The doctrines of Calvinism have a way of both wounding and healing the human heart. They are sword and balm, stumbling block and safety net, thundercloud and rainbow.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) once described Calvinism as a lamb in wolf’s skin: “cruel in the phrases,” but “full of consolation for the suffering individual.” The words unconditional election, for example, can feel rough on the surface; they can seem to snarl and bare their teeth. Yet as countless Christians have discovered, beneath Calvinism’s wolfish exterior is the softness of a lamb.

Some, however, have seen in the phrases of Calvinism not a lamb in wolf’s skin, but just a wolf (or just a lamb). How many have felt Calvinism’s offense (you’re calling me totally depraved?) and missed its comfort? And how many, alternatively, have reached for Calvinism’s comfort (“once saved, always saved”) without receiving its offense?

For some time now, Calvinistic Christians have captured the doctrine of salvation in the acronym TULIP (summarizing the 1619 Canons of Dort):

Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

These phrases celebrate the saving, sovereign grace of God — the grace that offends and the grace that comforts. But in order to grasp both the offense and the comfort, we may do well to consider what these phrases do not mean, what TULIP never taught us.

Utter Depravity

Unfortunately, some people’s exposure to Calvinism begins and ends with the phrase total depravity. What do some people hear in those two words? As sinners, we are as fallen as we possibly could be. Nothing we do can be called good or kind or noble in any sense. The most wicked impulses stomp and strain like stallions within, restrained by the thinnest of reins. We are utterly depraved.

“Total depravity was never meant to teach utter depravity.”

No wonder some hear total depravity, imagine their sweet but unbelieving Aunt Susie, and toss TULIP aside. But total depravity was never meant to teach utter depravity. Rather than claiming we are as fallen as we could be, the doctrine simply claims that every part of us is fallen. As the Canons of Dort put it, when our first parents fell,

they brought upon themselves blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in their minds; perversity, defiance, and hardness in their hearts and wills; and finally impurity in all their emotions. (III/IV.1, emphasis added)

Paul offers a similar testimony in Ephesians 2:3:

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.

By nature, we carry out (with our wills) the fallen desires of both body and mind. In other words, when sin entered the door of human nature, it made a home in every room. As a result, we are born “dead” to the things of God (Ephesians 2:1), spiritually helpless and unable to turn to him on our own.

Scripture uses stark language to describe human sinfulness: “Every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5); “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). Yet the image of God remains in fallen humans (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9). Unbelievers are capable of showing “unusual kindness” (Acts 28:2). Pagan poets can pen truth (Acts 17:28).

Even though these acts fall short of pleasing God — since “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) — they nevertheless reflect the power of God’s common grace to keep the totally depraved from becoming utterly depraved.

Unconditional Salvation

Calvinism offers deep, unshakable security for fragile people — but not the kind of security we sometimes imagine. Many of us, for example, assume that for our salvation to rest secure, it must be unconditional. If we must do A, B, or C in order to finally be saved, then it can feel like our little house of faith rests in a land of violent earthquakes.

We may hear the word unconditional in TULIP, therefore, and take a deep breath. Salvation doesn’t require anything of me, we may think. The U of TULIP, however, stands not for unconditional salvation, but for unconditional election — a doctrine Paul articulates in Romans 9:11–12 (among other places). Referencing Jacob and Esau, he writes,

Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls — [Rebekah] was told, “The older will serve the younger.”

Notice the distinct lack of conditions in God’s choice to call Jacob rather than Esau. Jacob was not more deserving and Esau less deserving, for God’s election took place before the brothers had done anything “either good or bad.” In the words of Dort, God saw both men lying “in the common misery” (I.7). His choice, therefore, was unconditional.

But apart from election, salvation does indeed include conditions. Justification requires faith (Galatians 2:16). Sanctification requires striving (Philippians 2:12–13). Forgiveness requires forgiving (Matthew 6:14–15). And heaven requires holiness (Hebrews 12:14).

And yet, under the glorious promises of the new covenant, we can still take a deep breath; our house of faith can rest secure. Because when God elects someone, he not only calls him but keeps him, all the way to the end (Romans 8:30). As Dort puts it, God “chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation” (I.8).

In other words, unconditional election does not exempt us from all future conditions; it rather guarantees that we will fulfill all future conditions by the power of God’s Spirit. If God has elected us, we will trust and keep trusting, we will strive and keep striving, we will forgive and keep forgiving, even through many sins and lapses and valleys of doubt.

