COMING SOON...
Sunday, May 27, 2012
The Pursuit of Happiness Part 3
A Sip
Good evening blogworms! This blog will be finishing off my series on Christian Hedonism with a practical Bible reading plan. I have created this by bringing together several ideas and instructions from the previous post to aid those who would like to put them into practice. As I have said previously, Bible reading is by no means the only way that we see God’s glory, but it is a crucial way that we can regularly see God’s glory if we plan effectively.
As many of us know, reading the Bible can often be viewed as a chore rather than a delight. I know personally that my own personal Bible reading has suffered because of this. It is for this reason that I hope is this post may be used by saints out there to make their Bible reading more productive, more regular and in particular, more pleasing (both to God and to themselves). So, on with the blog!
Spring Time!
BIBLE PASSAGE
This will vary depending on your time available for Bible reading. My preference is to read chronologically through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in order to better grasp the historical context of passages as I go. However, this is by no means the only right way to do read the Bible.
Nevertheless, because of my preference to read the Bible chronologically, once I get to certain passages of the Old Testament (such as detailed outlines of the Mosaic Law) where it is harder to see the glory of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ than in the New Testament, there is a risk I may forsake reading the Bible as many others have. For this reason, I have chosen to read one Old Testament and one New Testament passage each week.
And since I have not got a lot of time at the moment, I have chosen to read only one chapter of each per week, breaking them up into only a few verses each day. I would love to read more, but as the saying goes, it’s quality that matters, not quantity. That said, if you have more time on your hands, by all means read more. I have also chosen to do my reading early in the morning as my mind is sharper and I am less tired. And since it is the first thing I will read for the day, it’s also beneficial as it should shape my view of the day and give me fuel to live faithfully day-by-day.
So, for example, this week I will be reading Genesis 1 and Matthew 1. I have chosen to read part of each every alternate day to break them up and give me a bit more variety. So on Monday, I will read Genesis 1:1-11. On Tuesday, I will read Matthew 1:1-8. On Wednesday, I will read Genesis 1:12-20. And so forth until Sunday, when I can either take a break or read theology. If I miss any days, I can just carry them forward so no dramas.
So having explained what system I have used to select passages each day, now I will explain how I will read these passages each day.
1) OPENING PRAYER
Since joy in God is a gift from Him and not through techniques, we need to begin our Bible readings cloaked in prayer. This should only be brief. Whilst again there is some liberty in what you pray for, I would suggest praying as John Piper outlines in the acronym IOUS: INCLINE our hearts to the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:36); OPEN our eyes to see the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:18); UNITE our hearts and minds to see the glory of God in His Word so that all of our being sees the glory, not just parts of us (Psalm 86:11); and finally SATISFY our hearts with the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 90:14).
This prayer will also be a way of keeping us humble and preventing us from being puffed up with knowledge. By crying out in prayer, “Help me see, God!” we are reminded that we are not masters of the universe trying to master God as an object of science, but humble servants asking for an undeserved and satisfying glimpse at His greatness. Ironically and on a side note, the act of praying for God’s help in seeing His glory is also a way of seeing His glory in itself. Prayer is a means of glorifying God afterall.
2) READ
After humbly praying, you should now read the passage once through.
3) MEDITATE
This should be the longest part of the session. This will involve three things. First, you should write the first verse out slowly. Then, once you finish slowly writing the verse out, write what initial thoughts, ideas or questions occurred to you whilst writing the verse out. Finally, you can refer to a Bible commentary and see what insights the writer has for the verse. Throughout this process, be sure to be thinking and mulling these things over in your mind and applying them to your life. After doing this for the first verse, repeat this process for the next verse, and continue until you have meditates over all the verses in the passage.
4) GOD’S GLORY
Flowing on from meditating about the general implications of the passage, now fine tune your gaze. Try and look for what this passage says about God and His works, that is, who He is and what He has done or is doing. What you’re looking for here is for God to reveal His glory to you, that is, His manifest goodness and beauty.
5) GOD’S MESSAGE
Next, try and summarise the passage into a message. This does not mean moralise the passage into an “eternal truth” such as “good things come to those who wait” or “two heads are better than one”. Rather, try and hear what God is saying to you in this passage with reference to law (His command to you) and gospel (His promise to you).
6) MEMORISE
Then, pick what you consider the key verse from the passage and memorise it however you think is best. Eventually, you will memorise one verse from each chapter each week. You can choose to memorise more if you think you can, but I think I can only manage one verse to start off with. Make sure you also memorise the verse citation (ie. the book, chapter and verse) not just the content of the verse so you can find it later if you need to.
7) CLOSING PRAYER
Finally, end the session in the way you started – by praying. In contrast to the first prayer which was brief, this prayer can be as long and as broad as you want. However, it may help to pray the passage you just read. What I mean by this is to turn the words that you just read in the passage into a prayer. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it will shape your desires to be more biblical and make sure that you pray for a diverse range of biblical things, not just your pet topics. Secondly, it will shape our language so that it is more biblical. This is, after all, what “praying in the Spirit” means. It means to pray the very words that the Holy Spirit Himself inspired.
Waves
Well, I think this has probably been my shortest and perhaps my most “practical” blog post yet. Again, I pray that this will stir you to read your Bibles more effectively and more regularly. But I know that this can only happen not through guilt, but through God opening your eyes and hearts to see reading the Bible not as a boring chore, but as the window through which we can look and see the source of our everlasting happiness – the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
Monday, April 9, 2012
The Pursuit of Happiness Part 2
A Sip
Hey there blogworms! Today’s blog post is a continuation of my previous post on the pursuit of happiness. So far, I’ve argued that God’s glory (His supreme value proclaimed and displayed) makes us happiest. In order for it to make us happy, we must first see it and we see it most clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fight to be happy is a fight to see the glory of God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus.
Though there are other ways that God reveals to us His glory, the Gospel is the blazing centre of the glory of God and we must therefore make every effort to see it in our lives daily. In this blog post, I will give some practical examples of ways to see this glory by faith arising from the book, “When I Don’t Desire God” by John Piper. So, on with the blog!
Spring Time!
HOW TO BE HAPPY
Now that we have dealt with the more theoretical framework answering the question, “what makes us happiest?” we can then deal with our more practical original question of how we can see Christ’s glory day-to-day and attain deep happiness. If seeing (by faith) the glory of Christ in the Gospel is what makes us happiest, then however we are able to see this by faith is how we can be happiest. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that God has ordained for us to see His Gospel by faith. You could call these ordained ways as “steps to happiness”.
However, before we proceed to look at the various ways that we can see God’s glory in the Gospel, it’s important to first note that joy in God is ultimately a gift and bestowed by Him at His discretion (Proverbs 21:31; Psalm 127:1; 1 Peter 4:11). This means that we shouldn’t rely on any of these like techniques to coerce joy or think we can earn joy by mere human achievement or willpower. Rather, we should practice these steps faithfully and humbly, patiently waiting for God to make us happy.
I say this because from experience, I know that even when you practice all these steps, God can still allow you to stay unhappy for a time according to His will. This can be simply to arouse a greater desire for Him and to rely on Him as opposed to ourselves (2 Corinthians 1:9). Nevertheless, despite these times of doubt and depression, God will never leave us there.
These “steps” to happiness are simply means of grace that God often uses to make us happy. To use a metaphor, it’s like if seeing cassowaries (rare far North Queensland birds) made you happy. Therefore, in order to be happy, you would need to see them. But they are very rare and so to have any chance of seeing them, you would need to walk along tracks that they are known to frequent. However, whether you see them or not is up to the cassowaries themselves. Similarly, these steps are like roads or paths of blessing that God is known to frequent and whether you experience His joy in Himself while doing them is entirely up to Him. All you can do is faithfully walk these paths often.
The following are the ways that God shows us the glory of His Gospel for our enjoyment:
1. Preaching
When Moses wanted to see the glory of God in Exodus 33:18, God answered by saying He would reveal His glory with His word, saying, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’” (Exodus 33:19). And that is exactly what God did in Exodus 34:6-7, giving one of the most theologically succinct descriptions of who He is. And how did Moses respond to this revelation of the glory of God? He worshipped God in verse 8 and that should be the result of seeing God’s glory proclaimed to us - feeling the worth of God and enjoying Him.
Likewise, in Samuel 3:21, God is said to have revealed Himself to Samuel by His word. In this age of sight by faith and not by eyes, God reveals His glory to us in the Gospel by His word, and primarily by His spoken word. This means that to see God’s glory in the Gospel, we need to regularly hear the Gospel orally proclaimed to us, be it in the pulpit each Sunday and even online. Hearing is how faith is created and sustained (Romans 10:17), and hence how the glory of God in the Gospel is presented to us to see and savour.
Why can’t we simply read our Bibles or theology though? Isn’t this the same as hearing a sermon? Well, we’ll come to the importance of the written word shortly in the fight for joy in God but for now, let me explain the main difference between reading the written word and hearing the word preached orally in Church. While the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of God to us through both means and hence imparts joy in God to us through both, the spoken word of God is more important because it shows us the Gospel more accurately.
Why does hearing as opposed to reading encapsulate the Gospel more accurately? Because when we read, we are actively seeking and achieving, whereas when we hear, we are passively receiving and trusting. The eyes are a symbol of activity and fullness whereas the ear is a symbol of grace and faith. We are saved not by our seeking and seeing, since we are all born not seeking the God of the Bible (Romans 3:11), but rather by God revealing Himself to us and our receiving His gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 10:20).
As Michael Horton says in ‘The Gospel-Driven Life’, “Everything that we possess right now of our salvation has come to us through the ear, not the eye. Even the sacraments are visible confirmations attached to God’s verbal promise…Sight corresponds to full possession, a complete realization of heavenly reality. By contrast, hearing corresponds to faith in a promise. If we demand our best life here and now we will be particularly susceptible to idolatry, but God calls us to embrace a promise that we hear and believe.”
So while our eyes are involved in worship such as reading, it is primarily through our ears that we “see” God’s glory in the Gospel, proclaimed to us from an outside source and penetrating our corrupt self-centred thoughts. It is on the basis of our ears that every other sense is engaged. Therefore, if we want to be happy and see the glory of Christ, we will submit and listen to the preaching of the Gospel by pastors every Sunday and beyond (2 Timothy 4:2).
And this preaching should be what John Piper calls “expository exultation”. In other words, the preacher should draw God-glorifying truths out of the Bible and exult over this truth. He should preach with passion, enthusiasm and joy for the joy of God and the joy of us. It should also be focused on and centred upon Jesus Christ and not on the preacher or his experiences (2 Corinthians 4:5). And when the preacher preaches the word of God faithfully, the Holy Spirit makes the preacher’s words effective and it is as if God Himself is speaking, “Let light shine out of darkness,” to each of our hearts to open our eyes to the glory of God in the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:6). This is why the preacher is called an ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) who is given a message to proclaim and not a license to make up his own message.
On a side note, what if someone has a hearing problem such as deafness? Well, I believe that God is a good and merciful God and can communicate the grace that is given to us through oral preaching through other means for these people such as sign language. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the general rule that we should regularly listen to Gospel-centred preaching.
2. Self-preaching
Despite what I have just argued about the importance of hearing the Gospel preached from an outside source (a minister of the word), we should also learn to regularly preach the Gospel to ourselves (Psalm 42:5). After hearing the Gospel preached from someone else, we should then recall and recount it to ourselves when other voices (be it Satan, the world or our old self) tempt us and discourage us (Micah 7:8-9).
This is because as 2 Corinthians 4:4 explains, our greatest enemies in this world seek to blind us to the glory of God in the Gospel and do this by showing us other promises of lesser and easier pleasures. Therefore, in order to attack and disable these deceitful promises, we need to fight them with the promises of the Gospel and the Bible, which promise far greater pleasures in God (Romans 8:32; Psalm 16:11). As Jonathan Edwards said, “We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life…The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; 'tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.”
Another way that these voices try and blind us to the Gospel is by using our guilt and indwelling sin. During those times when we do sin and we hear in our heads those voices condemning us and creating doubt over God’s faithfulness and our salvation, we need to remind ourselves of those great Gospel truths such as Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
We need to talk to ourselves and explain that we have been justified by faith in Christ and that even though we sin, He is still our perfect and unchanging righteousness in Heaven who is the sole basis of our acceptance by God (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 13:8). Rather than let our sin go to waste, so to speak, we should take the opportunity to use it for our joy and God’s glory.
Similarly, it is also important to not confuse our justification with our sanctification (Romans 6:22). This means that we should not think that we are accepted by God based on how good we are or how much we’ve grown, but based solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ (Romans 3:28). So when you fight for joy, don’t do things to establish your identity with God, but become what your identity already is with God in Christ. For example, since we are already holy in Christ (Colossians 3:12), we should be holy in all our conduct (1 Peter 1:15). Since we are already the light of the world in Christ (Matthew 5:14), we should let our light shine (Matthew 5:16).
