“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Perhaps you’ve encountered this famous line penned by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins aimed all of his poetry at helping people see that we live in a world drenched in divine delights — a world that everywhere reveals the glory of God. That is a wonderful reality, but for the child of God, the wonder goes even deeper.

For the Christian, the glory revealed in the world is not the glory of some generic deity; it is the goodness of our happy Father. “The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord” (Psalm 33:5 NASB). And so, the pleasures we experience in the world are paternal pleasures. The beauty of the world is our Father’s smile in stuff. And, wonder of wonders, our Father delights in our delight in his gifts. Like a happy dad on Christmas morning, the Father of lights lavishes on us all things richly to enjoy so that we might be happy in the Giver of all good things (James 1:17). Who then could resist reveling in the pleasures of God?

We do — daily! Like fussy children, aren’t we often too greedy or self-focused or distracted to enjoy our Father in his gifts? Consider yourself for a moment. Did you enjoy the sunrise this morning? I’m not just asking if you saw it. No, did you marvel as the sun vaulted the horizon? Did you delight in the fanfare of light and color? Or maybe you’re not the “outdoors type.” In that case, did you find pleasure in a cup of coffee? Or the comfort of a good pair of socks? Or the smile of your child? Did you really attend to any of our Father’s gifts?

As you can see, there is a reason C.S. Lewis called enjoying God the difficult discipline of hedonism. Joy is hard work, but eternally worthwhile. In Letters to Malcolm, Lewis writes, “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito” (101). And pleasures are his footprints, reminding us that he is here. “Pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibilities” (121).

So, if Lewis is right, if we can nowhere evade the presence of God, then how do we so often — consciously or unconsciously — evade the pleasures of God? How are we so easily distracted from enjoying our Father’s gifts? Lewis gives three reasons well worth pondering.

Greed

Lewis starts with low-hanging fruit: greed. Why? Because greed corrupts the pleasures of God by seizing them in degrees, times, or manners outside of God’s design. We are all prone to wander into those wonderless sins.

Greed is a scaly beast. It stashes and hoards and sleeps on treasure. Greed is always hungry, always demanding more. Lewis calls this the demand of Encore. That fatal word encore knows no boundaries. It recognizes no proper times or rhythms. It always overeats. It loves to say “just one more.”

Unfortunately, almost all of our consumer society aims to allow us to demand encore in a voice that cannot be gainsaid. And the dragon fusses — and fusses loudly — if the demand is denied. Yet Lewis doubts that God ever fulfills this desire for encore. “How should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once” (35). Ironically, the demand for encore is too easily pleased! God wants to give more than we desire to get. How many present pleasures do we render rotten by demanding again and again what God once gave?

But greed does not always announce itself in fire and destruction. Perhaps the sneakiest form of greed comes when we use God’s gifts without enjoying them for what they are, giving no heed to what Lewis called “the quiddity” of things (Surprised by Joy, 244). When we indulge this form of greed, we force honey to school us about wisdom without ever actually tasting the honey-ness of honey (Proverbs 24:13–14). We order birds to soothe our anxiety without ever delighting in bird-ish beauty (Luke 12:24). We close the sun into the classroom of theology without ever basking in his sunny glory or his Eric-Liddell-like delight (Psalm 19:5). We should delight that things are before we seek to use them. As Chesterton once said, we must take fierce pleasure in things being themselves. Here there be pleasures the dragon never knows.

“God is eternally, graciously, stunningly generous with his pleasures.”

God is eternally, graciously, stunningly generous with his pleasures. The daily sunrise says so. And as Thomas Traherne — who was one of Lewis’s great inspirations — points out in his book Centuries, we are not yet nearly as happy as he means us to be. What an antidote to sticky fingers, the itch for encore, and the pragmatic misuse of God’s good gifts!

Self-Focus

According to Lewis, the wrong kind of attention also distracts us from the pleasures of God. He explains that this kind of attention subjectifies pleasures. It turns from the sunrise (the object) to try to see what’s happening in me (the subject).

We’ve all had the experience of turning inward to grasp a feeling only to have it slip through our fingers. I suspect this dynamic is often at the root when Christians struggle with assurance. A saint looks inward to find evidence of faith and discovers faded footprints in the sand because his gaze has left the object of faith. He has ceased to attend to Christ.