Hyper-Calvinism

Limited atonement may be the phrase of TULIP most prone to misunderstanding. And unfortunately, some Calvinists have played into the misunderstanding by accenting the word limited. In their zeal to defend the special love of Christ for his people, and the effective power of his redemption, some have spoken or acted in ways that suggest a narrowness to what Jesus purchased and a reluctance to publish it from the housetops.

Rightly taught, limited atonement says that even though the death of Jesus “is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world” (as Dort says, II.3), Jesus had particular people in mind when he climbed Calvary’s hill. He died for his sheep (John 10:15), his friends (John 15:13), his bride and church (Ephesians 5:25) — or to pair the L with the U, he died for those whom the Father had unconditionally elected. As such, limited atonement emphasizes not the limited nature of Jesus’s death, but its purposefulness. (Hence why many Calvinists prefer the terms particular redemption or definite atonement.)

Historically, some Calvinists have moved from a true statement (Jesus died for his elect) to a false conclusion: Christians should offer Christ to others only when those others show signs of election. Sometimes called hyper-Calvinism, this position is a fine illustration of cart-before-horse syndrome, since the elect appear precisely by how they respond to the offer of Christ. Throughout Acts, for example, we find no apostle hesitating or tiptoeing before preaching Christ fully and freely. The apostles rather publish the gospel without distinction; only afterward do they discern who among the crowds was “appointed to eternal life” — because these elect ones “believed” (Acts 13:48).

Far be it from anyone, then, to take limited atonement as a reason to limit the precious value of Christ’s blood or the worldwide offer of that blood to any and every sinner, however non-elect he or she may appear at the moment.

Hard Determinism

Many who hear of Calvinism, with its depraved humanity and sovereign God, struggle not to see the world it presents as a puppet show. This was certainly my biggest struggle. Calvinism can seem to suggest, “Yes, people may appear to desire and love and decide on the stage of human life; they may appear personally responsible for their actions. But above lurks the Grand Puppeteer, raising arms and legs by invisible strings.” The phrase irresistible grace can seem to endorse the image. We, mere puppets, go wherever God’s strings pull us.

The original framers of the five points were sensitive to the struggle. “This divine grace of regeneration,” they wrote, “does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force” (III/IV.16). Well, what does irresistible grace mean, then?

The doctrine does indeed teach that God is the first and decisive actor in the miracle of salvation — and that it must be so, given the fallen will’s inability to seek God or submit to God (Romans 3:11; 8:7). As in the beginning, God and not man is the one who says, “Let there be . . .” And yet, those so wrought upon by God are neither blocks nor stones nor puppets. For, in regeneration, “God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant” (III/IV.11). When God saves a person, he does not drag him against his will; rather, he “penetrates to the inmost being” so that he becomes wonderfully, happily willing to be saved. Irresistible grace refers to the healing of the human will.

“God’s decision to save us enables rather than cancels our own decision to be saved.”

The I of TULIP, then, echoes the prophetic promise that God will write his law on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33) and even “remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Puppeteers may tug on strings; God resurrects hearts. And that means his decision to save us enables rather than cancels our own decision to be saved. As Sinclair Ferguson writes, “The choice is made for us even as it is made by us.”

Once Saved, Always Saved

The divines gathered at Dort were keenly aware that some “Calvinists” would live in such a way that Calvinism would appear as “an opiate of the flesh and the devil” (“Rejection of Errors,” V.6). Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in TULIP’s fifth point, perseverance of the saints, popularly paraphrased as “once saved, always saved.”

Now, understood rightly, “once saved, always saved” accurately captures the Calvinistic doctrine. Our God finishes every good work he truly begins (Philippians 1:6); he glorifies all those whom he justifies (Romans 8:30). But in popular practice, “once saved, always saved” often means something different: once you have made a decision for Jesus, you will be saved no matter what.

Such a doctrine would indeed function as an “opiate of the flesh” — and has. How many have walked fearlessly on the wide way to destruction because of the hour they spent upon the narrow road? How many have comfortably bowed the knee to their lusts because they once bowed the knee to Christ? How many have found their security in a past decision for Jesus rather than in present love for Jesus?

Perseverance of the saints, however, takes seriously that word perseverance. Yes, God forever saves those whom he has once saved, but he does so by enabling us to “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast” (Colossians 1:23). Yes, Jesus keeps his sheep safe in his hand, but he does so by keeping them from becoming goats or wolves (John 10:28).

God’s persevering people, then, are not marked by a casual, drifting approach to the Christian life. They take seriously the warnings of Scripture, aware that those who “live according to the flesh . . . will die” (Romans 8:13). They take pains to enjoy God through his appointed means, knowing that whoever does not abide in Jesus withers and burns (John 15:6). They work out their salvation with fear and trembling, confident that their work is evidence of the God who works within them (Philippians 2:12–13).