3. The Lord’s Supper
Flowing out of the word of God preached to us, this sacrament is another way that the Gospel of the glory of Jesus is proclaimed to us in a visible and sensory manner (1 Corinthians 11:26). Therefore, it is another way that the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us. The Holy Spirit does this by reminding us of and applying to us the benefits that Christ died to purchase for us such as forgiveness, righteousness and fellowship by our participation in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). And how often is “often” (1 Corinthians 11:25)? I think depending on the congregation, this will vary but I would have big problems with a congregation partaking of the Supper less than once a month.
4. Read the Bible
Though I have earlier argued for the importance of the spoken and preached word of God whereby God reveals His glory to us, it is from the written word that this is enabled. Thankfully, we do not have to rely simply on our memories to recall important doctrine and revelation, but rather God has given us a written text to be our highest authority, which we call the Bible. This Bible, which contains 66 books of the Old and New Testament, is what all preachers and oral preaching must conform to.
The Bible is our highest authority because God Himself has inspired and breathed out these words (2 Timothy 3:16) by the Holy Spirit carrying along anointed men as they wrote (2 Peter 1:21). Therefore, the Bible is the most reliable way that God reveals His glory and the glory in His Gospel to us for us to see. It is through the Bible that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus Christ (John 5:46; Acts 24:27). And since public preaching from the Bible occurs usually once a week, it is important that we read the Bible daily if we wish to be happy.
It is also important to our happiness because as explained earlier, Satan wishes to blind us to what makes us happiest – the Gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. And what is our greatest weapon against Satan? The shield of faith (in the promises in the Bible) and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11, 16-17). Therefore, to overcome the devil and his schemes to lure us away from joy in God, we must read and recite the Bible so regularly that the word of God is said to abide in us (1 John 2:14).
So why don’t we? It’s not because it’s boring. In fact, for those who delight in the Lord, studying the Bible is very interesting (Psalm 111:2). Rather, we do not read our Bibles regularly because we are lazy, a result of indwelling sin. This is even more appalling because unlike many of those Christians before us, we have easy access to the word of God. So how can we combat this apathy and unfamiliarity with the Bible? Here are a number of ways that John Piper advises can help:
· Planning – make a time each day to read your Bible in a secluded place (ie. somewhere without distractions). John Piper recommends early morning because he believes to begin the day without filling your mind and heart with the word of God is like taking a car trip without filling up the tyres with air. Also, plan how you will read the Bible such as using a reading plan allocating certain passages to each day.
· Writing – don’t only read Bible passages, but write them down as well. As John Piper advises, “Go home and this time, write the text, instead of just reading it. If anything stands out as helpful, make a mark and write down your ideas about it. Keep writing till you are done with that insight. Then keep reading and writing the text till you see something else to write about, or until you are out of time…The main value in this is that writing forces us to slow down and see what we are reading. Some of us have very bad habits of passive reading that certain types of formal education have bred into us, by forcing us to read quickly when we ought to be reading slowly—thinking as we go. Writing is a way of slowing us down and opening our eyes to see what we do not otherwise see.”
· Meditating – God often commands us to regularly meditate on His words (Joshua 1:8; Psalms 1:2, 119:97, 143:5, 145:5). This does not mean crossing our knees and humming, but rather to talk to ourselves about what’s written in Scripture. It means to think about, to ask questions about, and to ponder the implications and applications of Scripture passages.
As George Mueller explains regarding the importance of meditation, “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it…What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and…not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.”
· Memorising – In Joshua 1:8, God says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” And memorizing verses and passages out of the Bible is how it gets in your mouth.
Memorisation makes us happy because it both directly gives us the beauty of Christ to see all day whether we have a Bible with us or not (Psalm 19:10) and it also provides us with the weapon for fighting sin (Psalm 119:11). This is why the New Testament writers often ask the church to remember their words (2 Thessalonians 2:5; Jude 17). For ease, you can integrate Bible memorization into your daily Bible reading, picking a key verse or two per week.
As John Piper says, “I spend this much time on Bible memory because I believe in the power of the indwelling Word of God to solve a thousand problems before they happen, and to heal a thousand wounds after they happen, and to kill a thousand sins in the moment of temptation, and to sweeten a thousand days with the ‘drippings of the honeycomb.’ I am jealous for you, my readers, that you would ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Colossians 3:16). This is the path to solid joy and all the service of love that it sustains.”
Hopefully, you will see the Bible as the great source of seeing Jesus and hence being happy. Because of this, I pray that you will be able to say with the Psalmist: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces… How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth… Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold… I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:72, 103, 127, 162).
5. Read Theology
Now, not everyone has the time or intellect or access to read large books of weighty and orthodox doctrine such as John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards. But nonetheless, for those who can, far from being joy-squelchers, these doctrinal books can be the source of great joy. In fact, the greater the complexity in thought, the greater the reward of knowledge of God and hence joy (Proverbs 2:1-6; Psalm 111:2; 2 Timothy 2:7). Theology is also important for guarding us against false interpretations of Scripture. These books do not need to be read quickly, you can instead read them at your own pace, be it a page or two a day.
As C.S. Lewis observed, “For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
6. Be with Bible-saturated People (Fellowship with Living Saints)
This certainly includes, though not exclusively, your local church. However, it can also refer to a Bible study or informal small gatherings. This is important for our joy as being with other Christians is a way that God ministers to us, encouraging and building us up in the faith for our joy (2 Corinthians 1:24, 3:12-13).
7. Read Christian Biographies (Fellowship with Dead Saints)
But it’s not just the living that we can have fellowship with. God also uses the lives of dead saints to inspire and educate us (Hebrews 11). God commands us to imitate the faith of our leaders, living and dead (Hebrews 13:7). As John Piper explains, “When you read Christian biography you get to see a person fight for joy over a lifetime. This is tremendously helpful. It gives guidance in the warfare. It gives inspiration because of triumphs of grace. It gives humility and hope because of failures and recoveries. And sometimes there are glimpses of what is possible in relation to God that set a reader to praying and longing as never before.”
8. Pray Continuously
But what happens when after hearing, reading, meditating and preaching the Word of God you fail to see and savour the glory of God? What happens when after practicing all these steps, you remain unhappy in God? This is where prayer plays such an important role in our fight for joy.
But before we see what role prayer plays in the fight for joy, we must first define what prayer is. The Westminster Larger Catechism is very helpful in answering this, offering a great definition in Question 178: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.” So prayer is simply us telling God what we want. It is for this reason that prayer reveals our deepest desires and hence our spiritual state.
In John 16:24, Jesus says the purpose of prayer is that we will be given our desires in His name for our joy. But in John 14:13, He says that the purpose of answering prayer is that He will be glorified. Is this a contradiction? Do we get joy or does He get the glory? Well, John Piper would say that this is not a contradiction but that Jesus gets the glory by our having our prayers answered for our joy. How is this so? Because, as I have explained, what we pray for reveals what we want. And what we want reveals what we treasure. So Jesus gets the most glory when we want Him the most, thus showing Him to be the ultimate treasure of our hearts.
So what this means is that as Christians, the focus of our prayers should be radically different to those prayed by non-believers. Whilst non-believers pray for God’s gifts according to their wills, believers should pray for God Himself according to His will (1 John 5:14). And even when we pray for His gifts, these should always be so that we can see more of Him. Whilst the world arrogantly makes God a butler by asking Him for idols (James 4:3), Christians should humbly desire God above all else (Psalm 73:25).
So how then should we pray? Here are a few tips that John Piper gives:
· Use the Bible – prayer and meditation on the Word of God are as inseparable as the Spirit and the Word. The work of the Holy Spirit happens through the Word and the work of the Word happens through the Spirit, and that definitely includes the work of awakening joy in Christians. Prayer is our response to God in reliance on His Spirit, and meditation is our response to God in reliance on His Word.
As John Piper explains, “Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings—not God’s. And meditation, without the humility of desperate prayer, will create proud legalism or hopeless despair. Without prayer we will try to fulfill the Word in our own strength and think we are succeeding and so become proud Pharisees; or we will realize we are not succeeding and will give up in despair.”
George Mueller makes an interesting observation on the connection between the Bible and prayer: “Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible…But what was the result? I often…after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way…Now…the first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it…The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it.”
So we see that the result of proper mediation on the Word of God is prayer. Prayer flows from reading the Bible. Mueller also advises that we should pray using Scripture not only as a catalyst, but also using the very words written. This is the key to praying for extended amounts of time as it helps us focus. By turning a passage of Scripture into prayer, you can pray as long as you read. It also helps conform our desires to be more biblical. This is what it means to “pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20-21).
But why does the Spirit bind Himself to the Word of God? It is because Jesus says that the Spirit is sent to glorify the Son (John 16:14). If the Holy Spirit simply awakened joy in people without any reference to Christ-exalting Scripture, Jesus would not be glorified. For Jesus to be glorified, the Spirit needs to awaken our joy in response to seeing the glory of Jesus revealed in the Bible. So when we pray whilst reading or recalling the Bible, we should pray before, during and after that the Spirit would use what we are reading to awaken joy in us. This glorifies God not only by humbling us and showing our reliance on God for joy, but also by showing that Jesus is our supreme treasure.
John Piper offers the acronym “IOUS” to guide such prayers regarding the Bible; INCLINE our hearts to the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:36); OPEN our eyes to see the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:18); UNITE our hearts and minds to see the glory of God in His Word so that all of our being sees the glory, not just parts of us (Psalm 86:11); and finally SATISFY our hearts with the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 90:14).
· Pray without ceasing – the Apostle Paul commands this in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, but its link to joy can be seen in the preceding verse where he also commands us to “rejoice always!” The key to obeying this command to rejoice in God always is to pray always. But what exactly does “without ceasing entail.” John Piper defines the term means at least three things. Firstly, that we should have a spirit of dependence and humility in all that we do. Secondly, that we should never give up on prayer.
And lastly, we should pray repeatedly and often. Piper explains it like this: “I base this on the use of the word ‘without ceasing’ (adialeiptøs) in Romans 1:9, where Paul says, ‘For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing [adialeiptos] I mention you.’ Now we can be sure that Paul did not mention the Romans every minute of his waking life, or even every minute of his prayers. He prayed about many other things. But he mentioned them over and over, and often. So ‘without ceasing’ doesn’t mean that, verbally or mentally, we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day in the fight for joy. It means we should pray over and over, and often. Our default mental state should be: ‘O God, help…’”
· Planning – similar to the advice given in our discussion on reading the Bible, you should plan specific times when you pray to God. To pray without ceasing requires discipline in order to enable regular spontaneous prayer. As John Piper argues, “The plants of spontaneous communion grow in the well-tended garden of disciplined Bible-reading and memorization. So it is with prayer.” We should follow the example of Daniel who prayed to God three times a day (Daniel 6:10).
As with reading the Bible, the best time for this is early in the morning (Mark 1:35). This is because it sets our priorities for the day, it strikes the first blow in our battle of the day to see God’s glory, and because what we do early shapes the spirit of our mind. This should be done in conjunction with the early morning Bible reading. And what of the rest of the day? Piper commends a long period of prayer in the morning (an hour if possible) then two or three shorter times during the day corresponding to breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As with Bible reading, allocate a quiet and secluded space devoted to prayer. If we can make rooms for cooking (kitchens), sleeping (bedrooms) and cleaning (bathroom), surely we can find a space for prayer. Of course, praying outside as opposed to indoors might work better for you depending on your situation.
· Use the Lord’s Prayer – using the structure of the Lord’s Prayer help us to keep our prayers focused on God and not on our own natural desires (Matthew 6:9-10). The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer reorient our priorities to desire that God’s name be hallowed (glorified), to desire the spreading of His Kingdom by people being converted everywhere, and that people would follow and obey Jesus. After making these fixed petitions, we are free to ask for all our other desires, which will somehow relate to these three petitions.
· Use Formal Descriptive Titles – this keeps our spirit serious and respectful. Despite our standing before God as His adopted children, we must still remember that God is the great Lord, King and Creator. This should lead us to have greater fear for the Lord whilst expressing our adoration. Some examples are, “O Holy Jesus, Son of the most high God,” “Righteous Judge and Light of Light,” and “Glorious and eternal Alpha and Omega.”
· Fasting – fasting is abstaining from food (or another dependence) practiced privately (Matthew 6:17), which helps us express our hunger for God. God can reward us with Himself if we do this. Since Jesus (our bridegroom) is no longer physically with us, fasting is a way to express our hope and desire for Jesus to return as well (Matthew 9:15). Fasting is the expression of our desire physically, whereas prayer is the expression of our desires orally. Therefore, fasting is a fitting and hungry handmaiden to prayer. But eating food can equally glorify Jesus if we receive it with thanksgiving and as a symbol of the satisfaction that He gives us (1 Timothy 4:3; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
· Corporate Prayer – asking others to pray for our desires gives more glory to God (James 5:16). How so? Because when I privately pray for something and God answers it, only I thank Him. But if many people pray for something and God answers it, many thank Him. By spreading the opportunity for thanksgiving and the expression for brotherly love, God is more glorified (2 Corinthians 1:11).
