http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16978088/are-christians-happier-than-non-christians-in-this-life
Audio Transcript
If you’re following the Navigators Bible Reading Plan with us in 2025, you know we’re in Romans, and today we’re reading Romans 5. In that reading, Romans 5:2 stands out to me. There, Paul models a life that is “[rejoicing] in hope of the glory of God.” Our present rejoicing is a hoping joy, an anticipating joy, a desiring joy, a joy felt now but a joy in something to come — something we don’t have in hand yet, a hope in a future glory that sustains our joy right now. We’ve revisited this precious truth often on Ask Pastor John. For me, it recalls the time we asked, “Is John Piper happy?” Your answer — rooted in this very text — was, yes, John Piper is happy, even amid life’s very painful sorrows. Why? Largely because of Romans 5:2, as you can see in the Ask Pastor John book — if you have a copy handy — on pages 306–307.
Glorious texts like Romans 5:2 prompt questions from listeners like Chip, who writes from Georgia: “Pastor John, hello. Christian Hedonism seems to say that our deepest longings in this life can only be satisfied by God, and that only in him can we be truly happy. If God makes us happier than people who pursue the world, why does Paul say we are to be pitied most of all men if there is no resurrection? (1 Corinthians 15:19). Isn’t our life, even now, more satisfying than that of a non-Christian?”
I am smiling real big. I love sharp, biblically rooted questions. So, I’ve asked this — in fact, I’ve spoken on it. Years ago, I spoke to the Wycliffe folks in Cameroon on this very question, so I was trying to remember what I said. It is a really important and good question rooted in 1 Corinthians 15. So, let me just bring Chip — and the rest of us — up to where I’m thinking today. And I don’t know that I have the completely satisfying answer, but I have some answers that have helped me.
Finding Joy in the Pain
Just a clarification to start with about Christian joy in this painful life. A huge part of our joy as Christians is what Paul calls “[rejoicing] in hope” in Romans 5. In other words, joy is not complete in what we can know and have of God here now. Our joy is in hope of what we will know and have of God in the future.
Also, our joy here is a foretaste of the fullness of joy there. And so, it’s not complete now. We see through a glass darkly, and we know in part, so our joy is in part (1 Corinthians 13:9–12). It’s strong now; it’s deep now; it’s enough to carry the day now. But it’s nothing near like what it will be. So, Romans 5:2 says, “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” That means that the joy we anticipate in the age to come flows back into this age in measure, but not in fullness — in measure.
“We rejoice in our sufferings,” he says, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). So, we are people who have this strange emotional experience of rejoicing in what we don’t yet have to make us happy. So, I don’t want to overstate the joy of the Christian Hedonist in this age. It is not nearly what it will be in the age to come, and much of it is anticipatory now.
Why the Pity?
So, here are the key words that create the problem in 1 Corinthians 15. The context is that Paul is talking about whether Christ has been raised from the dead or not. He says in 1 Corinthians 15:14–17, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God” — that is, we’re false witnesses of God, liars about God — “because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.” And then 1 Corinthians 15:17–18: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”
“Paul’s sufferings were sustained by his joy in Christ, not the other way around.”
We’re going to come back to that. That’s really crucial. “Christians have gone to hell. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. They’ve gone to hell.” “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). And the question is, How can Christians, who have more joy than anybody else, be most to be pitied? That’s the question. And I’m asking, Why did you say that, Paul? And here are the reasons for why Paul says this. I think I see four.
1. A deluded life is pitiable.
Evidently, Paul believes that a life of delusion is to be pitied, even if it’s a happy delusion. It’s not just that what we’re experiencing in this life proves to be more or less happy in the other. It proves to be non-existent in the other. If Christ is not raised from the dead, then my joy in the living Christ is not joy in the living Christ. There is no living Christ, and therefore I am not experiencing joy in the living Christ. I am an absolute idiot. I’m a fool.
Paul’s first conviction, it seems to me, is that this is not true. Christ is raised. And his second conviction is that it’s a delusion if he’s not raised. And it’s an enormous delusion — more pitiable than anything he could think of, evidently. So, that’s the first reason: a delusory life, a life lived in absolute delusion, is to be pitied.
2. Pointless sufferings are pitiable.
Paul’s life would be pitiable because he willingly embraced so much suffering that he could have avoided. Those sufferings were sustained by Paul’s joy in Christ, not the other way around. The sufferings didn’t create the joy in this life. So, if there’s no resurrection, those sufferings were absolutely pointless. That’s the second one.
