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How Preachers Grow Graceless
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast. Well, coming up soon — I believe on Wednesday of next week — as we read the Bible together, we read the first section of Matthew 23, where Jesus confronts the religious rulers of his day. And to anticipate that text — which is itself loaded with a full day’s worth of reflection — we have a cluster of thoughts and questions from a listener named Jim who lives just outside of Nashville.
“Pastor John, hello to you. I’m a bi-vocational elder and sometime preacher at my little church,” Jim writes. “I have always been drawn to Jesus’s words about the Pharisees in Matthew 23:1–5. The text is instructive to me about preaching and personal holiness. It seems to suggest at least four things.
“(1) Hypocrites can preach truth. Jesus says these Pharisees are truth-tellers; therefore, ‘observe whatever they tell you’ (verse 3). That line is startling. There’s an obligation to obey the truth of what they get right, even though they, the Pharisees, are hypocrites. Does that hold true today? Irrespective of whether we know a preacher is truly obedient in private, we receive the truth of their preached words. It also seems to apply to men who are later disqualified for sin, and people are left wondering about all the truth they learned from that preacher over the years.
“(2) It seems to speak to a preacher’s assurance. It suggests that preachers who preach truth well do not find in that homiletical skill the grounds of their personal assurance if their private life does not measure up. Is that true?
“(3) It speaks to the calling of pastors to preach holiness. In verse 4, it seems the calling of others into personal holiness and living out personal holiness go together for a preacher. Would this make a preacher hesitant to preach holiness because his life doesn’t measure up in private? How far does his life need to measure up until he’s a hypocrite? Do I repent for myself every time I call for holiness from the pulpit? These questions haunt me, a preacher with remaining sin within me.
“(4) It speaks to all our service. If we serve only so others see us serving, that service is rendered vain (verse 5).
“Many thoughts and questions intertwine for me over this text. What do I get right and wrong on Matthew 23:1–5?”
Well, first of all, I just commend Jim for reflecting so profoundly on this text.
Let me give quick, short answers to those four questions — especially the last one, I think, was more of a comment — and then step back and see how those words of Jesus are so relevant for all of us.
Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees
Here are the words from Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples,
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. (Matthew 23:2–5)
1. Hypocrites’ Teaching
So, the first question Jim asks is, What should we do with the true teaching of hypocrites — preachers who preach true things and live a double life, denying by their private lives what they preach in public? There are three responses to that.
First, when duplicity is discovered in a pastor, the pastor should be removed from his service, according to the qualifications given for the elders in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–16.
Second, truth is truth even if a donkey or a heretic or the devil himself speaks it, just as when the demons called out to Jesus, “[We] know who you are — the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). Then Jesus wouldn’t let them talk, it says in Mark 1:34, “because they knew him.” They got part of the truth right, but they hated it. So, we must not make a preacher’s sins the only measuring rod of all that he teaches. He may say true things and hate them, and we should believe the true things and not hate them.
That doesn’t mean, by the way, that Jesus’s words about knowing them by their fruits (Matthew 7:20) are wrong, because there is always plenty about a false teacher that is false and misleading and needs to be recognized — even if many of his doctrinal sentences are true.
Third response to that first question: no, you do not have to assume that, when a pastor is discovered to be guilty of ministry-disqualifying sin, you need to reject all the truth that he’s taught you over the years. You don’t have to go back and say, “Well, I guess everything he taught me for all those years was false.” You don’t have to do that.
“Let us put to death immediately every temptation to love the praise of man.”
However, it will always be good to reassess that teaching in retrospect and see if there were omissions or imbalances in it — true as it was — that we can see in retrospect were owing to his hidden sin. He skipped things, he didn’t say certain things, and he rode this hobbyhorse all the time. And you see now in retrospect why he was skipping them, why he was riding his hobbyhorse.
That’s my response to his first question.