9. Use the World
God has graciously given us five senses to experience the physical world He has created. Any combination of these senses can give us an emotion. Just think of how smelling your favourite perfume, or giving a friend a hug, or seeing a sunset can bring a smile to your face. But what do these sorts of happiness have to do with the joy that the Holy Spirit creates in us (Galatians 5:22)? To answer this question, we must first distinguish between two kinds of emotions; physical and spiritual emotions.
Physical emotions are caused and experienced via the chemicals and impulses in our physical bodies. Spiritual emotions, on the other hand, are caused and experienced via our spirits and the Holy Spirit. As opposed to modern “wisdom,” we know that you do not need a physical body to experience emotions because God is said to experience emotions (Zephaniah 3:17) yet does not have a physical body (John 4:24; Luke 24:39; 1 Timothy 1:17). And these spiritual emotions are higher and richer than their physical counterparts.
After we die and before we are resurrected, we will exist only as spirits who are capable of only spiritual emotions (Philippians 1:23; Revelation 6:10). However, until we die and when we are resurrected, our spiritual emotions are connected to our physical senses. This means that our spiritual joy in God and its physical expression in the body are inseparable. This also means that some of these spiritual emotions will feel virtually the same as their physical counterparts. Therefore, spiritual emotions can have physical effects and physical conditions can have spiritual effects.
C.S. Lewis explains the way the two kinds of emotions interact using a musical metaphor. He likens spiritual emotions to that of an orchestra and physical emotions to that of a single piano. When the music of spiritual emotions plays in our souls, it gets “transposed” into physical sensations. But since the spiritual “orchestra” is richer and more complex than the physical “piano,” the same piano keys have to be used for sounds that in the orchestra are played with different instruments. Thus, love and lust can often feel the same just as endorphins and joy in God do.
However, as Lewis continues, in the transposition from the higher to the lower, the spiritual emotion enters into the physical sensation so the sensation becomes part of the higher emotion. Spiritual emotions can actually transform physical sensations. Although they are not identical, we cannot experience spiritual emotions without experiencing physical sensations. We are complex spiritual-physical beings who experience joy in Christ as something more, but almost never less, than physical sensation.
Now, this is all very interesting, but you may be asking how this helps our fight for joy? Well, as we’ve seen, physical sensations can affect our spiritual emotions. At the risk of either manipulation and idolatry, we must use our physical reality wisely for spiritual ends. Because even if we practice all the earlier ways of seeing God’s glory, if we don’t use our physical sensations properly, they can hinder our experiencing of joy in Christ. If the glory of God in the Gospel gives us joy, the following are examples of physical means of developing and sustaining such joy:
· Nature – whilst the Gospel is the clearest catalyst for awakening joy in God, the Bible says that nature can also make us happy in God (Psalm 19:1-4) This is because, as I have already stated, the natural world also reveals God’s glory. Therefore, it is another way for us to see the glory of God that makes us happiest.
But what is the difference between a Christian experiencing happiness from gazing at a sunrise and a non-believer who seems to experience the same emotion whilst looking at the same sunrise? C.S. Lewis provides an interesting answer: “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
If we want to see the glory of God in nature and not just the glory of nature, we need to move beyond the simple experience of seeing nature. We need to let the “beam” of nature fall on the eyes of our heart so that we see the source of the beautiful scene before us. We need to learn to relate how we experience nature to God. For example, instead of just thinking ‘Oh what a beautiful sunrise that is!’, we need to think, ‘Wow! Only a beautiful God could make such a sunrise and if this is the beauty He makes, imagine how beautiful He Himself is!’
· Food, sex and other physical sensations – the Apostle Paul provides us with two ways to make sure that these good things do not become God things in 1 Timothy 4:2-5: “Liars whose consciences are seared…forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Here, Paul says that we can use any physical sensation to glorify God and make us happy if we do two things. The first is to thank God for it. By doing so, we focus our attention on seeing God’s glory as the Good Giver. When you thank someone, you are enjoying the Giver through enjoying the gift. However, thanksgiving alone is not enough. We must also make sure that we use the sensation correctly according to its intended purpose revealed by God in the Bible. We may otherwise thank God for food and be a glutton, or thank God for sex and be an adulterer.
· Literature, art and music – we can experience joy in God more fully with the use of poetry and other literary forms. Even unbelievers can be of assistance here. The goal with reading such literature is that our eyes would be opened to greater vocabulary for expressing happiness and other emotions. And what you will find is as you’re vocabulary is expanded, so too will your capacity to perceive joy in God in all its richness. Similarly, we can look at a painting and look along its beam to the ultimate Artist or we can listen to a booming musical piece and be drawn into the drama of Scripture. Whilst not catalysts for joy in God, they can be means of expressing and sustaining such joy. This will vary, of course, depending on culture as every culture has its own idea of language, symbolism and pleasing sounds.
· Monotony – a key to being satisfied with the glory of God revealed in the natural world is to exult in the repetitive. This is something that all of us lose as we get older, much to the detriment of our pursuit of pleasure. G.K. Chesterton artfully observes it as such: “Children…always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” I think that people would be far happier as a whole if they rejoiced in the old they have then pursue it in the new they will never have enough of.
· Diet, exercise and rest – certain foods can make us feel better than others. This is common sense. But we should have a greater motivation to eat healthily since by doing so not only will we make our bodies more susceptible to joy in God, but we will also increase our chances of living longer to experience His grace on earth.
The same goes for exercise and rest. Exercising regularly and resting often will place us in a better mood for having the Holy Spirit awaken joy in us and sustaining it. And if the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us and we neglect these things, we may lose the joy that was given to us because of our carelessness. Yet despite the benefits of these healthy practices, we must remember not to be enslaved to anything, especially those things which are good things (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Of course, there are rare occasions when Christians are persecuted. They can be locked up in a prison with no nature, barely any food, barely any exercise and God can give them extraordinary joy in Himself to sustain them through this persecution. But nevertheless, for the large majority of Christians who are not in situations such as these, they would do well in their fight for joy in God to treat their bodies well.
10. Evangelism and Acts of Love
Last, but not least, we can see the glory of God in the Gospel by the acts of love it inspires and the conversions created by its spreading. Seeing and savoring the glory of God in the Gospel is not completed until it is lived out in our lives. Not that we “live the Gospel”, but rather by sharing (the Gospel) and caring (for people), the power of the Gospel is displayed in its fullness and enjoyed by those witnessing it (2 Corinthians 8:1-7).
I have of course left out some other ways that we can see God’s glory but these are the most essential and important.
Waves
To summarise, we can do see God’s glory in the Gospel primarily though the God ordained means of hearing the Gospel preached, preaching it to ourselves, eating the Lord’s Supper, not confusing justification and sanctification, reading the Bible, reading theology, reading Christian biographies, praying, using physical sensations, evangelizing and doing other acts of love.
I pray that as you have tasted Christian Hedonism, this would spur you on to seek greater happiness in God. Not happiness per se, but happiness in God. As George Mueller said, “The more we know of God, the happier we are…When we became a little acquainted with God…our true happiness…commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more truly happy we become. What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God.”
I pray with Christ that above all you would see His glory (John 17:24) and know Him more (Ephesians 1:15-19), prioritizing joy in God above all other cares of the day. As Mueller again says, “According to my judgement the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life.”
So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
Hey there blogworms! Today’s blog post is a continuation of my previous post on the pursuit of happiness. So far, I’ve argued that God’s glory (His supreme value proclaimed and displayed) makes us happiest. In order for it to make us happy, we must first see it and we see it most clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fight to be happy is a fight to see the glory of God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus.
Though there are other ways that God reveals to us His glory, the Gospel is the blazing centre of the glory of God and we must therefore make every effort to see it in our lives daily. In this blog post, I will give some practical examples of ways to see this glory by faith arising from the book, “When I Don’t Desire God” by John Piper. So, on with the blog!
Spring Time!
HOW TO BE HAPPY
Now that we have dealt with the more theoretical framework answering the question, “what makes us happiest?” we can then deal with our more practical original question of how we can see Christ’s glory day-to-day and attain deep happiness. If seeing (by faith) the glory of Christ in the Gospel is what makes us happiest, then however we are able to see this by faith is how we can be happiest. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that God has ordained for us to see His Gospel by faith. You could call these ordained ways as “steps to happiness”.
However, before we proceed to look at the various ways that we can see God’s glory in the Gospel, it’s important to first note that joy in God is ultimately a gift and bestowed by Him at His discretion (Proverbs 21:31; Psalm 127:1; 1 Peter 4:11). This means that we shouldn’t rely on any of these like techniques to coerce joy or think we can earn joy by mere human achievement or willpower. Rather, we should practice these steps faithfully and humbly, patiently waiting for God to make us happy.
I say this because from experience, I know that even when you practice all these steps, God can still allow you to stay unhappy for a time according to His will. This can be simply to arouse a greater desire for Him and to rely on Him as opposed to ourselves (2 Corinthians 1:9). Nevertheless, despite these times of doubt and depression, God will never leave us there.
These “steps” to happiness are simply means of grace that God often uses to make us happy. To use a metaphor, it’s like if seeing cassowaries (rare far North Queensland birds) made you happy. Therefore, in order to be happy, you would need to see them. But they are very rare and so to have any chance of seeing them, you would need to walk along tracks that they are known to frequent. However, whether you see them or not is up to the cassowaries themselves. Similarly, these steps are like roads or paths of blessing that God is known to frequent and whether you experience His joy in Himself while doing them is entirely up to Him. All you can do is faithfully walk these paths often.
The following are the ways that God shows us the glory of His Gospel for our enjoyment:
1. Preaching
When Moses wanted to see the glory of God in Exodus 33:18, God answered by saying He would reveal His glory with His word, saying, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’” (Exodus 33:19). And that is exactly what God did in Exodus 34:6-7, giving one of the most theologically succinct descriptions of who He is. And how did Moses respond to this revelation of the glory of God? He worshipped God in verse 8 and that should be the result of seeing God’s glory proclaimed to us - feeling the worth of God and enjoying Him.
Likewise, in Samuel 3:21, God is said to have revealed Himself to Samuel by His word. In this age of sight by faith and not by eyes, God reveals His glory to us in the Gospel by His word, and primarily by His spoken word. This means that to see God’s glory in the Gospel, we need to regularly hear the Gospel orally proclaimed to us, be it in the pulpit each Sunday and even online. Hearing is how faith is created and sustained (Romans 10:17), and hence how the glory of God in the Gospel is presented to us to see and savour.
Why can’t we simply read our Bibles or theology though? Isn’t this the same as hearing a sermon? Well, we’ll come to the importance of the written word shortly in the fight for joy in God but for now, let me explain the main difference between reading the written word and hearing the word preached orally in Church. While the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of God to us through both means and hence imparts joy in God to us through both, the spoken word of God is more important because it shows us the Gospel more accurately.
Why does hearing as opposed to reading encapsulate the Gospel more accurately? Because when we read, we are actively seeking and achieving, whereas when we hear, we are passively receiving and trusting. The eyes are a symbol of activity and fullness whereas the ear is a symbol of grace and faith. We are saved not by our seeking and seeing, since we are all born not seeking the God of the Bible (Romans 3:11), but rather by God revealing Himself to us and our receiving His gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 10:20).
As Michael Horton says in ‘The Gospel-Driven Life’, “Everything that we possess right now of our salvation has come to us through the ear, not the eye. Even the sacraments are visible confirmations attached to God’s verbal promise…Sight corresponds to full possession, a complete realization of heavenly reality. By contrast, hearing corresponds to faith in a promise. If we demand our best life here and now we will be particularly susceptible to idolatry, but God calls us to embrace a promise that we hear and believe.”
So while our eyes are involved in worship such as reading, it is primarily through our ears that we “see” God’s glory in the Gospel, proclaimed to us from an outside source and penetrating our corrupt self-centred thoughts. It is on the basis of our ears that every other sense is engaged. Therefore, if we want to be happy and see the glory of Christ, we will submit and listen to the preaching of the Gospel by pastors every Sunday and beyond (2 Timothy 4:2).
And this preaching should be what John Piper calls “expository exultation”. In other words, the preacher should draw God-glorifying truths out of the Bible and exult over this truth. He should preach with passion, enthusiasm and joy for the joy of God and the joy of us. It should also be focused on and centred upon Jesus Christ and not on the preacher or his experiences (2 Corinthians 4:5). And when the preacher preaches the word of God faithfully, the Holy Spirit makes the preacher’s words effective and it is as if God Himself is speaking, “Let light shine out of darkness,” to each of our hearts to open our eyes to the glory of God in the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:6). This is why the preacher is called an ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) who is given a message to proclaim and not a license to make up his own message.
