleasures. Now here's what causes the problem for Emma and for all of us. This new reality does not yet completely destroy the old reality called "my flesh." In a sense, a decisive victory has been won over my flesh.

I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says, Galatians 2:20. Done. Decisive. But in another sense, we must lay hold on this decisive victory by faith, hour by hour, and reckon our old self, our flesh, dead, according to the reality that it really is. We have to make war on the flesh and count ourselves dead as we really are.

So Paul says in Galatians 5:16, now here's the reality we're dealing with, "Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other." War.

These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. And no book in the Bible is more insistent that the new birth produces a real change than John's first epistle. And yet this book emphasizes that we're not sinless. The battle goes on.

Here's what he says in 1 John 1, 8, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So we do sin. That is, we don't value God the way we ought to. We do value the world sometimes the way we shouldn't.

Then he continues, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And Paul describes his own battle like this, "I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." Romans 7 22.

So what should we say? How should we answer Emma's two questions, which are really our questions? Number one, "In view of this battle, how can I be sure that I have been given new holy desires?" And my answer is that the question is one of authenticity and reality of our desires for Christ, not primarily a question of intensity or frequency of the battle.

Because we are talking about God-given spiritual delight in the glory of Christ and the beauty of the gospel—a delight which in any quantity the natural person does not have. So pray that the Lord would not only show you the fruit of such spiritual desires, but would by his Spirit bear witness that your sight and your delight in Christ are real, are authentic.

That's the work of the Spirit— to witness with your spirit that you have really tasted Christ and your desires, however small or big, are the real thing that no natural person has. And here's the second and last question. "How much desire for God and victory over sinful desires is realistic or normative for the Christian life?" And I would put it something like this.

Never expect in this life that you will get beyond warfare with your flesh, and never assume that the Lord may not have a far greater victory for you than you have ever known. Yes, this fight continues for us all. Thank you, Pastor John. And whether you listen in the car or at the gym or doing chores, thank you for inviting us into your busy day.

If you have not yet done so, you can subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app, in YouTube or in Spotify. And if I know there are other episodes in our archive, or to submit a question to us of your own, like this really good one from Emma, go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Next time we turn our attention to prayer, specifically prayerlessness, if we are not happy with our prayer lives, how can we kick-start this essential discipline? Pastor John has three very practical suggestions that will help us out. That's up next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.