Grace’s Sword and Balm

In his book Grace Defined and Defended, Kevin DeYoung writes,

At their very heart, the Canons of Dort are about the nature of grace — supernatural, unilateral, sovereign, effecting, redeeming, resurrecting grace, with all of its angularity, all of its offense to human pride, and all of its comfort for the weary soul. (25)

The grace of God is not simple or one-dimensional. It has angles. It startles and delights, offends and comforts, cuts and cures. It can seem rough as wolf’s skin at first, but then we feel the wool.

Few doctrines are more humbling than those captured in TULIP. Born depraved in mind, heart, and will; chosen not for anything in me; rescued and kept despite daily offenses to my God — these will lay a person low. But they will also lift him up to behold and be healed by a God worthy of the acclamation, “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8).

According to Jesus in Mark 12:30, the first of all the commandments is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” What does that mean? It can’t be reduced to physical acts of compliance to the law. It can’t be reduced to acts of willpower contrary to the heart’s desire.

We know it can’t because Jesus said in Matthew 15:8–9, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me.” The lips are singing hymns and worship songs. The lips are preaching truth. The lips are advocating for justice. For the poor. For the unborn.

But these acts of the body and the will — these acts in themselves alone — are not love to God. They are a moral zero. “Their heart is far from me; in vain [empty, zero, for naught] do they worship me” — on Sunday with their singing, on Monday with their deeds. It is not love.

Heart of Love

Why not? Because the heart is far from God. Luke’s version of the first commandment gives us a clue as to the essence of love for God. It goes like this (spoken by the lawyer, approved by Jesus): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27).

But that translation is not exactly right. Translating each of these prepositional phrases identically (“with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind”) overlooks a crucial difference. One of them is different, the first one: “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart.” The first Greek preposition means “from” or “out of.” The other three prepositions mean “in” or “with.”

So, more carefully, the first commandment in Luke 10:27 is, “You shall love the Lord your God from [out of, as a root or spring] all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” They move the muscles of their lips; they show their willpower; but their affections are not for me.

Why does that matter? Because it is a clue that the human heart has a unique role to play in loving God. The soul, the strength, and the mind are not peculiarly associated with the affections. But the heart is. Love for God comes first from the heart. “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart,” because love’s essence is what the heart produces — not the motions of the lips, not the acts of willpower against the desires of the heart, but first the affections of the heart.

What the soul and strength and mind produce are ways of expressing love, ways of feeding love. But their work is not the essence. Heart-work is the essence. Which is why Jesus essentially said, “In vain do they worship me, in vain do they love me, for their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8–9).

What Are Spiritual Affections?

I’m using the word affections the way the Puritans did. For example, in John Owen’s book Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, he says, “Without spiritual affections we cannot be spiritually minded.” (See page 395 of The Works of John Owen.)

What’s he referring to — spiritual affections? He explains, “Spiritual affections [are the way] the soul adheres unto spiritual things [e.g., Scripture, salvation, Christ, heaven, God]” (395). And how do the affections thus adhere to these spiritual realities? He answers, “[By] taking in such a savor and relish of them as wherein [the soul] finds rest and satisfaction.” This, he says, “is the peculiar spring and substance of our being spiritually minded.”

So, spiritual affections are the Holy-Spirit-enabled savoring, relishing, resting in, being satisfied with spiritual reality, as opposed to carnal or worldly reality. And at the apex of that spiritual reality is God. Therefore, to be spiritually minded — that is, to love God with all your heart — is to savor, and relish, and rest in, and be satisfied with God above all other reality.

When John Owen says, amazingly, “All the designs of [God’s] effectual grace, are suited unto and prepared for this [one] end — namely, to recover the affections of man unto himself,” he means: God’s great end in redemption is to bring men to love him with all their heart (395). Or to be more complete: God’s great end is that his greatness and beauty and worth be magnified in our savoring, relishing, resting in, and being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.

Or to use more familiar language, God’s great end in redemption is that his glory be magnified by our enjoying him above all things forever. That is the essence of what the great commandment requires — the heart’s enjoyment of God above all things. To love God with all your heart means to savor him, relish him, rest in him, be satisfied in him above all things.

How Affections Authenticate

This is not reductionistic, as if Owen or I were saying that the grand aim of creation and redemption were reduced to, or limited to, the affections of the human heart. The roots of a tree and the sap it makes, which courses through every branch and every leaf, giving life to every living fiber, is not everything in the tree. The roots are not the branches. The sap is not the leaves. And the human heart is not the mind or the tongue or the legs or the arms. And spiritual affections are not the new heavens and the new earth.

