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The Emotional Roller Coaster of Bible Reading · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Comforted, warned, threatened, comforted, warned, threatened, comforted, warned,
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  threatened. Does your Bible reading feel like an emotional roller coaster experience?
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  Mine does a lot of time, and I know that's not my experience alone.
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  So is this experience by design? Another really important Bible question today that
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  you have sent to us. And we've had a lot of those over the
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  years, as you can see in the APJA book on pages one to forty
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  six, the longest section in the book talking about Bible reading and Bible memorization.
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  This nixt Bible reading question is from a young man who listens to the
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  podcast to a little Pastor John. Every day I seem to get happy and
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  feel comforted, and every day I feel sad and worried, almost like it
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  switches in a moment. The reason for this is the words of comfort and
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  warning from Jesus and Paul. For instance, I'm happy to hear Jesus say,
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  whoever comes to me, I will never cast out in John six thirty
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  seven. But then I hear him say, no one who puts his hand
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  to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God Luke nine
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  sixty two. Then I hear Jesus say to the seemingly mature Church of Ephesus
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  that if they don't repent, he will take their lamp stand out of its
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  place. In Revelation two, verses one to seven. Is it right to
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  feel sort of emotionally pushed back and forth like this so regularly in my Bible
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  reading? Is this healthy and normal for the Christian life to feel like this?
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  Comforted then warned, then threatened. Is the Christian life in this fallen
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  world meant to feel like this by design? That such a good question.
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  There are over four hundred imperatives in the writings of Paul, over one thousand
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  in the four Gospels. Now what this means is that when Paul says in
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  Romans eight twenty nine that God predestined Christians to be conformed to the image of
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  Christ, that is, to be holy like he's holy, to love like
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  he loves, to be morally perfect as He is morally perfect. The means
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  by which God brings that about that predestined reality. The means by which He
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  brings it about is by hundreds of commands given to those predestined saints. That's
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  the key thing. He uses, commands that we must take seriously because they
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  are His appointed means for our moral perfecting, our glorification. There are people
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  who think that because we are justified by faith alone, there are no imperatives
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  that we must obey in order to show that our justifying faith is genuine and
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  that we're true Christians. But in fact, the way God brings us to
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  the final state of glory moral perfection is by means of commanding us to stay
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  on the narrow way that leads to life. The fulfillment of these commands is
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  rooted in the fact now that we are already justified, already forgiven, already
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  accepted, because of what Christ has done for us and our attachment to Him
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  by faith. But it is unbiblical to say that because we're already forgiven,
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  already accepted, there's no need for God to command us to do anything.
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  That's unbiblical to say that it's unbiblical and foolish to say that God gives no
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  threats of destruction for disobedience. That's not true. God's means of bringing about
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  what He has predestined to take place, namely our holiness, our glory,
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  our perfection, is to command us to be holy and then by the spirit
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  enable us to do what he commands us to do. Say, Augustine was
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  right when he prayed, command what thou wilt o God, and give what
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  thou commandest. And here's what our friend who sent us question. Here's what
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  our friend is drawing our attention to God uses both promises and threats to motivate
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  that obedience to his commandments. And lest anybody say, ba bo, I
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  don't even need the word commandments. We shouldn't even use the word commandments in
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  the New Testament. That's an Old Testament idea. We don't live by commandments
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  in the New Testament. That's law. We live under grace. To that,
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  I respond first John two three. By this we know we have come
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  to know him if we keep his commandments verse John three twenty four. Whoever
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  keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him Verse John five to three.
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  This is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his
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  commandments are not burdensome. Jesus said in John fourteen fifteen, if you love
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  me, you will keep my commandments, and so on on and on.
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  People need to read their Bibles and not just make theological pronouncements about what the
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  Bible means without close attention to texts, the difference between the Old Covenant and
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  the New Covenant is not the absence of commandments, but the presence of power
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  to keep them. I will write my law on your heart and cause you
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  to walk in my statutes. That's the heart of the New Covenant. Obedience
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  to commandments is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of faith.
