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Why I Have Written The Desiring God | John Piper · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. This is the deep dive, the place
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where we take dense theological sources, articles, research,
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scholarly notes, and really trying to pull out the core
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ideas you need to grasp and grasp them quickly.
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And today we're tackling a concept that I think for a lot
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of people sounds pretty radical. It does.
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It can sound like a real departure from what we think of
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as traditional piety. It's a framework that tries to
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reconcile, you know, that deep human desire for happiness with
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the single purpose Scripture gives us, which is the
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glorification of God. And that's the tension, right?
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That perceived conflict between my own self-interest and God's
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interest. This whole body of thought we're
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looking at aims to resolve that completely.
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So what are we calling it? We're examining what's often
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called Christian hedonism, and we need to define that very
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clearly right at the start. It is the purposeful pursuit of
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full and lasting joy. OK, but specifically joy and
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God. It's all based on the conviction
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that humanity glorifies God most completely by delighting in Him
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supremely. It's a synthesis of our desire
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and our duty. I think that word hedonism is
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what trips people up. The immediate association is,
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you know, self indulgence, maybe even vice.
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Of course, but the sources are so clear that this is a
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Christian modification. It pivots the object of our
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desire away from the self and on to God.
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And it argues this isn't some theological footnote.
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No, it's central. It's absolutely central to
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doctrine and practice. And if you accept the premise,
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it really forces you to rephrase.
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The chief end of man from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
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Right. So instead of just saying, man's
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chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever as two
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separate, maybe parallel ideas. This framework demands that the
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phrase be unified. Man's chief end is to glorify
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God by enjoying Him forever. That little word by changes
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everything. It changes everything.
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It's not just a subtle rearrangement of words, it's a
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total reordering of causation. It makes the enjoyment, the
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means, the very engine through which the glorification is
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achieved. So our mission today is to
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unpack the main arguments the sources give for this idea.
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We want to show why this desire for supreme satisfaction isn't
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just permitted, but is the only truly righteous desire.
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That's the goal. Let's get into it.
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All right, so let's start not with human desire, but with a
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divine mandate. The sources established pretty
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clearly that joy isn't just a pleasant religious outcome, it's
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a direct command, a non negotiable command.
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It is, and that's often surprising for people to hear.
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You know, when we think of commands, we think of actions.
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Right. Don't steal, honor your parents,
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things you do. Exactly.
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But the Bible is filled with commands for affections for
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internal states of being, and joy is, you could argue, chief
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among them. Psalm 37.4 says Delight yourself
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and the Lord. Not feel delighted if it
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happens. It's an active command.
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It's an active command, and Paul writing to the Philippians from
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prison of all places, he repeats it.
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Emphasis rejoice in the Lord always.
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Again, I will say, rejoice. This isn't just passive advice.
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It's an urgent call for active engagement of the heart.
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And the sources don't just point to the positive command, they
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also highlight the severity of feeling to follow it.
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It's not just that joy is recommended.
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Joylessness is seen as actively offensive to God.
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It's treated as a form of spiritual rebellion, and you see
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this in Deuteronomy 28. It's a chilling passage when you
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look at it through this lens. It warns Israel that they're
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going to face terrible things, including being subjected to
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their enemies. And why?
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Because they failed to serve the Lord their God with gladness of
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heart and with cheerfulness. So the problem wasn't that they
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stopped the sacrifices, it was the heart attitude behind them.
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Precisely. Their joylessness demonstrated a
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profound lack of regard for God's incredible provision and
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His worth. It was an offense of the heart
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showing they didn't really value the giver.
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OK, so this immediately brings up that classic tension for the
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listener. If God commands me to pursue
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him, but He also commands me to feel joy, how do I stop my
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pursuit from becoming a self-serving quest just for the
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feeling, you know? If I'm always checking my
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spiritual pulse, am I happy yet? Am I joyful?
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Aren't I being fundamentally selfish, even if I call it
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spiritual joy? That is the essential
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clarification this framework has to make, and the sources insist
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that the key distinction is in the object of your pursuit.
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The critical phrase, as we said, is joy in God.
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Not just joy. Not just joy.
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If you make your subjective experience, your happiness
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level, your sense of well-being, the primary thing you're focused
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on, you will fail and you will dishonor God.