But under God, they are the authenticating reality of all divine and human activity. Owen puts it like this: “Whatsoever we do in the service of God, whatever duty we perform on his command, whatever we undergo or suffer for his name’s sake, if it proceed not from the cleaving of our souls unto him by our affections, it is despised by him; he owns us not” (396).

In other words, whatever we do in the age to come in the new heavens and the new earth (which are vastly more than affections), whatever we think, whatever we build, whatever acts of creativity or worship we complete, they will be as nothing, and worse than nothing, if they are not coursing with the sap of delight in God, savoring God, relishing God, loving God.

“Spiritual affections define who we are, and where we belong in the last day.”

Which means that we won’t even be there without the spiritual affections of savoring and relishing and loving God. These spiritual affections define who we are, and where we belong in the last day. Owen puts it like this: “Whatever men pretend, as their affections are, so are they” (396).

They are not everything. But they permeate everything. They authenticate everything. They sweeten everything. They magnify God in everything. And they guide everything. “Affections,” Owen says, “are in the soul as the helm in the ship; if it be laid hold on by a skillful hand, he turneth the whole vessel which way he pleaseth” (397).

Widening Our Lens

Now, up to this point I haven’t mentioned the word joy, even though my title is “The Joy of the Puritans.” But I hope you have recognized that’s what I’ve been talking about. The spiritual affections of savoring, relishing, being satisfied, delighting — those are ingredients of joy in God. And that’s what I aim to focus on in this message: the joy of the Puritans in God.

It may help us grasp not only the meaning, but the importance, of what I’m saying about the affections if I open the lens a bit and say a more general word about affections in the Bible. Over the years I have found that there is a kind of Christian — I think they number in the millions — who reads the Bible through a lens that virtually blocks out the affections. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, a lens that neutralizes or deactivates the significance of the affections in the Bible.

It’s as though the lens of their glasses puts a little note on the affections: “Unimportant, negligible, peripheral, caboose on the train, icing on the cake, optional.” Or, to say it another way, this lens is designed to make the Christian life look like a process of right thinking, right deciding, and right doing. Doctrine, decisions, deeds. Have right thoughts about God, make right decisions about God, and do right things for God — while the hundreds of biblical texts about the affections drop from view.

Deep-Seated Truth

That way of reading the Bible is another world from the way the Puritans read the Bible. Owen said, “[The affections] are the seat of all sincerity, which is the jewel of divine and human conversation, the life and soul of everything that is good and praiseworthy” (396). One view marginalizes the affections by making them optional. And one view makes them the “soul of everything that is good and praiseworthy.”

I don’t know where your roots are on this issue, but it may be helpful to pan out for a moment and see some of the vastness and indispensability of the affections in the Bible. I say “indispensable” because of how often they are commanded. Not suggested, commanded.

Negatively, we are commanded

not to feel covetous (Exodus 20:17),
not to fear those who kill the body (Luke 12:4),
not to feel anxious (Matthew 6:25),
not to give way to anger (Colossians 3:8),
not to lust (1 Thessalonians 4:5), and
not to love money (Hebrews 13:5).

Or positively:

Contentment is commanded (Hebrews 13:5).
Hope is commanded (Psalm 42:5).
Thankfulness is commanded (Colossians 3:15).
Zeal is commanded (Romans 12:11).
Brotherly affection is commanded (2 Peter 1:7).
Tenderheartedness is commanded (1 Peter 3:8).
Sympathy is commanded (1 Peter 3:8).
Contrition is commanded (Psalm 51:7).
Desire for the word of God is commanded (1 Peter 2:2).
Sorrowful sympathy is commanded (Romans 12:15).
Joy is commanded (Philippians 3:1).
Gladness is commanded (Matthew 5:12).
Delight is commanded (Psalm 37:4).

So, if you have been reading the Bible through a lens that turns all of this into optional icing on the cake of decisions and deeds, I urge you to take them off. I know it’s threatening. For at least two reasons.

Our Fears Behind Feeling

One is that all of us are emotionally handicapped. The range of our healthy affections is very narrow, and that list I just read is, with our emotional disabilities, totally unrealistic for us. We can feel a few things really strongly: anger, lust, disappointment, fear. That’s what our hearts are good at. But hope, and brotherly affection, and tenderheartedness, and delight in God? So many spiritual affections feel outside our range.

