That's My King!

I doubt this will ever get old, and I can't think of a better Resurrection Sunday post.

I rejoice this day in the resurrection and the life of my King, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, King Jesus the Christ, the Name above all names.

Rejoice with me.

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance,
God is now declaring to men that
all people
everywhere
should repent,
because He has fixed a day
in which He will judge the world in righteousness
through a Man whom He has appointed,
having furnished proof to all men
by raising Him from the dead.
- Acts 17:30-31 -

Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life;
he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?"
- John 11:25-26 -

He proved it.

Do you believe this?

Hope in God's Character

The final installment in this five-part series on lessons about suffering righteously that we can learn from Jeremiah as we study the book of Lamentations has been a long time coming. The big crunch at the end of last semester prompted me to take a break from the blog in December, and visiting home over the last couple of weeks -- during which time I've had the opportunity to prepare and deliver a sermon -- has monopolized much of my time. I apologize for any of you who have been waiting for this final post. I also hope any of you who have surmised that this blog must just have "gone dark" will come back and continue reading, as I plan to post more regularly again.

That said, now we come to the final, and perhaps most important, lesson that Jeremiah teaches us on suffering well and according to righteousness and faith. In the midst of his intense suffering and deep anguish, Jeremiah does not mourn as one who has no hope (1Th 4:13). Rather, he sets his hope entirely on, and rests in, God's character. He hopes in the restoration of God's people according to His character and His covenant.

Even though there has been broad devastation, Israel was not utterly destroyed. Jeremiah attributes that to Yahweh’s compassion, lovingkindness, and covenant faithfulness. Because his words are so powerful, I simply want to reproduce them here. Please read them thoroughly, and give them much thought. The juxtaposition of "affliction," "wandering," "wormwood" and "bitterness," along with "hope," "lovingkindess," "compassion," and "faithfulness," is so striking and spurs the heart unto much worship.

Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Yahweh's lovingkindnesses [His chesedim] indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.

"Yahweh is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I have hope in Him." Yahweh is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of Yahweh. It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there is hope. Let him give his cheek to the smiter, let him be filled with reproach.

For the Lord will not reject forever, for if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.

I hope you lay hold of the magnitude of those words. They come at the dead center of the book of Lamentations (Lam 3:19-32). Yahweh's great covenant faithfulness and loyal and steadfast love according to His own character and name is the centerpiece of Jeremiah's lamentations in his great suffering.

And that is deliberate. Lamentations has the most deliberate, symmetrical structure of any book in the Bible. In chapters 1 and 2, even in the original Hebrew, there are 22 verses that are composed of 3 lines in each verse, for a total of 66 lines in each of the first two chapters. And each verse begins with the successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In chapter 3, there are 66 verses of one line each, again totaling 66 lines in the chapter. And again, each cluster of three verses begins with successive letters in the alphabet. (So, verses 1-3 start with aleph, 4-6 with beth, and so on.) Chapter 4 has 22 verses composed of two lines each, and chapter 5 has 22 verses with one line each.

All of this gives form and shape to Jeremiah's mourning. Because of Yahweh's great faithfulness to His own name, His steadfast, loyal, covenant love expressed in the repeated term chesed (Lam 3:22, 32), Jeremiah's suffering is not just unbridled grief and despair. Yahweh's fresh mercies and abundant lovingkindnesses keep him from losing control and despairing entirely as those who grieve with no hope (1Th 4:13).

Therefore, though Israel has been exceedingly unfaithful to the covenant which God made with them at Sinai, and though God has chastened them greatly because of it, nevertheless their unfaithfulness will never nullify God’s faithfulness to the word which He spoke to Abraham: to give His people the land He promised (Gen 15:17-18). That is why Paul says in Romans 11 that, from the standpoint of God's election, Israel is beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom 11:28). God will not violate His covenant. Neither will it nullify God's faithfulness to the word which He spoke to David: to send the Messiah to reign over them forever on the throne of David (2Sam 7:10-16; Ps 89:34-35). And so with the New Covenant: "'If this fixed order departs from before Me,' declares Yahweh, 'then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.' Thus says Yahweh, 'If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,' declares Yahweh" (Jer 31:36-37; cf. Ps 89:36-37). It is for this reason that Jeremiah can come to the end of his lamentations and declare: "Restore us to You, O Yahweh, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old" (Lam 5:21).

And so in our trials of suffering, we also, as God's people, should faithfully turn to trust in His own faithfulness to His promises. He has sworn by the greatest thing by which there is to swear: Himself. God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb 6:17-20).

We must locate our hope entirely in the covenant faithfulness of God, specifically in His promise of the blessings of the New Covenant: that the Spirit guarantees our inheritance of dwelling with God in His presence forever – that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom 8:38-39).

Our hope, just as Jeremiah's, is in the Lord’s grace, His ceaseless lovingkindnesses, His never-failing and always-new compassions, for God will always be faithful to Himself (2 Tim 2:13).


Jeremiah's Five Lessons

1. He identifies with, and suffers alongside, his people.
2. He acknowledges that sin is at the root of suffering (even though not all suffering is a direct result of personal sin).
3. He acknowledges God’s absolute sovereignty in his suffering.
4. He recognizes that although God is sovereign, He is not the enemy.
5. He sets his hope entirely on, and rests in, God’s character.

What Love for God Is and Isn't

I was listening to a sermon by John Piper on Romans 8:28 this week (as I've been listening through his Romans series, chapters 6 through 8) called "All Things for Good." And I was just overwhelmed with delight to come to this point in his sermon. He was discussing the "those who love God" part of Romans 8:28, and thus discussing what it means for us to love God. In order to do that, he also spent some time discussing what love for God is not.

I've spent some time (with Piper's help) trying to unfold this doctrine of love for God in my own thinking here and here, along with the posts under the "Love of God" tag that can be found on the sidebar. Yet what Piper said in this sermon is exactly what I want to say, and exactly what my soul resonates with.

This topic -- what it means to love God -- is what the universe is about. And so when I hear these things, everything I experience of reality is that much more real. When I'm contemplating the purpose for which I was created, I am more alive than at any other time. I am made to worship more greatly and more purely, which is to say, I enjoy God more at this time than at any other time. I pray that the same be true for you.

