John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

Every Tuesday, Violet smiles when I visit and hold her hand, but she doesn’t remember that I’m the friend who has helped to care for her for the past five years. The framed needlepoint pictures with which she lovingly decorated her home were forgotten long ago, and she now sits at the craft table in a daze, as if she’s never held scissors before.

On a good day, she tries to recite the Lord’s Prayer along with me, but increasingly she shows no recognition of the words that once buoyed her through the storms of life. The fog of dementia crowded out her recollection of such ordinary means of grace long ago, and now her world has narrowed to the bright walls of her memory-care community.

Walking alongside Violet feels like watching death in slow motion. As the quirks and values and personality traits I’ve come to love about her fade away one by one, it’s as if I’m watching Violet herself dwindle and vanish.

Unique Grief

The sorrow I’ve experienced in my journey with Violet is only a shadow of the anguish that caregivers shoulder when a beloved family member has dementia. Families of dementia sufferers struggle with high rates of anticipatory grief — mourning in expectation of loss — while a loved one is still alive. A devastating diagnosis brings tides of disbelief and heartache even before death takes hold. We grieve as we envision life without someone dear to us; we grieve as illness erodes our loved one’s vitality and, in the case of dementia, his memories and personality.

It is a strange and disorienting experience to mourn for someone who is still alive. In the most merciful cases, a dismaying diagnosis prompts us to prioritize heartfelt conversations and last lingering embraces while we can. Dementia, however, often robs loved ones even of this meager solace. Sufferers often lack the language, insight, and memory to have the meaningful conversations for which we pine. We may say the words pressing on our hearts, only for our loved one to forget an hour later, or even worse, to lash out with agitation and uncharacteristic cruelty. Closure in dementia grief is an elusive and seldom-achieved prize.

Our sorrow deepens as the insidious and progressive nature of dementia alters our loved ones before our eyes. Troubles with finding words and the loss of short-term memory pave the way for withdrawal from activities and friends. The abilities to cook and drive disappear. Eventually, even getting dressed independently becomes a feature of the past. As the familiar fades away, new, unsettling behaviors emerge, with agitation, anxiety, and hallucinations punctuating our loved one’s days. In the wake of such changes, families experience the loss of the person they knew, and given the long and slow course of dementia, this period of grieving persists for years. Rather than offer closure, anticipatory grief in dementia hobbles on and on, accumulates new wounds, and often worsens over time.

As we ride the swells of confusion and sorrow, our concerns turn toward the spiritual. What can we say about a loved one’s soul when he loses all memory of attending church, of reciting prayers, and even of Christ himself? Does God’s grace fade away with memories, shriveling as our neurons thin? Are our loved ones still saved when they can no longer affirm with their words that Christ is risen?

Kept as Memories Fade

Violet no longer seems to remember her beloved dogs, or how she would manicure the woods in her backyard, clearing sticks from the carpet of pine needles with a precision hinting of fairy work. And yet, she smiles, returns hugs, and feels emotions sufficiently deep to laugh and cry. Although her memories have faded away, God’s fingerprint remains indelibly upon her.

And so it does upon all of God’s people, whether we stride through life clear-eyed or wander in a mist, because our salvation springs not from our memory, but from God’s grace toward us in Christ. As Benjamin Mast, professor of psychology at the University of Louisville, so poignantly states in his insightful book Second Forgetting,

Conditions like Alzheimer’s disease have such a hold on a person that it can seem like a form of bondage — that the person is a slave to the disease. Yet while there are great changes in their memory, personality, and behavior, there is still an underlying reality and an enduring aspect of their identity that cannot be taken away. . . . These individuals remain children of God, created in his image, and their identity and their life is still rooted securely in Christ. (66)

Such an assurance can be comforting when we no longer hear the name of Christ upon a loved one’s lips. When praises fall silent and long-recited prayers fade from memory, we may worry that our loved one’s prior declarations of faith were false professions (Matthew 7:21–23; Romans 11:29). How can we still count loved ones among the saved, we wonder, when they no longer call upon the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21)?

“Our loved ones’ salvation depends not on their memory, but on his. And his memory is perfect.”