And the other reason it feels threatening to take off the affection-minimizing lens is that we know that affections are not the kind of thing you can turn on and turn off by an act of willpower. So, all of those commandments are impossible. They threaten my control. Even if I wanted to change and become that kind of person, I couldn’t.

How can you obey the command to be glad when you feel sad? How can you obey the command to be tenderhearted when you are angry and bitter? How can you obey the command not to fear when you are afraid? What should we do — become hypocrites? Fake it till we make it?

No. Jesus is not in the business of making hypocrites. He is in the business of helping us do the humanly impossible. Remember the rich young ruler? Jesus told him to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus for treasure in heaven. In other words: “Stop loving money, and start loving me.” But he couldn’t do it, and he walked away. (Unlike the dad in Mark 9:24 who said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”)

Jesus commented to his disciples, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” — than for a person who prefers money to Christ (Matthew 19:24). They were stunned and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus did not say, “Nobody.” And he did not say, “His problem was that he was unwilling to become a hypocrite.” What he said was, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). In other words: “I came into the world to forgive sinful affections and create new ones.”

So, I understand why you might not want to take off your affection-minimizing lens — why you might want to hold onto a Christianity of right doctrine, right decision, and right deeds, untroubled by merely optional affections. That religion is comfortable, because it’s in your control. “I think through my doctrines. I make my decisions. I do my deeds. It’s my obedience.”

John Howe as Our Guide

The Puritans see the Bible and the affections and the reality of enjoying God in a radically different way. So what I want to do for the rest of this message is let the Puritan John Howe guide us into the biblical understanding of delighting in God as the essence of loving God — the greatest commandment, and the end for which God created the world. We’ll do this in four steps:

The duty of enjoying God
Strategies for enjoying God
The glory of enjoying God
The summons to enjoy God

John Howe was an English Puritan pastor who lived from 1630 to 1704. He served several churches and was a chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. In 1674 he published a work titled A Treatise of Delighting in God — a 279-page meditation on Psalm 37:4, which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Under the authority of Scripture, which he loved, John Howe will be our guide along the pathways of obedience to Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

1. The Duty of Enjoying God

First, let John Howe express his agreement with what we have seen so far — namely, that the great commandment to love God with all our heart is in its essence a commandment to savor, relish, be satisfied with God more than in anything else.

“Loving God as we ought is not less than experiencing him as our greatest pleasure.”

Howe uses the word pleasure to express this. He asks, “Can they be said to love him, that take no pleasure in him? That is, to love him without loving him.” (See page 561 of The Works of Reverend John Howe.) In other words, loving God as we ought is not less than experiencing him as our greatest pleasure. It is more than that, but not less.

Then Howe draws out the obvious implication not only from the great commandment, but also from the fact that Psalm 37:4 is also stated as a commandment (“Delight yourself in the Lord”) — the implication being, in his words: “It is plain that it is the common duty of all to delight in God” (479, emphasis added). Duty, obligation. If delight is commanded by God, delight is the duty of man. If delight in God is a command, delight in God is obedience.

Delight as Obedience

Now we need to linger here for a moment to get some clarity about the relationship between obedience to God and delighting in God, because there seems to me to be no end of confusion on this matter among Christians.

For example, about twenty-five years ago at a conference in England, I was on a panel with one of my heroes, Elisabeth Elliot. She knew about my Christian Hedonism, and so she prodded me with this: “John, I don’t think you should say, ‘Pursue joy with all your might.’ I think you should say, ‘Pursue obedience with all your might.’” To which I responded, “But, Elisabeth, that’s like saying, ‘Don’t pursue peaches; pursue fruit.’”

Peaches are fruit. And joy in God is obedience to the command, “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1). Delight in God is obedience to the command, “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). It causes no end of confusion to inculcate into believers the mindset that delighting in God and obeying God are alternative paths, that the pursuit of delight and the pursuit of duty are alternative pursuits. They’re not! John Howe is right: “It is the common duty of all to delight in God” (479, emphasis added).

“If delight is commanded by God, delight is the duty of man.”

Test yourself. How would you respond if someone said, “We should enjoy obeying God”? I would say, “Yes, indeed. The commandments of the Lord are not to be burdensome (1 John 5:4). His yoke is easy. His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). ‘In the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God’ (Psalm 40:7–8). Yes, we should enjoy obeying God.”

Delight to Obey

But there are at least two problems if that’s all you say. First, the average person who hears that will infer from what you say that obedience is one thing, and the possible enjoyment of it is another thing, but it’s not obedience. So, the confusion continues.