On a side note, what if someone has a hearing problem such as deafness? Well, I believe that God is a good and merciful God and can communicate the grace that is given to us through oral preaching through other means for these people such as sign language. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the general rule that we should regularly listen to Gospel-centred preaching.
2. Self-preaching
Despite what I have just argued about the importance of hearing the Gospel preached from an outside source (a minister of the word), we should also learn to regularly preach the Gospel to ourselves (Psalm 42:5). After hearing the Gospel preached from someone else, we should then recall and recount it to ourselves when other voices (be it Satan, the world or our old self) tempt us and discourage us (Micah 7:8-9).
This is because as 2 Corinthians 4:4 explains, our greatest enemies in this world seek to blind us to the glory of God in the Gospel and do this by showing us other promises of lesser and easier pleasures. Therefore, in order to attack and disable these deceitful promises, we need to fight them with the promises of the Gospel and the Bible, which promise far greater pleasures in God (Romans 8:32; Psalm 16:11). As Jonathan Edwards said, “We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life…The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; 'tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.”
Another way that these voices try and blind us to the Gospel is by using our guilt and indwelling sin. During those times when we do sin and we hear in our heads those voices condemning us and creating doubt over God’s faithfulness and our salvation, we need to remind ourselves of those great Gospel truths such as Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
We need to talk to ourselves and explain that we have been justified by faith in Christ and that even though we sin, He is still our perfect and unchanging righteousness in Heaven who is the sole basis of our acceptance by God (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 13:8). Rather than let our sin go to waste, so to speak, we should take the opportunity to use it for our joy and God’s glory.
Similarly, it is also important to not confuse our justification with our sanctification (Romans 6:22). This means that we should not think that we are accepted by God based on how good we are or how much we’ve grown, but based solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ (Romans 3:28). So when you fight for joy, don’t do things to establish your identity with God, but become what your identity already is with God in Christ. For example, since we are already holy in Christ (Colossians 3:12), we should be holy in all our conduct (1 Peter 1:15). Since we are already the light of the world in Christ (Matthew 5:14), we should let our light shine (Matthew 5:16).
3. The Lord’s Supper
Flowing out of the word of God preached to us, this sacrament is another way that the Gospel of the glory of Jesus is proclaimed to us in a visible and sensory manner (1 Corinthians 11:26). Therefore, it is another way that the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us. The Holy Spirit does this by reminding us of and applying to us the benefits that Christ died to purchase for us such as forgiveness, righteousness and fellowship by our participation in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). And how often is “often” (1 Corinthians 11:25)? I think depending on the congregation, this will vary but I would have big problems with a congregation partaking of the Supper less than once a month.
4. Read the Bible
Though I have earlier argued for the importance of the spoken and preached word of God whereby God reveals His glory to us, it is from the written word that this is enabled. Thankfully, we do not have to rely simply on our memories to recall important doctrine and revelation, but rather God has given us a written text to be our highest authority, which we call the Bible. This Bible, which contains 66 books of the Old and New Testament, is what all preachers and oral preaching must conform to.
The Bible is our highest authority because God Himself has inspired and breathed out these words (2 Timothy 3:16) by the Holy Spirit carrying along anointed men as they wrote (2 Peter 1:21). Therefore, the Bible is the most reliable way that God reveals His glory and the glory in His Gospel to us for us to see. It is through the Bible that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus Christ (John 5:46; Acts 24:27). And since public preaching from the Bible occurs usually once a week, it is important that we read the Bible daily if we wish to be happy.
It is also important to our happiness because as explained earlier, Satan wishes to blind us to what makes us happiest – the Gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. And what is our greatest weapon against Satan? The shield of faith (in the promises in the Bible) and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11, 16-17). Therefore, to overcome the devil and his schemes to lure us away from joy in God, we must read and recite the Bible so regularly that the word of God is said to abide in us (1 John 2:14).
So why don’t we? It’s not because it’s boring. In fact, for those who delight in the Lord, studying the Bible is very interesting (Psalm 111:2). Rather, we do not read our Bibles regularly because we are lazy, a result of indwelling sin. This is even more appalling because unlike many of those Christians before us, we have easy access to the word of God. So how can we combat this apathy and unfamiliarity with the Bible? Here are a number of ways that John Piper advises can help:
· Planning – make a time each day to read your Bible in a secluded place (ie. somewhere without distractions). John Piper recommends early morning because he believes to begin the day without filling your mind and heart with the word of God is like taking a car trip without filling up the tyres with air. Also, plan how you will read the Bible such as using a reading plan allocating certain passages to each day.
· Writing – don’t only read Bible passages, but write them down as well. As John Piper advises, “Go home and this time, write the text, instead of just reading it. If anything stands out as helpful, make a mark and write down your ideas about it. Keep writing till you are done with that insight. Then keep reading and writing the text till you see something else to write about, or until you are out of time…The main value in this is that writing forces us to slow down and see what we are reading. Some of us have very bad habits of passive reading that certain types of formal education have bred into us, by forcing us to read quickly when we ought to be reading slowly—thinking as we go. Writing is a way of slowing us down and opening our eyes to see what we do not otherwise see.”
· Meditating – God often commands us to regularly meditate on His words (Joshua 1:8; Psalms 1:2, 119:97, 143:5, 145:5). This does not mean crossing our knees and humming, but rather to talk to ourselves about what’s written in Scripture. It means to think about, to ask questions about, and to ponder the implications and applications of Scripture passages.
As George Mueller explains regarding the importance of meditation, “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it…What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and…not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.”
· Memorising – In Joshua 1:8, God says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” And memorizing verses and passages out of the Bible is how it gets in your mouth.
Memorisation makes us happy because it both directly gives us the beauty of Christ to see all day whether we have a Bible with us or not (Psalm 19:10) and it also provides us with the weapon for fighting sin (Psalm 119:11). This is why the New Testament writers often ask the church to remember their words (2 Thessalonians 2:5; Jude 17). For ease, you can integrate Bible memorization into your daily Bible reading, picking a key verse or two per week.
As John Piper says, “I spend this much time on Bible memory because I believe in the power of the indwelling Word of God to solve a thousand problems before they happen, and to heal a thousand wounds after they happen, and to kill a thousand sins in the moment of temptation, and to sweeten a thousand days with the ‘drippings of the honeycomb.’ I am jealous for you, my readers, that you would ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Colossians 3:16). This is the path to solid joy and all the service of love that it sustains.”
Hopefully, you will see the Bible as the great source of seeing Jesus and hence being happy. Because of this, I pray that you will be able to say with the Psalmist: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces… How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth… Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold… I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:72, 103, 127, 162).
5. Read Theology
Now, not everyone has the time or intellect or access to read large books of weighty and orthodox doctrine such as John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards. But nonetheless, for those who can, far from being joy-squelchers, these doctrinal books can be the source of great joy. In fact, the greater the complexity in thought, the greater the reward of knowledge of God and hence joy (Proverbs 2:1-6; Psalm 111:2; 2 Timothy 2:7). Theology is also important for guarding us against false interpretations of Scripture. These books do not need to be read quickly, you can instead read them at your own pace, be it a page or two a day.
As C.S. Lewis observed, “For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
6. Be with Bible-saturated People (Fellowship with Living Saints)
This certainly includes, though not exclusively, your local church. However, it can also refer to a Bible study or informal small gatherings. This is important for our joy as being with other Christians is a way that God ministers to us, encouraging and building us up in the faith for our joy (2 Corinthians 1:24, 3:12-13).
7. Read Christian Biographies (Fellowship with Dead Saints)
But it’s not just the living that we can have fellowship with. God also uses the lives of dead saints to inspire and educate us (Hebrews 11). God commands us to imitate the faith of our leaders, living and dead (Hebrews 13:7). As John Piper explains, “When you read Christian biography you get to see a person fight for joy over a lifetime. This is tremendously helpful. It gives guidance in the warfare. It gives inspiration because of triumphs of grace. It gives humility and hope because of failures and recoveries. And sometimes there are glimpses of what is possible in relation to God that set a reader to praying and longing as never before.”
8. Pray Continuously
But what happens when after hearing, reading, meditating and preaching the Word of God you fail to see and savour the glory of God? What happens when after practicing all these steps, you remain unhappy in God? This is where prayer plays such an important role in our fight for joy.
But before we see what role prayer plays in the fight for joy, we must first define what prayer is. The Westminster Larger Catechism is very helpful in answering this, offering a great definition in Question 178: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.” So prayer is simply us telling God what we want. It is for this reason that prayer reveals our deepest desires and hence our spiritual state.
In John 16:24, Jesus says the purpose of prayer is that we will be given our desires in His name for our joy. But in John 14:13, He says that the purpose of answering prayer is that He will be glorified. Is this a contradiction? Do we get joy or does He get the glory? Well, John Piper would say that this is not a contradiction but that Jesus gets the glory by our having our prayers answered for our joy. How is this so? Because, as I have explained, what we pray for reveals what we want. And what we want reveals what we treasure. So Jesus gets the most glory when we want Him the most, thus showing Him to be the ultimate treasure of our hearts.
So what this means is that as Christians, the focus of our prayers should be radically different to those prayed by non-believers. Whilst non-believers pray for God’s gifts according to their wills, believers should pray for God Himself according to His will (1 John 5:14). And even when we pray for His gifts, these should always be so that we can see more of Him. Whilst the world arrogantly makes God a butler by asking Him for idols (James 4:3), Christians should humbly desire God above all else (Psalm 73:25).
So how then should we pray? Here are a few tips that John Piper gives:
· Use the Bible – prayer and meditation on the Word of God are as inseparable as the Spirit and the Word. The work of the Holy Spirit happens through the Word and the work of the Word happens through the Spirit, and that definitely includes the work of awakening joy in Christians. Prayer is our response to God in reliance on His Spirit, and meditation is our response to God in reliance on His Word.
As John Piper explains, “Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings—not God’s. And meditation, without the humility of desperate prayer, will create proud legalism or hopeless despair. Without prayer we will try to fulfill the Word in our own strength and think we are succeeding and so become proud Pharisees; or we will realize we are not succeeding and will give up in despair.”
George Mueller makes an interesting observation on the connection between the Bible and prayer: “Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible…But what was the result? I often…after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way…Now…the first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it…The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it.”
So we see that the result of proper mediation on the Word of God is prayer. Prayer flows from reading the Bible. Mueller also advises that we should pray using Scripture not only as a catalyst, but also using the very words written. This is the key to praying for extended amounts of time as it helps us focus. By turning a passage of Scripture into prayer, you can pray as long as you read. It also helps conform our desires to be more biblical. This is what it means to “pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20-21).
But why does the Spirit bind Himself to the Word of God? It is because Jesus says that the Spirit is sent to glorify the Son (John 16:14). If the Holy Spirit simply awakened joy in people without any reference to Christ-exalting Scripture, Jesus would not be glorified. For Jesus to be glorified, the Spirit needs to awaken our joy in response to seeing the glory of Jesus revealed in the Bible. So when we pray whilst reading or recalling the Bible, we should pray before, during and after that the Spirit would use what we are reading to awaken joy in us. This glorifies God not only by humbling us and showing our reliance on God for joy, but also by showing that Jesus is our supreme treasure.
John Piper offers the acronym “IOUS” to guide such prayers regarding the Bible; INCLINE our hearts to the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:36); OPEN our eyes to see the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:18); UNITE our hearts and minds to see the glory of God in His Word so that all of our being sees the glory, not just parts of us (Psalm 86:11); and finally SATISFY our hearts with the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 90:14).
· Pray without ceasing – the Apostle Paul commands this in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, but its link to joy can be seen in the preceding verse where he also commands us to “rejoice always!” The key to obeying this command to rejoice in God always is to pray always. But what exactly does “without ceasing entail.” John Piper defines the term means at least three things. Firstly, that we should have a spirit of dependence and humility in all that we do. Secondly, that we should never give up on prayer.
And lastly, we should pray repeatedly and often. Piper explains it like this: “I base this on the use of the word ‘without ceasing’ (adialeiptøs) in Romans 1:9, where Paul says, ‘For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing [adialeiptos] I mention you.’ Now we can be sure that Paul did not mention the Romans every minute of his waking life, or even every minute of his prayers. He prayed about many other things. But he mentioned them over and over, and often. So ‘without ceasing’ doesn’t mean that, verbally or mentally, we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day in the fight for joy. It means we should pray over and over, and often. Our default mental state should be: ‘O God, help…’”
· Planning – similar to the advice given in our discussion on reading the Bible, you should plan specific times when you pray to God. To pray without ceasing requires discipline in order to enable regular spontaneous prayer. As John Piper argues, “The plants of spontaneous communion grow in the well-tended garden of disciplined Bible-reading and memorization. So it is with prayer.” We should follow the example of Daniel who prayed to God three times a day (Daniel 6:10).