3. Empty hopes are pitiable.
We deny ourselves many pleasures here precisely for the sake of the reward of the age to come. Jesus said, “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 your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11–12).
So, we renounce retaliation and the joy of getting back at people. We renounce that. We renounce the comforts of fitting into the world so that we don’t ever have to be criticized or reviled. We renounce that. Why? Precisely because we believe it will be made up to us in heaven. Which means we didn’t just fail to maximize the pleasures we could have had here, but we bargained that the self-denial would be rewarded in the resurrection, and there is no resurrection, and the bargain failed.
4. False prophets are pitiable.
Here’s the fourth and last reason I think he said it. This one comes straight out of his words: “If Christ and we are not raised from the dead, then . . .” Paul doesn’t infer atheism. He infers hell — that we enter a worse punishment in hell than others because we didn’t just make a mistake; we actively misrepresented God.
Oftentimes, I’ve read this chapter in this argument as though, “Well, if there’s no resurrection from the dead, the whole biblical religion is false. There is no God. Que sera sera. Let’s eat, drink, and make merry.” That is not what Paul does. He didn’t argue like that. He says, “If Christ has not been raised, God’s going to send me to hell because I’ve been telling everybody that this is his Son and he’s been raised from the dead. And I am a false prophet, and therefore I am of all people most to be pitied, for I’m going to get the worst punishment.”
Most to Be Pitied
So, I would sum it up — here they are: If there is no risen Christ, no resurrection of believers unto eternal reward and joy, then . . .
1. Christian life is a delusion.
2. Voluntary suffering is painfully pointless.
3. Hope in heaven is futile, and all of our basing our self-denials on it was ridiculous.
4. Any attempt to speak for the living Christ would be a damnable scam and a false prophecy, which would deserve hell even more than others. And we would perish under that severe sentence.
So, we are of all people most to be pitied.
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Praying the Purposes of God into Reality: 2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, Part 1
What is Look at the Book?
You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.
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Christmas and Our Longing to Belong
A young Scottish man left his coastland home and went to sea. He left quickly, without family closure. His wanderlust made him heedless of how such an abrupt departure might hurt his parents.
One cold winter night, his ship sailed north into a fierce and freezing headwind. The gale drove the boat perilously close to a rocky shore. As a pale sun rose, the ship was so near the headland that the young sailor could see the fire in the hearths sparkling through the windows of the few houses on the cliffside. Suddenly, the lad recognized his own home! Then he recalled it was Christmas Day. His parents would be by the fire, talking of the son who was gone, “a shadow on the household” festivities. “A wicked fool” he felt himself to be, as his very proximity to his childhood house heightened his distance from his loved ones.
Robert Louis Stevenson concludes his story-poem “Christmas at Sea” by saying,
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
Yearning for Home
Like no other time of year, Christmas stokes this home fire in us. The season ignites the hope, no matter how cynical we have become, that we may sit joyfully around a table with people we love and have it feel right. In spite of the disappointments, arguments, loneliness, and distorted dynamics, something in our heart stubbornly grasps the memories, no matter how fleeting, of feeling deeply known, accepted, and safe. We distill these moments to the magical tastes of joyful love. Every Christmas, we’re hoping to savor another drop. But it’s a daunting quest.
“Since we forfeited the garden, humans have been pierced with a home-longing.”
Since we forfeited the garden, humans have been pierced with a home-longing. We leave home looking to find home. Yet it always seems to elude us. It’s never the same if we go back. Our own new relationships still leave us with the ancient yearning. The Welsh use the word hiraeth (hee′-ryth) to describe the powerful, unassuageable cry for home. Hiraeth evokes the stab the roamer feels upon at last arriving back: this isn’t it. There’s yet a farther shore more home than even this cherished place. We can dream of it, but we don’t know how to get there.
I’d like to suggest this Christmas that we allow this hiraeth to draw us to the manger. For there our true Home arrived to gather us back. He who is our heart’s homeland took up residence within the broken, ruined land of our lonely exile. The Son of God came to get us and bring us back to communion with his Father and the Spirit.