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You'll become frustrated because joy is a byproduct, it's not the
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goal itself. Right.
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You can't capture joy by chasing it directly.
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It's like trying to stare at your own eyeball.
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That's a great way to put it. The sources use a really good
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analogy of visiting an Art Museum.
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If you go to a museum, your goal is to attend to the paintings.
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You look at their composition, the light, the story they tell.
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You're focusing on the object. And if you attend to the art
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correctly, the expected byproduct is delight or awe.
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Makes sense? But imagine walking through that
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same museum and just focusing on your wrist, checking your pulse
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and asking, am I happy yet? Am I experiencing awe now?
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You'd miss the art entirely, and the museum staff would, you
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know, rightly wonder why you were even there.
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So the goal is the objective reality of God's worth.
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Joy is just the fitting, the honorable subjective response to
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that reality. Precisely.
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And this framing, this joy in God, is so necessary because it
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actively guards against two recurring errors you see in
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religious practice. What are they?
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The 1st is a mercenary pursuit of God, that seeing God is just
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a means to an end. You're seeking His benefits,
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healing, comfort, safety, even heaven without genuinely valuing
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God Himself for who He is. Using God to get stuff.
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Basically the second error is seeking joy as an experience
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that's separate from God, trying to replicate some kind of
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spiritual euphoria through other non spiritual means.
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But when we delight in Him, that delight becomes the very
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evidence that we value Him above all of His gifts.
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OK, so let's follow that logic. Let's move to reason 7 in the
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sources, which explains how this delight actually is the
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glorification. It's not just a warm up for
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worship, it's the main event. The sources argue that they're
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fused The enjoyment and the glorification of God become a
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single, unified purpose. Our whole design as creatures is
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to consciously reflect and manifest God's infinite worth
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and beauty. But how does a finite creature
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even do that? How do I demonstrate the
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infinite worth of the Creator? By being utterly and completely
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satisfied with Him. When we are satisfied with God,
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that satisfaction, that joy, becomes the demonstration that
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God is supremely, uniquely worthy of all admiration.
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Because if I could be just as happy with something else.
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Then God would just be 1 worthy thing among many and that
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diminishes His glory. Our supreme satisfaction in Him
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proves He is supreme. This draws a really sharp line
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between what we're talking about and joyless duty.
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It suggests you can go through all the motions, follow every
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rule, perform every ritual, but actually be dishonouring God
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because your heart isn't in it. That critique is central to the
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prophets. Just look at the intense
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frustration God expresses in Isaiah chapter 1.
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He asks what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
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He says. I've had enough of booked
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offerings. I do not delight in the blood of
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bulls. He's.
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Rejecting the outward form. He is, and Amos 5 is maybe even
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sharper. God says I hate, I despise your
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feast, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
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But let justice roll down like waters.
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The rituals were happening, maybe very dutifully, but they
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lacked the necessary internal delight in the God that we're
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supposed to be for. Your empty performances.
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Exactly. Joyless duty in that light is a
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detestable hypocrisy. It fails to communicate God's
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actual worth. It's like reciting a love poem
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to your spouse, but you're checking your watch the whole
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time. The words might be right, but
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the delivery betrays the heart and the whole gesture becomes
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worthless. Or worse, it's much worse than
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worthless. It suggests the performer
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doesn't actually value the recipient.
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The sources use a beautiful illustration for this from
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Isaiah 58 about the Sabbath. God is rebuking the people for
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how they treat His holy day. They're seeking their own
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pleasure on it. And the sin wasn't that pleasure
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exists. The sin was that they chose
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their fleeting secular interests over the superior, breathtaking
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beauty of God and His commands. They lacked delight in God's
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beauty as it was revealed in that Sabbath command.
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Yes. And the command to honor the
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Lord is put right next to the command to call the Sabbath a
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delight. So the two are linked.
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The honoring is dependent on the internal affection.
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The text basically says if you want to honor the Lord, you must
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call the Sabbath a delight. If you find your pleasure in the
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day and in the Lord, you testify that he is beautiful and
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satisfying. If you're just groan through it
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waiting for it to be over so you can get back to your own
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projects, you're testifying that he's a burden.
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So the principle that ties all this together is what?
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We honor what we delight in. We glorify what we enjoy.
