Friday, May 10, 2013

The Pathway to Joy


A CALL TO WAR

The Christian life is often referred to as a war. We are constantly battling against the flesh, sin, and Satan. Scripture tells us things like, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:14-15). Commands such as this one can be overwhelming. One can really fill the weight of the call to holiness from Jesus’ words in his Sermon on the Mount. “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). How do we do this? Is this even possible?

To be a Christian is to repent of your sin and to trust fully in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus is the only person to ever live upon this earth and be perfect in every way; completely righteous. But He willingly exchanged His righteousness for our sin on the cross so that those who repent and believe would be saved from their sin and counted as righteous in the eyes of God. So in one sense the Christian is perfect because the perfection of Christ has been imputed to him at the moment of justification; however, in this life the Christian is in an ongoing process called sanctification.

Put simply, sanctification is the process of being made holy or as Paul tells us, “For those whom he (God) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Jesus)” (Romans 8:29a). So being sanctified is becoming like Jesus. Again, the Christian is already seen as righteous in the eyes of God but that reality is not yet fully realized here. From the moment a person is saved until God calls them home he is becoming more and more like Jesus; or becoming more and more holy. There will come a day when the Christian is made completely holy for “we know that when [Christ] appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2b). For now though, the Christian is called by God’s grace to make war on sin and pursue holiness. “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

LIVE TO GLORIFY GOD

“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19b-20). “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). In my judgment, Paul’s command to glorify God is the same thing as the command to be like Jesus. In Romans 3:23 Paul says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That is, everyone except Jesus. Jesus is the only one who has not and will not ever fall short of the glory of God. In Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer He tells the Father, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). So to glorify God in our body or to do everything we do to the glory of God is to be like Jesus.

How do we do this? How do we live to the glory of God? Do we simply make ourselves do this because it is our duty as Christians? Jesus called us to be perfect; does that mean we just modify our behavior out of duty? C. S. Lewis once wrote, "A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own."1

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law? He responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Notice how Jesus closes His reply; obedience to the commands of Scripture comes from love. Jesus tells us something similar in John’s Gospel when He says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (John 14:21a). True obedience flows from love, not from duty. So how do we love God enough to glorify Him?

TO LOVE GOD IS TO GLORIFY GOD

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18a). “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15a). So, as we “behold the glory of the Lord,” namely the glory of God seen in Christ we will be transformed into the same image; meaning we will become more and more holy, or more and more like Jesus. So to glorify God is to be like God and we become like God when we begin to see God for who He truly is and behold His glory.

In order to see God for who He truly is we must grow to know and understand Him more (as much as our finite minds can). We must get to know God better through the truth of Scripture and through the glory of His grace that’s contained in the gospel. As Pastor Ray Ortlund has said, “Stare at the glory of God until you see it.”2 As we behold His glory by seeing how glorious He is in His Word and in His creation, then we will fall more and more in love with Him because we will see that He is perfect in every way, so there is nothing not to love about Him. And as we fall deeper in love with Him we will want to obey the commands of Scripture, not because of a sense of duty but because we love Him.

My wife teaches third grade at the school my children attend. She typically leaves to go to work at 6:30am but I don’t have to leave to go to work until 7:30am. However, every morning I get up at about 5am and make my wife coffee, make my wife and kids lunch for school, and get my kids ready for school. Why do I do this? Is it my duty to do this? Certainly not; however, I love my wife dearly and if me getting up early and helping her and the kids get ready makes her day easier I want to do it. Doing these things brings me joy because I am, even in this small way, making my wife’s day better. So I do these things simply because I love my wife. Similarly, the more we love God, the more we will want to serve Him and follow His commands, and this will in turn bring us great joy.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.”3 So as we come to know God more we will come to love God more, and as we know and love God more we will see His glory more and become more and more like Him, and the more like Him we become the more obedient we will become, and the more obedient we become the more we will glorify God, and the more we glorify God the more joyful we will be. This all stems from love. To love God is to glorify God, and to glorify God is to enjoy God. To put it another way, to be like Jesus is to experience true genuine joy.

Conclusion

I began by saying that the Christian life is war. This is certainly true, but this call to make war is a call to experience true joy. No doubt, as Christians we are called to repent of the temporal sinful pleasures of this world but we are given a much greater pleasure in God. As Peter says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining, the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). God is infinitely glorious, and as we begin to see this glory we will love God more and more. The more we love God the more we will want to glorify God, and the more we glorify God the more we will experience true joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

In this life we struggle with countless different things. Becoming a Christian certainly doesn’t rid our lives of all these struggles, but in the midst of them we can experience true joy; but we must love God. Our hope as Christians should be to fall more and more in love with Jesus and to encourage others to do the same. I am a father of two children, whom I love very much. I want them to live a fulfilling, joyful life. As a Christian I know that the only way this is possible is for them to live their lives for the glory of God. So my aim and hope is that in everything I say and do I might help them fall in love with God so that they will glorify God and experience true joy.

If you are a parent, this certainly should be your hope for your children, but parent or not, as a Christian you are called to help others love God. As we preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations, we are teaching others about the nature and character of God, about who He is, what He has done, and what He promises to do. And as we do this we are helping others fall in love with the infinitely glorious Triune God of the universe. So dig deep into the riches of Scripture and into the beauty of theology. Stare at the glory of God and fall in love with Him over and over again, and help others do the same; for this in the pathway to true eternal joy.        

1.      C. S.  Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis and Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), pp. 277.
2.      Taken from Jared Wilson’s Blog,http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2011/03/gospel-is-only-means-of-gospel.html?m=1 Accessed on 5/10/13.
3.      C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1958), p. 97.