If you'd like, you can listen to the sermon as well here. The stream loads pretty quickly, and the section that the below edited transcript is taken from starts at either "-27:00" or "-22:10." For whatever reason it seems like two different versions might load. So you can just let it load for a minute and then click over to -27:00 or -22:10 and listen along. (I always recommend listening to Piper along with reading him when possible.)

Anyway, he says:

What the Love of God Is Not

So what does it mean to love God? How can you know if you are in this number? The best way I can think to make the answer clear is to say three things that love for God is not. At least the essence of love for God is not these three things.

Loving God is not meeting his needs. The way we love man is different from the way we love God. In Acts 17:25 Paul said, "He [is not] served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things." God is radically different from us. He is the source of all things and has no needs. He cannot be helped or improved. There are no defects to reverse or deficiencies to supply. We cannot love him by supplying his needs. He has none. Therefore the essence of our love for him must be an experience of receiving. (And I do regard joy as essentially receiving pleasure from the object of our delight.)

That leads to the second thing that love for God is not. Loving God is not, in its essence, love for his gifts – gifts like forgiveness, justification, escape from hell, resurrection to a pain-free life, etc. Indeed if we love God, we will cherish these gifts and be thankful for them, because we would not have God without them. But loving God is treasuring God himself revealed in his gifts and treasuring God himself beyond his gifts. His gifts are precious to the degree that they bring us to God and show us more of God. When you love God, God is central in your affections, not his gifts.

This word "affections" leads us to the third thing that love for God is not. The essence of loving God is not the things that love for God prompts you to do. Love for God may prompt you to leave mother and father and forsake all that to declare his glory among the nations. But leaving mother and father and forsaking all are not the essence of love – they are the fruit of love. Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." This does not mean keeping his commandments is love. It means love is the kind of heart that prompts you to keep commandments.

In John 21:15-17 Jesus illustrates this connection when he asks Simon Peter three times, "Do you love me?" When Peter says, "Yes," Jesus does not say, "Good, that must mean you are obeying my commandments, because obeying my commandments is love." No, he said, "Feed my sheep." In other words, if you love me, act like it. Love my flock and feed them. Feeding sheep is the fruit of loving Jesus.

In other words, what I am saying is that love for God is a matter of the heart’s esteem for God before it produces anything else. It is something internal and involves spiritual emotions. It is not, in essence, a deliberated choice or a deed. It is more like a reflex of the heart to the perfections of God revealed especially in Christ. If you equate the deeds of love with the essence of love you will produce hypocrites – people who imitate the deeds and claim to love God when their hearts are far from him. If you equate love for God with love for his gifts, you produce hypocrites – people who are very glad to feel forgiven and declared righteous and delivered from hell and heaven-bound, but have no pleasure in God himself. They don’t love God. They just don’t want to have bad guilt feelings or go to hell.

What the Love of God Is

Therefore I think it is absolutely crucial that we clarify what the essence of love for God is. Let me grasp for the kinds of words that I think will help us know if we love God. Loving God is desiring God himself beyond his gifts. Loving God is treasuring God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is delighting in God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is being satisfied in God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is cherishing God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is savoring God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is valuing God and prizing God and revering God and admiring God beyond his gifts. All these words are grasping for that essential response of the heart to the revelation of the glory of God, especially in Christ through the gospel. It is a glad reflex of the heart to all that God is for us in Christ.

A Caveat and Some Applications

I'm taking a break from the regularly scheduled Repentance series this Tuesday to tack a few extra thoughts onto Friday's post on pursuing First Things first. My point there was that as we consider how to love our neighbor as ourselves, and so fulfill the Law (Mt 7:12; Mt 22:40; Rom 13:8; Gal 5:14; Jas 2:8), it leads us into the discovery that we fulfill the Second Greatest commandment by pursuing the First: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Because "by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments" (1Jn 5:2). The way we love people is by loving God.

That is, when we are so consumed with the glory of Jesus Christ, when He becomes our All in all, and when our hearts are captured to just seek Him first, in our satisfaction we proclaim Him, and our lives tell the truth about His sweetness. We manifest the glory of God, because our lives are a product of seeing Him. And we prefer Him more than we prefer the deceptive satisfaction-substitute that comes from sin. That is loving the world. Because the greatest good that can be done to the world is to see Jesus Christ. And when we esteem Him rightly and prefer Him, we present Him to everyone around us as He is: as supremely desirable, supremely beautiful, supremely attractive, supremely compelling, supremely preferable.

To be satisfied in Christ, then, is to love the world; because we present to them what gives them most joy and what is most satisfying. When we love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, in that we love our neighbor as ourselves. Love for people overflows from love for God. And if it doesn’t start there, we have become idolaters, and therefore cannot benefit them. If your love for people starts with them, you have failed to love them, because you have failed to love Him. Just as Lewis said:

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

And so we need to have this complex, brain-bending, deep-into-the-soil-of-Scripture theology undergirding our love for people. If we American pragmatists ignore this First-Things-First lesson, and tell people to just go out and love people and perform acts of service because that’s 'what Jesus would do,' we totally blow it. We pursue secondary things first, and lose both the first and secondary things.

A Caveat

Now, some people will read this and believe that I’m saying that we should forget about loving and serving people. They'll hear me saying that it’s really loving God that matters, and if you love God, you’re automatically loving people. So you don’t have to actually do anything. But that is emphatically not what I’m saying.

A couple of months ago, my wife and I took a road trip up the California coast from Santa Monica up to San Francisco via the beloved Pacific Coast Highway. That highway is exhibit A of how we can be sure that the west coast was populated after the east coast. Somebody thought enough to put a highway right next to the ocean. I mean what a beautiful drive it was. Now, our 8-hour drive was chock full of sighs, and wows, and calls from one to the other to "Look at that!" You'd think that we'd get tired of being so impressed! But that wasn't the case. The beauty of God's creation in the ocean, in the mountains, in the grass, in the rocks, in the trees, in the flowers, and in the clouds was absolutely stunning. And we couldn't help but talk about it! What we learned from that drive is that true beauty compels praise. When you look at something that is glorious, the delight it produces in you wells up into expression.

In the same way, when you behold the glory of Christ, the affections that are created in you from such satisfaction and such beauty necessarily find expression in your life. By definition, you don’t look at something that is beautiful and remain unaffected. Beauty compels action. Whether you’re proclaiming to people how beautiful and satisfying God is, or whether the glory of God motivates you to go out and serve people, it’s going to compel you to be a practical benefit to people. So don't think I'm trying to give myself and others a free pass to not serving people, to not loving our neighbor as ourselves. I don't mean that at all. My point is simply that it’s got to be in the proper order; we must pursue first things first, otherwise we’re idolaters. Our love for people must be God-centered.