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It's that simple. OK, this moves us very smoothly
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into the second reason from the sources, which grounds this
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whole framework not just in God's command, but in the way
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we're actually made. It connects Christian hedonism
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to a universal, God-given craving.
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That's right, the assertion that kicks off this section is pretty
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arresting. No reality is more breathtaking
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than God, and we as humans inherently crave the experience
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of awe, of wonder. We're wired for it.
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We are designed to be worshippers of the breathtaking.
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You see this in Psalm 27. David's one desire is to gaze
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upon the beauty of the Lord. Or think of Isaiah's vision in
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the temple. The Lord is high and lifted up,
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filling the temple with glory. That overwhelming, consuming
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divine beauty is what our souls are oriented toward.
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And this is where, you know, ancient wisdom speaks directly
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to our modern restlessness. The preacher in Ecclesiastes
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says that God has put eternity into man's heart.
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What do the sources say that means?
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Is eternity in the heart? The sources explain that this
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this divine setting of our internal compass toward the
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infinite, it leads inevitably to a universal restlessness.
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We have this compass built into us that only points N to God,
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but we spend our lives trying to follow it in a small, finite
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world. So we're made for an infinite
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God. And because of that, we long for
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something ultimate, something we can't fully define or attain
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here on earth. And that leads to this constant
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low grade dissatisfaction with everything else.
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Which is what Saint Augustine famously observed, right?
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Thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it
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rests in thee. It's an insight that just
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resonates through the centuries because it explains so much.
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It explains why our achievements, our relationships,
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even our greatest comforts always leave us wanting more.
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And that continuing dissatisfaction is a necessary
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setup. It highlights the world's
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constant failure to satisfy this deep innate craving.
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The sources point out that humanity tries desperately to
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fill this God shaped hole with every finite substitute you can
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imagine. Right, we chase scenic
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vacations, hoping the grandeur of the mountains will finally
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fill us up. Or we seek out cinematic
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productions for that sense of epic awe.
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We pursue accomplishments, sexual exploits, intense
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sporting events, anything to try and replicate that feeling of
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absolute consuming wonder. But the deep spiritual longing
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just remains. We mistake the echo for the
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shout. I think that's beautifully
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captured in George Herbert's poem The Pulley.
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It's one of the great theological poems, and it
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illustrates why God actually guarantees this restlessness.
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It's a wonderful poem. Herbert has God pouring out all
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his blessings on humanity, strength, beauty, wisdom, honor,
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pleasure. But just as he's about to pour
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out the last blessing, he strategically holds back one
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thing Rest. And why?
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The rationale is that if we were given all these great gifts,
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including ultimate satisfaction, we might end up idolizing the
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gifts, not the giver. We would rest in nature, not the
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God of nature. So God keeps us rich and weary.
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Exactly. The weariness is a divine
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kindness. The idea is that if we don't
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return to God out of goodness, then the weariness, the
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persistent dissatisfaction, will eventually toss us back to Him,
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to the source. The desire Forrest is so strong
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that when it's unfulfilled by all the finite things, it pushes
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the soul toward the infinite, the only true place of rest.
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CS Lewis really picked up on this same idea in his own
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writing, didn't he? He saw this unfulfillable desire
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as a signal from a greater world.
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Lewis's formulation is a classic.
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He argued that if you find in yourself a desire that no
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experience in this world can satisfy the most rational
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explanations that you were made for another world.
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He described all earthly beauty and pleasure as only the scent
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of a flower we have not found or the echo of a tune we have not
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heard. They're just fleeting images and
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the dangers. When we trust these images to
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deliver the thing itself, then they become what he called dumb
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idols because they can't speak the whole truth.
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That reframes every attempt at self satisfaction outside of God
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and a form of idolatry. We're chasing the echo instead
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of the original shout. So the theological conclusion
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has to be that the one thing capable of fulfilling this deep
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seated, God-given longing for the breathtaking must reside in
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God Himself. And that's where the revelation
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of God in Christ becomes so central.
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The sources affirm that the breathtaking beauty has visited
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us in Jesus Christ. John One says the Word became
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flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.
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That glory, that visible manifestation of God's perfect
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beauty, is the ultimate tangible object that can finally resolve
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that eternal restlessness built into our hearts.
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He is the rest that was withheld finally revealed to us.
