Why is my theology not changing my life? Or at least not changing me as fast as I thought it would. Anyone who regularly plunges into the riches of scripture, or who plunges into the riches of the Reformed tradition, will eventually face this very sobering question. It's a probing question.

This topic was taken up by Pastor John and by the late R.C. Sproul at a Ligonier National Conference back in 2011. The conversation was on stage there. The dialogue turned toward how the mind and the heart relate to the discovery of biblical truth. We jump right into the middle of that conversation, beginning here with Pastor John.

Have a listen. I totally agree that the primacy of the affections is in terms of the mind serving the affections so that they're not emotionalism, but real fruit of knowing. God is not honored by emotions based on falsehood. He's only honored by emotions that are rooted in truth. Now here's the practical issue.

Lots of people know things and don't get changed. Some of you are just discovering the doctrines of grace and you're just as crabby this year as you were last year. So what's wrong? How can you know, right knowing leads to right affections and doing, but not quickly for everybody or not immediately or sometimes not at all.

The devil knows quite a bit of theology and hates all of it. He's maybe more orthodox than most of us, but he can't abide it. The reason is because he doesn't know it as glorious. He doesn't know it as beautiful. I'm just going to add to know something a right is not just to get the theological pieces in order and have the right quotes in the Bible, but to go to 2 Corinthians 3.18, beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed from one degree of glory to the next.

Now I would say the implication is that the veil is lifted by the Holy Spirit. This is reformed sovereign grace lifting the blinding veil so that now we don't just see five points. We see five stunningly glorious, beautiful things about God and it's the beauty of them that changes.

Beholding the glory, we are being changed. They asked me the other day in our little round table at Bethlehem College and Seminary, they said, "We're students here and we're faculty here. What can we do so that we don't just become academically big headed and get it all right and not be changed or help anybody?" I said, "Most practical thing I can say is as you study from morning till night, pray at least every 10 minutes that God would not let that happen and would reveal the part of scripture that you're working on or the theological issue you're working on, reveal himself to you as beautiful.

Ask him over and over again, 'Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of your law.'" Psalm 119 verse 18, "Open my eyes." I'm staring at it right now, nothing's happening. Ask him, "Open my eyes." Because I need to see not just truth, I need to see beautiful truth, glorious truth and that's what changes.

So prayer I think would be the key. You look like you're ready to say something. No, I'm just sitting here eating that up, John. One place where I have felt so much alone in the ministry that I am involved with is I find so few people who have a passion for beauty.

And I see that God is the foundation for the good, the true, and the beautiful. And you can distinguish among those three things, but you better never separate them. And I love it when you sit here and talk about it because you're articulating what I've been trying to articulate for years.

I've usually said it's not just enough to understand the truth, you've got to see the loveliness of it, and you've got to see the sweetness of it. You talk about the glory of it, but you've added to it the beauty of it, and that's it. I mean, our worship is supposed to be for beauty and for holiness.

And God went to such extremes in the Old Testament to communicate that principle of beauty in the heart of worship. And that's one of the great weaknesses of our tradition is that we seem to think that the only thing that's virtuous is ugliness, and we have to get away from beauty.

But everything that's beautiful, even paintings painted by pagans, travesties, sometimes in spite of themselves, they call attention to the character of God because everything beautiful bears witness to Him because He is the source of beauty. And that beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. It's there essentially in the character and the being of God Himself.

And what you're talking about here just thrills my heart because that's what we have to see, how beautiful, how beautiful the truth is and the God of the truth is. I think that the enticement to sin is that sin promises pleasure. That's the bad kind of hedonism, but it never delivers.

It's a lie. And that's where our great deception is. We think that we can't be happy unless we're sinning. And sin can be pleasurable for a season from one perspective, but it can never be joyful ever. It can't possibly bring joy because it's not beautiful. It's ugly. And we have that attraction to ugliness.

Our basic makeup is to prefer the darkness rather than the light. We live in a world that has been marred, seriously marred. It's been vandalized. The beauty of that creation where the glory of God is everywhere, the whole world is full of His glory, but we have vandalized that glory.

It seems to me that the way Jesus argues is that the kingdom of God is like a man who found a treasure hidden in a field, and in his joy, apa khoros, from his joy, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field. That's the paradigm for how you get freed from the bondage to the world and sin and the devil.

If you see the kingdom and the king as a treasure more valuable than your grandfather's clock, your car, your computer, your books, your fame, and whatever, then it all becomes rubbish and you're freed. Before then, it had tremendous power. It just held you. So sin has the power of pleasure, and the Bible breaks that power with the power of a superior pleasure.

It severs the root of it. Second Peter 1, "All things that pertain to life and godliness are yours through the knowledge of him who called you to his own glory and excellence. In order that by these you might have these precious and very great promises and escape from the corruption that is in the world." So how do you escape from the corruptions in the world?

Precious and very great promises of the glory and excellence of God. The sequence of thought in Second Peter 1, 2, and 3 is escape from corruption comes through a superior promise. So I think the beauty of holiness, the more it goes deep and satisfies, really, really satisfies the freer you become from pornography and from the pleasures of resentment and bitterness that you want to hold on to, and from fear of man.

These sins that have their talons in us, those talons are dislodged, not so much by duty yanking them out like this, but by pushing them out. You know, who asked, "What's the easiest way to get the sin of air out of a glass? Put a vacuum on it?" No, just pour water in the glass.

It's real simple. Just want to get the air out of the glass, just fill it with water. That would be the way I want to build holiness into my people's life. That's so good. Sin has its talons in. Yeah, really good reflections here on the heart, on the place of delight and divine beauty and our own maturity into Christlikeness.

This excerpt was taken from Ligonier's 2011 National Conference in a session titled, "Ministry Reflections with John Piper and R.C. Sproul." Our session can be found online. Whether you listen in the car or at the gym doing chores, whatever it is you're doing, thanks for joining us and 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. To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Friday we end the week with a wonderful question.

I love this one. "How can I meaningfully bless my children before bed?" What would it look like if we put some time into this? It's a great question from a dad of three young kids. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.