Here’s a worse problem: If we say, “We should enjoy obeying God,” but say no more about the relationship between obedience and joy in God, we will almost certainly confirm people in the widespread misconception that there is a holy obedience to God that may have no delight in God at its root.

The Puritans knew their Bibles better. We’ve already heard from John Owen that delight in God is the “soul of everything that is good and praiseworthy.” But now listen to John Howe:

As the law of love is the universal and summary law, comprehending all duty . . . so must disaffection to God be comprehensive of all sin. . . . Dost thou not see then how thou cancellest and nullifiest the obligation of all laws, while thou hast no delight in God? . . . Not to delight in God therefore, what can it be but the very top of rebellion? (605)

In other words, where the heart has not embraced God as its supreme treasure, all apparent obedience is rebellion. “This people honors me with their professed obedience, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they profess to obey” (cf. Matthew 15:8). Savoring, relishing, being satisfied with, enjoying God in Christ as our supreme treasure is obedience, and it is the root of all other true obedience. It is our duty and the root of all other God-glorifying duty.

2. Strategies for Enjoying God

So, we may ask Puritan John Howe: If delighting in God, enjoying God, loving God, is so deeply essential and so pervasively transformative (as the root of all true obedience), how then shall we obtain and live in this delight?

Howe’s first answer, like Jesus, is: You must have a new heart — the heart promised in the new covenant, which Jesus bought with his blood (Luke 22:20). This is the new covenant. This is what Jesus bought for his bride, his sheep, his elect: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26–27).

Then Howe makes this connection: “When it can once be truly said, ‘Thy law is in my heart,’ it will be also with the same sincerity be said, ‘I delight to do thy will, O God,’” like Psalm 40:8 (507). And since it is God’s will that we delight in him (not just his will separate from him), he himself will be the delight of our delight (cf. Psalm 43:4). That’s where it starts: We must be born again. We must have new hearts.

Second, Howe urges us to fight against all that obstructs delight in God. “Strive against all your spiritual distempers that obstruct it, in the power of the Holy Ghost” (590–591). And: “God hath in this matter no other rival than this world. It is its friendship that is enmity to him (James 4:4)” (620). Set yourself against God-diminishing thoughts, against entertainments that make your mind more worldly and less able to delight in God.

Third, Howe says, “If ever you will do anything in this great matter of delighting in God, you must arrest your thoughts for him, and engage them in more constant converse with him: and [mingling] prayers with those thoughts” (645).

He goes on: “God is out of your sight, and therefore how can it be expected you should find a sensible delight in him” (601). Then: “There can be no other way to be taken, but to behold him more in that discovery of him which his gospel sets before your eyes, and in that way seek to have your hearts taken with his amiableness and love, and allured to delight in him” (656).

In other words: We won’t enjoy him if we don’t engage to know him. And what is it about God that we should keep before our eyes? Howe gives us this taste:

[God] did invite thee to delight in him who hath always sought thy good, done strange things to effect it, takes pleasure in thy prosperity, and exercises lovingkindness towards thee with delight; who contrived thy happiness; wrought out thy peace at the expense of blood, even his own; taught thee the way of life, cared for thee all thy days, hath supplied thy wants, borne thy burdens, eased thy griefs, wiped thy tears. And if now he say to thee, “After all this couldst thou take no pleasure in me?” will not that confound and shame thee? (610–611)

In other words, devote your minds steadfastly to the unsearchable riches of God in Christ.

3. The Glory of Enjoying God

It is remarkable how many Reformed theologians are uneasy with the Puritan emphasis on the experiential nature of the Christian faith rooted in the duty of delighting in God. One of the possible reasons behind this uneasiness is the preeminence of the objective reality of the glory of God in Reformed theology. It is thought that elevating the subjective experience of delighting in God will somehow dislodge the glory of God from its objective preeminence.

But ironically it was the very fact that the Puritans shared this zeal for the preeminence of God’s glory that they insisted on the indispensable duty of delighting in God. Jonathan Edwards, with his little echo in John Piper, was not the first to see the revolutionary truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. John Howe put it like this:

We are to desire the enjoyment of [God] for his own glory. And yet here is a strange and admirable complication of these with one another. For if we enjoy him, delight and rest in him, as our best and most satisfying good, we thereby glorify him as God. . . . It is his glory to be the last term of all desires, and beyond which no reasonable desire can go further. (559)

It is his glory to have [needy] souls satiating themselves in him. . . . And if you should say you love him, but . . . you care not to be happy; it would sound like a hollow compliment. You are not to deal with God upon such terms. (655)