Follow the Golden Thread
Even as an infant and young boy, Jesus was magnetic to those who longed to know God and see his glory, whether they were shepherds from the nearby fields or the wise magi from far eastern lands. To the eyes of faith, the baby in swaddling cloths was journey’s end. For those early worshipers intuited what they probably could not express: in the incarnation, the eternal Son brothered us by taking true humanity as his own (Hebrews 2:11).
“In Christ, we can taste home now, even knowing we will still pine for a full arrival.”
The child means that the triune God refused to be without us. He wants to be known, related to, and loved back by those who see in Jesus just how utterly he loves us. As Mary holds Jesus close, we stand amazed that the Son of God so joined himself to us. He came to gather us that he might present back to his Father those joined to him by faith. So, from his first arrival, this Jesus was “bringing many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). In Christ, we can taste home now, even knowing we will still pine for a full arrival.
Undergirding this astounding event of incarnation is the promise God made to his people from the beginning. Even before we were expelled from Eden, the triune God had planned how to bring us home. From Genesis to Revelation, there runs a covenant promise of steadfast love: “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Leviticus 26:12). You can follow this golden thread through a cascade of passages (including Genesis 17:7; Exodus 6:7; Jeremiah 31:33–34; Ezekiel 37:27; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Hebrews 8:10; Revelation 21:3). In ever more intimate and redeeming ways, the triune God proves to be our home-maker until finally we dwell directly with him, where there is no more sighing or pain, but only life everlasting in communion.
At Home in Our Hearts
God answers our cry of hiraeth through the centuries with the arrival of Jesus in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). The Son of God wanted to be with us so much that he took up flesh and blood and “pitched his tent” among us (John 1:14). Each time the news is told and believed, the Holy Spirit pours into a heart a home-cry that now has a name. “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). We get to taste his presence now even as we anticipate our full arrival. It’s as if the triune God says to us, “I am your God, and you are my child. You will come home to me, no matter where you are or what you are going through. For in the end, I make all things new.”
This Jesus, who arrived in our midst at Christmas, grew up to be the man called a “friend of sinners” (Luke 7:34). They meant it pejoratively, but we know it as a precious title of our Redeemer. Jesus, our brother in shared humanity, is yet the friend “who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Because he is also the heart of our own heart. The true home-maker.
This Advent, we can imagine this child, this God with us, and how much he must love us to bring elusive Home down to us. Then, we can pour our hearts more fully into the carols we sing. We can love him more as we worship him more. We can read all the great Christmas texts. We can follow the golden thread of his home-creating promises. We can be moved to offer him the Christmas present of our enthusiastically wanting to keep his word day by day. These are the ways into a magnificent promise Jesus made: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).
Our Homecoming Song
The hiraeth will cry for home through us all our earthly days. But when we know where that cry directs us, our pining does not leave us bereft. For we know we have a friend, our brother Jesus, who has secured our passage home. His Spirit sings through us right now. The hiraeth is a homecoming song and unites us to our fellow travelers in a communion deeper than we may ever have known before.
Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man! Home has come into the ruin and opened the garden to us once more.
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Ingredients for a Theology of Feasting
Audio Transcript
Happy Monday! We launch a new week and close in on 1,700 episodes in the podcast. Thank you for all the support and prayers and encouragements over the years. And as we march forward, I’m also investing some time curating the archives to notice where some of our content gaps remain. And while doing so, Pastor John, I found one of those gaps. We have several episodes on fasting. What is fasting? What does it mean? What does it accomplish? How do we do it? And so on. But by contrast, we have relatively little on feasting. And yet feasting is a major category in Scripture — far more prevalent in the Bible than fasting is, actually. So on this Monday, Pastor John, can you give us a little theology of feasting in ten minutes, as you understand it?
A little theology of feasting in ten minutes? Maybe the way to think about this episode on feasting is that the biblical points that I will make are the raw materials of a theology of feasting. That would make me feel a little bit better.
Commemorate God’s Mercy
First, we need a definition. I’m going to start with a popular definition — namely, feasting is the enjoyment of abundance. That’s my short-term definition. I’m not even going to say that it is limited to the enjoyment of food, because you could feast your eyes on scenery, you could feast your ears on music, you could feast your nose on sweet aromas, you could feast your taste buds on honey, feast your skin and body on sexual pleasures.
So when you turn to the Bible, you find that the word feast does not always have this connotation even of abundance in view. If you do a word search on the word feast in the Old Testament, it’s just full of “prescribed feasts,” as they’re called in English. And they include Passover, Feast of Firstfruits, Feast of Weeks, Feast of Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, Feast of Booths.