Applications

So with that in mind, I want to make some applications of this First-Things-First principle. Here are some things you can do to love your neighbor as yourself by presenting to them their greatest benefit: God in Christ Himself.

Read the Word of God daily, because it’s in the Word that you behold the beauty of Christ. Show people that He is so satisfying, that He delightfully compels you to seek Him out in His Word.

Pray daily, because it’s in prayer that you have communion and fellowship with God, and it’s in prayer that that relationship thrives. Show people that He is so beautiful and satisfying that He makes it a joy for you to give up an hour of your busy schedule to pray.

Be in church on Sunday, because it’s in the fellowship of the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day that gives particular expression to the glory of God as it manifests the work of God’s grace in these people’s lives, and is the pinnacle of the worship of God, which is the most satisfying thing we can do. Show people that He is so satisfying that He makes it a pleasant thing to get up at 6:30 on a Sunday morning.

Meet with each other, because it’s an opportunity for believers to present that glory of Christ to each other, by speaking the Word to each other and even rebuking each other when we see that it will benefit each other.

And open your mouth and preach the Gospel to those who don’t know Christ, because (1) as you speak His message you savor the Person and the work of Christ that saved you, and (2) the preaching of the Gospel is how other people get saved, and how more people come to worship God as He deserves. Show people that He is so satisfying that it’s a joyful honor to risk being thought of as weird or a religious nut in order to preach this message both to strangers and to people we’ve known for years. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And out of that love, love your neighbor as yourself.

First Things First

As some of you know, it was my study of the Greatest and Second Greatest commandments (as laid out by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40), that spurred me on to start this blog. If you haven't read those two original posts (first, and second), I'd encourage you to do so. For this post, it will be particularly helpful to read the second, as it's in that context that the following quotes from C. S. Lewis make sense.

But just in case you don't want to click over, I'll reproduce a relevant portion of that post here. In studying how it is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, I looked at how the nature of (1) The Father's love, (2) the love Jesus showed while He was on earth, and (3) the love believers are commanded to show are all summed up in the concept of benefit. The Father loves by benefiting (Rom 5:8), Jesus loved by benefiting (Mt 9:18-35, Mk 6:30-34, Lk 22:49, etc.), and we are commanded to love by benefiting (Lk 6:27-31; Jas 2:14-17; 1Jn 3:17-18).

But when I asked how it is that I am to benefit my neighbor, I kept running up against this concept in the Bible that I fulfill the Second Greatest Commandment by pursuing -- not it -- but the First. How do I love my neighbor as myself? I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Principally, I get that from 1 John 5:2: By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.

But this principle of "You get Secondary Things by pursuing First Things first" is confirmed in many other passages of Scripture as well. From that post, slightly modified:

• Matthew 6:33 - Considering the Greatest Commandments as commandments required to be obeyed, Jesus says just to seek first the kingdom and His righteousness. Be consumed with loving God with all that you are. And all other things – which are all summed up in “Love your neighbor as yourself” – will be added unto as you just seek Him first.
• Leviticus 19:14, 32; 25:43 - As a grounding for commands to practically benefit their neighbor, God continually says to Israel, “You shall revere your God.” Reverence for God is the basis for loving one’s neighbor. You will get the Secondary Things if you pursue the First Things.
  
• Luke 10:38-42 - Martha is worried about many secondary things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, as she's chosen to pursue First Things first.
  
• Colossians 3:1-4 - Here we are commanded to be so consumed with heavenly things because that is where Christ is. And if you look at the context, it is this command to seek First Things first that is the ground for all of the practical directives on how to love each other from Colossians 3:12 all the way to the end of the body of the letter in Colossians 4:6.
• Psalm 27:4 - When David declares that the beauty of God is the one thing in his life that demands his affection and allegiance, I am benefited -- I am loved -- by David’s singularity of focus. I see his all-consuming desire to just behold the beauty of God, and I am thereby helped to see God more clearly, treasure Him more fully, and enjoy Him more fully. And that is my greatest benefit! To know God! So it can properly be said that David loves me by displaying to me his love for God. He accomplishes love for his neighbor, a Secondary Thing, by pursuing First Things first.

Now, with all that in mind, I came across a couple of C. S. Lewis quotes the other day that speak to this very same issue, and I was greatly benefited by seeing how his thoughts, independent from my own, affirmed this very doctrine that I am teaching: that we love -- or benefit -- our neighbor most when we love God most. They are from multiple sources.

From a 1952 letter: “When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”

From God in the Dock, pp. 278-281: “The longer I looked into it the more I came to suspect that I was perceiving a universal law...the woman who makes a dog the center of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all his power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication. It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman – glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? [Implied: You are disappointed.] Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good [instead of] a great, or a partial good [instead of] a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.

Apparently the world is made that way... You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. From which it would follow that the question, What things are first? is of concern not only to philosophers but to everyone... if we do not know, then the first and only truly practical thing is to set about finding out.”

From Mere Christianity, pp.134-135: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more – food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization [love our neighbor, care for the least of these] as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.”

He's saying precisely what Paul says in Colossians 3:1-4:

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

We are to set our minds on the things above, and not on the things on earth, because that is where Christ is. And our life is in Him. Do you want to love people? Good! Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you will love your neighbor as yourself. Pursue First Things first, and the Secondary Things will be "added unto you."

Many folks balk at this notion. One application in particular that I'd like to make, though, is to those who call themselves "missional," and sound the call for the Church's role in achieving social justice. They call attention to the fact that the eternal state will be enjoyed here on a renewed earth by Christians with glorified physical bodies -- that Heaven won't be our disembodied spirits in a ghost world. And based on this they conclude that God is concerned not only about the spiritual but the physical. And so we should be concerned not just about the spiritual, but the physical. As such, the preservation of the environment, social structures, and fallen human culture is erroneously thrust to the forefront of the Church's mission.