What does John Howe think about any effort to minimize the greatest commandment — the commandment to delight in God above all else, and thus to glorify him as the most excellent of all beings? What does he think of the aversion to delighting in God that would attempt to extol the glory of God without delighting in him? Here is what he thinks, and it may be the most amazing paragraph in his entire book:

Is not aversion to delight in God a manifest contrariety to the order of things; a turning all upside down. . . . How fearful a rupture doth it make! How violent and destructive a dislocation! If you could break in pieces the orderly contexture of the whole universe within itself, reduce the frame of nature to utmost confusion, rout all the ranks and orders of creatures, tear asunder the heavens, and dissolve the compacted body of the earth, mingle heaven and earth together, and resolve the world into a mere heap; you had not done so great a spoil as in breaking the primary and supreme tie and bond [that is, delight in God] between the creature and his Maker. (603–604)

4. The Summons to Enjoying God

Therefore, since God will not be supremely glorified in his people apart from his people being supremely satisfied in him, let us give heed to John Howe’s closing summons.

Awake, and make haste to get your heart fixed [to delight in God]; lest “the heavens rejoice, and the earth be glad, the world and all that dwell therein; lest the sea roar, and the fulness thereof, the floods clap their hands, the fields and the hills be joyful together, and all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord” — while you only are silent and unconcerned (650).

Make haste. Do you not have a promise? “In [his] presence there is fullness of joy; at [his] right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). Pursue this with all your might. Make this “the business of your life” (608).

Audio Transcript

It’s no secret that God has designed this world, and he has designed us, such that we can improve as we listen to the criticism of others. Just look at the theme of rebuke in Proverbs, for example. Rebuke is essential to our lives. But receiving critique from others means overcoming the fear of criticism. It means overcoming the condemnation of criticism. It means discerning the truthfulness of criticism. Knowing how to benefit from criticism requires a high degree of skill. These are skills that every Christian needs to develop.

And that leads us to today’s question from an anonymous young woman who lives in Munich, Germany. She wants to overcome her fear of others. Here’s what she writes. “Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this outlet to ask my question. I’ll get right to it. I think too much about what people think of me. In particular, when people criticize me, I really take it to heart. I know I should focus on Jesus. But I fail. Sometimes I cannot sleep as I think about what people said about me. It is worst at work. I really take my office job to heart and cannot deal with it when my boss criticizes anything about what I do. I might look cool and stay calm and polite, but I wilt inside. What can I do to overcome this feeling of hurt? How can I focus on Jesus instead of myself?”

Sometimes it helps in a situation like this, I find, whether it’s in myself or others, to break the problem down into parts. So let’s try to do that.

Categories of Criticism

It seems to me that there are four kinds of criticism that our German friend might get at any given time.

There is criticism that is deserved and is given in kindness and goodwill.
There is criticism that is deserved and is given in harsh and demeaning ways.
There’s criticism that is not deserved and is given in kindness and goodwill. It’s a real mistake; it’s just an honest mistake.
There is criticism that is undeserved and is given in harsh and demeaning ways and may have real ill will behind it.

Now, we could break it down further. Those aren’t the only categories. I mean, it makes a difference whether the person who speaks in a harsh and demeaning way does that because he or she really wants to hurt you. That’s really abusive. Or there may be extenuating circumstances like a bad day at home or personality issues, and the harsh person doesn’t really mean to hurt you at all. But let’s keep it simple for now. We’ll just stay with these four categories of criticism.

So my first suggestion is simply that our friend think about these categories and not just about her own hurt feelings. And I’m not suggesting that, if the criticism she gets is deserved or delivered with kindness, it doesn’t hurt. I mean, all four of these categories can hurt because we don’t like to be criticized. I don’t like to be told that the job I just did isn’t as good as it should have been. “You should have done better, Piper. That was not a good way to do it.” That’s never a pleasant thing to hear. So hurt is sometimes huge, sometimes little, but any of those four categories can make us uncomfortable or angry or hurt.

Emotional Self-Control

I’m saying it would make a significant difference if our friend does not go first and foremost to her hurt feelings, but rather if she goes first to the issue of truth. This is what I’m suggesting in this first idea, that it helps to not first feel the hurt and linger there, but switch around the focus of your mind to what is true. What kind of criticism is it? Was it deserved or not? Was it partially true or not? Is it true that the way the criticism was given was kind? Was it harsh?

The very asking of these questions is a partial deliverance from self, and that’s a victory — that’s a partial victory. Concerning yourself with truth outside of you and your feelings is a wonderful habit to form, a habit of freedom from bondage to hurt feelings — feelings that we all have. We do. We all have them. She’s asking how to be less controlled by them. And I’m suggesting that a focus on truth and analyzing the situation to get at the truth would be a partial deliverance right off the bat.