Pleasures, just like faith, are object dependent. When you stop looking at the sunrise to ask, Am I really enjoying it? you lose the whole pith and pleasure of the sunrise. Thus, self-focus, the wrong kind of attention, can gut the pleasures of God. This scoliosis of the soul can be traced right back to the garden, which led the ancients to call man homo incurvatus in se — man bent in on himself. So, how do we become unbent?

Ultimately, only the Spirit of God can rip our attention off self and rivet it on God. But Traherne provides a way to act that miracle: lose your “self” in wonder. “When you enter into [God’s world],” Traherne writes, “it is an illimited field of Variety and Beauty: where you may lose yourself in the multitude of Wonders and Delights. But it is a happy loss to lose oneself in admiration . . . and to find God in exchange for oneself, which we then do when we see Him in His gifts, and adore His glory” (9). Childlike wonder crowds out selfishness and makes room for divine pleasures to enchant us to God.

Familiarity

Finally, Lewis warns that inattention is the greatest enemy to the pleasures of God because, over time, we fail to see what we see. Like an old bungee cord, our senses become slack — our vision veiled by familiarity. What we once enjoyed with assiduous attentiveness soon fades to the background like art on a hallway wall. Traherne warns us, “The most beautiful object being always present, grows common and despised. . . . Were we to see it only once, that first appearance would amaze us. But being daily seen, we observe it not” (65). In our fallen state, the current of human sensibility ever drifts toward this negligence.

Let me try to prove this. Have you walked past a tree today? Did you see it? If you’re like me, you didn’t even notice. But what a fantastic work of the triune imagination. This star-powered wood-tower becomes a pillar of Eden in summer, a heaven-high flower in fall, a snow-robed statue in winter, and a living signpost of hope in spring. Just imagine a world without trees! Yet we observe them not.

Just here, the poets are so helpful because, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge explains, poetry aims to “give the charm of novelty to things of every day . . . by awakening the mind’s attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us, an inexhaustible treasure” (Biographia Literaria, 208). Poetry — perhaps preeminently — arrests our attention and helps us savor the pleasures of God.

The Psalms do this so well. These inspired poets awaken us to men that bear fruit like trees (Psalm 1:3), to the sun that runs across the sky like a giddy bridegroom (Psalm 19:5), to the moon and sundry stars that hold court at night (Psalm 136:9), to wind heaped up in heavenly storehouses (Psalm 135:7), and, of course, to the sea, that fathomless playground of Leviathan (Psalm 104:26). In this theatre of glory, we shall never starve for want of wonders. If we had but Spirit-opened eyes, we would out-awe the angels. “The real labor,” according to Lewis, “is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake” (Letters to Malcolm, 101).

The pleasures of God are good — in the full, fat, dripping sense of the word — but they require work. Joy is indeed a difficult discipline. Greed, self-centeredness, and the relentless pull of inattention constantly creep in and cut us off from divine delights. Therefore, Traherne exhorts us, “Apply yourself vigorously to the enjoyment of [God’s world]” (63).

Audio Transcript

What should we think of flashy pastors? That’s the question this Monday morning from a listener named Emily. Emily writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us all on this podcast. Recently, social media accounts have surfaced and gained quite a bit of attention which show numerous well-known pastors wearing extremely expensive and flashy clothes, shoes, watches, etc. These accounts have raised controversy about whether these leaders are justified in doing this.

“Many say they should be able to use the money they make however they please. Or that these items are gifts. But others are offended by their luxurious lifestyles and argue that regardless of how a pastor obtains these things, they should still be demonstrating humility and reverence toward their congregations and toward those who are struggling to simply survive. Many think their lavish lifestyles discredit Christ. First Peter 3:3 seems to allude to this issue. But I’m curious, what other texts of Scripture speak to this? And where do you stand on it all?”

Well, there’s no question where I sympathize here. My sympathies have been made clear over the years with regard to simplicity and wartime lifestyle. I get angry when I see pastors flaunting their luxury as if it were a compelling testimony that Jesus is more satisfying than what money can buy. Baloney. It’s appalling.