Well, it’s true that He is coming to redeem this earth. But if we follow that line of reasoning, we will be seeking to achieve secondary goals -- some of them great, Biblical, necessary goals, but secondary goals -- by pursuing them first, rather than by pursuing First Things first and seeing the second things "thrown in," as Lewis says. We'll never save society as long as society is our main object." And as Paul says, our 'setting-our-mind' energy is to be focused entirely on Christ. When He’s here, then we can set our minds on the things that are on earth because He will be on earth. But until then, we set our minds on things above because that’s where He is. Oh we most certainly run this race, but we fix our eyes on Jesus as we run this race (Heb 12:2)!

It’s exactly as Lewis, following the Apostle Paul, following Jesus, says it: the first thing is Christ. Seek Him first, and all these things will be added to you.

By this we know that we love the children of God,
when we love God
and observe His commandments.
- 1 John 5:2 -

(Click here for a follow-up post.)

What is the Bottom of Your Joy?

On Sunday, John Piper preached a sermon to his congregation to clarify a statement he's made (or actually, a question he's asked) for years to try to locate the believer's joy in God and not in himself. He was speaking to them specifically with a view to his upcoming 8-month sabbatical, and wanted to leave this message with them in his absence.

I read the notes of the sermon, though I haven't listened to it, and I found it to be a very refreshing read. It articulates some of the things that I was trying to express in this post last week, especially in the last paragraph. I re-post it here and leave it with you, confident that it will benefit you as it has me.

Before I get to his actual notes, here's a video excerpt of something I think everybody who can understand English needs to hear. It has to do with what a Christian, most foundationally, is; that is, at the most foundational level, what makes a Christian different from a non-Christian.

The Bottom of Our Joy: God, Not Self

I have been asking audiences for years: “Do you feel more loved by God because God makes much of you, or because God, at great cost to his Son, frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?” The aim of that question has never been to deny that God makes much of us. He does. (Which we will see shortly.) The aim has been to help people relocate the bottom of their joy—the decisive foundation of their joy—from self to God.

More Concerned About the Hell-Bound

Let me try to help you understand what shapes so much of what I say. A people ought to understand their pastor. I am more concerned about nominal hell-bound Christians who feel loved by God, than I am about genuine heaven-bound Christians who don’t feel loved by God.

Please don’t hear me as uncaring or indifferent to genuine Christians who don’t feel loved by God. I do care, and this sermon is especially for you. At this point, I’m simply trying to give you a perspective on why I emphasize what I do. There are millions of nominal Christians who are not born again who believe God loves them and yet are on their way to hell. And the difference between them and a born again believer is this: What’s the bottom, the decisive foundation, of their happiness? As you penetrate down deeper and deeper to the core, or the bottom, of what makes you happy, what is it?

Jesus Is Not a New Butler

Millions of nominal Christians have never experienced a fundamental alteration of that foundation of happiness. Instead they have absorbed the notion that becoming Christian means turning to Jesus get what you always wanted before you were born again. So, if you wanted wealth, you stop depending on yourself for it, and by prayer and faith and obedience you depend on Jesus for wealth. If you wanted to be healthy, you turn from mere human cures to Jesus as the source of your health. If wanted to escape the pain of hell, you turn to Jesus for the escape. If you wanted to have a happy marriage, you come to Jesus for help. If you wanted peace of conscience and freedom from guilt feelings, you turn to Jesus for these things.

In other words, to become a Christian, in this way of seeing things, is to have all the same desires you had as an unregenerate person—only you get them from a new source, Jesus. And he feels so loving when you do. But there’s no change at the bottom of your heart and your cravings. No change in what makes you happy. There’s no change in the decisive foundation of your joy. You just shop at a new store. The dinner is still the same; you just have a new butler. The bags in the hotel room are still the same; you just have a new bellhop.

A New Bottom for Our Joy in the New Birth

That’s not what the new birth is. It’s not having all the same desires that you had as an unregenerate person, and just getting them from a new source. The new birth changes the bottom, the root, the foundation of what makes us happy. Self at the bottom is replaced by Jesus. God, himself.

What makes the born-again person glad is not at bottom that they have God’s gifts, but that they have God. This is what I am more concerned about than genuine Christians who are truly on their way to heaven, and don’t feel loved by God. And my shorthand way of trying to awaken people to the dangers of feeling loved by God while being unregenerate is to ask: Do you feel more loved by God because he makes much of you, or because, as great cost to his Son, he frees you to enjoy knowing him and treasuring him and making much of him?

Why God Makes Much of Us for His Own Glory

But today I am jealous that this concern of mine not undermine the immeasurable way God loves you who are born again, including by making much of you—indeed, making much more of you than you ever dreamed.

So here is my new way of coming at this issue. I ask: Why does God perform all his acts of love toward us in a way that reveals he is loving us for his own glory? Why does God relentlessly reveal his love to us by telling us in the Bible that he is loving us for his own name’s sake? It is an urgent question because there are so many who say or feel that it isn’t love if God’s aim is to magnify his own glory. Or they feel: You say he is making much of me, but in fact he isn’t making much of me if his design is that he be made much of in making much of me.

I tremble just to say those words. It isn’t so. I want to show you—I want to help you see and feel—that you are more loved by God when he loves this way. He makes much more of you when he makes much of you this way. Please don’t turn this off. Ask God to help you see what we are about to see in the Bible.

Examples of God Loving Us for His Own Glory

Just a few examples of what I mean by God performing all his acts of love toward us in a way that reveals he is loving us for his own glory.

1. God shows his love for us by predestining us for adoption into his family.

He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace. (Ephesians 1:5-6)

God loved us in eternity before we were created, and he planned to make us his children by adoption. And the aim of this love was “to the praise of the glory of his grace.” He loved us this way that we might praise his grace. A regenerate person loves to praise God’s grace in our adoption. A nominal Christian simply loves the natural benefits of adoption.

2. God shows his love for us by creating us.

Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory. (Isaiah 43:6-7)

God loved us in bringing us into being that we might enjoy forever all the good he plans for us. And he did it, he says, for his glory.

3. God shows his love for us by sending us a Savior.

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest.’” (Luke 2:10-14)

We get the Savior; he gets the glory. We get the “great joy”; God gets the praise. That is God’s design in sending his Son.

4. God shows his love for us when Christ died for us.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)

Christ loved us, died for us; and the aim was that we might live for him. He pursues his glory through our salvation. And if you wonder why we read Psalm 79 at the beginning, it was because of one verse, verse 9:

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake! (Psalms 79:9)

Born-again people pray like this. They see their salvation primarily as a gift of the ability to see and savor and show the glory of God.