2. Oratory and Assurance
Second, he asks how the preaching gifts (the skills) of a pastor relate to his assurance. Now, part of the answer is that no public rhetorical skills can atone for private reprehensible sins. It is possible to be a great orator and a lost sinner. The blood of Jesus and its effect in our holiness is the source of our assurance, not our rhetorical skills. Which means, yes, that true, godly, humble, Christ-exalting preaching will be part of that holiness — and thus, in that sense, part of a pastor’s assurance.
3. Preaching Holiness
The third question Jim asks is, How holy do you have to be to preach holiness? That’s a good question. The way I would answer would be this: not perfect and not careless. Or to say it another way, humbly penitent for remaining failings but vigilant to gouge out your eye rather than sin and bring the gospel and your church into disrepute. According to 1 Timothy 4:15, your people need to see you passionate in your pursuit of holiness.
4. Serving for Praise
And the fourth question Jim asks is, If we serve to get the praise of man, is our service ruined before God? And the answer is yes, our service is ruined if we live for the praise of men.
So, those are my brief answers to the questions, but let’s step back and see how these words of Jesus relate to all of us.
Practice of Pharisees
I think it’s always helpful when you see a text like this to break it down into pieces, and then see how the pieces relate to each other. So, there are three steps that I see in Jesus’s exposure of the scribes and Pharisees.
One, they use the truth to cover their own sin. It says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat” — that is, they teach what the truth of the law of God says — “so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice” (Matthew 23:2–3). So, they cover their non-practice with teaching Moses’s law. They use truth to cover sin.
Two, they do not accompany that teaching with any God-dependent doctrine of enabling grace. They don’t teach people how to avail themselves of God’s grace to help them obey. They just leave people with burdens — heavy, weighty, crushing burdens of God’s commands — to do with no help at all. They won’t lift a finger to help people obey. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matthew 23:4). There’s no doctrine of sanctifying, enabling, empowering grace.
And the third step in exposing these rascals is that they love the praise of man more than God or his truth. That’s the deep, deep desire, pleasure, treasure of their lives. It’s the governing principle of their lives. “They do all their deeds to be seen by others” (Matthew 23:5).
Fruit from a Poisoned Root
Now, here’s the key question: How do those three indictments relate to each other? Here’s what I would suggest, and this is how they become so relevant for all of us. I’m going to go backward and show how they build.
Number one, Jesus has put his finger on the deep desire of their lives — the deep love of their lives. What do they love? What do they desire? What’s the passion and the treasure of their lives that’s driving their decisions, their behaviors? And the answer is the praise of man. They taste how delicious is the pleasure of self-exaltation that comes through other people’s praise. That’s number one.
Number two, now we move backward (or forward) toward the next effect of that. What is the effect of loving the praise of man on the doctrine of grace in living a godly life? And the answer is that it cancels grace. Grace that enables a person to obey God’s law means we don’t get the praise — God does. Grace does. Grace is a breaking gift; it’s a humbling gift. They cannot embrace God-exalting grace because it contradicts their self-exalting love of human praise. So, they load men with burdens of duty and tell them, in essence, “Be self-sufficient like us” — implying that you’ll get some praise for your moral achievement like we get praise for our moral achievement.
And then finally, if they love the praise of man, and that keeps them from embracing God’s enabling grace for obedience, what do they do with truth, the truth of Moses’s law, when they sit on Moses’s seat? And the answer is that they don’t love the truth; they use the truth. Bible words become a cloak for hidden sin. They turn Moses’s seat into a place where they get human praise.
That is a warning to all of us, not just pastors. Let us, all of us, put to death immediately every temptation to love the praise of man. Instead, let us love the Christ-exalting, self-humbling grace of God through Jesus Christ to help us do what we need to do, and then let us use truth to stoke the fires of love for God and love for people.
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How Can Satan Harm Christians?
Audio Transcript
We have talked on this podcast about Satan. Not a lot — we don’t fixate on him. But we do talk about him and his designs, usually to look at what Satan cannot do to us. There’s a lot he cannot do to us as Christians because Christ has disarmed him in two very important ways. We looked at this back in February, in APJ 1750. Pastor John, today we flip the question and ask, What can Satan do to Christians?