We can remind ourselves that a dementia sufferer’s forgetfulness reflects the effects of disease rather than a willful rejection of salvation through Christ. For those with dementia, the brokenness of creation affects the mind with particular devastation. Yet while such a sufferer’s spoken trust in the Lord may falter, God has promised to uphold us into our old age, even as our memories fade (Isaiah 46:4).

Undiminished Hope

God chose his elect before the foundation of the world to be his own children (John 1:12; Ephesians 1:4), “a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Whether or not the ravages of dementia change a loved one’s memory or behavior, in Christ he remains a new creation (Romans 6:6; 2 Corinthians 5:17). Consider the assurance and the solace Peter offers:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3–5)

God has caused us to be born again. Faith is a gift from God himself, “not a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8–9), and once lavished upon us, our inheritance of eternal life remains imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. That same inheritance awaits our loved ones with dementia, even when they can no longer remember Christ’s name. Even when they cannot speak, the Spirit continues to search and know their hearts and prays on their behalf (Romans 8:26–27). Our loved ones’ salvation depends not on their memory, but on his. And his memory is perfect.

Unfading Memory

God never forgets his beloved. Unlike our own sin-weary minds, prone to deterioration and breakage, nothing escapes his notice (Psalm 33:13–15). He knows our thoughts even before we voice them: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:1–2).

Even more astonishing, God’s perfect memory is caught up in his faithfulness. Over and over throughout the Old Testament, God remembers his people and acts in mercy even as they wickedly dismiss him. When the floodwaters covered the earth, “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 8:1), and he buoyed them to safety. God remembered Abraham and rescued Lot from the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19:29). When the Israelites languished under Pharaoh’s tyranny, “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24), and he forged a path toward their freedom.

In each case, God’s remembrance of his people was bound to his goodness, his acts of grace, and his eternal character as one “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?” God declares through the prophet Isaiah. “Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15–16).

He Holds Fast

Although Violet seems a shadow of herself, I draw comfort from the truth that God sees her and knows her. He has engraved her name on his palms and has promised never to leave her or forsake her (Hebrews 13:5). While she has forgotten how to pray, the one worthy of all praise will never forget her.

As you walk with those struggling with dementia, take heart. Dementia reflects the fall, and under its oppression memories wither, fade, and blow away like dry leaves on a gust of wind. But God’s memory is perfect. His grip upon his beloved remains firm whether they recall his name or not. And in Christ, nothing can wrench his people from his love (Romans 8:38–39).

If I were in your shoes, and a new preacher comes to town and presumes to stand in this sacred place where the word of God has been so faithfully proclaimed by your pastor, I would want to know, “Who are you?” Not your name. Not your address. Not your job. Not your education. But, “What do you stand for? What are you committed to? What’s your standard of truth? What’s your authority? What’s your aim in coming here?”

Let me begin with three statements about my commitments so that you can decide whether you want to lean in or not.

Committed to Scripture, God — and You

First, I come with a total allegiance and submission to the Bible — the Christian Scriptures — as our only infallible authority. Which means I come to you with no authority except what I am able to see in the Scriptures, to savor in my own soul, and to show in the power of the Holy Spirit for your building up. If you don’t see what I say in the Bible, don’t believe it just because I say it.

Second, my life mission statement is “I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” Which means: I’m not in Cincinnati and in this church willy-nilly, or aimlessly, or to tickle anybody’s ears. I am here on a mission. My aim in this message is to speak God’s word to you in the hope and the prayer that your passion for the supremacy of God in every area of your life will soar, with joy, through Jesus Christ. Which leads me to the third commitment (about how God’s supremacy and your joy fit together).

Third, I am driven by a particular truth that became clear to me from Scripture about 56 years ago (when I was 22 years old), which has a profound and pervasive effect upon the way I think and feel about the glory of God and the joy of the human soul. That truth is this: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, especially through your suffering in the path of love.

In other words, when you experience the living God himself (not his precious gifts, but himself), through his Son, Jesus Christ, as so satisfying to your soul that no suffering in your life can rob you of that satisfaction in God, you make him look great! Which he is. I call that kind of joy “serious joy.” You can hear what I mean by “serious joy” in Paul’s phrase in 2 Corinthians 6:10: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

How Can We Be Freed?