So let me say loud and clear, right off the bat: nobody is drawn to Jesus as the spiritual, saving, satisfying treasure of their souls by the luxurious lifestyle of those who supposedly preach the word — nobody. What people are drawn to in preachers who make much of their luxury is the hope of luxury. That’s what they’re drawn to — the hope of luxury.

Go and Tell

This is not Christianity. Christianity is to be drawn to a crucified and risen Savior whose greatness and beauty and worth in himself are so admirable and so satisfying that the heart cries out with the psalmist in Psalm 63:3, “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.” Yes, and everything in this life. You cannot commend the truth that Jesus is better than money by giving the impression that you live for money.

“You cannot commend the truth that Jesus is better than money by giving the impression that you live for money.”

A decisive turn happened in redemptive history with the coming of Jesus that makes it invalid to use the lavish temple of the Old Testament, the priestly robes, the gold-plated utensils, and the lavish curtains as a model for contemporary church buildings or Christian living. It’s invalid. The Old Testament was by and large a come-see religion. The Queen of Sheba was breathless at the wealth of Solomon. But the New Testament is largely a go-tell religion.

Unlike the Old Testament, the Christian church has no temple, no geographic center like Jerusalem, no ethnic identity like Jewishness, no theocentric civil structure that puts people to death for impieties. We are a pilgrim people, exiles and refugees scattered among the nations with the grand mission given by the Lord Jesus to make disciples of all the peoples of the world. And we’re not done with that.

Not All That Glitters

This revolutionizes the way we think about money and use our resources. It all tends toward the simplicity of wartime living, where we strategize to glorify God by finishing the Great Commission and evangelizing our cities and showing love to our neighbors. The New Testament is relentless — it’s just amazing; just read it — in pushing us toward simplicity and economy for the sake of Christ and away from luxury and away from affluence and finery. For example:

Luke 6:20, 24: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. . . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
Luke 8:14: “They are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life.”
Luke 9:58: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Luke 12:15: “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Matthew 6:19: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
Matthew 6:25: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
Luke 12:31: “Seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”
Luke 12:33: “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail.”
Luke 14:33: “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
Luke 18:24: “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
James 2:5: “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom?”

That’s the refrain over and over and over throughout the whole New Testament, and even in those places — and there are only a few — where wealthy Christians are directly addressed, like 1 Timothy 6:17. The message is to be thankful to God for all of your legitimate enjoyments, and be filled with good deeds for those who have greater need than you.

In other words, there’s just no encouragement anywhere in the New Testament that we should accumulate and accumulate or increase the symbols of our wealth by what we wear, what we drive, and where we live. The man who builds bigger barns for what he doesn’t need is a fool. He’s a fool, Jesus says (Luke 12:20–21). The gist is this: be content with a relatively simple lifestyle. (And I say relatively because I know that virtually all Americans are rich, because the rest of the world — or two-thirds of the world — lives so close to the edge.)

“Be content with a relatively simple lifestyle.”

So, I’m talking about a relatively simple lifestyle. Make as much money as you please, and give what you don’t need for the sake of the glory of Christ and the spread of the gospel and the care of the suffering. Most of the New Testament revolves around three main concerns when it comes to teaching on money: (1) how to display the value of Christ and the gospel, (2) how to meet the needs of the lost and the suffering, and (3) how to avoid the soul-destroying dangers of wealth. So, just a word about each of those.

Treasure in Toil

First, how to display the value of Christ and the gospel. Paul said in Philippians 3:8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing [value] of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He wanted to live in such a way as to show that his heart was satisfied with Christ and not captured by the idol of greed. So, he worked with his hands rather than give any impression that he was fleecing the churches. First Thessalonians 2:5 says, “We never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed.” We weren’t using our ministry as a cover-up for our love of money.

To the elders in Ephesus, he said, “I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me” (Acts 20:33–34). To the Corinthians, he said, “We are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word” (2 Corinthians 2:17). To Timothy, he said, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8). And then he just laid it down for all pastors that they must not be lovers of money (1 Timothy 3:3).