Peter warns believers that Satan seeks to devour us (1 Peter 5:8–9), which raises two questions. One is from Russ in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He writes, “Hello, Pastor John! My question for you is about 1 Peter 5:8–9. Is Peter saying that the devil seeks to devour us in and through our suffering? Or is he saying the constant attacks of Satan are our suffering?” And Steve in Rochester, New York, is asking about this same text. “Pastor John, hello! First Peter 5:8 says Satan is our enemy, and I believe it! But enemies are opposed to us in very specific ways, and I’m not clear about this with Satan. My question is how — how is Satan our enemy? Thank you.”
First, here’s what 1 Peter 5:8–9 says:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
So Russ asks, “Does the word sufferings refer to whatever Satan does to us, or does it refer to actual Christian pain or suffering, which Satan is behind?” Now, I think virtually all interpreters agree that the second is the right answer. Peter is referring to real sufferings of various kinds that Christians are experiencing throughout the world, and Satan is behind them, making every effort to use those sufferings to destroy the faith of Christians. That’s what “seeking to devour” means. He would succeed in devouring a Christian if he could use those sufferings to cause us to throw away our faith in the goodness and the wisdom and the care of God, and turn us against God.
Tried by Fire
Now, I think that’s the right interpretation about what sufferings refers to, first, because the other kinds of temptations that Satan throws at us — like temptations to lust, or covetousness, or pride — can indeed devour people, and he’s about them, but they’re not called sufferings. So not all of Satan’s attacks on us are called sufferings. In fact, Satan is very good at attacking us with pleasures as often as with sufferings. More people’s faith, I would venture, is devoured by being lured into sinful pleasure as is devoured by sufferings.
Another reason that I think that interpretation is right — namely, that Satan’s particular strategy referred to here in verse 9 is Christian suffering — is that Peter has already referred to this in 1 Peter 1:6–7. He says,
Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So he has already prepared us at the very beginning of his letter that our faith will be tested as with fire through these various trials — that is, sufferings. So in answering Russ’s question, I think we are already in the middle of answering Steve’s question, because Steve is asking, “Well, what are the specific ways that this satanic lion opposes us? How is he our enemy in this text?”
“Satan’s aim in causing suffering is to deceive us into believing that God is against us and not for us.”
Now, the main answer we’ve seen is that he’s our enemy by causing Christian suffering. His aim in causing that suffering is to deceive us into believing that God is against us and not for us — that God is helpless, perhaps, and can’t stop the suffering (poor God). In other words, by this suffering, Satan aims to undermine our faith in God’s goodness, or God’s power, or God’s wisdom, or God’s kindness. And if Satan can do that, we will be devoured, destroyed as Christians. We will make shipwreck of our faith, and he will have won a tactical victory.
Satanic Sickness
But we can be more specific now in how Satan does this, because that’s what Steve is asking. I’ll give four examples of how Satan opposes Christians through suffering.
First, Satan is behind much, though not all, sickness. For example, after Jesus heals the woman bent over for eighteen years, he defends his action to the rulers by saying, “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16). In other words, Satan is behind this disease, this bent condition that this woman is in for eighteen years.
We see an example of this in the lives of Christians in 2 Corinthians 12:7, where Paul had been given those amazing visions. Paul explains how God designed, planned to keep him from getting conceited by these visions. Here’s 2 Corinthians 12:7: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” This is especially important, because here we have both the activity of God and the activity of Satan.
We know that Satan did not aim at preventing Paul’s pride. He wants Paul to be conceited. He wants to destroy his faith with pride. Saving Paul from conceit was God’s purpose. God aimed to keep Paul humble and holy, and yet the instrument of God’s sanctifying work is called a “messenger of Satan.” That’s amazing. So what we learn is that even when Satan is bringing about some kind of thorn or suffering in the life of a Christian, he’s not sovereign; he’s not ultimate. He’s under God’s supervision. And while Satan’s design is the destruction of Paul’s faith, God’s design is the strengthening of Paul’s faith and the preservation of his holiness and his humility.
