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What Is Christian Hedonism · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Over the years. The name that I have given to
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  Speaker 1: my understanding of this massive role that joy plays in
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  Speaker 1: not only the Christian life, but all of creation and
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  Speaker 1: God's purposes in it is the name Christian hedonism. And
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  Speaker 1: the shortest description of Christian hedonism is God is most
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  Speaker 1: glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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  Speaker 1: My pathway into this understanding over the last thirty years
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  Speaker 1: or so is mainly affected by Jonathan Edwards and C. S.
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  Speaker 1: Lewis and the Apostle Paul, but it does reach back
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  Speaker 1: to my father. My father was probably the happiest man
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  Speaker 1: I've ever known, and yet he was filled and consumed
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  Speaker 1: with the glory of God. And so there was this
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  Speaker 1: both and in my father's life that had to have
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  Speaker 1: a resolution or explanation someday that abundant joy and total
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  Speaker 1: commitment to the glory of God had to go together
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  Speaker 1: in some way. And then after my dad came C. S.
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  Speaker 1: Lewis with his amazing statement that our problem is human
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  Speaker 1: beings is not that our desires are too strong, but
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  Speaker 1: that our desires are too weak, which blew me away.
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  Speaker 1: When I first read it, I thought my desires were
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  Speaker 1: the problem, and he was saying no, your desires aren't
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  Speaker 1: the problem. The weakness of your desires or the problem.
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  Speaker 1: You are like a child fooling about in the slums
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  Speaker 1: with your mud pies because you can't imagine what a
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  Speaker 1: holiday at the sea is like. In other words, your
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  Speaker 1: desires for the great things that God is offering you
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  Speaker 1: are way too. Your problem is not big desires. Your
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  Speaker 1: problem is small desires for big things. And then there
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  Speaker 1: was Jonathan Edwards. Now Edwards was the biggest of all
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  Speaker 1: because he came along and said, God Almighty, in his
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  Speaker 1: trinitarian form, is God the Father, having an idea of
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  Speaker 1: himself which stands forth in the Son, the Son of God,
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  Speaker 1: and having delight in himself, which stands forth in the
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  Speaker 1: Holy Spirit, surging back and forth as a person between
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  Speaker 1: the Father and the Son. And then when he creates
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  Speaker 1: human beings there in his image, so that we glorify
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  Speaker 1: God both by having a right idea of him true
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  Speaker 1: doctrine and by having appropriate passionate emotions toward him. That
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  Speaker 1: was just massive for me to see that I have
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  Speaker 1: these two great surging faculties in me, thinking faculty that
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  Speaker 1: glorifies God by thinking rightly about him, and an emotional
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  Speaker 1: faculty that glorifies God by feeling rightly about him. And
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  Speaker 1: under all of that was the Bible, which all over
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  Speaker 1: the Bible says glorify God, and all over the Bible
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  Speaker 1: it says delight in God. And so how do they
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  Speaker 1: come together? And so I go to the Westminster Catechism
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  Speaker 1: and I look at the first question, what is man's
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  Speaker 1: chief end? Answer? Man's chief end is to glorify God
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  Speaker 1: and enjoy him forever. And I ponder is it just?
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  Speaker 1: And what does an mean? Isn't it The chief end
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  Speaker 1: of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
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  Speaker 1: That's what Edward said, That's what Lewis implied. That seemed
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  Speaker 1: to be what was surging in my father's life. But
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  Speaker 1: is it biblical? Is that true? And that now that
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  Speaker 1: brings us to Philippians. Philippians Chapter one, verses twenty twenty
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  Speaker 1: one was the key text that in its logic, settled
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  Speaker 1: this for me. That God is most glorified, Christ is
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  Speaker 1: most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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  Speaker 1: Here's the way it goes. Paul says, my eager expectation,
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  Speaker 1: my firm, solid expectation, is that Christ will be magnified
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  Speaker 1: in my body, whether by life or by death. Four,
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  Speaker 1: And that little word four became all important. Four. To me,
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  Speaker 1: to live is Christ, and to die is gain. So
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  Speaker 1: Paul is with that little word four, grounding the certainty
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  Speaker 1: of the expectation that Christ will be magnified in his
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  Speaker 1: body when he lives and when he dies. Why, what's
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  Speaker 1: the ground what's the basis of that expectation that Christ
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  Speaker 1: will be magnified in my body when I die? Because
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  Speaker 1: for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
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  Speaker 1: And I stopped, how does that work? How does that
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  Speaker 1: logic work? And it came clear when I just dropped
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  Speaker 1: out the life pair and stayed with the death pair.