Now the point of all those words was to remove every obstacle to believing the gospel, and to show the superior worth of Christ over all earthly possessions, and to set an example for the believers of self-denial and a happy embrace of sacrifice for the sake of love. Because, as Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Anybody who’s been walking with Jesus for any amount of time knows you’re going to be happier and sleep better at night the more generous you are — the less selfish you are.

Live to Give

The second main concern of the New Testament and possessions is how to meet the needs of the lost and the suffering. Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail” (Luke 12:33).

Paul said, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28). Isn’t that amazing? In other words, don’t steal, and don’t just work to have — work to have to give. There are three levels. You can steal, you can work to have, and you can work to have to give. And he says, “Go there, Christians — go there. Live there. Live to give.”

Christians are going to inherit the entire world and everything in it. We could spend a whole session on 1 Corinthians 3:21–23. You have everything, Christian. You don’t need to grasp for it now. You’re going to get it in a vapor’s breath. This little world’s going to be over. The present world is lost without the gospel. Millions are suffering. This is the age for radical generosity and sacrifice, not the age for luxurious living.

Soul Snare

Finally, number three, the last concern with possessions is how to avoid the soul-destroying dangers of wealth. Jesus says it’s hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:24). Paul said, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9). Oh, goodness. How clear can Jesus and Paul be about the dangers of accumulation and accumulation?

So, I say it again: it is appalling that those who claim to be faithful ministers of the word of God would flaunt their luxuries — just appalling. It turns Christ from a beautiful, all-satisfying Savior into a broker who gives us what we really want — money and comfort.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, and welcome to a new week on the podcast — to a week we are devoting to the theme of knowing and following God’s will. Today we look at the key to it all. Without this key in place, following God’s will will be impossible. Then on Wednesday we look at an example of how one man proceeded with confidence in a real-life decision, knowing he was following God’s will. It’s a great story, and it’s on Wednesday (in APJ 1808). And then we will end this week hearing from a super busy Christian man. How does he prioritize his life when he cannot get everything done? That’s on Friday (in APJ 1809).

So, we start the week talking about the key to knowing and following God’s will. We’ll get there through a Bible question from a listener named Kyle. “Hello, Pastor John! In Colossians 1:9, Paul uses the terms ‘knowledge,’ ‘wisdom,’ and ‘understanding.’ Do these terms each have a different meaning? How do these three words relate to each other in the context of that passage?”

Yes, I think they do have different meanings, and I think there’s a practical usefulness in trying to understand the differences. But it’s good to keep in mind — as I step back and just let myself think about the difficulties of handling words like this — that, the way the human mind works and the way language works, it would be a mistake to think that words like knowledge (or knowing), wisdom, understanding are so precise that they don’t overlap with each other. They do overlap.

Borders Between Words

The borders between words like knowledge and wisdom and understanding are not like walls, not like fences that are real nice and clear and precise, with one field on one side and one field on the other. They’re more like the space where the fresh water of a river flows into the salt sea. You can’t draw a line between fresh water and salt water, but everybody knows there’s a huge difference between fresh water and salt water.

Words that refer to processes of knowing and words that refer to processes of feeling are inevitably more flexible and more imprecise than words that refer to objects, like dog or daffodil or peach. Acts of knowing and feeling are not like a dog or a daffodil or a peach. You can’t see them; you can’t touch them; you can’t hear them; you can’t smell them; you can’t draw them. How would you draw wisdom? How would you draw understanding? You can’t point to them with your finger; they’re a peculiar kind of reality. And so, when language tries to capture them or give expression to that peculiar kind of reality, we have to leave room for some overlap in meaning. So, that’s a preface to how difficult it is sometimes to do what Kyle is asking me to do.

Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding

Colossians 1:9–10 says,

From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge [that’s the first word, epignōsis in Greek] of his will in all spiritual wisdom [second word, sophia] and understanding [synesis, sometimes translated ‘insight’], so as to 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 [same word, epignōsis].

So, Paul starts by praying that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, and he ends that prayer by praying that they would go on increasing in the knowledge of God himself.

“Knowing God increasingly and knowing God’s will increasingly are part of the same experience of knowing.”