As with reading the Bible, the best time for this is early in the morning (Mark 1:35). This is because it sets our priorities for the day, it strikes the first blow in our battle of the day to see God’s glory, and because what we do early shapes the spirit of our mind. This should be done in conjunction with the early morning Bible reading. And what of the rest of the day? Piper commends a long period of prayer in the morning (an hour if possible) then two or three shorter times during the day corresponding to breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As with Bible reading, allocate a quiet and secluded space devoted to prayer. If we can make rooms for cooking (kitchens), sleeping (bedrooms) and cleaning (bathroom), surely we can find a space for prayer. Of course, praying outside as opposed to indoors might work better for you depending on your situation.
· Use the Lord’s Prayer – using the structure of the Lord’s Prayer help us to keep our prayers focused on God and not on our own natural desires (Matthew 6:9-10). The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer reorient our priorities to desire that God’s name be hallowed (glorified), to desire the spreading of His Kingdom by people being converted everywhere, and that people would follow and obey Jesus. After making these fixed petitions, we are free to ask for all our other desires, which will somehow relate to these three petitions.
· Use Formal Descriptive Titles – this keeps our spirit serious and respectful. Despite our standing before God as His adopted children, we must still remember that God is the great Lord, King and Creator. This should lead us to have greater fear for the Lord whilst expressing our adoration. Some examples are, “O Holy Jesus, Son of the most high God,” “Righteous Judge and Light of Light,” and “Glorious and eternal Alpha and Omega.”
· Fasting – fasting is abstaining from food (or another dependence) practiced privately (Matthew 6:17), which helps us express our hunger for God. God can reward us with Himself if we do this. Since Jesus (our bridegroom) is no longer physically with us, fasting is a way to express our hope and desire for Jesus to return as well (Matthew 9:15). Fasting is the expression of our desire physically, whereas prayer is the expression of our desires orally. Therefore, fasting is a fitting and hungry handmaiden to prayer. But eating food can equally glorify Jesus if we receive it with thanksgiving and as a symbol of the satisfaction that He gives us (1 Timothy 4:3; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
· Corporate Prayer – asking others to pray for our desires gives more glory to God (James 5:16). How so? Because when I privately pray for something and God answers it, only I thank Him. But if many people pray for something and God answers it, many thank Him. By spreading the opportunity for thanksgiving and the expression for brotherly love, God is more glorified (2 Corinthians 1:11).
9. Use the World
God has graciously given us five senses to experience the physical world He has created. Any combination of these senses can give us an emotion. Just think of how smelling your favourite perfume, or giving a friend a hug, or seeing a sunset can bring a smile to your face. But what do these sorts of happiness have to do with the joy that the Holy Spirit creates in us (Galatians 5:22)? To answer this question, we must first distinguish between two kinds of emotions; physical and spiritual emotions.
Physical emotions are caused and experienced via the chemicals and impulses in our physical bodies. Spiritual emotions, on the other hand, are caused and experienced via our spirits and the Holy Spirit. As opposed to modern “wisdom,” we know that you do not need a physical body to experience emotions because God is said to experience emotions (Zephaniah 3:17) yet does not have a physical body (John 4:24; Luke 24:39; 1 Timothy 1:17). And these spiritual emotions are higher and richer than their physical counterparts.
After we die and before we are resurrected, we will exist only as spirits who are capable of only spiritual emotions (Philippians 1:23; Revelation 6:10). However, until we die and when we are resurrected, our spiritual emotions are connected to our physical senses. This means that our spiritual joy in God and its physical expression in the body are inseparable. This also means that some of these spiritual emotions will feel virtually the same as their physical counterparts. Therefore, spiritual emotions can have physical effects and physical conditions can have spiritual effects.
C.S. Lewis explains the way the two kinds of emotions interact using a musical metaphor. He likens spiritual emotions to that of an orchestra and physical emotions to that of a single piano. When the music of spiritual emotions plays in our souls, it gets “transposed” into physical sensations. But since the spiritual “orchestra” is richer and more complex than the physical “piano,” the same piano keys have to be used for sounds that in the orchestra are played with different instruments. Thus, love and lust can often feel the same just as endorphins and joy in God do.
However, as Lewis continues, in the transposition from the higher to the lower, the spiritual emotion enters into the physical sensation so the sensation becomes part of the higher emotion. Spiritual emotions can actually transform physical sensations. Although they are not identical, we cannot experience spiritual emotions without experiencing physical sensations. We are complex spiritual-physical beings who experience joy in Christ as something more, but almost never less, than physical sensation.
Now, this is all very interesting, but you may be asking how this helps our fight for joy? Well, as we’ve seen, physical sensations can affect our spiritual emotions. At the risk of either manipulation and idolatry, we must use our physical reality wisely for spiritual ends. Because even if we practice all the earlier ways of seeing God’s glory, if we don’t use our physical sensations properly, they can hinder our experiencing of joy in Christ. If the glory of God in the Gospel gives us joy, the following are examples of physical means of developing and sustaining such joy:
· Nature – whilst the Gospel is the clearest catalyst for awakening joy in God, the Bible says that nature can also make us happy in God (Psalm 19:1-4) This is because, as I have already stated, the natural world also reveals God’s glory. Therefore, it is another way for us to see the glory of God that makes us happiest.
But what is the difference between a Christian experiencing happiness from gazing at a sunrise and a non-believer who seems to experience the same emotion whilst looking at the same sunrise? C.S. Lewis provides an interesting answer: “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
If we want to see the glory of God in nature and not just the glory of nature, we need to move beyond the simple experience of seeing nature. We need to let the “beam” of nature fall on the eyes of our heart so that we see the source of the beautiful scene before us. We need to learn to relate how we experience nature to God. For example, instead of just thinking ‘Oh what a beautiful sunrise that is!’, we need to think, ‘Wow! Only a beautiful God could make such a sunrise and if this is the beauty He makes, imagine how beautiful He Himself is!’
· Food, sex and other physical sensations – the Apostle Paul provides us with two ways to make sure that these good things do not become God things in 1 Timothy 4:2-5: “Liars whose consciences are seared…forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Here, Paul says that we can use any physical sensation to glorify God and make us happy if we do two things. The first is to thank God for it. By doing so, we focus our attention on seeing God’s glory as the Good Giver. When you thank someone, you are enjoying the Giver through enjoying the gift. However, thanksgiving alone is not enough. We must also make sure that we use the sensation correctly according to its intended purpose revealed by God in the Bible. We may otherwise thank God for food and be a glutton, or thank God for sex and be an adulterer.
· Literature, art and music – we can experience joy in God more fully with the use of poetry and other literary forms. Even unbelievers can be of assistance here. The goal with reading such literature is that our eyes would be opened to greater vocabulary for expressing happiness and other emotions. And what you will find is as you’re vocabulary is expanded, so too will your capacity to perceive joy in God in all its richness. Similarly, we can look at a painting and look along its beam to the ultimate Artist or we can listen to a booming musical piece and be drawn into the drama of Scripture. Whilst not catalysts for joy in God, they can be means of expressing and sustaining such joy. This will vary, of course, depending on culture as every culture has its own idea of language, symbolism and pleasing sounds.
· Monotony – a key to being satisfied with the glory of God revealed in the natural world is to exult in the repetitive. This is something that all of us lose as we get older, much to the detriment of our pursuit of pleasure. G.K. Chesterton artfully observes it as such: “Children…always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” I think that people would be far happier as a whole if they rejoiced in the old they have then pursue it in the new they will never have enough of.
· Diet, exercise and rest – certain foods can make us feel better than others. This is common sense. But we should have a greater motivation to eat healthily since by doing so not only will we make our bodies more susceptible to joy in God, but we will also increase our chances of living longer to experience His grace on earth.
The same goes for exercise and rest. Exercising regularly and resting often will place us in a better mood for having the Holy Spirit awaken joy in us and sustaining it. And if the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us and we neglect these things, we may lose the joy that was given to us because of our carelessness. Yet despite the benefits of these healthy practices, we must remember not to be enslaved to anything, especially those things which are good things (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Of course, there are rare occasions when Christians are persecuted. They can be locked up in a prison with no nature, barely any food, barely any exercise and God can give them extraordinary joy in Himself to sustain them through this persecution. But nevertheless, for the large majority of Christians who are not in situations such as these, they would do well in their fight for joy in God to treat their bodies well.
10. Evangelism and Acts of Love
Last, but not least, we can see the glory of God in the Gospel by the acts of love it inspires and the conversions created by its spreading. Seeing and savoring the glory of God in the Gospel is not completed until it is lived out in our lives. Not that we “live the Gospel”, but rather by sharing (the Gospel) and caring (for people), the power of the Gospel is displayed in its fullness and enjoyed by those witnessing it (2 Corinthians 8:1-7).
I have of course left out some other ways that we can see God’s glory but these are the most essential and important.
Waves
To summarise, we can do see God’s glory in the Gospel primarily though the God ordained means of hearing the Gospel preached, preaching it to ourselves, eating the Lord’s Supper, not confusing justification and sanctification, reading the Bible, reading theology, reading Christian biographies, praying, using physical sensations, evangelizing and doing other acts of love.
I pray that as you have tasted Christian Hedonism, this would spur you on to seek greater happiness in God. Not happiness per se, but happiness in God. As George Mueller said, “The more we know of God, the happier we are…When we became a little acquainted with God…our true happiness…commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more truly happy we become. What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God.”
I pray with Christ that above all you would see His glory (John 17:24) and know Him more (Ephesians 1:15-19), prioritizing joy in God above all other cares of the day. As Mueller again says, “According to my judgement the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life.”
So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The Pursuit of Happiness Part 1
A Sip
Welcome back blogworms! Like Lazarus, this blog is back from the dead and ready to edify and clarify. This first post is a succinct (but not exhaustive) summary of a philosophy that has endeared itself to me over these past two years and has sparked a greater passion for the things of Christ. This is a culmination of reading one of my favourite theologians, John Piper, and I hope that it leads my readers to become more familiar with him. In particular, this blog post is based on “When I Don’t Desire God” by John Piper. So without further ado, let’s get on with the blog.
Spring Time!
HAPPINESS
All humans seek happiness. There can be no denying that. As the French mathematician Blaise Pascal rightly observed, “All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.” It is for this reason that countless men have pondered, struggled and strived to answer the question, “how can I be happiest?”
But in order to answer this age-old question, we must first answer the far more important question of what makes us happiest. To answer this question, I would ask you to think of something that brings you pleasure and happiness. It could be a favourite item of clothing, a memory or even a person. Why does this thing make you happy? Is it not because in this object of affection, you see something of value?
This can be confirmed by our experiences; that which we value brings us pleasure. Or as John Piper would say, “pleasure is the measure of our treasure.” We cannot value something and not experience some amount of positive emotion because of that same thing. Therefore, logically, the thing that would bring us the most pleasure would be that which is most valuable.
So, the real answer to what makes us happiest is whatever is the most valuable thing in the universe. Now John Piper (and I) would put to you that the answer to this question is God Himself. So straight off the bat, the key to everlasting happiness is being able to see the God of the Bible as He really is; infinitely valuable and supremely precious.
THE GLORY OF GOD
But if we want to be more precise, it is actually the glory of God that is the source of eternal happiness for us as humans. This is because due to God’s infinite nature and our finite nature, without God revealing to us His value, we would be unable to know Him. It is not until God steps out from His private room and enters the public arena (so to speak) that we are able to know Him. And if we could not know Him, we could not enjoy Him. This is what the word “glory” means. Although it sounds like holy jargon, it simply means the revelation of God’s goodness, beauty and supreme worth.
Therefore, it is this revelation of His goodness and beauty that is essential to our joy. This is because for us, knowing the glory of God is knowing God. Thankfully for our happiness, God is a God who loves to reveal Himself to His creatures. In fact, God’s main agenda in the world in everything He does is to fill it with the knowledge of His glory (Habakkuk 2:14) because what makes God happy is His glory being displayed to us.
SIGHT AND DELIGHT
God loves to show us His glory, which means that He wants us to see His glory. This is ultimately why He created us. As Isaiah 43:7 says, God created every one of us for His glory. We were created to display His glory and see His goodness displayed. However, God does not simply want us to see His glory, He wants us to delight in it.
Seeing God’s glory is not enough. Many people see God’s glory, yet they are apathetic towards it. This does not make God happy. What makes God happy is when His glory makes us happy. And what makes Him happiest is when His glory makes us happiest. In the words of theologian Jonathan Edwards, “God glorifies Himself toward the creatures in two ways: 1. By appearing to their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their heart, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestation which He makes of Himself… God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and the heart.”