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OK, but now we have to tackle the biggest, most frequent
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objection to this whole framework, and that's the
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command for self denial. If we were pursuing supreme joy,
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how can we possibly square that with Jesus's star command in
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Mark 8? Whoever would save his life will
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lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels
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will save it. Doesn't that just directly
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contradict pursuing personal satisfaction?
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It seems like a head on contradiction, but only if you
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assume that the goal of the Christian life is self denial
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for its own sake. Christian hedonism reframes
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biblical self denial not as the abandonment of pleasure, but as
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a strategic calculation. A strategy.
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Yes, a necessary refusal to settle for anything less than
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full, superior and lasting joy in God.
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So you're denying A lesser good now to secure a greater good
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later? Precisely.
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Self denial, in this view, is never a virtue in and of itself.
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Its value is purely proportional to the superiority of the goal
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you're embracing. You deny the small temporary joy
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so you don't forfeit the big eternal one.
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It's a calculated decision, not an act of grim joyless
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resignation. You postpone A lesser
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satisfaction because you know a greater eternal 1 is guaranteed.
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The classic Old Testament example of failing at this kind
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of strategic self denial has to be Esau.
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Absolutely. Hebrews 12 warns us not to be
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unholy like him who for a single meal sold his birthright.
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His sin was short sighted desire.
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That's it. He prioritized the immediate
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fleeting pleasure of satisfying his hunger, a bowl of Stew, over
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a superior covenantal lasting blessing.
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The sources really stressed that the main evil wasn't that he ate
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a meal, it was that he despised his birthright.
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He failed to see the superior worth of the inheritance.
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He valued the Stew more than the promise.
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In that moment, yes, he valued momentary relief more than an
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eternal promise. And so Christian hedonism
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insists that believers must have the spiritual vision, the
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appetite, to choose the greater, lasting joy, even if that choice
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means enduring hunger or pain or sacrifice in the present.
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It's an investment strategy for joy.
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OK, that reframing handles minor sacrifices pretty well, but we
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have to confront the most extreme challenges in the
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sources, the hypothetical sacrifices of Paul and Moses.
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Moses in Exodus 32 prays to be blotted out of God's book.
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Paul, in Romans 9 expresses his willingness to be accursed and
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cut off from Christ for the salvation of his kinsmen.
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Right. These seem like an absolute
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abandonment of personal joy and salvation for someone elses
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sake. They are genuinely startling
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verses, and they require some very careful theological
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analysis to align with the rest of Scripture.
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First, with Moses's prayer being blotted out of your book in the
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Old Testament context often refers to physical death or
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being cut off from the covenant community on earth.
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So not necessarily eternal damnation.
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It's not a clear cut wish for eternal damnation, and this is
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consistent with Hebrews 11, which says Moses was looking to
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the reward. His willingness to die for his
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people was still motivated by a hope for a greater good, perhaps
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the reward of righteous leadership or just the hope of
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Israel's continuity. But Paul's statement in Romans 9
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is definitely the tougher one. How can a desire for eternal
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separation from Christ, the ultimate loss of all joy, be
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explained in a framework that mandates the pursuit of joy?
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The key and the sources highlight this is the precise
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Greek verb tense Paul uses. It's called the desiderative
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imperfect. OK, what does that mean?
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It's critical. It's a tense used to express A
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wish that is known to be unattainable or impossible.
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Paul uses the phrase I could wish or I would have wished.
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It indicates a desire that cannot be carried through
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because there's an obstacle intervening.
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He's not making a plan, he's expressing the depth of his
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desire. Exactly.
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He's articulating the depth of his desire for Israel's
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salvation, not formulating a strategy for self damnation.
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So what's the obstacle? What's the intervening thing
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that makes his wish impossible? The obstacle is the absolute
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unshakeable promise that Paul himself just laid out 1 chapter
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earlier in Romans 18, right? Neither death nor life, nor
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anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from
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the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Paul, as the inspired writer, knows that the very structure of
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God's covenantal love makes his wish literally impossible.
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God has not constructed reality in a way that a believer could
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be eternally damned for an act of love and mercy.
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And if you were damned for an act of supreme love, that act
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would be his greatest satisfaction, which would sort
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of negate the definition of damnation in the first place.
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You've got it. If hell were a place where Paul
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could achieve his deepest, noblest desire, the salvation of
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Israel, it would cease to be the place of ultimate misery and
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separation from God that Scripture promises.
