Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry 3 OCTOBER 2024 | Topic: Joy’s Triumph over Spiritual Sloth
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Joy’s Triumph over Spiritual Sloth
Welcome to October. This month we’re celebrating the Reformation together — Martin Luther’s great stand against the pope and against Rome’s spiritual abuses and theological errors. Luther did not stand alone, of course. Other men stood for this same cause, before and after him — people like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and John Calvin. And many other lesser-known names paid the ultimate price in the Reformation — men and women, even teenagers, who stood against Rome, and who bled and were burned and drowned for it. These stories of sacrifice are our focus in the month ahead, in a 31-day tour you can complete in just 5–7 minutes each day. It’s called Here We Stand. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the email journey today, online at desiringGod.org/stand. Or just go to desiringGod.org and click on the link on the top of the website. I hope you’ll join us in remembering the price paid for the spiritual blessings and religious liberties we enjoy today.
Speaking of church history, again, the birthday of Jonathan Edwards falls on Saturday, October 5. Pastor John, on Monday we talked about Christian zeal — an old-fashioned word, but an important one. You called zeal an “essential virtue” to Christian obedience. To make the case, you quoted Paul’s biblical exhortations, like in Romans 12:11: “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” And in Titus 2:14: “[Christ] gave himself for us . . . to purify for himself a people . . . who are zealous for good works.” Then you brought up Jonathan Edwards and his seventy resolutions that he made as a young man, especially the one you can recite from memory after almost fifty years since you first read them — namely, number 6: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”
But here’s today’s question. Both you and Edwards are Christian Hedonists. And he is a major source of your own understanding of Christian Hedonism. A point that was not made clear last time, as you were talking about zeal: Does Edwards see a connection between zeal and delight in God? Do you? Do you see a connection between zeal to live with all our might for the glory of God and the Christian Hedonist’s passion to maximize his joy in God?
Yes, and the best way I think to see it is to follow a certain sequence of thought in Edwards’s mind and my mind that moves from (1) zeal for the glory of God to (2) zeal for good deeds to (3) the inner motivation of those deeds in love for God or delight in God or treasuring God (different ways to say the same thing) to (4) the Christian Hedonist principle that we should seek to maximize — zealously seek to maximize in every way we can — our joy in God now and forever.
Christian Hedonist Zeal
Let’s try to follow that sequence of thought. And we’re going to bump into another amazing resolution of Edwards that really brings clarity to his Christian Hedonism.
1. Zeal for God’s Glory
Remember, in Romans 12:11, Paul said, “Never flag in zeal, serve the Lord.” So, clearly, Christian zeal is directed toward serving the Lord. And since the Lord is not needy — he doesn’t need any servants to make up for any lack in himself — what that means is that we should avail ourselves of his power to do his bidding to make him look great. I think that’s what “serve the Lord” means.
“We must pursue joy with zeal, with passion, with all our might.”
The apostle Paul said, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Everything in our lives should be calculated to make God look more glorious than people think he is. Edwards defines Christian zeal as “a fervent disposition or affection of mind in pursuing the glory of God.” That’s step one.
2. Zeal for Good Deeds
This zeal for God’s glory implies being zealous for good deeds — good deeds to people — because this is one crucial way God is glorified. Titus 2:14 says that Christ died to create a people “who are zealous for good [deeds].” Jesus said in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” So, that’s step two. Zeal for God’s glory implies zeal for good deeds since that’s how Jesus said we will glorify the Father. Or as Edwards says, Christian zeal is a “fervency of spirit that good may be done for God’s and Christ’s sake.”
3. Zeal from New Hearts
Step three is to realize that good deeds toward man and outward acts of worship toward God are of no spiritual value without a new heart that loves God, values God, delights in God, treasures God above all else. Jesus said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain [emptiness] do they worship me” (Matthew 15:8–9). Outward acts of worship without inward affections of love are worthless. Jesus speaks of moral acts of good deeds in the same way: “You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matthew 23:26). They did all kinds of good deeds, the Pharisees did, but were hypocrites, because those deeds were not coming from the right kind of heart. They just wanted to be seen by men.
So, if we want our zeal for the glory of God to be real, and we want our zeal for good deeds to be morally significant in God’s sight, we must be changed on the inside, so that we value and treasure God above all things. Or to say it another way, we must delight in God, be glad in God, find God to be our superior satisfaction so that our outward acts of worship are authentic and our good deeds toward people serve to glorify the value of God and not ourselves. Psalm 16:11: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Tasting that right now — tasting that in the heart — is the heart of worship.
And at the horizontal level of good deeds, Jesus said, “It is more blessed” — more glad, more happy, more satisfying — “to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). We should find more gladness in good deeds than in having security and comfort and riches. That’s true now, in measure, and he says it’s true lavishly in the future. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for great” — that’s an understatement! — “great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:11–12). Which leads to step four.
4. Zeal to Maximize Joy in God
If this is true, if worship is authentic because our hearts are treasuring and delighting in and being satisfied with God above all things, and if good deeds are morally significant because of the present experience of gladness and blessedness and because of a future hope or reward in God, then we simply cannot be indifferent to the pursuit of joy in God himself and the joy that comes from the overflow of that Godward joy into the lives of other people through good deeds. We can’t be indifferent to that joy. We must pursue it with zeal, with passion, with all our might — which is what makes us Christian Hedonists.
Edwards on Zeal and Joy
Now, that was a long argument to get to the point that, yes, there’s a connection between zeal for God’s glory and being a Christian Hedonist. Here’s the amazing way Edwards connected zeal with the pursuit of this joy in God. This just boggled my mind when I first read it. Number 22: “Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world” — that is, in God, in heaven, or in the age to come, not in earthly ease — “as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.” That’s just off the charts. Zealous for joy. Zealous for happiness with God in heaven forever. That’s like saying, “Resolved, to live with all my might while I do live.”
There’s the connection between Christian Hedonism and zeal in his own resolution language. “To live with all my might while I do live” — namely, in the pursuit of maximum joy in God, with him, forever, by whatever means on earth I can. Of course, that means by doing as many good deeds as I can, even if it costs me my violent death. That’s the point of referring to violence. It’s not violence against others he’s talking about, but the kind of violence that cuts off your hand or tears out your own eye if it would diminish your doing of good and your avoidance of sin and your experience of joy in God through loving other people.
So, my conclusion, Tony, is yes, there is a powerful connection in Edwards’s mind — there certainly is in my mind — between zeal to live with all our might for the glory of God and the Christian Hedonist passion to maximize our joy in God. They come together as our joy in God extends itself to make God look great through deeds of love. We pursue our joy in the joy of others in God because zeal for his glory and for their good impels us in the Christian Hedonist pursuit of maximum joy in God forever.
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