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  Paul calls it the obedience of faith. What our friend is pointing out is
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  that God motivates us to this obedience by using promises and threats. And his
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  experience is that threats make him feel sad and worried, while promises make him
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  feel happy and comforted. And he wonders if this is normal? Is it
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  the way God designed the Christian life to be in this fallen world? Now,
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  I can't get inside his head or heart to pass any judgment with any
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  confidence on whether this particular Christian experience of his is healthy and normal. It
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  might be, so I'm not going to base my counsel on his experience,
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  but on the biblical pattern. The Biblical pattern is that God motivates positively with
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  promises and negatively with threats and warnings. The positive pattern looks like this.
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  God's promise leads to confid faith, which leads to obedience, and the negative
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  pattern looks like this. God's threat leads to fear, which drives us back
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  to confident faith, which leads to obedience. Here's an example of the positive
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  Hebrews thirteen five and six. Keep your life free from the love of money.
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  Be content with what you have, for he has said, and here
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  comes the promise, I will never leave you or forsake you. So we
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  can confidently say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear.
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  What can man do to me? So the promise is I will help you
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  and never forsake you. The confident faith, so we can confidently say the
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  Lord is my helper, I will not fear, and then the obedience.
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  We stop loving money by believing that promise. And here's the negative side.
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  Romans eleven eighteen to twenty. Do not be arrogant towards the broken off Jewish
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  branches. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast
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  through faith. So do not become proud but fear. For if God did
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  not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. So The threat
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  is God won't spare breaking off your branch if you're arrogant. That causes fear,
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  like I don't want to be a broken off branch. This fear drives
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  you away from boastful self exaltation and self reliance and leads you back to humble
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  faith in Christ. And then the obedience is you stop boasting over Jewish unbelievers.
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  So here's what's important to see about the way the two emotions relate to
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  each other. Faith on the one side, fear on the other side.
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  They're not equal or balanced. In the Christian life, confident faith is the
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  continuous, lasting, normal condition of the Christian heart in this age, but
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  because of sin, God also uses fear as a temporary warning to drive us
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  back to Christ, his cross, his forgiveness, his acceptances love, and
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  to faith when we're tempted to sin. But that's not the only difference between
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  these two emotions. It's not just that faith is to be continuous and fear
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  is to be temporary, but also that a confident feeling of faith is the
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  end and a threatened feeling of fear is a means to drive us to the
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  goal. So continuous versus temporary is one difference. An end versus means is
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  another difference. So yes, the Christian life in this fallen age is a
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  pattern of continuous confident faith and occasional threatened fear. This is the way every
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  healthy family raises kids. We want our kids to be overwhelmingly dominantly happy and
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  confident that there's an ongoing, continuous trust in the goodness and helpfulness of their
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  parents. But we also want them to know the boundaries where they could get
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  themselves killed in the street or in an electric socket. And for their own
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  good, they don't cross the boundaries. They feel fear of the discipline that's
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  going to come to them if they cross the boundaries and are tempted to cross
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  them. So God is a good father toward us. He knows how to
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  bring his predestined children home to glory, and he uses both confident faith and
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  the feeling of fear that comes through his warnings positive reinforcement, negative warning,
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  all by paternal design. So good, thank you, pastor John. And
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  of course all of this assumes a regular routine of Bible reading, and maybe
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  you're listening, and maybe when it comes to Bible reading, you don't even
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  have routine. You don't know where to begin. Pastor John has given us
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  a lot of wise Bible reading advice over the years, which I have summarized
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  for you in the Ask Pastor John book on pages one to forty six.
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  Is by far the longest topic in the book. There's lots to learn from
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  someone that I would call a master of Bible reading, a man seeking to
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  be mastered by the Bible. But there's so much to learn see pages one
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  to forty six in the APJ book. And speaking of double dynamics at work
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  in the Christian life, we live out the victorious resurrection of Christ and we
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  live out the death of Christ in our lives at the same time, as
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  we see in Philippians three, verses eight to eleven, Pastor John will explain
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  how this duality works inside of us. I'm Tony Rinky, Pastor John,
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  and I will see you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.