5. God shows his love for us in the way Jesus prays for us.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

“With” him. He prays that we be with him. And why does that make us happy? O he will give us many things. But the bottom of our joy, the decisive foundation of our happiness will be this: We will see his glory. Our Savior, not our self, will be the bottom of our joy.

The point of those five texts is to show that throughout the Bible, God performs all his acts of love toward us in a way that reveals he is loving us for his own glory.

Why does he do it this way?

How Much God Does Make of Us

Before I answer, it’s crucial in this message to emphasize that God’s love for us includes making much of us in ways that take our breath away. They are so over-the-top that we are scarcely able to believe how much he makes of us. A few examples of what I mean:

1. God makes much of us by being pleased with us and commending our lives.

Alan Jacobs said that C. S. Lewis’ greatest sermon was “The Weight of Glory.” And in that sermon, what is the weight of glory that every true Christian will bear? To the hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. (“Weight of Glory,” 1965, p. 10)

2. God makes much of us by making us fellow heirs with his Son, who owns everything.

• “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)
• “The promise to Abraham and his offspring [is] that he would be heir of the world.” (Romans 4:13)
• “Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

3. God makes much of us by having us sit at table when he returns and serving us as though he were the slave and we the masters.

“Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.” (Luke 12:37)

4. God makes much of us by appointing us to carry out the judgment of angels.

“Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:3)

5. God makes much of us by ascribing value to us and rejoicing over us as his treasured possession.

• “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. . . . Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31)
• “The Lord your God . . . will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

6. God makes much of us by giving us a glorious body like Jesus resurrection body.

• “He will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:21)
• “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:43; cf. Romans 8:30)

7. Most amazingly God makes much of us by granting us to sit with Christ on his throne.

• “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Revelation 3:21)
• Or as Paul says, “The church . . . is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)

We are destined to share in the governing of the universe with divine-like authority.

Let it be known loud and clear, God makes much of his Son’s bride, the church. God loves the church with a kind of love that will make more of her than she can ever imagine. All this is yours, if you are belong to Christ (Romans 8:9).

Why God Reminds Us That He Loves Us for His Glory

The final decisive question is: Why does God, who loves so much, and who makes much of us so extremely, remind us again and again that he does all this for his own glory? Why does God remind us over and over that he makes much of us in a way that is designed ultimately to make much of him?

The answer is this: Loving us this way is a greater love. God’s love for us, that makes much of us for his glory is a greater love than if he ended by making us our greatest treasure, rather than himself. Making himself our end is a greater love than making us his end.

Self Will Never Satisfy

The reason this is greater love is that self, no matter how glorified by God (Romans 8:30), will never satisfy a heart that is made for God. God loves you infinitely. He sent his Son to die that he might have you, and that you might have him (1 Peter 3:18). He will not let you settle for wonderful and happy thoughts of self. Not even a glorified self. He will not let your glory, which he himself creates and delights in, replace his glory as your supreme treasure.

God’s Greatest Gift

Bethlehem, I leave this truth with you while I am away for these months. Glory in this. Take heart from this. Rejoice in this. Be strengthened by this. You are precious to God, and the greatest gift he has for you is not to let your preciousness become your god. God will be your God. God alone forever. And this is infinite love.

I Benefit from God's God-Centeredness

"As I live," declares the Lord Yahweh, "surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out, I shall be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out; and I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face. As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you," declares the Lord Yahweh.

"I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant; and I will purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against Me; I will bring them out of the land where they sojourn, but they will not enter the land of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the Yahweh. As for you, O house of Israel," thus says the Lord Yahweh, "Go, serve everyone his idols..."

"...but later you will surely listen to Me, and My holy name you will profane no longer with your gifts and with your idols. For on My holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel," declares the Lord Yahweh, "there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land; there I will accept them and there I will seek your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your holy things. As a soothing aroma I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered; and I will prove Myself holy among you in the sight of the nations. And you will know that I am Yahweh, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land which I swore to give to your forefathers. There you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. Then you will know that I am Yahweh when I have dealt with you for My name's sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel," declares the Lord Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 20:33-44 -

This text is so glorious. I could probably spend a month making observations that would make my soul sing. But right now I just want to just bask in how awesome the God-centeredness of God is, and how God's pursuing His own glory necessarily is for our benefit.

In the passage above, the scene is Judah's impending judgment. Soon the Babylonians will come and destroy the temple and destroy Jerusalem. And they will be acting entirely according to the will of Yahweh, who credits Himself with the destruction of His people, His land, and His holy temple.

But He declares that that judgment is not the end of the story for Judah. No, He will surely restore them as a people, will give them back their land, and, as Ezekiel will tell us later on, will give them back their temple (Ezek 40-48).

But what's amazing is why God says He'll have mercy on them and graciously restore them. He declares that He will save Israel to prove Himself holy, and to ensure that His name be properly honored and not be profaned. You see, He is not content to simply cut off His people in judgment. That would not magnify His attractiveness. It would give the nations occasion to mock and jeer, "These are the people of Yahweh; yet they have come out of His land" (Ezek 36:20). "What kind of weak God is Yahweh that His people regard Him so lightly that they defy Him so greatly, that He must resort to such measures to punish them?"

But in the pursuit of His glory, to ensure that His compelling beauty be magnified in the sight of all the world, He will see to it that Israel worship Him. It's as if He's saying, "Oh, one day you will see how great I am. One day you will finally have your eyes opened to fully appreciate how beautifully glorious and delightfully satisfying I am. I will make sure of it. You will not get away with not worshiping Me!"

How awesome is that? God is emphatic about saving Israel not for their sake but for His sake. Here, He's said, "I will deal with you for My name's sake" (Ezek 20:44)! Later on He says, "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name. ... I will vindicate the holiness of My great name" (Ezek 36:22-23)! He is radically and recklessly God-centered.

But isn't it just lovely that it is precisely His love for Himself that we, as His people, experience as love for us!

That God's absolute commitment to His own glory is linked to my finding Him delightful and being satisfied by Him in worship is unspeakably glorious and the most lofty demonstration of grace that I could ever conceive of! God has designed this universe to work in such a way that His glory and our good are not only vitally connected and related -- they are the very same thing! It's not just that whatever God decides will glorify Him most will satisfy us most. It's that God's glory is our good! The good we are looking for is to see Him magnified!