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So Paul's statement is a powerful rhetorical device.
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It's a dramatic measure of his love that says my delight in the
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prospect of Israel's salvation is so massive, so consuming,
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that I would willingly reach for the hypothetical ultimate
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sacrifice, even though I know it is impossible.
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So even this extreme example ends up illustrating the point.
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It's driven by a deep desire for a good outcome.
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An immense delight in the prospect of that good.
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Yes, this intense focus on the internal state, the light, the
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value, the Passion brings us to Reason 4, which is the essential
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role of affections in the Christian life.
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The sources argue very strongly against any view of Christianity
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that just prioritizes external activity or, you know, mere
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intellectual ascent over the movements of the heart.
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There's a common error the sources observe in defining true
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Christianity just by decisions, You know, walking an aisle,
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reciting a formulaic prayer. These decisions often require so
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little transformation to achieve, and if they aren't
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accompanied by genuine interchange, they give evidence
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of no true work of grace in the heart.
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So Christianity can't be reduced to just a cognitive thing or an
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act of the will. No, and this brings us right to
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the heart of the Reformed theological tradition,
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especially to Jonathan Edwards. He asserted that true religion
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in great part consists in the affections.
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So what did he mean by affections?
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He identified the primary workings of a truly converted
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soul, and they aren't just intellectual, they're
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passionate. The two hallmarks he points to
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are an intense love for Christ and a joy that is inexpressible
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and filled with glory. The new birth for Edwards is the
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supernatural creation of a new nature that had new affections.
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It's a complete spiritual recalibration.
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And you see that in Scripture, like at first Peter talking
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about believers loving Christ whom they haven't seen and
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rejoicing with that deep, pervasive, glorious joy.
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It's all over the New Testament. And it's not just love and joy,
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either. Scripture seems to command us to
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feel dozens of specific emotions, not just to perform
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external duties while gritting our teeth.
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The Bible treats emotions not as optional, but as mandatory.
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As requirements for real obedience, yes.
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Think about the variety of commanded affections.
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We're commanded to be content, which is the opposite of the
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feeling of covetousness. We have to forgive from the
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heart, which is so much more demanding than just deciding not
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to sue someone, right? We're told to love one another
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earnestly, to feel hope, to have a healthy fear of the Lord, to
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experience peace, zeal, and, critically, gratitude.
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If God commands these feelings, they cannot be dismissed as
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optional icing on the cake. They're necessary components of
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true righteousness. But let's be realistic about the
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human experience. I mean, there are times when
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your heart is just sluggish or cold or dry, when you're facing
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depression or exhaustion or some prolonged difficulty.
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Joy can just vanish. Is that state automatically a
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sin? The sources address this reality
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of a sluggish heart, one that lacks the right affections.
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And yes, they do state clearly that joylessness, specifically
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the culpable coldness, the refusal to delight in God when
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He is given every reason for delight, is a sin to be
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confessed and actively fought against.
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So the goal isn't to just settle for a state of joyless duty.
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Never. The goal is to fight for the
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restoration of gladness. And there's a clear, structured
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process in the sources for how to combat this spiritual
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coldness, a three-step path from confession to action.
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It's a process that's both psychologically and
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theologically sound. Step one is introspection and
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petition. You have to confess the sin of
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joylessness. You acknowledge the heart's
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coldness as a failure to value God rightly.
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Amen. Step 2 is earnest prayer.
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You ask God to intervene and restore the joy of obedience,
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but crucially, Step 3 requires that you proceed with the
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outward duty anyway, in the hope that the action itself will
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rekindle the delight. That third step is so important
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because it prevents paralysis. You don't just sit around and
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wait until you feel like reading scripture to actually read it.
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Precisely, you act in faith, believing that the means God has
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appointed, preaching, giving, serving, can be the very
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channels through which He restores that lost affection.
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It is always better to perform a joyless duty with humility and
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repentance than to not do it at all.
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But the direction of travel must always be towards the recovery
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of gladness. And the ultimate aim of this
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whole fight. It's what the theologian John
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Murray called the reunion of pleasure and duty.
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That's a great phrase, the reunion of pleasure and duty.