“Forming the habit of measuring your feelings by the truth will have a very maturing effect on your soul.”

What happens with this focus on truth or reality outside of you is that you realize that different feelings are appropriate in each of these four situations. And that helps you differentiate your own soul so you’re not controlled completely by this overwhelming sense of hurt, but rather you’re getting at the truth of your own feelings by differentiating them. All of them may involve hurt or discomfort, but the intensity and the nature of the feelings are going to be different when they are informed by the truth about whether the criticism, harsh or not, is deserved. Forming the habit of measuring your feelings by the truth will have a very maturing effect on your soul. And you will be wiser and freer, having a greater measure of self-control, which the Bible says is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit when we are acting in faith (Galatians 5:22–23).

Test Cases

Now, say the criticism is deserved. If you could have and should have done better, then you preach to yourself like this: “I know I should do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). I know that he has promised me grace to do that (2 Corinthians 9:8) [in other words, you put things through a Bible grid], and that means at least using God’s gifts to me to do the best job I can. And so I will let these criticisms spur me on to do my job better. And I will thank God (and maybe even my critic) for this criticism, as painful or hurtful as it is. And I will do all I can to grow by this legitimate criticism.”

Now, if the criticism is not deserved, and you think the critic misunderstood or was misinformed, then in a professional setting it’s right and good with humility to go to the person and give them whatever evidence you have that there was a mistake. “There was a miscommunication; something went haywire here, because what you just said isn’t true about what I did or what I said.” It’s possible that peace and appreciation and admiration could be restored because it was just an honest mistake.

Or if there’s real ill-will involved, and you’ve been intentionally maligned, then you may for a season overlook the fault as you seek to win the goodwill of the person by returning good for evil, like the Bible says. But in a professional setting, where much larger issues are at stake than your own feelings, you may need to confront the critic with the hope of reconciliation — and if not through personal confrontation, then through proper grievance procedures seek the good of the whole corporate culture by exposing the dishonesty or the dysfunction.

Showing Christ’s Sufficiency

The deeper question in all of this — and I think this may be what she’s really getting at — is how to keep our hurt feelings (which all of us have from time to time) from dominating us, controlling us, causing us to either become melancholy or depressed. Or how to keep them from making us bitter or angry so that we are miserable to be around. Neither of those responses to criticism shows the sufficiency of Jesus.

So Jesus and Paul, just to take a couple of examples, team up to give us two ways to combat the negative effects of hurt feelings. Jesus does this by directing our gaze forward to a great reward. And Paul does it, in the text I’m thinking about, by directing our gaze backward to the work of Christ.

Look to the Reward

So here’s what I mean. Jesus’s counsel when we’re criticized, even unjustly, goes like this: “Blessed are you when others revile you [now that’s serious criticism] and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you [there’s more serious criticism] falsely on my account.” So he’s dealing with a real situation of criticism. And he says, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11–12). So what do we do? We preach this to ourselves. We preach it from as many texts as we can think of. We keep a journal. If we’re prone to this kind of hurt, we keep a journal of texts like this as we read the Bible.

How inexpressibly great is your future, Jesus says. Dwell on it. Think on it. If we could really see how long and glorious and happy heaven will be, and how short the criticisms of this life really are, it would lighten our load. Jesus says it will take enough sting out of the reviling and the criticism that you can actually rejoice. Maybe it’s a sorrowful rejoicing, but it’s a real rejoicing. It enables you to keep on doing your job and keep on returning good for evil.

Look to the Cross

Then Paul directs our attention backward to the work of Christ. He says, “[Bear] with one another . . .” Now, that means somebody has done something to you that’s hard to deal with. I’m meant to endure you because you’ve just said something that really hurts me or angers me or makes me want to get back at you. “. . . and, if anyone has a complaint against another [like being criticized], [forgive] each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13). So there’s the pointing backward: “as the Lord has forgiven you.”

“Concern yourself with truth, let it measure and shape your feelings.”

So we should not be overwhelmed by the criticism. We should be overwhelmed, not only with the greatness of our reward, but with the love of Christ, who died for us in spite of all of our ill-advised words toward others, toward him.

So, dear friend in Germany, you’re not alone. Jesus knew, Paul knew, we all know, this is a battle we will fight until the end of our days on earth. Concern yourself with truth, let it measure and shape your feelings. And then, when you’re criticized, look to the greatness of Christ’s forgiveness and the greatness of your future with him.