That is absolutely astounding to me. I hope it is for you too. May your heart be captivated and worship at such benevolent grace from such a large-hearted God.

I want to add one thing in closing. I don't know about you, but as I ponder these things, I sense that I am loved in an infinitely greater way knowing that God is not acting for my sake or for my benefit per se, but rather for His own. If He was doing everything He does for my sake and not His own sake, I would feel less loved, because I know in my heart that I'm not worthy to be so highly regarded that way. God would seem smaller to me; He would be man-centered. But because He is unwaveringly committed to the glory of His name, He is magnified in my sight as utterly righteous and utterly worthy. And then, because it is His nature that, in tireless commitment to Himself I somehow benefit from that, well that takes my breath away. My God is a big God. My God is an amazing God. I feel more loved by God because He aims at loving Himself above all things, and loving Himself spills over into benefit for me.

I hope you feel the same way.

A Glorious Morning Meditation

I'm very thankful for the requirement to pray for an hour a day for my prayer class. I pray that it's building in me a taste for the discipline of prayer for the rest of my life. I really enjoy the time of meditating on God's Word and on the glory of Christ. It truly does become a devotional time; that is, it is a time of sincere worship of God my Savior.

I wanted to share with you one such meditation from a recent morning. The night before I was reading a (I guess you could call it a) biography on Jonathan Edwards called A God Entranced Vision of All Things. So when I woke up the next morning, my mind was still considering the God-centeredness of God. I wasn't particularly captivated by the rightness of our God-centeredness, but what particularly thrilled me that morning was God's own God-centeredness, His "self-centeredness."

I considered how glorious it is that for my God, it is loving for Him to be self-seeking, for Him to be selfish, for Him to magnify and make much of Himself… and how opposite of loving it would be for anyone else to do that. When I pursue my own glory and my own desires, I am functionally hating those around me, because I’m making much of myself, and I am not worthy to be made much of. The exaltation of me in the hearts and minds of those around me will not do them good. There is no benefit there. But for my God, when He exalts Himself in the minds of those in His presence, He Himself is so delightful and pleasant and worthy and beautiful that His self-exaltation is love to those people. When He magnifies Himself, He is infinitely benefiting those in whose sight He is magnified.

Dear friends, I love this God!

...and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.

- John 14:21 -

But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.
- Psalm 73:28 -

One thing I have asked from Yahweh, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of Yahweh
And to meditate in His temple.
- Psalm 27:4 -

Obedient Disobedience, Part 4

One last post on obedient disobedience (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Our detractor responds, "You're making this too complicated. God is our Father. We are His children. We just need to obey Him. It's like me and my son. He just needs to do what I say. Because he's my son, and I'm his dad. I tell him, 'Please clean up your room.' Then he needs to do it. If he doesn't, he's disobeying. Period."

And again, I agree as before. I'm not saying at all that if we simply don't feel like obeying God that that's any excuse for our disobedience. I'm actually upping the ante. I'm saying that we can do what God says, in one sense, and still be disobeying Him. I'm saying that we can "obey" on the outside and hate it. And I'm saying that that's not how the Bible presents Christ or the Christian life under the New Covenant to us. I'm saying that the New Testament authors speak to us like this: "You're His son; He's your Dad. You know Him! You've tasted His goodness! You know He's worthy to be loved with all your heart! Based on that relationship, obey joyfully!"

I agree that if you tell your son to clean his room and he doesn't do it, he's disobeyed. And nothing like, "Well, I didn't feel like it" excuses him. 100% agreed.

But here's the question: If he cleans his room -- and does all his other chores -- every time you ask him, but as he does them is grumbling, and thinking to himself about how you're such a slave driver, and how it's really annoying how you ask him to do things he doesn't wanna do all the time, and the only way to avoid trouble is to do what you ask... is he obeying then? Is it obedience for him to drag himself off the couch away from his TV, or computer, or X-Box, and to clean his room while thinking about how much he'd rather be doing something else?

I would say, "No way. He's not obeying at all."

And if even you would say he is obeying (after all, the room is getting cleaned up), can you honestly say, dear detractor, that as his father, you are honored by such "obedience"?

I'd have a hard time believing you'd say yes. And that's my point. God doesn't say yes either. He proclaims that He is more worthy and more satisfying, and more pleasant, and more beautiful than to be forced upon someone begrudgingly. "Obeying" God as if His commandments are burdensome is to disobey "obediently." Obeying God joyfully is actually finding Him to be as delightful as He is.

May God grant you and me a heart to delight in Him.

This people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service,
But they remove their hearts far from Me,
And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.
- Isaiah 29:13 -

I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your Law is within my heart.
- Psalm 40:8 -

My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.
- John 4:34 -

Piper on What to Do with Obedient Disobedience

Obedient Disobedience, Part 3

So after writing the two previous posts (Part 1, Part 2), I opened John Piper's Taste and See devotional, as I've been going through it semi-regularly. The chapter I was on was entitled, "When Your 'Want To' Doesn't Match Your 'Ought To'." This is Piper's take on what to do about obedient disobedience.

If your "want to" does not conform to God's "ought to," what can you do to have peace? I see at least five possible strategies.

1. You can avoid thinking about the "ought to." This is the most common strategy in the world. Most people simply do not devote energy to pondering what they should be doing that they are not doing. It's easier to just keep the radio on.

This is where the world is. This is the kind of thing that goes on (mostly) outside the church. Though this is a problem, this hasn't been my focus.

2. You can reinterpret the "ought to" so that it sounds just like your "want to." This is a little more sophisticated and so not as common. It usually takes a college education to do this with credibility, and a seminary degree to do it with finesse. (And I believe strongly in both college and seminary!)

This also is a common worldly strategy, and it's usually employed by those who do not have a high view of Scripture but want to pat themselves on the back for being 'obedient' to God. Again, though this issue is important, it hasn't been my biggest concern.

3. You can muster the willpower to do a form of the "ought to" even though you don't have the heart of the "want to." This generally looks pretty good, and is often mistaken as virtue, even by those who do it. In fact, there is a whole worldview that says doing "ought to's" without "want to" is the essence of virtue. The problem with this is that Paul said, "God loves a cheerful giver," which puts the merely "ought-to givers" in a precarious position.

