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What’s the Essence of Love? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Hello, and welcome back to the podcast on this Thursday. Well, what
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  is love? That's a timeless question, and as you know, pastor John,
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  from time to time we get questions about the nature of love, God's
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  love for us, our love for God, our love for each other,
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  and what it means that God is love, as first John four eight tells
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  us. On top of this, we get questions about how joy relates to
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  love, too, which is part of what we mean by Christian hedonism.
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  You mentioned a while back that you were working through Second Corinthians recently and saw
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  something that relates to all of these questions that I just mentioned and ties them
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  all together in a surprising way. Can you summarize your discovery from Second Corinthians
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  and explain how it touches on all those questions about love and joy? I
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  can try, And it was surprising, not only because for being so simple
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  it has vast implications for the very nature of God himself and how he loves
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  himself and how we love him and how He loves us. But also it
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  was surprising also because what I saw was not found in some high soaring part
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  of Paul's writings, but rather in a very down to earth practical interaction with
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  the Corinthians about his travel plants. You don't expect to find vast implications about
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  the nature of reality as somebody's talking about their travel plants. So let me
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  read verses one to four of Second Corinthians, Chapter two and make three observations
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  as we go through this text. And these three observations are just mind blowingly
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  vast in their implications. So here's what he wrote. He said, I
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  made up my mind not to make another pain full visit to you, And
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  then he gives the reason for why he's not going to make a sorrowful,
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  painful visit to them. He says, because if I cause you sorrow,
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  who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have grieved.
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  So the first observation I make is the reason Paul decides not to make a
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  painful visit, is because if their joy goes down, Paul's joy goes down,
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  which implies that their joy is in some measure Paul's joy. He finds
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  his joy in their joy. If their goes up, his goes up.
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  If there's goes down, his goes down. So that's observation number one.
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  Paul's joy is in some measure theirs or theirs is in some measure his,
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  so that if theirs goes down, which a painful visit would cause, his
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  would go down, he doesn't want that, so he doesn't go. Now
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  verse three, and I wrote as I did, so he's writing this letter
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  instead of going. I wrote as I did so that when I came,
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  I might not suffer sorrow from those who should have made me rejoice. Now,
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  why did Paul not want to be made sorrowful? I mean, I
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  think, well, that's obvious, but no, it's not obvious. Listen,
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  why did Paul not want to be made sorrowful? He says this because
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  I felt sure of you all that my joy would be the joy of you
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  all. So my second observation is that the reason Paul wrote a letter instead
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  of making this painful visit is that his joy was their joy. So what
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  he says, I'm not even drawing it out as an implication. He just
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  says it, my joy would be the joy of you all. So if
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  his joy goes down by painful visit, their joy is going to go down
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  because his joy is in some measure, he says, their joy. That's
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  my second observation. Now, here's the rest of the text. Verse four,
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  he describes the same desire, now not to make a painful visit,
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  but to write. Instead. He describes that same desire, only this time
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  not in terms of being motivated by joy, but motivated by love. Here's
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  what he says, for I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish
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  of heart, and with many tears, not to cause you sorrow, but
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  to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. So my
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  third observation is that in Paul's mind, love means finding our joy in the
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  joy of the other, the beloved. He didn't want their joy to be
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  undermined because their joy was his joy, and he didn't want his joy to
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  be undermined because his joy was their joy. And then he steps back and
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  he says, that's what it means to love you. That's what it means
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  to love you. So we know Paul is writing as a Christian and from
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  other things that he says even in this book, Christian joy is joy that
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  has God in Christ as its focus. So the definition of love that he
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  gives here is this love is finding our joy in the joy of the beloved
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  in God. When they have joy in God. That's our joy, and
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  we're willing to lay on our lives to bring about their joy in God.
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  God is willing to delay on his life to bring about our joy in God.
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  So now we got to step back and test this to see if we're
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  onto something here, and I think we're onto something vastly significant. So let's
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  start by testing it with ultimate love. God is love one John four to
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  eight. Before there was creation, God was God, and God was love,
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  meaning in the fellowship of the Trinity, before there were any people to
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  love, God was love. And in the fellowship of the Trinity, Father,
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  Son, and Holy Spirit, God was loving God. It says in
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  Matthew three seventeen God says to his son, this is my loved son,
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  and then he says with him, I am well pleased. That is delighted,
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  joyful. That's what it means for the father to love the son.