Nevertheless, in order for God’s glory to make us happy, we must first see it. And due to the numerous idols distracting us from seeing God’s glory, the “good fight” to experience joy in God is a fight to see God’s glory (1 Timothy 6:12). To fight for everlasting happiness is a fight to see God’s glory.
REVELATION OF GLORY
So now that we have established that seeing God’s glory makes us happiest, we must next describe the various ways that God displays His glory for us to see. The first way is nature (Psalm 19:1-2). As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:19-20, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
However, despite this glory being clearly displayed to us in nature, we reject God and suppress the truth of His goodness and existence (Romans 1:18). Even worse, we exchange the eternal pleasures derived from seeing God’s glory for lesser pleasures derived from idols (Romans 1:21-23). This is the epitome of sin, to “fall short of” reflecting and enjoying God’s superior glory by preferring someone or something else’s inferior glory (Romans 3:23). Therefore, we become blind to God’s glory and unable to savour it. We reject the promise of eternal happiness and settle for the fleeting pleasures of the world.
If that were the end of the story, we would be judged guilty of rejecting God and destined for Hell. But thankfully, it’s not. There is hope for those who want deep and lasting happiness. And His name is Jesus Christ. What Paul said of the Jews and the Old Testament is also true of the Gentiles and the book of nature: “Their minds were hardened. For to this day…that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Corinthians 3:14-16).
But why is it through Jesus Christ that our natural blindness and apathy to the glory of God is taken away? It is because in Jesus Christ, we have the most clear and accurate visible representation of God’s glory. He is the only image (literally “idol”) that shows us God’s glory perfectly (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15). So when we see Jesus, we see God and His glory perfectly.
But there is also another reason why Jesus takes away our spiritual blindness. As John Piper explains, “Salvation is the purchase and provision of sight for the blind. God sent Christ into the world to die for our spiritual blindness, pay its penalty, absorb the wrath it deserves, and provide a perfect imputed righteousness for all who believe. This is the most beautiful display of God’s glory that has been or ever will be. The divine glory we have been redeemed to see is most beautifully shown in the redemption itself. The all-glorious Christ is both the means and the goal of our salvation from blindness. His life, death, resurrection, and present reign in heaven are both the means by which we sinners regain our sight and the highest glory we are saved to see.”
John Piper here argues that Jesus heals our blindness so we can gaze at His beauty, but it is the healing itself that displays this beauty most clearly. This healing is what we most commonly call “the Gospel” or literally, “the good news”. The Gospel is all about what Jesus accomplished 2000 years ago; His perfect life, atoning death, victorious resurrection and kingly ascension.
The Apostle Paul echoes this idea in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
So salvation is the opening of our eyes by God to see and know His glory shone forth most visibly in the face of Christ in His Gospel (Isaiah 42:7). This is what will make us happiest, both in this age and the next; we must gaze at the beauty of God revealed to us (His glory). Now of course, there are many ways that God shows us His glory, be it in nature, in humans or in God’s other works, but we see it most lucidly in the Gospel in which the Father elects, the Son redeems, and the Spirit applies (Ephesians 1:1-14).
SIGHT AND FAITH
Now, as we have discussed so far, what makes us happiest is to see the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ presented in the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). But as anyone with any sanity would be able to point out, Jesus isn’t here anymore, at least not physically. This raises a potential problem; if in order to be happiest I must gaze at the face of Jesus and Jesus is not physically here anymore, then how can I see Him? And furthermore, if I must see His glory shown in the Gospel events and the Gospel events happened long before I was born or there was any such thing as a video recorder, then how do I have any chance of attaining everlasting happiness?
It is at this point that we must distinguish between two kinds of seeing in Scripture. The first is what we might call actual sight. This is the seeing that we do with our eyes. Though we cannot see God’s glory with the eyes in our head in this age, there is coming a day when we will be able to see it (Romans 8:18; 24-25). This is the great hope that we share as Christians, being able to stare at Jesus face-to-face and see His glory with our eyes (Isaiah 66:18; 1 Peter 4:13).
But now, however, we do not see Jesus with our eyes. Instead, we see Him as though “in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We see Him through a dim reflection. This seeing is another kind of seeing, a seeing with the eyes of our hearts (Ephesians 1:17). In other words, we are able to see Jesus through faith. We are able to see Him spiritually. Though this seeing Jesus with our hearts is inferior to seeing Him with our eyes, it nonetheless is able to fill us with inexpressible joy.
As the Apostle Paul says to all of us who love Jesus in 1 Peter 1:8: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” It is this kind of seeing by faith, enabled by the Holy Spirit, which enables us to see and savour God’s glory in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is what makes us happiest.
Waves
In this blog post, I have explained what it is that makes us happiest – seeing (by faith) the glory of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In my next blog post, I will answer the next question that flows from this, “How can I be happiest?” This blog post will deal with the practical methods that we can use to see God’s glory by faith. But until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
Sunday, February 14, 2010
He Loves Me...
A Sip
Happy St Valentine’s Day blogworms! I pray you are well in the love of our Lord. I’ve actually just got back from a camp this weekend with our Christian university group (BCC) which was fantastic, but nonetheless tiring as usual. Being held this weekend, the theme for Camp was ironically on “Love”. And seeing as I’m still ‘feeling the love’, I thought what would be more appropriate than writing a blog on this very topic – love. But far from writing the usual commercialised secular sentimental dribble that is typically churned out during this day, I thought I would write not on our mushy-gushy love, but on God’s real and genuine love.
Whilst this may seem like a pretty simple and well understood topic, I hope to reveal to you how much we fail to begin to comprehend how complex the love of God really is. Rather than being a simple truth grasped by everyone, it is a truth which is not only taken for granted, but is so frequently incorrectly applied. Instead of going off what we think God’s love means based on our own prejudices and agendas, what God Himself says about His love through His Word needs to be regularly studied and meditated deeply upon. In fact, I can think of no truth in Western contemporary society that is more widely believed, talked about and affirmed, yet is so fundamentally perverted, distorted and misunderstood, than God’s love.
To help me do this all, I will draw heavily from a little book I just read by D.A. Carson called “The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God”. As always, for anyone who feels this blog has not fully satisfied their questions, I would highly recommend reading this book (and the Bible of course!). Though small and palatable, it has been a great aid in my understanding of this topic, revealing many an unexpected insight into this intriguing and mysterious subject matter.
Spring Time!
But before we plunge straight into this rich topic, lest you think I am exaggerating slightly by my dire assessment above, I will first show you an example of what I mean when I assert that the love of God is so widely distorted and misrepresented. The other night, I watched a Christian movie that I had been wanting to watch for some time. It is only a recent movie, but from what I had read and heard, the pretense of the plot had me hooked and interested. The movie is called “Joshua” and is based on a novel of what I can only assume is of the same name. The film is basically set up on the hypothetical question, what would Jesus do and say if He inconspicuously returned to a small rural town today? Sounds like a very interesting scenario, doesn’t it? It also sounds very dangerous. Whilst I was intrigued by the plot, I was also concerned about its possible profane portrayal of Jesus as other extra-biblical representations of God and Jesus have shown such as the ever popular and heretical novel, “The Shack”. Nonetheless, putting my concerns aside, I watched the movie. Was I right? Did “Joshua” fall into the same category as “The Shack”? Was it heretical?
Well, to answer these questions bluntly, my concerns were not in vain. Whilst “Joshua” had some very relevant observations to make about the church and also had some very touching scenes which I must admit nearly spurred me on to tears, it also contained some very heretical representations and comments. Sadly, I think these unorthodox views are commonly held in Evangelical and secular circles. The Jesus character (‘Joshua’) is often not the same Jesus of the Bible.
Whereas the Jesus of the Bible would have had quite a bit to say on the heresy of the Roman Catholic church (which figures quite prominently in the movie), Joshua seems either indifferent or ignorant of any of these problems (Joshua even goes so far as to make a statue of the Apostle Peter, aiding the local Catholic church’s idolatry). In fact, whereas the Jesus of the Bible would have preached to the sinful inhabitants of the town about the Gospel, Joshua stays silent on this crucial message, seeming more interested in helping and empowering them. Whereas the Jesus of the Bible is the glorious Lamb of God; the Servant King who is to be worshipped forever by the Church; Joshua is portrayed as more of our buddy and life coach than our Holy King who seems more concerned about making our dreams come true (there is even one scene where Joshua grants a Catholic priest’s dream to become a cardinal without any mention of what God’s will is for the priest or Joshua correcting his heretical views).
All of these contrasts simply sum up the difference between the Biblical narrative of Jesus and the movie’s narrative. In the Bible, Jesus is the star and we are the supporting cast, whilst in the movie, the roles are reversed and we become the main cast and Jesus becomes our supporting cast. Was I surprised by this? Unfortunately, not really. I have come to expect this sort of narcissistic view being conveyed by now after reading such Christian commentators as Michael Horton who reveals how backwards we have Christianity in the West.
But perhaps the best example of these views (and the one which most relates to this blog topic) is displayed in a scene where Joshua goes to the local Roman Catholic church. After listening to the priest preach about sin, the fear of God and Judgment Day, Joshua is later confronted by this priest after the service who asks what Joshua thought about his sermon. Joshua replies with his typical non-confrontational indifference. This I can tolerate. What I cannot tolerate is what he said afterwards about the Bible. Whereas the Jesus of the Bible reveres and holds the Holy Scriptures in the utmost esteem; this same Jesus who replied systematically, “It is written…”, “It is written…”, “It is written….” to Satan’s temptations (Mt 4:4-10); Joshua shrugs off the Bible as simply a love letter between God and us.
Really? A love letter? Whilst people who have only a passing familiarity with the lovey-dovey parts of the New Testament may be able to buy into that, try telling that to the young congregant who is reading the wars of the Old Testament. Or the seemingly severe Mosaic laws. Or even eternal punishment in Hell. And when the priest’s fellow priests (and, though I never thought I would stand alongside Catholic priests on issues of sin and salvation, me also) pertinently ask Joshua about what the Bible says about sin, judgment and the law, Joshua again disregards all these with the simple reply of love. Love, it would appear, is all we need. In fact, it would appear that love is all God is. Without any mention of the Holiness, Righteousness and justice of God that the Biblical Jesus regularly and confrontationally preached about, Joshua not only paints a two dimensional picture of the Bible, but of God’s love and, dare I say, God Himself.
This is the issue at hand. So common is this view that it is very hard to divorce it from the Christianity we know and are presented with everyday. This view conveys that the Bible is simple to understand and subsequently, God’s love is likewise simple. What’s the answer to all life’s problems? It’s easy – love God and love your neighbour. You hear this on contemporary Christian radio, you read this in popular Christian self-help books and you see this in current Christian films. Heck, you even hear it from other religions and even secular society. “God loves you!” “Love each other!” If it was that easy, then God really wouldn’t have needed to send His Son in the first place. This world sure wouldn’t be in the state it is in if love was easy. It is precisely because true love is impossible for humans that Christ died on the Cross and gave us His Spirit. We as humans naturally hate God as He is and cannot love each other in the way God desires. These two human inadequacies are at the heart of the problem of sin.
What these proponents of this view have done is take a beautiful truth from Scripture, namely “God is love” (1Jn 4:8), and have twisted it to mean “Love is god”. As long as it is done in the name of love, it is good. God is not the answer anymore, love is. I don’t mean to be critical for the sake of being critical, but things really haven’t improved since the era of the Hippies. Different people, different means, but same old message. Love and peace are the ultimate aims; goals that must be accomplished at any cost, even if that cost is the truth.
D.A. Carson explains that part of the reason why the love of God is so misunderstood is that, by and large, our contemporary Western culture is no longer grounded in Judeo-Christian ideologies as it has been in the past, but is now grounded in secularism, post-modernism and pluralism. Whereas great writers in the past such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien could get away with saying “God loves you” without the need to go to great lengths to explain what this means, these days this phrase no longer carries with it the meaning that Scripture ascribes to it. As Carson says:
“The love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized. This process has been going on for some time…It has not always been so. In generations when almost everyone believed in the justice of God, people sometimes found it difficult to believe in the love of God. The preaching of the love of God came as wonderful good news. Nowadays if you tell people that God loves them, they are unlikely to be surprised. Of course God loves me; he’s like that, isn’t he? Besides, why shouldn’t he love me? I’m kind of cute, or at least as nice as the next person. I’m okay, you’re okay, and God loves you and me. Even in the mid-1980s, according to Andrew Greeley, three-quarters of his respondents in an important poll reported that they preferred to think of God as ‘friend’ than as ‘king’. I wonder what the percentage would have been if the option had been ‘friend’ or ‘judge’. Today most people seem to have little difficulty believing in the love of God; they have far more difficulty believing in the justice of God, the wrath of God, and the non-contradictory truthfulness of an omniscient God. But is the biblical teaching on the love of God maintaining its shape when the meaning of ‘God’ dissolves in mist? We must not think that Christians are immune from these influences.” (pp.11-12)
It is against this cultural and Christian backdrop that we must strive with a renewed fervor to learn what God’s love is; what it truly is. Because if we fail to understand the love of God, I am afraid that every other Christian doctrine will be negatively affected as a result. In a world full of many evils (such as war, illness, death and suffering) seemingly inconsistent with the general perceived notions of God’s love, it is more important than ever that we return to the Scriptures and allow God Himself to teach us about the different distinctions in the depiction of His love. So with that said, I will now summarise how D.A. Carson categorises the different ways God loves (please note, however, as Carson himself clarifies in his book, this list is not an exhaustive explanation but a mere scratching of the surface – so great and unfathomable is the love of God that you can spend your whole life trying to understand it).