This is where those who practice 'obedient disobedience' live most of the time. This strategy is employed by born again, orthodox, conservative evangelical brothers and sisters who love God's Word and have a real desire to see God glorified. But they've been taught, "You just obey your Lord. It doesn't matter how you feel." And Piper's right. That does sound virtuous. Self-denial, doing hard things. It certainly takes a person of... well... strong will... to do that. But this is not Biblical obedience. This is the focus of my previous two posts. A lot of believers -- sound in nearly every other area of doctrine -- find themselves in this category. Examine yourself. Are you in this category? (I was.)

4. You can feel proper remorse that the "want to" is very small and weak - like a mustard seed - and then, if it lies within you, do the "ought to" by the exertion of will, while repenting that the "want to" is weak, and praying that the "want to" will soon be restored. Perhaps it will even be restored in doing the "ought to." This is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy hides one of the two contradictory impulses. Virtue confesses them both in the hope of grace.

This is what I suggested in Part 2. Not having the "want to" doesn't change the "ought to." Yet even as we do the "ought to" we must repent of our sin: that is, that the "want to" isn't there for us.

5. You can seek, by the means of grace, to have God give the "want to" so that when the time comes to do the "ought to," you will "want to." Ultimately, the "want to" is a gift of God. "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God . . . it is not able to submit to the law of God" (Romans 8:7). "The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God . . . because they are spiritually appraised" (1 Corinthians 2:14). "Perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 2:25).

Amen. This is what we need to be doing. And we need to be seeking this gift of God as we practice strategy #4. We obey, confessing as sin our slowness of heart to believe that Jesus is as delightful as He says He is, while pleading with God to give us the gift of a clear vision of Him so that we will "want to."

Piper's conclusion is extremely helpful:

The Biblical doctrine of original sin boils down to this (to borrow from St. Augustine): We are free to do what we like, but we are not free to like what we ought to like. "Through the one man's disobedience [Adam] the many were made sinners" (Romans 5:19). This is who we are. And yet we know from our own soul and from the Bible that we are accountable for the corruption of our bad "want to's." Indeed, the better you become, the more you feel ashamed of being bad and not just doing bad. As N.P. Williams said, "The ordinary man may feel ashamed of doing wrong: but the saint, endowed with a superior refinement of moral sensibility, and keener powers of introspection, is ashamed of being the kind of man who is liable to do wrong" (First Things, #87, Nov. 1998, p. 24).

God's free and sovereign heart-changing work is our only hope. Therefore we must pray for a new heart. We must pray for the "want to" - "Incline my heart to Your testimonies" (Psalm 119:36). "Make glad the soul of your servant, for to You, O Lord, I lift up my soul" (Psalm 86:4). He has promised to do it: "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes" (Ezekiel 36:27). This is the new covenant bought by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 8:8-13; 9:15). "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help [us want to do what we ought to do] in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

May God incline our hearts to Him.

UPDATE: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4

Obedient Disobedience, Part 2

So I spent Friday's post outlining how much of what we might think of as obedience in our Christian lives, from a Biblical perspective, may not be obedience at all. We can, in response to the commands of Christ, read our Bibles, go to church, and spend time in prayer, and we can think we've obeyed Him. "He said to do those things, and I did them. I'm OK!" But if you read your Bible, went to church, and spent time in prayer simply because that was the right thing to do, but you were really burdened by doing all those things, then you actually have fallen short of Biblical obedience.

The Application

Having said all that, let me add the following.

Though truly God-honoring obedience comes out of delighting in Him, I also do know that there are times when we don't always feel like He's delightful. That's obviously because we've still got the presence of sin in our flesh. Our 'fleshiness' (that is, the presence of indwelling sin that the believer struggles against) sometimes -- even oftentimes -- gets the upper hand and renders us as if we were blind. It clouds our vision. We wind up delighting in things that aren't delightful (i.e., sin) and being bored by things that are absolutely thrilling (i.e., Christ). Or, as Paul puts it, we do what we do not want to do, and the very thing we do is that which we hate (Rom 7:14-25).

The question is, then, at those times when our flesh does get the upper hand and we don't feel like reading our Bibles, or praying, or going to church, should we just not do those things because it would be "obedient disobedience"? Given all I've said, do I say that unless we feel all warm and fuzzy about it, we should never obey God?

I answer with an emphatic, "No! We should indeed act in obedience to God and do those things!"

If faced with the opportunity to obey God, and you survey your soul and see your sin and it says to you that you're not delighting in Him, and that your obedience would be burdensome, I say, "Do it anyway." I say that for at least two reasons.

1. The principle of grace in sanctification -- and obeying Christ out of delight and not duty -- never translates somehow into license for not obeying Him. That is, disobeying the command to rejoice in the Lord always is never an excuse for disobeying another command that He gives. Do not yield to the slavery of your flesh; if you do, your affections will never catch up with your actions.
   
2. The second reason you should obey Him even when you don't feel like it is because what will happen -- invariably -- is that God will be gracious, and just by the beauty of Himself will win your affections... sometimes even in the process of doing what you didn't feel like doing.

Summary

So, I wake up in the morning and am tired. And because of the presence of sin -- my remaining fleshliness -- I don't feel like spending time with my Savior by reading His Word and worshiping Him in prayer. First of all, that's insane. I'm demonstrating that my sinfulness has clouded my vision such that I see the most awesome Person in the universe as boring. But, nonetheless, I don't feel like reading and praying. But, God is gracious to me, and He reminds me of His commands, and that I should obey Him. So, I walk downstairs, wishing I was in bed, or on the computer, and I read my Bible and I pray.

I'm saying, at that point, I must recognize that I've disobeyed Him. I have not kept His commandments as if they were not burdensome (1Jn 5:3), but as if they were very burdensome. He is not honored by such "obedience." I may have "obeyed" on the outside. I opened my Bible. I read it. I prayed. But I did not obey from the heart. My obedience was owing less to the glory and delightfulness of God in Christ, and more to my own guilty conscience and will power.

But, at the same time, it would have been wrong for me to go back to bed, or go open my computer, or turn on the TV, and say to myself, "I don't want to dishonor God by not obeying Him from the heart, so I'm not going to do what He says at all." No! Do indeed act as free men, as the Apostle Peter Says, but "do not use your freedom as a covering for evil" (1Pet 2:16). Rather, "use it as bondslaves of God." Don't add disobedience to disobedience! If you do, your disobedience will harden your heart and you'll never obey out of delight. And besides, even when I come to the Bible as if it isn't delightful, God is invariably gracious to me, and by the end of my Bible reading time, I've seen Him, and I'm thankful that I read His Word. He wins me over, and produces in me those very affections that I couldn't work up on my own.