Thrown into Prison
But there’s another way that Satan brings about the suffering of Christians. He sometimes throws them into prison. Revelation 2:10 says,
Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
And we ask, “Well, how might Satan do that? How does Satan do that? How does he throw Christians into prison?” And one answer is the same way he threw Jesus under arrest in the garden, the same way he threw Jesus on the cross. How did that happen? Here’s John 13:2: “During supper . . . the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.” Then in John 13:27 it says, “After [Judas] had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’” And he went out and betrayed Jesus — as it were, threw him in prison, only worse.
“Satan is not sovereign. God is. Wherever Satan is acting, he’s acting by permission.”
We can assume that sort of thing happens regularly to cause Christians much suffering. Satan puts it in the heart of people to betray Christians or to lie about Christians, and so bring them into suffering, whether prison or some other consequence.
Take Up the Sword
So I conclude that in 1 Peter 5:8–9, the lion’s roar — this roaring lion going about trying to devour people — is the roar of Satan’s effort to strike fear into Christians by the suffering he brings into their lives. He aims for that fear to destroy their faith. We know from 2 Corinthians 12, and from the story of Job 1, and from the fact that Jesus commands demons and they obey him, that Satan is not sovereign. God is. Wherever Satan is acting, he’s acting by permission, not because he has ultimate control.
Nevertheless, he’s real. Oh, he is real. He is strong. He’s evil. He’s on a long leash. Under God’s providence, he does terrible damage. Therefore, Peter does not say, “Ho-hum, God is sovereign.” He says, “Be sober. Be watchful. Resist, firm in your faith. Fight.” That is, take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and stick Satan in the face with it. Believe God’s promise, and stand your ground, and do not be sucked into Satan’s temptation that God is evil or that God is weak. Let the fires of suffering purify and strengthen your faith, not destroy it.
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How Can a Holy God Have Pleasure in Sinners?
I want to begin with a story that I hope encourages the younger people among us, putting within you a passion to do something significant with your life for the glory of God — and to do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.
The theme of this first Godward Life Conference — the pleasures of God — has its roots first in the Bible, because of how many times God tells us what pleases him. But its roots are also in the life of a pastor and professor in Scotland who died in 1678. His name was Henry Scougal, and he died when he was 27 years old. I draw attention to his age because he was so young when he died, and yet the impact of his life has been amazing.
He wrote one lasting work, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, but he didn’t write it as a book. He wrote it as a long letter to friend — a 100-page letter that begins, “My dear friend.” That friend began to circulate the letter, and it proved so powerful in the lives of others that Gilbert Burnet published it the year that Scougal died. It has been serving the church for over three hundred years now.
Scougal wasn’t the only person who lived a short but hugely significant life:
David Brainerd, the missionary to American Indians, died in 1747 at the age of 29, and his journals shaped the early modern missionary movement.
Henry Martyn, a missionary to India and Persia, died in 1812 when he was 31, his memoirs inspiring generations to this day.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a Scottish pastor whose Bible reading program we are still using today, died in 1843 at the age of 29.
Jim Elliot, missionary to the Huaorani people of Ecuador, was matyred alondside four other men in 1956 at the age of 28. In fact, all five of the martyrs that day were under 33.And to broaden out the lens: Alexander the Great died at 33. Martin Luther King Jr. at 39. Mozart at 35. Emily Brontë at 30. John Keats at 26. Anne Frank at 15.
May God give you a passion, young people, to make your lives count for the glory of God — and to do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.
“Make your lives count for the glory of God — and do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.”
And if you are old like me, or somewhere in between, pray like I do: “God, make every remaining day count.” If you have seventy years in front of you, don’t waste it, even now in your teen years. And if you have seventy years behind you, don’t waste what’s left. One of the reasons for creating this new fall conference as an intergenerational conference is to share some of the passions of this school with those who might come to the school and with those who, like me, wish we could sit in on every class.
