http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15568824/pauls-extraordinary-affection-for-believers
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Who Is Paul’s Joy — Christ or the Church? 1 Thessalonians 2:17–20, Part 2
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15573902/who-is-pauls-joy-christ-or-the-church
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You Will Be Breathtaking: Why God Clothes Us in Glory
It might be hard to imagine that a phrase like soli Deo gloria could be misunderstood or misapplied. To God alone be the glory. What could be unclear or mistaken in those six simple words?
Fortunately, the main burden of the phrase is wonderfully and profoundly clear. Our generation (and, to be fair, every generation before us and after us) desperately needs to be confronted with such God-centered, God-entranced clarity. The clarion anthem of the Reformation has been the antidote to what ails sinners from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We fall short of the glory of God by preferring anything besides the glory of God above the glory of God. That’s what sin is.
We want the credit, the appreciation, the praise for any good we’ve done (and pity and understanding for whatever we’ve done wrong). We were made to make much of him, but we demand instead that he make much of us. That is, if we think much of God at all. John Piper has been waving the red flag for decades.
It is a cosmic outrage billions of times over that God is ignored, treated as negligible, questioned, criticized, treated as virtually nothing, and given less thought than the carpet in people’s houses. (“I Am Who I Am”)
God’s glory gets less attention than the fibers under our feet — and we wonder why life feels so confusing and hard. Five hundred years ago, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other reformers recovered the priceless medicine: soli Deo gloria. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Psalm 115:1).
To Us Be the Glory
The Reformers were living in a spiritual pandemic of compromise and confusion. As they walked through the darkness and corruption, they stumbled into the holy pharmacies of Scripture. And what did they find in those vials? They found, above all else, the glory of God. And that startling light became the North Star of all their resistance. They would not settle for any religion that robbed God of what was his and his alone.
Justification — what makes us right before God — had been distorted and vandalized in ways that uplifted our work, our self-determination, our glory. God’s justifying act was no longer found by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but in significant measure, muddied by our efforts. And that emphasis on what we do in salvation siphoned off glory from the gospel. To us, O Lord, and to our name, be some of the glory.
The stubborn word of God would not surrender glory so easily, though. “I am the Lord,” the Reformers read; “that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols” (Isaiah 42:8). “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). Then four more times in just three short verses:
For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. . . .For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:9–11)
The only God who saves is a God rightly, beautifully jealous for glory. He plans and works all things, especially salvation, “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). Our only hope in life and death is that God will do whatever most reveals the worth and character and beauty of God. All our efforts to find glory beside him or apart from him only lead us further away from him and into sin. Any news that says otherwise, whether from a pope in Rome or an angel from heaven, is a curse, not a gospel.
Does God Get All Glory?
How, then, might soli Deo gloria possibly go awry? If we wrongly assume that God’s ultimately receiving all the glory means his people receive none. No, if God alone is glorified in our salvation, Scripture promises, then we too are and will be glorified. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). God himself glorifies someone other than God — to the glory of God.
“God himself glorifies someone other than God — to the glory of God.”
As the apostle Paul unfolds God’s plan in that greatest of all chapters, he says more: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for . . .” For what? For the appearing of Christ? For the renewed creation? No (not here anyway). “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18–19). The creation pants to see us — what we will be. Why? Paul goes on, “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). When the creation sees us as we will be, it too will be set free.
For us to live in a paradise where fullness of joy lives — where God himself lives — we have to be something more than we are. Piper writes, “You can’t put the jet engine of a 747 in a tiny Smart Car. You can’t fit the volcano of God’s joy in the teacup of my unglorified soul. You can’t put all-glorious joy in inglorious people” (“Soli Deo Gloria”). We will be made glorious enough to swim in the wells of the greatest happiness ever conceived. The oceans, mountains, and stars are lined up outside to get a glimpse of that transformation — of our glory.
God Will Make You Like God
This thread in Scripture is as stubborn and stunning as the one beneath soli Deo gloria. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even now, here on earth, we’re growing in degrees of glory. And then one day we’ll close our eyes for the last time on earth, and the next time we open them, we’ll barely recognize ourselves: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). When glory finally comes, it will not merely be a wonder to see, but a wonder to be.
“When glory finally comes, it will not merely be a wonder to see, but a wonder to be.”