What To Do

So, the take-away is: confess your obedient disobedience as sin. Confess to Christ that you haven't found Him as delightful, and as glorious, and as pleasant, and as satisfying as He actually is. Confess that that is your problem, and ask Him to overcome your fleshliness. Ask for grace to obey from the heart... that you would be so filled with all that God is for you in Christ, that satisfaction from that fullness would overflow into joyful obedience and delightful service. Tozer puts it this way:

O Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee and be satisfied. My heart longs to respond, but sin has clouded my vision till I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine own precious blood, and make me inwardly pure, so that I may with unveiled eyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage. Then shall I be prepared to behold Thee in full splendor in the day when Thou shalt appear to be glorified in Thy saints and admired in all them that believe. Amen.

Then, our obedience wouldn't make much of our will power, but it would make much of the glory of God in the face of Christ, which, as we behold it, transforms us into Christlikeness.

May God give us the grace that it would be so.

But we all, with unveiled face,
beholding
as in a mirror
the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed
into the same image
from glory to glory,
just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
- 2 Corinthians 3:18 -

UPDATE: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4

Obedient Disobedience, Part 1

To provide a little context for the following, it comes from something I wrote a while ago in regards to a conversation I had about obedience and the Christian life. I've slightly adapted it where appropriate.

We must be sanctified by grace, and not a legalistic system, whether it be the Law of Moses or any other law. God doesn't present us with a list of things to do and not to do as the means (or motivation) for our sanctification. He presents to us Christ Himself, and by beholding Him, we are transformed (2Cor 3:18).

And so what's necessary for the orthodox, conservative Christian to recognize about the way he lives is Christian life is that it's not obedience at all if we grit our teeth and clench our fists and struggle and say, "Allllll riiiiight. Off to church, I guess," or, "I really don't feel like doing this, but I know you tell me to read Your Word, so here I go." That's not the second half of 1 John 5:3, which teaches us that the love of God is not only that we keep His commandments, but that we keep His commandments while finding them 'not-burdensome.' No, that would be demonstrating in action that His commandments are indeed burdensome.

The point that I think needs to be made over and over again within churches and other Christian circles, is that God gives us the grace in Christ to obey Him with joy. Many of you will be familiar with John Piper's effective little sound-byte on this issue, and I think he's spot-on. He often says, "Christ doesn't save us to make much of us; He saves us to enjoy making much of Him forever." And so the person who goes to church, or reads his Bible, or prays, or seeks to serve his neighbor against his will, but does it because "it's just the right thing to do," dishonors God.

Because it's as if that person is saying, "I know You tell me, God, that going to church and reading Your Word and praying are all good for me. And I know You reveal Yourself to Your people through those means as they obey in loving submission, but I honestly just don't think You're satisfying enough, pleasing enough, beautiful enough, to have me enjoy obeying You. Sure, I can muscle it down, but it's not enjoyable."

That's not obedience that glorifies God. That's moralism, and anyone can do that. Anyone -- born again by the Spirit of God or still dead in their trespasses and sins -- can do things they don't want to do if they're really pricked in their conscience that they should do them. But that's not grace. That's law. And so that dishonors not only the finished work of Christ on the cross, but also the beauty and pleasantness of Christ Himself.

Objections

"But," a reasonable detractor interjects, "isn't that a really complicated way to describe something that the Bible often describes so simply? Why can't we just read John 14:15 and 1 John 5:3 and be done with it? Why the extended explanation?"

Those are extremely good questions.

The answer for why we can't just leave it there is because we've gotten really good at being Pharisees. We've gotten really good at doing things "just because."

In John 14:15 and in 1 John 5:3 the doctrine of sanctification by grace -- and the doctrine of enjoying God in Christ as the basis of the Christian life -- is there. We've just largely ignored it. Someone quotes those verses, and everyone nods their heads in agreement. But then they deny that confession by their actions. Evidently, we understand different things when we read those verses.

Think of the Westminster Catechism. All true children of God affirm that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And we affirm that because we believe Scripture teaches that clearly. We also believe, for the same reason, that God does everything to glorify Himself to the utmost. Now, if that's true, it means that it is God's desire for His children (those to whom He reveals Himself) to enjoy Him. And so He's not honored by someone obeying Him just because they know it's the right thing to do as much as He's honored by someone who knows Him, and has tasted the satisfaction and the fullness that is in Christ, and given that -- that I know my God -- he loves to obey. It's at that point that we exclaim: Of course His commandments are not burdensome! And it's a delight to keep those commandments, because when I do, I get more of Him!

That's the love that Jesus is talking about in John 14:15. He is not saying that love for God is commandment-keeping. That's just not what the text says. Love for Christ -- that's one thing -- produces joyful obedience to what He commands -- that's another thing. Neither is He saying, "Your task is to prove your allegiance to Me by keeping My commandments." He is simply declaring that those who truly love God, who delight in Him, who know Him and enjoy Him, will, out of that love, keep His commandments.

"I don't know," responds our reasonable detractor. "Why can't we just say, 'If you're a Christian, a follower (= disciple = student) of Christ, do what your Lord tells you to do'?"

I say: We absolutely can say that!

But, unless the person you're talking to implicitly affirms and understands the principle of grace, that God makes it a delight for me to do what He tells me to do -- simply by making me able to see Him as He really is -- they will miss out on His glory, will not enjoy Him, and thus will fall short of Biblical obedience. And like I said earlier, I think many Christians don't implicitly affirm or understand that principle of grace in sanctification when they hear, "Do what God tells you to do." So in those instances in which that misunderstanding is even remotely possible, it's already complicated, and needs to be explained.

The Application

Now, all of this brings up another question. Someone asks, "So, based on all you've said here, does that mean that if I don't feel like reading my Bible or going to church, that even if I do read and if I do go I'm sinning?"

Yup. That's what it means.

"So does that mean I shouldn't read my Bible or go to church unless I do feel like it?"

Nope! It doesn't mean that at all!

I'll flesh that out a bit in the next post.

UPDATE: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4