How Do Finite Beings Worship an Infinite God?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Sarah Nelson, a listener from Tallahassee, writes in,
00:00:08.000 | "Pastor John, I've been reading Joe Rigney's book, The Things of Earth,
00:00:12.000 | and reflecting on the correlation between our limits as creatures
00:00:16.000 | and our love for God, seeing as we are unable to love an infinite
00:00:20.000 | God as finite beings, Rigney speaks of the alternative
00:00:24.000 | of loving God supremely, fully, and in a way ever
00:00:28.000 | expanding. How would you describe or define
00:00:32.000 | the practical differences between these two categories? How do I know if I'm feeling
00:00:36.000 | false guilt for trying to love God infinitely, which goes against
00:00:40.000 | my creaturely design, versus a right guilt for not loving
00:00:44.000 | God supremely and fully?"
00:00:48.000 | Well, I think I'm going to say something
00:00:52.000 | that will at first be discouraging to Sarah.
00:00:56.000 | Hang on. If I understand what she's struggling with,
00:01:00.000 | that will probably be the case.
00:01:04.000 | And yet, I think what I'm going to say will in the end be
00:01:08.000 | massively encouraging to her and the rest of us
00:01:12.000 | who share her struggle. So hang on. Let's clarify what
00:01:16.000 | she's struggling with because I'm not sure what you just said went by pretty fast
00:01:20.000 | and it might be too complicated for some of our listeners to grasp the distinction
00:01:24.000 | she's making. She points out that the finite human
00:01:28.000 | being cannot love in a qualitatively
00:01:32.000 | infinite way. And I say qualitatively
00:01:36.000 | because temporally our love
00:01:40.000 | will be infinite. That is, it will last forever.
00:01:44.000 | It will be without end. But our love for God
00:01:48.000 | will never correspond to God's love in the sense of being
00:01:52.000 | infinite in a quality or kind. And therefore,
00:01:56.000 | she points out rightly that
00:02:00.000 | we should not feel guilty for falling short
00:02:04.000 | of infiniteness when God has designed us to be finite.
00:02:08.000 | Well taken. Good point. On the other hand, she says
00:02:12.000 | that God has called us to love him supremely,
00:02:16.000 | which I take to mean more than we
00:02:20.000 | love anything else or anyone else, and that certainly is
00:02:24.000 | true. Jesus says, "Whoever loves mother or father more than me
00:02:28.000 | or son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." And then she
00:02:32.000 | asks how she can know whether any particular
00:02:36.000 | guilt feeling that she has about not loving God is false
00:02:40.000 | guilt for falling short of doing what
00:02:44.000 | she was never designed to do, or
00:02:48.000 | real guilt, which is a falling short of precisely what
00:02:52.000 | she was designed to do and commanded to do, namely love God supremely. Now,
00:02:56.000 | before I answer, let me make the problem worse.
00:03:00.000 | And that's where I think the discouragement may come.
00:03:04.000 | Jesus didn't just command us to love God supremely
00:03:08.000 | more than we love anything else. He commanded
00:03:12.000 | us to love God totally or comprehensively.
00:03:16.000 | That is, with all of our heart.
00:03:20.000 | To love him not just with more of our heart
00:03:24.000 | than we love anything else, but to love God with all of our heart.
00:03:28.000 | "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
00:03:32.000 | all your soul, all your mind." This is the great first
00:03:36.000 | commandment, and the second is like it, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
00:03:40.000 | So now, Sarah has to add this to her
00:03:44.000 | guilt struggle. She will not only want to know if she's
00:03:48.000 | falling short of loving God supremely, she
00:03:52.000 | will also want to know if she's falling short of loving
00:03:56.000 | God comprehensively or totally, with all her heart, not just
00:04:00.000 | 95% of her heart while she loves
00:04:04.000 | the rest of the things in the world with 5%, which might have given
00:04:08.000 | some comfort, but now it won't because 95% is
00:04:12.000 | not all of her heart, and Jesus says you're supposed to love God with all of your
00:04:16.000 | heart. Now, it's precisely
00:04:20.000 | this difficulty, for me anyway, of measuring
00:04:24.000 | our love for God in this way that determines
00:04:28.000 | how I'm going to answer Sarah's question and help
00:04:32.000 | her with her struggle, because it's mine, too. Frankly,
00:04:36.000 | I don't know how to sort through what
00:04:40.000 | aspects of my failure to love God are false
00:04:44.000 | guilt and what aspects are true guilt. The Bible teaches
00:04:48.000 | me that the human heart, my heart, is
00:04:52.000 | desperately sick. Who can
00:04:56.000 | know it? That's Jeremiah 17:9. "The heart is deceitful
00:05:00.000 | above all things, and desperately sick. Who
00:05:04.000 | can understand it?" So it seems to me that the Bible itself
00:05:08.000 | does not hold out very much hope to us
00:05:12.000 | that we can know ourselves accurately at these
00:05:16.000 | complicated and profound levels, to which Sarah
00:05:20.000 | might respond, "Well, that's not encouraging. Must I
00:05:24.000 | live then with constant sense of uncertainty
00:05:28.000 | and vague guilt feelings and not enjoy peace
00:05:32.000 | with God?" To which my answer is
00:05:36.000 | no, you are not condemned to that. God does not want you
00:05:40.000 | to live without peace. He wants you to enjoy sweet
00:05:44.000 | contentment and a profound sense of assurance
00:05:48.000 | that he loves you and accepts you and forgives you
00:05:52.000 | and will receive you in the end. And the pathway
00:05:56.000 | -- now here's getting at the essence of my answer -- the pathway
00:06:00.000 | that he gives to that peace is not
00:06:04.000 | by bestowing on you or me
00:06:08.000 | an infallible capacity to discern our own errors,
00:06:12.000 | but a gospel that cleanses
00:06:16.000 | so deeply that it remedies the very
00:06:20.000 | sins you can't even see or feel.