What will happen when Christ returns? “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:52–53). Or as he says a few verses earlier: “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:42–43). We’re destined to live on a real earth like ours, with real bodies like ours, surrounded by blessings and experiences like ours, but without the weakness, mortality, and sin that plague all we know and enjoy now. That world will be like ours, but glorious. We will be ourselves, but glorious.
One of the most staggering and scandalous claims of Christianity is that God not only loves shameful, undeserving sinners, but shares his glory with them. He not only allows them to live in his presence, but he makes them like his Son.
To God Alone Be Glory
In a man-centered age like ours, it seems right that the overwhelming focus of our theology be away from self and on God. Thirty years ago, John Piper lamented, “I find the atmosphere of my own century far too dense with man and distant from the sovereignty of God” (The Pleasures of God, 2). I assume the pounds per square inch are even higher today (and many more miles farther from heaven). Soli Deo gloria is a precious, God-breathed chorus for our self-sick generation. We’re not in need of many articles exalting our glory.
We might need more than we have, though. Ironically, discovering all that we are and will be in Christ may be one key to escaping the cold cells of man-centeredness. Because anything glorious we discover about ourselves — and we will be glorious — is a mere reflection of him. We don’t receive any glory that does not whisper his glory and therefore glorify him all the more. We are “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9–11). If he makes us wise, he is always wiser. If he makes us strong, he is always stronger. If he makes us happy, he is always happier. As brilliant as the stars are — each of them blazing fires so bright they’re seen across galaxies — their Maker eclipses them all.
At our very, most glorious, nearly unimaginable best — sinless, painless, fearless — we’ll always still be candles lit by a far greater light, the Glory of glories, God himself.
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What Does It Mean to Serve God?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast today. We have a trio of interesting emails to work through in the next three weeks, Pastor John, as I look ahead on the calendar of questions on the table. What does it mean to serve God? That’s today. Next week: As we serve God, what do we give him? Are we giving him anything that he doesn’t already have? Does he need us? That’s APJ 1957. And then a week after that: What does it mean to be spiritual? Spirituality is a squishy concept in the world today, and we’re going to work toward a definition in APJ 1960. It’s an interesting trio of topics, all at the foundations of what it means to be a successful Christian living out the Christian life.
So, today: What does it mean to serve God? The question is from a listener named Amy. “Pastor John, hello. I was discussing the phrase ‘serve the Lord’ with a fellow believer the other day, and I was wondering if you could clarify something for us. All over Scripture, we are told to ‘serve the Lord.’ In Psalm 100:2, it says to ‘serve the Lord with gladness.’ Deuteronomy 10:12 says, ‘Serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.’ Joshua says, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15). And Paul in Romans 12:11 also tells us to ‘serve the Lord.’ But then, in Mark 10:45, Jesus says, ‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.’ Christians throw around the phrase ‘serve the Lord’ so often, but I’m not sure I know what that phrase means. Can you clarify this for me?”
I think this is one of the most important questions a Christian can ask about living the Christian life in a way that glorifies God and does good to other people. It gets at the utterly crucial issue of a right way of serving God that honors him and blesses people, and a wrong way of serving God that dishonors him and doesn’t help people. This is not a marginal issue. We’re talking about what it means to be a Christian moment by moment in real life.
Let’s make it crystal clear that Amy is right that the Bible teaches almost everywhere that human beings are to serve God, and when the Son of God comes into the world, we are to serve him. In the Old Testament, Joshua says, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). And then Paul celebrates the Thessalonian converts because “you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9).
Over and over again, Paul calls himself and he calls Christians “servants” — literally, “slaves” — of Christ and of God (Romans 1:1; Ephesians 6:6). Peter does the same in 1 Peter 2:16 and 2 Peter 1:1. It is unmistakable. One biblical way of speaking rightly about the relationship to God that we have is to call ourselves servants or slaves of God and of Christ. That’s right. She’s drawing attention to that, and she should.
Warning Lights
Now, as soon as we say that, we must ask really pointedly what’s involved in serving God and what’s not involved in serving God. If we start serving God as though we could earn wages from him, or as though we could meet his needs, or as though we could put him in our debt and make him our beneficiary, red biblical lights start flashing very brightly. For example, in John 15:15, Jesus says to his disciples, “No longer do I call you servants [or slaves], for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” And yet in John 15:14, the preceding verse, he says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Whoa. What kind of a friend is that?