What Makes a Soul Excellent?
But back to Henry Scougal and the theme of this first Godward Life Conference, the pleasures of God. One sentence in his long letter has shaped this theme. He wrote, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.”
You can see into the excellence of a soul by what that soul loves. And by “loves,” he doesn’t mean merciful love for what is unlovely; he means the love we have for what delights us and gives us pleasure. He says, “The most ravishing pleasures, the most solid and substantial delights that human nature is capable of, are those which arise from the endearments of a well-placed and successful affection.” That’s what he’s talking about when he says, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love,” by its well-placed affection.
Now Scougal said that about the human soul — how to see the excellence of a human soul. But what struck me in 1987 was that this is also true of God. We can see into the worth and excellency of God himself if he reveals to us the object of his well-placed affections — his solid and substantial delights and pleasures.
In other words, this first conference theme is rooted in one of the passions of Bethlehem College and Seminary. Namely, we want to know God. We want to know what is great and beautiful and excellent and worthy about God, because you can’t enjoy God or love God or trust God or honor God if you don’t know him. If you don’t really know what he is like.
So Henry Scougal gave us a fresh pathway into the knowledge of God. We might say, The worth and excellency of God is to be measured by the object of his love — his delight, his pleasures.
God’s Pleasure in His People
My assignment under this theme is to think with you about God’s pleasures in human responses — that is, our responses to God in what he is and says and does. Or to say it another way: Does God take pleasure in his people, in who we are and what we do?
The biblical answer is plainly yes:
Isaiah 62:4–5: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken . . . you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you . . . as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God . . . will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
Colossians 1:9–10: “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you might . . . walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:9: “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.”
Philippians 4:18: “I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”
Hebrews 13:16: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”So, the answer is yes. God can and does take pleasure in his people — in who they are and what they do. As C. S. Lewis puts it in the Weight of Glory: “To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
Deserving of Displeasure
Now the question becomes, How can this be? “You are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13). But all human beings are sinners. Paul writes:
Both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; . . . Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:9–10, 19–20)
That means, Paul says, that by virtue of our sinful nature, human beings are not children of God. They are children of wrath. He adds in Ephesians 2:1–3: “You were . . . following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
All mankind are children of wrath. The wrath of God — not the pleasure of God, but the displeasure of God — is coming to us like the inheritance of a parent comes naturally to a child: “Children of wrath.” Or as Jesus put it, “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). Remains. It was ours by nature. And without rescue it remains — forever (Revelation 14:10–11).
So how can it be that there would ever be a people in whom God could delight, a people in whom he would feel pleasure, rather than the displeasure of wrath? How can that be? And if there were a way that it could be, that God could actually be pleased with sinners, how could he then be holy and righteous? It’s one thing to be merciful to the unlovely; it’s another thing to delight in the ungodly.
Called to Life by Christ
Christianity exists, the church exists, Bethlehem College & Seminary exists, because God answered this greatest of all problems with Christ.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:6–9)
That is the greatest event and the most glorious news in all the world: “Having been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from wrath.” God’s love in Christ saved us from God’s wrath. God saved us from God. “He did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Who then is not under the wrath of God? Answer: All who are justified. “Having been justified by his blood, much more shall be saved by him from wrath.”
And who are the justified? Romans 8:30: “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” All those who are predestined to be God’s sons are called. All the called are justified, which means that all the called are brought to faith, because only by faith is anyone justified. Romans 5:1: “[Having] been justified by faith, we have peace with God.” Therefore, all the called believe.
That is what the call of God does — it creates life and faith. Therefore, we may fill out Romans 8:30 like this: “Those whom he predestined he called, and those whom he called believed, and those who believed he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.” It is so sure that it is as though the whole process is finished.