Therefore, under those three commitments, I invite you to look with me in the Scriptures at Hebrews 12:1–2. And what I hope to show is that this kind of joy is the spring of love — and I mean love for people, especially the kind of love that is very costly. So, the question I am trying to answer is, How can I be set free from selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes Christ look great?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We’re not going to focus on everything in the text, but rather almost entirely on these words in verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” But let’s at least get these words situated in the flow of thought so that they don’t dangle in isolation.

Run, Christian, Run

Chapter 11 celebrates the faith of Old Testament saints who, though they are dead, yet continue to speak (Hebrews 11:4). That is, their lives remain a living witness to us about the value of living by faith. So, you can see at the beginning of chapter 12, in verse 1, that the writer pictures us as running our own race, with the lives of these saints, as it were, crying out to us, “You can do this! You can make it to the end! We finished our race in faith. You can finish yours. Don’t quit!”

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [all those stories from chapter 11], let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

In other words, life is a marathon. It’s not a 100-meter dash. It is long, and there are hills that make your muscles burn to the point where they are screaming at you, “You can’t finish this!” And all these witnesses are saying, “Yes, you can!” There may be hills and sleet and heat and wind in your face. But the book of Hebrews was written to help us finish in faith and love.

And verse 1 says that you don’t run this marathon with an overcoat on your shoulders and that you don’t run this marathon with performance-enhancing drugs in your veins. Do you see that in the middle of verse 1? “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin.” We’re not stupid, and we don’t cheat. It’s stupid to wear an overcoat, and it’s cheating to use drugs. Weights and sins.

I tried to raise four sons and one daughter in the Lord. And I recall times of them wanting to do something I disapproved of. They would ask, “What’s wrong with it?” With this text in my mind, I would say, “Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Ask instead, ‘Does it help me run the race? Does it help me to run with all my focus and energy and love for Jesus? Does it help me to be the best Christ-exalting marathon runner I can be?’” Don’t set your sights on the minimal standard of avoiding cheating. Set your sights on the maximal standard: “How can I be the most devoted, Christ-exalting runner possible?”

So, the main point of this text is this: Run! Get rid of all the sins that you can. Get rid of all the weights and hindrances that you can. Take hold of the marathon of your life, and don’t just set the pitifully low standard that asks, “What’s against the rules?” But rather: “How can I train, and eat, and think, and dress to be the best runner possible? How can I live my life and finish my course with maximal, Christ-exalting faith and sacrificial love?”

Selfishness-Killing Power

Verse 2 now gives us perhaps the deepest answer to that question. You are going to face the hills, and cold, and heat, and wind, and the burning in your legs, and the thundering of your heart and the thoughts of hopelessness about finishing — you are going to face them like this:

. . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You are going to look to Jesus as you run. And what you are going to focus on, as you look to him, is this: He too ran. His race was 33 years long. And it ended with a horrific gauntlet of opposition and suffering — namely, with the unspeakable torture of the cross and the immeasurable shame of such a death. He ran it. He finished it. How?

“Go deep with Jesus until he is the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.”

Mark the words in the middle of verse 2: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame.” And surely you will agree that the marathon Jesus ran was a marathon of love. He ran the last several hundred yards of the marathon with nails in his hands and his feet, and a spear in his side, and a crown of thorns on his head. Surely this was the greatest act of love that has ever been performed in the history of the world — because he was dying for our sins, not his own.

My question for my life — and your life — is, How can I run like this? How can I be set free from my selfishness so that — at any cost to myself — I will love other people in a way that makes this Christ look great? And the central answer of this verse is that the greatest act of love that was ever performed was performed “for the joy that was set before him.”

So, perhaps you can see where I got the title for this message, namely, “How Is Joy the Root of Sacrificial Love?” Verse 2 teaches us that Jesus was sustained through the cross and through the shame by the joy that he anticipated at the end of his marathon. That does not mean that there is no powerful, sustaining experience of joy on the marathon itself, that there is only joy at the end.