So, the meaning of “slave” or “servant” is qualified. And the meaning of “friend” is qualified. We can’t just assume that what we mean by servant or friend is what Jesus means by servant or friend. We have to listen.
Or here’s another bright, flashing red light: “[God is not] served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). So yes, serve him, but not that way — not as though he needed your service.
“Serve God, but not by presuming to meet his need. He owns everything. He doesn’t need your supply.”
Or here’s another red flashing light. God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. . . . [You] call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:12, 15). That was one of Spurgeon’s favorite verses. He called it Robinson Crusoe’s text, because that’s what he quotes in the book. Yes, serve God, but not by presuming to meet his need. He owns everything. He doesn’t need your supply. We call on him in need, not the other way around.
Here’s another red flashing light. Amy quoted it. “The Son of Man came not to be served” — that’s a pretty clear warning — “but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He saves us; we don’t save him. He meets our need; we don’t meet his need.
Here’s one more flashing red light of warning about serving God in any old way that we think might be right. In Romans 4:4–5 — you can’t get much more basic than this — Paul describes how the Christian life begins. Are we justified and put right with God by working for God — earning a wage — or by trusting him to work for us in our utter helplessness? Here’s the quote: “To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” We did not get right with God in the beginning of our Christian life by serving him for a wage of salvation. He worked for us, he served us, not us him. He did the humanly impossible on the cross.
So, with all those red warning lights flashing in our face, we better not serve God that way — as though we could earn wages, as though we could meet his needs, as though we could put him in our debt or make him our beneficiary.
Here’s what we need to ask. Well, how should we serve him? You keep telling us all the bad ways. What is right service?
Every Step a Gift of Grace
Maybe the deepest and clearest answer is 1 Peter 4:11. This got prayed over me every time I preached at Bethlehem. For years and years, this was our go-to verse just before walking upstairs to preach: “Whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.”
So, every effort expended in the service of God is a God-given effort. That may be the most important sentence. Let me say it again: Every effort expended in the service of God, the right service of God, is a God-given effort. That’s what must absolutely sink into our souls. Otherwise, we will always think of ourselves as bringing to God things that he doesn’t have, as though we could meet his needs, when he doesn’t have any. He’s not served as though he needed anything.
The conception of service that dishonors God and will not help people — because it points them away from God’s all-supplying grace toward our own supposed self-produced moral efforts — is serving without relying upon him to serve us in our serving. All God-pleasing service is done in the moment-by-moment reliance upon God’s service-enabling power. Or to say it another way, the only service of God that pleases God is done through the glad acceptance of his undeserved service toward us and in us. We see this in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked” — you could say, “I served” — “harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
“All God-pleasing service is done in the moment-by-moment reliance upon God’s service-enabling power.”
So yes, we work; yes, we serve. We have a master; we obey. But every baby step we take in obedience to our Master is a gift of grace from him to us. Therefore, we should never think of our service to God as a way to repay him in gratitude for his goodness to us, because every step we take in that so-called payback is another gift from him, and it takes us deeper into debt to grace, which is a glorious place to be forever and ever and ever. We will never not be debtors to God’s grace. For all eternity, with every act of glad obedience, we will go deeper and happier into debt to the praise of the glory of his grace.
Life Under the Waterfall
Here’s one last picture of this peculiar kind of service to God. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). So, the question is, How do you serve money? That would be a clue. Serving money doesn’t mean doing things to meet money’s need. You serve money by calculating all your plans, your efforts, to benefit from what money promises you. You calculate your whole life to benefit from what money promises you. Your life revolves around trying to put yourself in the position of the greatest benefit from money.
That’s also what it means to serve God. You serve God by calculating all your plans and all your efforts to benefit from all that God promises to be for you. Your life revolves around trying to put yourself under the waterfall of God’s greatest blessing, positioning yourself for the greatest benefit God has to give — namely, himself.
So, I conclude, yes, God enlists us into his service, which means he calls us to have a part in accomplishing his purposes, not meeting his needs. And he accomplishes his purposes precisely by supplying the grace to do our work, because the giver gets the glory; the servant gets the joy. That’s God’s purpose for his world: his glory and the joy of his people in him.