Double Imputation
So the foundational key to how sinners can please God and become an actual ingredient in the divine happiness is justification in Christ by faith. How can that be? Justification includes two things. In union with Jesus Christ, it includes the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of God’s righteousness.
And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (Romans 4:5–8)
In Christ, first, the sins of all who believe are nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14). They are punished, condemned (Romans 8:3). By trusting Jesus, by embracing him as our treasured Savior, we receive forgiveness because of that once-for-all transaction on the cross. That’s one aspect of justification: our sins are not reckoned against us. They were laid on Jesus. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
The other aspect of justification is that God reckoned his own righteousness in Christ to be ours. He counted us righteous in union with Christ. As Paul says, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:8–9).
Or as he says in Romans 5:19, comparing Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience: “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Or once more in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
By Grace Through Faith
In sum, then, God’s love rescues us from God’s wrath by giving his only Son as a substitute for us. By Christ’s perfect obedience unto death, he bore our sins, and he provided perfect righteousness, which is then imputed to us — counted as ours — in justification.
Christ alone is the sole ground, foundation, basis of our justification. We do not add anything to his justifying suffering and death. We do not add anything to his justifying righteousness. None of our deeds, none of our thoughts, none of our feelings add anything to the righteousness that God takes into account as the basis of our justification. It is all Christ’s. God is one hundred percent for us forever because of justification.
Our forgiveness and our imputed righteousness, to use the words of Paul in Romans 3:24–25, are “by his grace as a gift . . . to be received by faith.” Faith is not part of justifying righteousness. Faith receives forgiveness, and faith receives righteousness — because faith receives Christ. Faith welcomes Christ, embraces Christ, as a supremely treasured Savior and Lord.
So! Does God now look upon us with delight, pleasure? Are justified sinners in this life pleasing to God, even before the final sin-obliterating glorification? Yes. God said when he looked upon Christ at his baptism and at his transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5). To put it another way: “I have much pleasure in beholding my Son.” Therefore, since we are united with Christ, and counted as righteousness with his righteousness, we are God’s treasured, loved, delighted-in children.
Perfected, Loved, and Disciplined
But you say, I still sin. Is he not displeased with my sin? Yes, he is. But this does not cancel out his delight in you, as you are in Christ. Consider these words, which the writer to the Hebrews quotes in Hebrews 12:5–6 from Proverbs 3:11–12:
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.
In the very act of disciplining his son for displeasing behavior, he has never lost his delight in his son. So when you experience suffering as the child of God, remember two things about God’s treatment of you.
My Father disapproves of the remaining corruption in me and is loving me enough to refine my faith and my holiness through discipline.
My Father is doing this discipline on the unshakeable, unchangeable basis that I am totally forgiven for all my sins, all my displeasing behavior, and totally righteous in Christ, and totally pleasing before my Father, as he sees me in union with his perfect Son Jesus.Now that may appear to you as a paradox, that God would discipline those whom he regards in Christ as perfect. But listen to Hebrews 10:14: “By a single offering [Christ] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Our perfection, in one sense, is finished. “By a single offering he has perfected [us] for all time . . .” God sees us as perfected in our union with Christ, forgiven, justified.
But in another sense, we are not yet sinlessly perfect. He has perfected those who are being now, little by little, sanctified — gradually made holy. We know this all too well. In our daily, earthly lives we are embattled and imperfect.
“We seek to please God in daily life because we are already perfectly pleasing to God in Christ.”
And the absolutely crucial essence of Christian ethics, which sets Christianity apart from all other religions, is that we pursue our daily, earthly holiness precisely on the basis that we are already holy. We pursue daily, earthly righteousness on the basis that we are already righteous. That’s why Paul says things like, “Cleanse out the old leaven . . . as you really are unleavened” (1 Corinthians 5:7). And we seek to please God in daily life because we are already perfectly pleasing to God in Christ.
God’s Pleasure in Our Daily Lives
Can we succeed? That’s our one last question, and we ask it to the Lord.