But before I do that, let us first make some preliminary observations about God’s love. When the Apostle John tells us that “God is love” in his First Epistle (4:8), we should proceed with great caution and reverence in interpreting this most popular of Scriptural declarations. Before I get into what the word ‘love’ means here, I will first briefly note something about the other two words which are often overlooked in this verse; i) ‘God’ refers to His nature, most importantly His being a Triune God, a Holy Trinity of three persons in eternal communion; and ii) ‘is’ refers to His being eternal, immutable and transcendent, evoking a connection to God’s name “I AM” (Ex 3:14).
So how do these two comments help us interpret this verse? Well in order to understand how God is love, you must first understand that God’s love has eternally existed in His very being; the Trinity loves each other. As Ravi Zacharias observes, Christianity is the only religion where God’s love preceded creation; in every other religion God did not love until after creating distinct objects to love. But because Christianity affirms the Trinity, God prior to creation did not need to create any objects to love as He already constituted three distinct persons to love and to be loved. There eternally existed an “other-orientation” for God’s love within Himself (p.45). In particular, we are told in Scripture that the Father eternally loves the Son (Jn 3:35) and the Son eternally loves the Father (Jn 14:31).
Now when it comes to interpreting what the word ‘love’ means in 1 John 4:8, Carson heavily advises against falling into the trap of simply translating it from the Greek word used, ‘agapao’. Carson argues that whilst this Greek word is popularly translated as meaning willed altruism, this is not the definitive translation. It is often used interchangeably throughout the Bible with another Greek word for love, ‘phileo’, such as in John 3:35 and John 5:20. Carson demonstrates by these, and many other inconsistencies which I will not go into here, that the word ‘agapao’ used by John should be best translated as simply the way it is - ‘love’. And just as in English when interpreting the word ‘love’ with its varied connotations, Carson proposes that we let the context define and delimit the word.
Though God is sovereign, transcendent, immutable (Mal 3:6), omniscient (Mt 11:20-24), omnipotent (Jer 32:17) and impassible, these attributes do not contradict nor remove the affective element of God’s love. In fact, they, particularly His sovereignty and immutability, accentuate His love. It is not, as many think, that God was once full of wrath and hatred in the Old Testament, then changed and became loving in the New Testament. On the contrary, in both Testaments God is depicted as loving and wrathful; it is just that this love and wrath is made more clearly manifest by Christ in the New Covenant. Because God is unchangeable and eternal, it a great source of comfort to know that when He loves us, this love is concrete and nothing we can do can change this. This engenders stability and elicits worship; He is being and we are becoming; He is the great Rock (p.62).
But this unchangeability does not deprive God of emotions; it simply means He is not prone to passionate mood swings as we are. God loves with real emotive love; He rejoices (Isa 62:5); He grieves (Ps 78:40) and He gets angry (Ex 32:10). In 1 John 4:7-11, the same word is used for our love and God’s love. What this shows is that, whilst God’s love is obviously infinitely richer and purer than our own, God’s love is both the model and incentive for our love (p.55). We were made in God’s image, after all (Ge 1:27). We cannot divorce God from what He is in Himself and God as he interacts with the created order, these created image-bearers. Both our love and God’s love belong to the same genus or else a parallel could not be drawn; we would not be able to relate to Him nor vice versa. Thus, as we love with emotion (albeit, sin-tainted emotion), likewise, so God does. But as Carson cautions:
“All of God’s emotions, including his love in all its aspects, cannot be divorced from God’s knowledge, God’s power, God’s will. If God loves, it is because he chooses to love; if he suffers, it is because he chooses to suffer. God is impassible in the sense that he sustains no ‘passion’, no emotion, that makes him vulnerable from the outside, over which he has no control, or which he has not foreseen. Equally, however, all of God’s will or choice or plan is never divorced from his love – just as it is never divorced from his justice, his holiness, his omniscience, and all his other perfections…In that framework, God’s love is not so much a function of his will, as something that displays itself in perfect harmony with his will – and with his holiness, his purposes in redemption, his infinitely wise plans, and so forth.” (pp.68-69)
1) INTRA-TRINITARIAN LOVE
The first way God loves is what we discussed above in relation to His very nature; God is a Trinity of eternal love directed at one another. To merely touch upon what this love of God perpetually existing in the Trinity means, Carson plucks an example from a book of the Bible especially rich in these divine insights, John’s Gospel.
For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him…I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” (Jn 5:16-30)
What the Jews accuse Jesus of in this passage is ditheism. They misunderstand Jesus’ claims to be equal with God as asserting that He is an alternate and separate god to God. Jesus answers these false charges in verse 19a by explaining that He is not separate or an alternative to God, but on the contrary, He is totally dependent and subordinate to God the Father. But in the following part of verse 19 (b), Jesus then subtly reveals that this subordination is unique. Whilst relying completely on the Father, Jesus tells us that everything the Father does, likewise, so He does. As Carson says, ‘like father, like son’ (p.36).
In other words, though the Son is subordinate, this is only in function and the Son is equal to God the Father in deity and coextensive action (ie. to quote a famous adage, ‘if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck’; and Jesus not only ‘quacks’ like God only can, He ONLY ‘quacks’ like God only can). Jesus eternally existed as the Son both pre-Incarnation and post-Incarnation (p.42). Because Jesus ONLY does and says everything that the Father does and says, not just some things the Father does and some things on His own, the Son is a perfect revelation of the Father. As Jesus reveals in verses 20-21, Jesus is not merely an agent of resuscitation and God’s miraculous works as others such as Elijah were, but He is the actual doer of them Himself; He raises the dead like His Father can because the Father has shown Him how to do this from eternity. This includes creation (Jn 1:2-3). And why does the Father show the Son everything He does? Carson answers this thusly:
“Here the pre-industrial model of the agrarian village or the craftsman’s shop is presupposed, with a father carefully showing his son all that he does so that the family tradition is preserved. Stradivarius Senior shows Stradivarius Junior all there is to know about making violins – selecting the wood, the exact proportions, the cuts, the glue, how to add precisely the right amount of arsenic to the varnish, and so forth. Stradivarius Senior does this because he loves Stradivarius Junior. So also here: Jesus is so uniquely and unqualifiedly the Son of God that the Father shows him all he does, out of sheer love for him, and the Son, however dependent on his Father, does everything the Father does.” (p.39)
Likewise, in obeying everything the Father has commanded and by doing everything the Father does, this reveals the Son’s love for the Father (Jn 14:31). We must, of course, make a distinction between the love of the Father for the Son and vice versa. The Father demonstrates His love for the Son by commanding, sending, telling and commissioning, ‘showing’ Him everything (p.45). Conversely, the Son demonstrates His love for the Father by obeying, saying what the Father gives Him to say, doing what the Father gives Him to do, coming into the world as the ‘Sent One’, demonstrating His love for the Father by such obedience (p.45). The Son is equal with the Father in substance or essence, but is subordinate in an economic or functional respect.
This functional subordination of the Son to the Father establishes His perfect obedience and self-disclosure of God. And contrary to what us egotistical souls may think, Carson argues that this revelation revolves not around God’s love for us, but on the Father’s unique love for the Son (p.40). Whilst God saves us because He loves us (as we will later explore), the reason He primarily saves us is because He loves His Son and desires all peoples to honour and worship Him.
It is this Intra-Trinitarian love that the Father has for the Son that establishes the standard for all other loving relationships, either inter-human, or between the Divine and the world as John 3:16 shows. Yes, the Father loved the world. But we measure this love for the world by the act of Him giving the Son. The Father’s love for the Son is the measuring stick. Similarly, the Son’s love for the Father demonstrated by His obedience is the standard for remaining in the Father’s love (Jn 15:9-10) (we will also explore this in the last kind of love). We are ultimately called to mirror the intra-Trinitarian love of God in our various relationships.
2) GOD’S PROVIDENTIAL LOVE OVER ALL THAT HE HAS MADE (IE. COMMON GRACE)
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” (Mt 6:25-32)
What Jesus is here revealing and depicting is a God who lovingly provides food, drink, clothing and the necessities of life to all the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the creatures and plants of the land. Though Scripture does not explicitly call this providence ‘love’, there is a very clear sense in which God is the loving Creator who provides for His creation out of His generous love. Before sin entered the created world, God declared it ‘good’ (Ge 1-2). After sin entered the world, God could have destroyed it all. Not partially in the flood, but completely wipe it out. However, God in His Grace has decided to leave it and not only leave it, but provide good things for it.
This is what the Reformers called God’s Common Grace. In other words, it is made manifest and available to all without distinction. If God created you, He loves you in the very fact that He created you and gave you the gift of life in the first place. None of us have done anything to deserve being created, hence it is rightly called Grace. Furthermore, though you are a sinner, you still can benefit from this providential love of God; you can love, eat, drink, laugh, have a family and enjoy life. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:43-45, this undiscriminating providential love of God is the basis for the great command to love our enemies, “for [God Himself] makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” As we will later see, this is one of the many ways in which the astounding love of God is used as the basis for our relationships with others.
However, this Common Grace is not guaranteed or eternal in its length, nor applied to all equally and similarly. Children die prematurely. Murders and wars happen every day. There are some in the world who die from famine and poverty. This is still a fallen world and the results of sin are clearly evident. But as Jesus assures us, “not one [sparrow] falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will” (Mt 10:29) and thus, God is in control of life and death. He is sovereign. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away (Job 1:21).
Yet, this love of God shown through Common Grace does not overrule God’s wrath upon sinners, but actually coexists with God’s wrath. That old cliché of Ghandi’s which has been dangerously appropriated into Christian theology, culture and language; that God “hates the sin but loves the sinner”; is actually mostly false when talking about God’s love and His wrath, Carson argues (p.79). Throughout Old and New Testaments, God declares His hatred not only for sin but also for the sinner themselves; God’s wrath is both on the sin (Ro 1:18) and on the sinner (Jn 3:36). Though God’s hatred depends on the object of His wrath, because God’s love does not depend on the object’s loveliness, God can be both loving and wrathful to the same individual. Though God loves all of us through Common Grace, He also is wrathful towards us because of our sinfulness. The only love of God which overrules and satisfies this wrath is the fourth love which we will discuss later.
3) GOD’S SALVIFIC STANCE TOWARD HIS FALLEN WORLD
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (Jn 3:16)
Though many (including, admittedly, myself) may try and twist this most famous of verses from Scripture to refer only to the salvific love God has for His elect, it is clear from a study of Johannine theology that the word ‘world’ (or ‘kosmos’ in Greek) refers primarily to “the moral order in willful and culpable rebellion against God” (p.18). In other words, this verse, rather than emphasising the bigness of the world that God loves, emphasises the badness of the world that God loves. As Carson says, “In John 3:16 God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, as to such wicked people” (pp.18-19).
Though the elect are chosen, saved and drawn out from the world (Jn 15:19), God loves both the elect and the world, albeit in different ways. This love God has for the world is made most manifest by the Great Commission in Mark 16:15; that the Gospel is to be preached to every creature in the world. God loves the world in this sense by inviting and commanding all humans everywhere to repent and believe the Gospel, calling out, “As I live…I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways!” (Eze 33:11).
It is important to note here, however, that though God is said to love the world, we are also told not to love the world (1Jn 2:15-17). This seeming contradiction whereby God is commended for His love for the world and yet, we are prohibited from loving this same world can be explained away by the distinction between God’s love and our love in this context. As Carson summarises this point, “God’s love for the world is commendable because it manifests itself in awesome self-sacrifice; our love for the world is repulsive when it lusts for evil participation. God’s love for the world is praiseworthy because it brings the transforming gospel to it; our love for the world is ugly because we seek to be conformed to the world. God’s love for the world issues in certain individuals being called out from the world and into the fellowship of Christ’s followers; our love for the world is sickening where we wish to be absorbed into the world” (p.91). That said, though the way we love the world in this way is prohibited, we are still encouraged to imitate the way God loves the world by preaching the Gospel to everyone in it.