And you can see these spelled out. They take their beginning in Leviticus 23, and then they’re unpacked all over the place. They don’t all imply abundance, but rather — and here would be a modification of the definition biblically — a communal sharing of a celebrated meal with a focus on some remembrance and thankfulness of some event of God’s mercy (something like that). And it might be very simple. I mean, unleavened bread is not what you think about when you think about a big Thanksgiving dinner.
So, we need to be careful and be sure that when we see the word feast in the Bible, we determine from the context whether it implies the enjoyment of abundance, or something more simple — some celebration of some remembered event in a focused and communal and simple way.
Four Biblical Truths About Feasting
But I’m going to focus on what we ordinarily mean by feasting. That’s what I think you’re really asking, over against fasting — namely, a joyful shared experience of some abundance, usually food and drink. And so I have four observations as I look at the Bible about such feasting — the raw material, maybe, of a little theology of feasting.
1. Feasting can be good — and bad.
First, the Bible is clear that feasting in and of itself may be a very good thing or a bad thing, depending on other factors.
“Mere abundance of food and drink does not make for a happy family or happy community. There must be more to it.”
For example, Proverbs 17:1 says, “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.” In other words, mere abundance of food and drink does not make for a happy family or happy community. There must be more to it.
Another example would be Ecclesiastes 10:16–17: “Woe to you, O land, when your . . . princes feast in the morning! Happy are you, O land, when your . . . princes feast at the proper time, for strength, and not for drunkenness!” In other words, there’s a time for work and a time for feasting, and there are good purposes for feasting, and there are fleshly, worldly, sinful reasons for feasting. Feasting in and of itself may or may not be good.
Another example: Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” In other words, the good and rightful pleasures of feasting cannot teach you the deepest things about life and death. I have never heard anybody say they went deepest with God, learned most of God, on easy days or at feasting.
One more example: God says to Israel in Amos 5:21, 24, “I hate, I despise your feasts. . . . Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In other words, if our feasting is a cloak of pleasure covering lives of lovelessness and injustice, the feast has become a stench in God’s nose.
So, those are examples of what I mean when I say feasting in and of itself may be a very good thing or a bad thing, depending on other factors.
2. Feasting rejoices in God’s kindness.
God intends that the abundance he provides for our physical enjoyment, the enjoyment of our senses, should echo in our hearts with thanksgiving to God and be made holy by the word and prayer. I’m simply echoing 1 Timothy 6:17, where Paul says we should set our hope on God, “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” In other words, the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touch of good things that God has made are not mainly tests to see if we will make them our god and become idolaters, but rather, they are mainly pleasures to send our hearts joyful and thankful back to God. That’s their main purpose for existence.
“The difference between unholy and holy feasting is not what’s on the table, but what’s in the mind and in the heart.”
Paul puts it like this in 1 Timothy 4:4–5: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” So, the difference between unholy feasting and holy feasting is not what’s on the table, but what’s in the mind and in the heart. Is the mind grasping the God-centered meaning of these things from the word of God, and is the heart sending up joyful prayers of thanksgiving as we taste more of the goodness of God in the very things we’re eating?
3. Feasting is our destiny.
One of the beautiful ways God describes the destiny of those who will accept salvation, his invitation, is a final feast with him in the age to come. Isaiah 25:6: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine. . . . He will swallow up death forever.” That’s a magnificent picture of our hope beyond this age, beyond the grave.
Jesus says in Matthew 22:2–10, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” The king sent out the invitation to the world: “Come to the wedding feast!” That’s what world missions is. I mean, my book is called Let The Nations Be Glad. It could be called Let The Nations Come to a Feast.
And to his disciples at the Last Supper, just before he gave his life for our sins, Jesus said in Luke 22:29–30, “I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.”
And the book of Revelation tops it off with the angel crying, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). To which I respond, “Blessed indeed to be a part of the bride of Christ on that day.”
4. Feasting shows off Christ’s supreme value.
In some measure now, and then perfectly at the last day, God himself will be our feast. Psalm 36:7–8: “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind . . . feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.”
I think if we meditate on those four observations about feasting from Scripture, in the context of the whole Bible, we will be able to move wisely between fasting and feasting, between the joy of self-denial and the joy of abundance, in a way that shows the supreme value of Christ in our lives.