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  I enjoy my son infinitely. He is perfectly enjoyable, and that's what it
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  means to love him. So it says the same thing in John fourteen thirty
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  one about the son loving the Father. So within the Trinity, to love
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  is to be infinitely pleased, infinitely delighted, infinitely joyful with each other.
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  And what makes them pleasing? What is it that makes the father pleasing to
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  the son and the son pleasing to the father. What makes them pleasing is
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  that they are the kind of being. Each one of them is the kind
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  of being who is perfectly pleased by what is perfectly pleasing. That's what it
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  means to be righteous, holy, just good, namely God. They find
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  their joy in the joy of the beloved in God. The Father delights in
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  the sun because the Son is perfectly delighting in the Father, and vice versa.
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  So the definition that Paul used works eternally in the Godhead. Now what
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  about God's love for us? So here's Psalm one seven ten, God's delight.
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  Get that fixed in your mind. God's delight. What delights God.
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  God's delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in
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  the legs of a man. But the Lord takes pleasure in those who hope
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  in his steadfast love. Now, if hope is longing for and expecting something
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  in the future that you delight in make you happy, then this psalm teaches
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  God delights in those who delight in Him. That is divine love. For
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  us is God's finding his joy in our joy in him. And we may
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  add then acting God acts to secure our joy in him, and he acts
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  at the cost of his own son's life, which is what the Bible underlines
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  about the amazing aspect of this love. What about our love for God?
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  For Timothy one eleven says that God is a happy God, a blessed God
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  macarios happy blessed God. And we've seen that in the fellowship of the Trinity.
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  God is a happy God. He's delighting in the fellowship of the Trinity.
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  God is an eternally happy God. So for us to love God is
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  to be glad that he is God. To love God is to say,
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  God, you are God, and I am glad, and you satisfy me.
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  You are wonderful, you are perfect, I adore I treasure, I
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  am satisfied in You. And our love for God then is to find our
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  joy in God's joy, which is joy in God, Father, Son,
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  and Holy Spirit. One more application, what about our love for each other?
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  In Second Corinthians eight, verse two, Paul says that the Macedonians had
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  an abundance of joy in the grace of God. It was abundant it was
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  overflowing. And then he calls that love in verse eight, when this joy
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  overflows, this joy in grace, in God's grace, overflows in generosity to
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  the poor saints in Jerusalem. And what is generosity. Generosity is the eagerness
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  to give so that others experience more joy. That's what you do when you're
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  generous, or you want people to be bettered. You want them to have
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  more joy, more lasting joy, deeper joy in what should give them the
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  deepest joy in this case, more joy in life. They were poor,
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  they were suffering, they were dying. He wants more joy in life and
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  more joy in God as they live. So love is the overflow of the
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  Macedonian's joy as it expands to include the poor saints in Jerusalem in that very
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  joy in God's grace. So to my amazement, Tony, and I'm still
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  blown away by this. To my amazement, a simple definition of love of
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  turning up in Paul's explanation of his travel plans in Two Corinthians Chapter two,
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  turns out to be just about as profound and far reaching as it can possibly
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  be. Love is finding our joy in the joy of the beloved in God
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  and willingness to die to bring that about which proves to be the essence of
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  love in the trinity, love in God for us and our love for God
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  and our love for each other. And it shows how central joy is in
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  defining ultimate reality. Yeah, mind blowing, vast implications for Christian hedonism is
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  right. I'm still blown away. I mean, I think that's amazing.
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  Yeah, it is. And God's happy delight in himself is one of the
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  core foundations of all that we think and do here at Desiring God is profound
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  to reflect on that point alone. Thank you Pastor John for this episode.
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  Thanks for joining us today. If you have a question you want to ask
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  Pastor John, email it into us and ask Pastor John at Desiring Good dot
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  org. Well. Over the several years we've been podcasting, we have feeled
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  many questions related to the good things of creation, Questions like how do I
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  know if I love the giver more than his gifts? And do I love
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  the Giver in his gifts? To me? I mean, this question is
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  a difference between worship and idolatry, a profoundly important discussion we will take up
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  again next time, as Pastor John shares with us his unique interpretation of Psalm
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  forty three to four, and why that interpretation matters some of your host,
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  Tony Rank, let's see on Monday