Instead of destroying the world once and for all as He would be just to do, God sent His Son into this dark world, though it deserved not this most precious of gifts (Jn 1:10-11), so that it may be saved. But as though sending His Son to die for the sins of the world were not enough, God goes one step further in the next way He loves.
4) GOD’S PARTICULAR, EFFECTIVE, SELECTING LOVE TOWARDS HIS ELECT (IE. SAVING GRACE)
God in His love has sent His Son into this rebellious world to die so that it may be saved through believing the Gospel. However, there is only one problem with this – man in his natural Total Depravity cannot and will not believe the Gospel (Jn 6:65). At this point, after not only creating and providing for us (the second love) and sending His Son to save us (the third love), God could have now thrown up His hands and exclaimed, “These foolish and sinful men; not only do they refuse to give Me praise for the gifts of life I lovingly provide for them, but they now reject My Son and My offer of Salvation! I give up – I shall now just destroy them all!” I know that’s probably what I would do.
But in His immeasurable love, God goes one step further and chooses some undeserving sinners out of the world whom He changes through His Spirit by His Grace so that whereas before they had hardened hearts and wills which rejected His offer of Salvation, afterwards they have hearts and wills which respond positively to the Gospel and can hence believe. This is what the Reformers called Saving Grace (please note, I will not get into a discussion now about the arguments for the Calvinist doctrines of Unconditional Election and free will, but if you are interested, read my earlier blog titled “Un-Free Willy [Part 1]”). We see this exemplified in the Old Testament with the way the Scriptures describe how God loved Israel.
“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Dt 7:6-8)
This, and many other passages in Scripture, shows the contrast between God’s people and the other nations of the world. What’s interesting to note is that the distinguishing feature between Israel and the other nations has nothing to do with any merit or inherent quality on their part, but rather has everything to do with God’s love and good pleasure. God chooses to save and redeem His people because He loves them in a way unique to other nations of the world. As God says in Malachi 1:2-3, “Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated.” The Apostle Paul later comments on this verse in Romans 9:11-13, explaining that this saving and electing love for Jacob is directed towards him not because of anything he has done better than Esau, as God declares this love toward Jacob before he or his brother were born, but because of God’s purposes.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. (Eph 5:25)
This sort of language is now used in the New Testament for Christ and His Church. God’s electing love now extends to Spiritual Israel; individuals from all nations on Earth make up the Church. We as the Church have been saved and now exclusively and uniquely experience the love of Christ manifest as our friend (Jn 15:14-15). Jesus makes the distinction here between a slave and a friend. But this difference lies not in a duty to obey and submit, or even of ownership as we are still commanded to obey Christ and submit to Him as He has bought us with His blood. Far from a notion of friendship as cheap human intimacy which we are often guilty of doing by calling Jesus our ‘best friend’ and bringing Him down to our level, this friendship is based on the Son’s disclosure to us of divine revelation. We are still His inferiors, yet “we have been incalculably privileged not only to be saved by God’s love, but to be shown it, to be informed about it, to be let in on the mind of God. God is love; and we are the friends of God” (p.49).
This saving, electing love of God is best exemplified in the Reformed doctrine of Limited Atonement. Carson prefers the term definite atonement and argues thusly (p.84). In other words, when God sent His Son to the Cross, He thought of its effect for His elect differently to its effect for others in the world. Carson argues that the Cross is definite in its atonement based more on God’s intent in Christ’s work than on the extent of its significance (p.85). Christ died to save His people (Mt 1:21); and as we saw above in Ephesians 5:25, Christ died specifically for His Church, so that He could purify a peoples exclusively for Himself (Tit 2:14). As Carson puts it, “In his death Christ did not merely make adequate provision for the elect, but he actually achieved the desired result (Rom. 5:6-10; Eph. 2:15-16)” (pp.85-86).
And to the Arminian who asserts that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, Carson replies that the Apostle John does not assert here that the atonement is effective without exception (as though those unread in Johannine theology would ignorantly assert he were a universalist), but rather that the atonement opens up a potential for all without distinction (p.88). As the old Calvinist adage goes, Christ’s sacrifice is “sufficient for all” (ie. the third kind of love), but only “effective for some” (this saving, electing love of God presently discussed).
And what’s more, nothing we can do can stop God loving us in this way. Once God has set this saving love upon you, He will not lose you (Jn 6:37-40). Carson explains this point brilliantly and humorously using an analogy of a young in-love couple:
“God does not ‘fall in love’ with the elect; he does not ‘fall in love’ with us; he sets his affection on us. He does not predestine us out of some stern whimsy; rather in love he predestines us to be adopted as his sons (Eph. 1:4-5)…We may gain clarity by an example. Picture Charles and Susan walking down a beach hand in hand…Charles turns to Susan, gazes deeply into her large, hazel eyes, and says, ‘Susan, I love you. I really do.’ What does he mean?…If we assume he has even a modicum of decency, let alone Christian virtue, the least he means is something like this: ‘Susan, you mean everything to me. I can’t live without you. Your smile knocks me out from fifty metres. Your sparkling good humour, your beautiful eyes, the scent of your hair – everything about you transfixes me. I love you!’ What he most certainly does not mean is something like this: ‘Susan, quite frankly you have such a bad case of halitosis it would embarrass a herd of unwashed, garlic-eating elephants. Your nose is so bulbous you belong in the cartoons. Your hair is so greasy it could lubricate an eighteen-wheeler. Your knees are so disjointed you make a camel look elegant. Your personality makes Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan look like wimps. But I love you!’ So now God comes to us and says, ‘I love you.’ What does he mean? Does he mean something like this? ‘You mean everything to me. I can’t live without you. Your personality, your witty conversation, your beauty, your smile – everything about you transfixes me. Heaven would be boring without you. I love you!’ That, after all, is pretty close to what some therapeutic approaches to the love of God spell out. We must be pretty wonderful because God loves us. And dear old God is pretty vulnerable, finding himself in a dreadful state unless we say yes…When he says he loves us, does not God rather mean something like the following? ‘Morally speaking, you are the people of the halitosis, the bulbous nose, the greasy hair, the disjointed knees, the abominable personality. Your sins have made you disgustingly ugly. But I love you anyway, not because you are attractive, but because it is in my nature to love.’ And in the case of the elect, God adds, ‘I have set my affection on you from before the foundation of the universe, not because you are wiser or better or stronger than others but because in grace I chose to love you. You are mine, and you will be transformed. Nothing in all creation can separate you from my love mediated through Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 8). Isn’t that a little closer to the love of God depicted in Scripture?…At the end of the day, God loves, whomever the object, because God is love…his love emanates from his own character; it is not dependent on the loveliness of the loved, external to himself.” (pp.69-72)
In God demonstrating that He loves the unlovable, this should spur us on to likewise love our unlovable enemies; once again showing that God’s love is the model and standard for our own relationships. This love is far deeper, richer and greater than any love God has for any of His creation. Everyone on earth, as the Creator’s creation, enjoys the love the Creator has for them. Only God’s elect and chosen people enjoy the privilege of being called God’s children (Jn 1:12-13), experiencing the love of God who manifests Himself to them as their Father. And this privilege comes through God’s choice and will by Grace, not through human choice or will, lest there be room for boasting and it cease to be called Grace; the distinction between the believer and the non-believer lies not in themselves, but in God’s electing and gracious love. After all, “we love Him because He first loved us” (1Jn 4:19).
This electing love, ironically, should also spur us on to preach the Gospel of the love of God to EVERYONE without exception, both in His salvific stance and His electing love. However, it is very important that, in preaching that God loves every sinner, we do not mix the two and hence ignore, cheapen or diminish the unique love that God has for His people. It has become so widely believed that God loves the world that this has become confused with His love for the Church; Common Grace and Saving Grace have been so marred and blurred together that they have become indistinguishable. Scripture makes a clear distinction between the two ways God loves.
And as Carson astutely points out, God does not, as opposed to popular opinion, ‘love everyone the same.’ His love, Carson argues, is far more complex than our “mere sloganeering” (p.27). John MacArthur corrected this common misperception regarding Common Grace and Saving Grace in one of his sermons, "http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/80-192">Man Rejects, But God Loves:
“All people are rejecters of God’s love by nature, and they frankly can do nothing about it. They have not the capacity to please God. They have not the disposition to love God. But God, in sovereign love, and unique love, penetrates through that universal rejection to forgive and save some sinners, in spite of their rejection. Not because they reject less than others. Not because they deserve salvation more than others. But purely on the basis of his own will, and his own desire, and his own sovereign love, he determines to penetrate that universal rejection, and rescue those upon whom he decides to set his saving love. This is another kind of love. This is a different kind of love. Different in degree, and different in extent. That first love we talked about [Common Grace] is greater in extent, lesser in degree. That saving love is greater in degree, and lesser in extent. God does love the world. The Bible makes that clear. He loves the world with a generous, sparing, grieving, compassionate, providential, warning, love that even offers the gospel. But sinners reject it…[and] God’s love spurned gives way to divine hate, manifested in eternal judgment. And while this love is universal in its extent, and it is limited in degree, it is not the sort of love that saves everybody…There is a love that does save. The love that does save is less in its extent, that is, it’s applied to fewer. It’s greater in degree, because it saves them forever.”
5) GOD’S CONDITIONAL OR PROVISIONAL LOVE DIRECTED TO HIS OWN PEOPLE
This final way God loves follows on from the previous category of God’s love; it is directed toward those whom He has chosen to save. Part of being saved is coming to know God both intellectually and intimately. An element of this relationship is that God’s love is conditional on our obedience. This is not to say if we don’t obey Him we won’t be provided for (as we have above seen, God’s providential love is hard to escape), nor does it mean that we will lose our Salvation (again, as we have already seen, God’s election is unconditional), but this kind of way God loves is conditional.
As Jude commands us in his letter, “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (v.21). By this simple command, Jude is implying that there are Christians who may not at certain times keep themselves in God’s love. Likewise, Jesus gives a similar command in John 15:10 when He says, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” This theme of God’s relational love being conditioned upon His covenant people’s obedience to His commands is found throughout Scripture such as in Exodus 20:6 and Ps 103. If you are still trying to struggle to understand this love of God, I will recount an analogy that Carson uses:
“To draw a feeble analogy: although there is a sense in which my love for my children is immutable, so help me God, regardless of what they do, there is another sense in which they know well enough that they must remain in my love. If for no good reason my teenagers do not get home by the time I have prescribed, the least they will experience is a loud telling off, and they may come under some restrictive sanctions. There is no use reminding them that I am doing this because I love them. That is true, but the manifestation of my love for them when I ground them and when I take them out for a meal or attend one of their concerts or take my son fishing or my daughter on an excursion of some sort is rather different in the two cases. Only the latter will feel much more like remaining in my love than falling under my wrath.” (pp.21-22)
In other words, what this analogy conveys is that this kind of way God loves us is as a parent to a child (Heb 12:4-11). Whilst we may disobey our Father, the result of this will be the temporary experience of His disciplinary wrath. But this passing punishment does not mean God does not love us anymore or will take our Salvation away; heck, even the punishment itself is inflicted out of love.
Waves
Well, that went way longer than I expected (although I’m sure by now you have come to expect length from me; one of these days I shall shock you all by posting a blog of only one paragraph). Anyway, I hope these different categories of God’s love have made you aware of the richness and complexity of something we not only take for granted, but undervalue and oversimplify. That said, as Carson cautions, it would be very dangerous and harmful to our views of God if we were to absolutise any of these categories:
“If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion…it steals God’s sovereignty from him and our security from us…If the love of God refers exclusively to his love for the elect, it is easy to drift toward a simple and absolute bifurcation: God loves the elect and hates the reprobate. Rightly positioned, there is truth in this assertion; stripped of complementary biblical truths, that same assertion has engendered hyper-Calvinism…If the love of God is construed entirely within the kind of discourse that ties God’s love to our obedience…, the dangers threatening us change once again…divorced from complementary biblical utterances about the love of God, such texts may drive us backwards toward merit theology, endless fretting about whether or not we have been good enough today to enjoy the love of God…In short, we need all of what Scripture says on this subject, or the doctrinal and pastoral ramifications will prove disastrous.” (pp.24-25)
We must also be careful we don’t compartmentalise them and think of them as separate and independent to one another; on the contrary, they overlap and are interlinked. I pray with Carson that we “learn to integrate them in Biblical proportion and balance” (p.26), not allowing one ‘love’ to diminish others.
Nevertheless, I also pray with Carson that you do not merely understand God’s love, but go beyond sheer analysis and receive, absorb and feel the very love of God in your own lives (Eph 3:17-19) (p.92). As he wisely says, “never, never underestimate the power of the love of God to break down and transform the most amazingly hard individuals” (p.93). Such is the Glorious God of love that we have! So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
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