And I say that because the book of Hebrews defines faith, by which we run the marathon, like this: “Faith is the assurance [or substance] of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Which means that the full, complete, all-satisfying, everlasting joy in God that we are hoping for at the end of our marathon becomes, in some measure, an experience right now, by faith, in the midst of our “cross,” in the midst of our “shame” — our marathon. That’s why it has such selfishness-killing, cross-bearing, shame-enduring power.

Selfishness Wouldn’t Die

What if someone says, “Doesn’t that turn the love of Christ, at the cross, into selfishness? If he’s just seeking his own joy at the end of the race, is he loving us?” The answer is this: in being sustained through the cross by the joy at the end of his race, he’s not being selfish, because selfishness is when you use other people to get your own happiness.

But nobody calls it selfishness when you’re willing to die to include other people in your happiness. This joy, which Jesus was sustained by at the end of his marathon, was precisely designed to be shared by everyone for whom he died. It was the joy of being surrounded by countless blood-bought people supremely happy in Jesus.

Which means that for you and me, in all the sufferings of our marathon, it is not selfish — it is love — to be sustained by the hope of everlasting joy in God, into which we are bringing as many people as we can. That’s what the marathon is for — joy in Christ, sustaining you through the sacrifices of love, that makes Christ look so satisfying, others want to go with you.

So, let’s ask this question: If this joy that’s set before us — this spring, overflowing from the future back into the present — is so powerful in producing and supporting the sacrifices of love, and if this is not only the way Jesus was sustained in the greatest act of love, but the way we should be sustained in our acts of love, are there examples elsewhere in the book of Hebrews that would show us what this experience is like?

Yes, there are. I’ll show you two.

Joyfully Plundered People

First, consider Hebrews 10:32–34. Listen for echoes of “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.”

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Cincinnati, where you live, and Minneapolis, where I live, need to see Christians like this more than anything. Some of them had been thrown into prison. The others had to decide whether to identify with them as fellow Christians and risk the plundering of the property or to go underground and save their skin. They conquered their fear and selfishness, and they took the risk of visiting the prison and paid the price of plundered property.

How did that happen? How did they become people like that? How did they overcome their selfishness and their love of comfort and security? The answer is that joy streamed from hope in the future back into the present and sustained them and empowered them for love. Let’s read it in verse 34: “For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property [How? Where did that costly compassion come from? Answer:], since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”

This was the joy that was set before them. They might lose their reputation. They might lose their houses. They might lose their positions. They might lose their lives. But those were not the spring of their joy. That was with Christ, in the future, streaming back into the present, by faith, making love possible. If this world is your treasure, rather than the immeasurable pleasures of being with Christ forever, you will not be able to love in a way that makes Christ look great. But if Christ is the all-satisfying joy set before you, you will.

Joyfully Reproached Leader

Here’s the second example: Hebrews 11:24–26, a description of how Moses was able to choose the hard path of loving the people of Israel rather than staying in the comforts of Pharaoh’s palace.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God [like Jesus chose the cross] than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin [there are sinful pleasures, but they’re not the ones we’re after, because they are too short — they only last eighty years or so]. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

This was the joy set before him. More precious, more satisfying than all the treasures of Egypt was the reward of finishing his marathon with Israel through the wilderness — through the cross, the shame — and joining all those Old Testament witnesses in the presence of the Messiah.

Go Deep with Jesus

My concluding plea is this: Get to know Jesus Christ. Go deep with Jesus until he is the supreme Treasure of your life and the all-satisfying joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

Go deep with the vastness of his wisdom, far greater than Solomon’s.
Go deep with the greatness of his power, upholding the universe with his mind.
Go deep with his majesty, this very day above all governments and armies.
Go deep with the tenderness of his kindness — blessing children and everyone like them.
Go deep with the uniqueness of his words — no one ever spoke like this man.
Go deep with the length of his patience, perfect toward all penitent sinners.
Go deep with the suffering of his love, even for enemies.
Go deep with his mercy, touching lepers, putting ears back on to attacking soldiers.

Get to know him until he is the joy set before you at the end of your marathon.

If he becomes that for you, three things will happen: (1) Your joy, even in the sufferings of this life, will overflow. (2) That joy will sustain a life of sacrificial love for others. And (3) that joy-sustained love will make Jesus look like the all-satisfying Savior that he is.