00:06:24.000 | For example, Psalm 19
00:06:28.000 | verse 12, "Who can discern his errors?
00:06:32.000 | Declare me innocent of hidden
00:06:36.000 | faults." Now, isn't the point of
00:06:40.000 | Psalm 19, 12, that verse
00:06:44.000 | that we will never get to the bottom of
00:06:48.000 | our sin and our guilt so that we can
00:06:52.000 | know it well enough to discern all that is false guilt and all that is
00:06:56.000 | true guilt and confess it perfectly? That whole approach is just
00:07:00.000 | helpless. It is for me, anyway, after 70 years. So
00:07:04.000 | the remedy that he says doesn't lie
00:07:08.000 | in that kind of discernment. It lies
00:07:12.000 | in the declaration of God that we are innocent,
00:07:16.000 | even of the measures of guilt that we cannot
00:07:20.000 | discern, and there are always some. You don't know your
00:07:24.000 | heart. Nobody knows the depth of his own sinfulness.
00:07:28.000 | "Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent of hidden faults."
00:07:32.000 | That's what the gospel offer in Christ does,
00:07:36.000 | declares us innocent of all faults, including the ones we can't see.
00:07:40.000 | Here's the way Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 4
00:07:44.000 | verse 4, "I'm not aware of anything against myself, but
00:07:48.000 | I'm not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord
00:07:52.000 | who judges me." Now, he didn't lose his assurance when he said that,
00:07:56.000 | because he knows what the Lord is going to judge him on the basis of.
00:08:00.000 | Isn't one of the points of saying that
00:08:04.000 | my awareness of
00:08:08.000 | all my faults, or my non-awareness of my
00:08:12.000 | faults, is not decisive in whether I will
00:08:16.000 | be saved? The Lord will make that determination,
00:08:20.000 | and he has given us the gospel that Christ died
00:08:24.000 | for our sins, even the ones we can't see, so that we
00:08:28.000 | might be forgiven and justified. Here's the way Paul says
00:08:32.000 | it positively and with sweeping
00:08:36.000 | glory. I love this verse. Acts 13,
00:08:40.000 | 38, and 39, "Let it be known to you,
00:08:44.000 | therefore, brothers, sisters, let it be known to you,
00:08:48.000 | therefore, that through this man, Jesus,
00:08:52.000 | forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by
00:08:56.000 | him everyone who believes is justified
00:09:00.000 | from everything from which you
00:09:04.000 | could not be justified by the law of Moses."
00:09:08.000 | Everything. The one who believes in
00:09:12.000 | Jesus is justified from everything
00:09:16.000 | if you believe in Jesus. So, I think what this
00:09:20.000 | means, practically now, for
00:09:24.000 | our friend is that we should daily
00:09:28.000 | appropriate the gospel of the blood of Jesus to
00:09:32.000 | cleanse our conscience and to give us peace with God, and then
00:09:36.000 | from that hope-filled position, we
00:09:40.000 | should be on the alert, and if we detect
00:09:44.000 | our love for any created person or any created thing
00:09:48.000 | rising to compete with our love for God, we should
00:09:52.000 | repent and ask for forgiveness and fly
00:09:56.000 | to Jesus and seek help to see
00:10:00.000 | God more clearly and love Him more
00:10:04.000 | dearly. Yeah, honest, realistic, and hopeful
00:10:08.000 | insights. Thank you, Pastor John. And Sarah, thank you for the great question.
00:10:12.000 | Well, if this episode was too short and you want some more listening material
00:10:16.000 | for your commute or for your time at the gym, you can find our audio feeds and you can
00:10:20.000 | browse and search our past episodes all online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:27.000 | Well, should the local church work alongside a college campus
00:10:31.000 | outreach? Are they doing two different things, and are these two
00:10:35.000 | in competition with one another? I'll ask Pastor John that
00:10:39.000 | question on Friday, "How the Local Church and Campus Ministry Should Relate."
00:10:43.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:10:47.000 | We'll see you then.
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