Father, with profound thankfulness in my heart for what Christ did in dying for me, and for bringing me to faith in him, and for the forgiveness of all my sins, and the imputation of his perfect righteousness to me, so that in him I am pleasing in your sight — with profound thankfulness for all that glorious gospel reality, I now ask you, Can I in my daily life on this earth please you by the way I think and feel and act? Can my thinking and feeling and acting become an ingredient in your pleasure?
Father, I am not asking that you replace Christ’s obedience with my obedience as the basis of my justification. God forbid! I’m not asking that my imperfect growth in holiness replace Christ’s perfect holiness as the basis of your being one hundred percent for me. I’m taking my stand there and asking: Can you find pleasure in my imperfect efforts to think and feel and act in holiness, in love, in justice?
God’s answer to this question in the Bible is yes.
Paul prays for the Colossian Christians, “[May] you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work” (Colossians 1:10).
He says to the Philippians, “The gifts you sent, [are] a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18).
He says to the Corinthians, “Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).
He urges the Ephesians, “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).It is possible for imperfect, justified sinners to please God — to be an ingredient in the divine pleasure — not only by union with Christ in justification, but also by depending on Christ in sanctification — in transformation. Not only because we stand perfected in his righteousness, but also because he empowers us for our righteousness.
Six Pieces in Paul
Why is that the case? How can the all-holy, perfect God be pleased with my imperfect thoughts and feelings and actions as a Christian? The answer is found in two amazing verses in 2 Thessalonians. There are six pieces to the answer. I’ll point them out as I read it:
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling [which would be pleasing in his sight] and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12)
Let’s put the pieces together.
First, at the bottom, at the root, of our action, our work, our behavior, is the grace of God and of Christ. Grace — absolutely unearned, undeserved favor.
That grace is manifest in God’s power in us for good works.
We experience that power in us by faith. We look away from ourselves. We admit we can do nothing without him. We look to grace. And we embrace grace. And we trust grace as our treasured hope for holiness.
In that faith we do good works. We do righteousness. We do mercy. We do love. We do justice. Paul calls these “works of faith,” and in other places he calls them “obedience of faith.”
Jesus gets the glory for our works of faith because his grace and his power were decisive in bringing about the works of faith.
In this way you walk worthily of your calling, so that your walk, your behavior, is pleasing to God.I’ll read it again:
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling [which would be pleasing in his sight] and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
“God is pleased with our works of faith because they are his works of power — of grace.”
In short, God is pleased with our works of faith because they are his works of power — of grace. Or to say it another way, God is pleased with our works done in dependence on his grace, because then his grace gets the glory. The giver gets the glory. And that’s the reason he created the world — for “the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:6).
Repeated in Hebrews
Here’s the way the writer to the Hebrews makes the same point with the same six pieces:
Now may the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21)
At the bottom is Jesus Christ, with his sovereign grace: “Through Jesus Christ.”
He works in us. That is, his grace is manifest as power in our lives for good works.
We do his will by that power.
Jesus gets the glory.
So, our obedience is pleasing in God’s sight.And the piece that was not mentioned from 2 Thessalonians is the link between God’s power and our obedience, namely, faith. But the writer had already made crystal clear in Hebrews 11:6 how essential faith is for obeying and pleasing God: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Pardoned and Empowered to Please
In summary, then, the same faith that unites us to the pardon of Christ for justification, unites us to the power of Christ for sanctification. The same faith that makes us perfectly pleasing to God by the imputation of his righteousness, makes us progressively pleasing to God by our righteousness.
You will not be perfect in this life. But you can be pleasing to God in this life — perfectly pleasing because of justification, and progressively pleasing because of transformation. You can become, beyond all expectation, an ingredient in the divine pleasure.
The glory of God in Jesus Christ overflowing in grace is God’s supreme delight. When we embrace the grace of God in Christ as our only hope for imputation and transformation, he is pleased. Or as we like to say here at Bethlehem College & Seminary, we are his pleasure when he is our treasure.