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It is. That's the end goal of saving
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grace. The tension we all feel between
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a sense of obligation, doing something we feel we have to do,
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and that wholehearted spontaneity of doing something
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we desire to do. That tension only arises from
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sin and a disobedient will. Saving grace is meant to erase
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that tension. It sanctifies our will so that
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our duty and our pleasure become perfectly aligned, mirroring how
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God himself acts. Because God doesn't do good
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things grudgingly. Never.
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He acts out of the infinite pleasure he takes in his own
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character and purposes, and we're called to imitate that
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gladness. OK, let's move to reason 5.
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This is about how Christian hedonism serves as a guard
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against self centeredness. It tackles both of its main
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manifestations, pride and self pity.
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Scripture is so clear that God's design is to exalt his mercy and
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to a base human pride. Ephesians 2, for example, says
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we're saved by grace so that no one may boast.
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This framework completely inverts the typical religious
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understanding of self-sufficiency.
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It positions us as recipients, not benefactors, which
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immediately undercuts any basis for pride.
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The sources use this wonderful image of humanity as an empty
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vessel beneath the fountain of God.
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We are simply recipients of grace.
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We're dependent welfare recipients if you like, not
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great philanthropist who can claim any merit for our actions.
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A philanthropist might boast about their giving, but a small
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child who is rescued by their parent from a fire doesn't
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boast. They just hug their rescuer.
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That shifts the focus entirely from what I have given to what I
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have received. And the sources point out a very
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practical way. This short circuits pride when
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we do good deeds. That's the it's my pleasure
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dynamic. When a good deed is done for the
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joy of it, for the intrinsic satisfaction you find in obeying
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God and seeing good happen, the impulse of pride is severed.
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When a host pays for a meal and says it was my pleasure to do
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this, the focus shifts away from their personal sacrifice and on
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to the internal satisfaction of their generosity.
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The deed is no longer about the giver's merit.
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Exactly. It's about the delight found in
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the ACT itself, which attributes the ability to feel that delight
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to God's grace. So boasting and self pity, pride
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and pity. They seem like opposites, but
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the sources link them very closely.
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There are two sides of the same coin of self centeredness.
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Boasting is prides response to success.
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Look at what I've achieved. I deserve admiration.
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Self pity is pride's response to suffering.
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Look at how much I've sacrificed and no one even notices.
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I deserve admiration for my suffering.
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The sources call it unapplauded pride.
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That's a great description. It's the voice of pride in the
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heart of the week. It comes from a wounded ego,
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from an expectation of recognition that wasn't met.
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So how does this framework sever the root of that unapplauded
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pride? By redefining suffering itself,
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it becomes a strategic action that we take for the sake of a
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superior and certain joy. When Jesus talks about
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persecution in Matthew 5, he doesn't say suffer stoically and
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grimly and maybe I'll notice. He says rejoice and be glad, for
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your reward is great in heaven. So when suffering is accepted
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for the sake of the reward. The focus immediately shifts
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away from the ego's wounded sense of merit and on to the
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Father's guaranteed superior compensation.
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The expectation of that heavenly reward is so overwhelming that
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the perceived sacrifice just vanishes.
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The reward is simply better. This sounds almost
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transactional. It is a transaction, but it's
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one that is guaranteed by God, which changes the dynamic
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completely. It makes the choice entirely
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rational. And this is where we remember
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that famous sentiment from the missionary Hudson Taylor.
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Right. He endured incredible hardship
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in China for his entire life, yet he said he never made a
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sacrifice. How could someone endure all
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that and say. That that's the question.
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How? Because the compensations, the
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unspeakable palpable joy of fellowship with God, the deep
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reality of divine provision, and the certainty of the eternal
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reward were so real and so superior to whatever earthly
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pleasure or comfort he gave up. In his eyes, he was always
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choosing the better deal. He gave up something transient
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for something immeasurable and lasting.
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Always, And this gives us the motto that really governs this
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part of the framework. When it comes to hardship,
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giving up is inevitably receiving.
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OK, this framework also has strong implications for how we
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treat other people. Let's turn now to reason 6,
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promoting genuine love for people.
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The assertion here is that loving acts are only genuine to
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the degree that they are done gladly, not out of some guarding
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sense of duty. A grudging service is not love.
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It might be obligation, but it's not love.
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Love has to flow from the heart. If someone does something kind
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for you, but they clearly resent the effort and wish they were
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somewhere else, the ACT loses the quality of genuine
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affection. The heart of love has to love
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kindness, not just perform it under compulsion.