I think in Paul’s mind, knowing God increasingly and knowing God’s will increasingly are part of the same experience of knowing, because to know somebody, when you think about it, is to know what they love, know what they hate, know what they desire, know what they will. That’s what it means to know them.

Knowing Versus Knowing

But to really grasp what Paul means by knowing God, which I think we must do here at the outset, it helps to look at Romans 1:18–23, where Paul talks about people who are outside Christ and yet have some kind of knowing of God. It says,

By their unrighteousness [they] suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse. For [this is the amazing part] although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.

It’s an amazing statement: “although they knew God” — every human being outside Christ. So, there is a kind of knowing God that is absolutely useless — indeed, worse than useless. It makes you guilty. It takes away your excuse. This is not the kind of knowing God or knowing his will that Paul is praying for in Colossians 1:9. That’s not what he’s praying for. So, the question is, What’s missing? What’s the difference between the knowing God and knowing his will that he’s praying for and the knowing that will only get you damned?

What’s missing is precisely what Paul is praying for in Colossians 1:9 — namely, that we would come to know God and know his will in or by spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. The word spiritual modifies both of those nouns — “spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding.” The key word is spiritual, which in Paul’s language refers to something that is given by and formed by the Holy Spirit. It’s not just a vague feeling of mysticism or something like that. It’s a Holy Spirit–given, a Holy Spirit–shaped wisdom and understanding.

So, what needs to happen so that the man of Romans 1 knows God — the way Paul is praying for us to know God and his will in Colossians 1:9 — is for the Holy Spirit to take away his blindness to the greatness and the beauty and worth of God. And we can watch this happen in 2 Corinthians 4:6, where Paul says, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” So, the formerly blind man of Romans 1 now sees God as glorious. A few verses earlier, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul had said in describing this very miracle, “This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

So, this miracle of seeing God for what he really is, is what Paul means in Colossians 1:9 by “spiritual insight” or “spiritual understanding.” When the Holy Spirit removes our blindness, we don’t just know God as Romans 1 knows God — disapproving, suppressing. We know him as glorious, as infinitely valuable, as worthy of all our allegiance and trust and love. This is spiritual understanding to know him like that.

Harmonious Wisdom

Now, to stir in the word wisdom — and specifically “spiritual wisdom” — from Colossians 1:9, let’s go back to Romans 1, because Paul does just that; he stirs in the word wisdom.

He’s been describing the unbelieving person as knowing God and yet suppressing that knowledge and failing to thank God and glorify him, and now he describes the same failure in terms of foolishness and pretended wisdom. He says, “They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” And then they do something that tells you what wisdom is all about: “[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Romans 1:21–23).

“Spirit-given understanding of the true worth of God leads to Spirit-given wisdom.”

So, in Paul’s mind, wisdom and foolishness relate not merely to whether we see things clearly, but whether we make choices or experience preferences that fit reality. If the darkened heart is not illumined by spiritual understanding, then the heart will act foolishly and make the absurd exchange of Romans 1:23, trading away God for something he made. That’s foolish. That’s crazy. And that’s what the lack of wisdom does. Spiritual wisdom would never do that. Spirit-given understanding of the true worth of God leads to Spirit-given wisdom in not making absurd choices that involve treating other things as more valuable than God.

Knowledge of His Will

So, in answer to Kyle’s question, one way to describe the difference between spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding is that spiritual understanding is the work of the Spirit enabling us to see reality (particularly God and his ways, his will) for what they really are — namely, great and beautiful and valuable and wise — while spiritual wisdom is the effect of that spiritual understanding upon the way we evaluate things, the way we experience preferences in our preferring heart, and the way we make choices that accord with (or not), that are in harmony with (or not), reality and are not the result of our former blindness.

So, when Paul prays in Colossians 1:9 that we would be “filled with the knowledge of his will in [or by] all spiritual wisdom and [spiritual] understanding,” he’s asking God to pour out his Holy Spirit upon us, and that more and more the Spirit would remove our blindness and the dimness of our ability to see God for who he really is. Then, as a fruit of that spiritual understanding, we would have spiritual wisdom that experiences preferences and makes choices that are in harmony with reality. And then, when those two are operating the way they should, we will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will for our daily lives.