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  Speaker 1: So let's say it like that. It is my eager
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  Speaker 1: expectation and hope that I will not at all be
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  Speaker 1: a shame, but that Christ will be magnified in my
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  Speaker 1: body through my death. Four. To me, to die is gain.
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  Speaker 1: It says, the confidence that I have that when I
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  Speaker 1: die Christ will be magnified is based on the fact
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  Speaker 1: that for me to die is gain. If Christ is
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  Speaker 1: gained in my dying, Christ will look magnificent in my dying.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a missing peace there's a missing peace to
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  Speaker 1: the argument. What is that? That's verse twenty three, right,
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  Speaker 1: Fal says, I want to go and be with Christ,
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  Speaker 1: for that is far better. So the gain that he's
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  Speaker 1: talking about in verse twenty one is Christ if I
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  Speaker 1: go to be with Christ. If I die and go
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  Speaker 1: to be with Christ, that is far better. That's my gain.
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  Speaker 1: So now let's go back and see if the logic
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  Speaker 1: makes sense. My eager expectation is that Christ will be
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  Speaker 1: magnified in my death because I'm going to experience death
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  Speaker 1: as gain, as more satisfying than anything this life could offer.
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  Speaker 1: And that is Jesus Christ. And that's just that close
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  Speaker 1: to my little rhyming pair. God is most glorified in
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  Speaker 1: us when we are most satisfied in Him. So let's
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  Speaker 1: see if we can put it together. I am confident
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  Speaker 1: or I have this strong, eager expectation that Christ will
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  Speaker 1: be magnified in my dying. And the basis of that
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  Speaker 1: expectation that Christ will be shown to be magnificent in
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  Speaker 1: my dying is that I am going to experience my
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  Speaker 1: dying as gain, namely as Christ being more satisfying to
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  Speaker 1: me than everything that life has to offer. So I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to argue and stake my little rhyming pair on
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  Speaker 1: the logic of the relationship between Philippians. One twenty and
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  Speaker 1: one twenty one. I have told the story about my wife.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell it again. Here my wife and
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  Speaker 1: the roses and the anniversary. I'm just gonna sum it
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  Speaker 1: up because every one of you knows from the gut
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  Speaker 1: of your soul that this is true. You know this
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  Speaker 1: is the way it works. So here I am. It's
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  Speaker 1: my anniversary. I say to Noel, I am going to
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  Speaker 1: take you out tonight because it's our anniversary, forty seventh anniversary,
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  Speaker 1: because spending the night with you makes me glad. Now,
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  Speaker 1: no wife has ever said, nor would Noel ever say,
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  Speaker 1: you are so selfish to talk like that. All you
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  Speaker 1: think about is yourself. Nothing would make me happy like
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  Speaker 1: taking you out and spending the evening with you. No
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  Speaker 1: wife ever complains that selfish. Why because if I pursue
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  Speaker 1: my full satisfaction in her, she's honored. Everyone knows this,
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  Speaker 1: women feel it, men know it. And so it is
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  Speaker 1: with God. If we are drawn to God because we
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  Speaker 1: want to spend time with God, we delight to spend
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  Speaker 1: time with God. God is our treasure and our satisfaction.
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  Speaker 1: God is honored. God is highly magnified. And so this
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  Speaker 1: truth that God is most glorified in us, or Christ
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  Speaker 1: is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied
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  Speaker 1: in Him, is not peripheral. This is not peripheral to
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  Speaker 1: the Christian life or peripheral to the Book of Philippians.
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  Speaker 1: This is right at the heart of what it means
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  Speaker 1: to be a believer, what it means to belong to
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  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, what it means to treasure and trust Jesus Christ.
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  Speaker 1: This is not icing on the cake of Christianity. This
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  Speaker 1: is at the the heart of Christianity.