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So the manner of our obedience is essential to its purity.
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But that's a high bar, especially when the demands of
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love are tiring or inconvenient. How does this framework argue
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that genuine gladness is even possible in those moments?
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It ties it back to the new birth.
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It points to 1st John 5, which says that being born of God
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gives us a new nature, and that new nature conquers our natural
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worldly aversion to the will of God.
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So the new nature makes God's commandments.
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Not burdensome. In fact, they become the desire
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and delight of our heart. The willingness to love other
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people, even when it's hard, is simply the outward manifestation
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of our inner delight in God's will.
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This brings us back to the idea of reward again.
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If we're supposed to be genuinely selfless, shouldn't
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our giving and loving be totally detached from any thought of
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personal benefit? And yet Jesus himself motivated
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charity with these explicit promises of heavenly treasure.
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He absolutely did. Jesus commanded giving to the
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needy by urging people to seek treasure in the heavens.
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That does not fail. He told them to be moved by the
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thought of God's reward rather than by seeking the praises of
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men. The sources conclude that it is
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real love when our giving is motivated by the heavenly
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treasure. That's the part that often
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confuses people who hold up selflessness as the highest
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moral virtue. Why is this reward motivation
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considered genuine love instead of just spiritualized
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selfishness? Because the reward in heaven is
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God himself. It's the ultimate satisfaction.
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So this motivation is real love, because the person giving alms
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isn't just rescuing the beggar from earthly poverty.
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They're trying to rescue the beggar for that same heavenly
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reward, for the supreme satisfaction of knowing God.
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And beyond that, the giver's own joy is magnified.
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It's enhanced and perfected when it's shared with others who are
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brought into that heavenly fellowship.
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The pursuit of joy here isn't exclusive or hoarding.
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It's expansive. The Christian hedonist wants to
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bring everyone else into his ultimate satisfaction.
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So the goal is shared, maximized eternal satisfaction in God, and
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the act of mercy is the vehicle to get there for everyone
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involved. Exactly.
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The love is real because the motivation is for the highest
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possible good of the recipient, which is the enjoyment of God
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forever. And this principle applies
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across all Christian duty, even to church leadership.
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The sources point to Hebrews 13 for this.
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That's the verse that tells leaders to oversee their flocks
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with joy and not with groaning. Yes, and the motivation for
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serving joyfully is precisely because joyless ministry is
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unprofitable for the people. A leader who fails to pursue and
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possess joy in his work is failing to pursue the ultimate
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prophet of his people, which is their own gladness in God.
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Because if the leader makes serving look like a miserable
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burden. The people will be discouraged
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from embracing obedience themselves.
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That's why Paul insisted that those who perform acts of mercy
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should do them with cheerfulness.
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The act of pursuit, of joy through mercy, is what makes
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love tangible, expansive, and in the end, utterly genuine.
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So we've spent a good amount of time now unpacking these
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arguments for Christian hedonism.
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We've talked about the divine command for joy, the
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breathtaking God who satisfies our universal restlessness, the
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necessity of holy affections, the framework for strategic
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sacrifice, the defense against pride and self pity, and its
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role in promoting genuine glad love for others.
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And the conclusion is that this framework reframes the entire
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Christian life. It's not a grim March of duty.
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It's a purposeful, passionate pursuit of supreme, lasting
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satisfaction, which is at the same time the highest act of
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worship. It resolves that age-old tension
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by affirming that God's eternal purpose and our eternal pleasure
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unite under the mandate to glorify God by enjoying Him
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forever. By finding our maximum
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satisfaction in God, we demonstrate that He is the most
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valuable, most glorious reality in the universe.
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And in doing so, we fulfill the very purpose for which we were
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created so. To finish our deep dive, let's
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connect this back to that story of Esau and the theme of
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strategic choice. If Christian hedonism is about
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prioritizing superior, lasting joy, then we have to be
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constantly evaluating our present choices.
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So, considering Esau and the pursuit of that great reward,
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here's the thought for you to take away.
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What small, fleeting pleasure, what bolas do, what moment of
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comfort, what secular pursuit are you currently accepting?
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Rather than denying yourself, which might be keeping you from
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the superior lasting blessing found in God's guaranteed
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compensation, it is something for you to consider as you seek
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to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.