Audio Transcript

On Monday we looked at the topic of suffering — in particular, the divine design behind suffering. What is God doing inside of us when trials hit? That was APJ 1852. God is the great physician, and he knows how to use pain in our lives to kill inside of us the sin that robs us of the greatest pleasures — namely, enjoying Christ as our greatest treasure. That Monday episode was a deep exploration into why suffering is not paradoxical to the joy-aims of the Christian Hedonist.

As a complement to that episode, today I want to play for you a sermon clip that stands out to me. In this clip, Pastor John explains how to prepare for suffering. If we are going to suffer well, what groundwork must happen inside of us first? This is a critical point to be made, with principles drawn from Paul’s own testimony in Philippians 3:1–11. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

You know this list, don’t you? He’s listing off his characteristics that, as an unbeliever, he really enjoyed: “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). This is a pedigree that, in the Jewish culture, was simply awesome.

“‘I’ve got a pedigree, and people know it.’ That’s the unbeliever’s satisfaction. That’s the old Paul.”

And when you have a good pedigree, you strut your pedigree. You get the praises, and you bask in the pleasures of the admiration of being a man with a pedigree. “This feels so good,” says the man. “This is satisfying. I’ve got a pedigree, and people know it.” That’s the unbeliever’s satisfaction. That’s the old Paul.

Blameless and Blind

And then he adds, at the end of Philippians 3:5, “I have three other things that make my life glorious. First, I am a Pharisee. There are no better law-knowers and law-keepers than Pharisees. And I’m outstanding.” Or as Paul says in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.” Oh, he had a lot going for him in his reputation.

Paul goes on to say in Philippians 3:6, “And zeal-wise — I took on the church, this renegade sect that’s undermining what I’ve lived for, calling this crucified criminal ‘the Messiah.’ What a blasphemy! And I’m taking it on from city to city and bringing it down. That’s who I am. That’s my identity. Has anybody got zeal? I’ve got zeal. The rest of you cowards are afraid to take on this sect. I’ll take it on.” Oh, how he had meaning, significance, purpose in his life.

And finally, he says, “As to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). This verse is why I think Paul was, by and large, free in his conscience. I know a lot of people try to say things like, “His conscience was killing him all the time because of this and that.” I’m not sure of that because Paul used to say, “I was blameless.” He was blind, but he was blameless in his eyes.

When Loss Becomes Gain

Now he meets Christ in Acts 9, on the Damascus road, and suddenly his world collapses. He was getting his meaning from a zeal for the law, an allegiance to the law, as he understood it. A passion for God, as he understood it. And at the core of it was the opposite: Jesus, crucified pretender, criminal, rightly executed — and people saying, “He’s the Messiah.”

And there he was before Paul, alive with a glory so bright, a greatness so great, that he blinded Paul. All Paul could do was listen as Jesus said, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). And Paul’s life was over.

“This is how you prepare to suffer: you turn your value system upside down.”

How, at that juncture, did he prepare himself to suffer? Look at Philippians 3:7. He said, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” That’s what he did. He looked at his life and all that list — all that pedigree, all those achievements, all that reputation — and he said, “Now I will regard that as loss. I will regard that as loss.” In other words, “I have now consciously reversed, turned upside down, my value system.” This is how you prepare to suffer: you turn your value system upside down.

Before he was a Christian, he had a ledger. He had a loss column and a profit column, a gain column. Over here, in the column of profit or gain, was “Hebrew of Hebrews” (astonishing pedigree), “Pharisee,” “zeal,” “blameless” (Philippians 3:5–6). Off the charts — what a gain column he had. And over here, in the loss column, was this horrible opposition: Christ Jesus.

And the possibility that Christ Jesus might be the Messiah — well, that’s not going to happen, Paul thinks. But then he meets Jesus. And what does he do? He takes out a big red pencil, and on the gain column he writes, L-O-S-S — and above the Jesus column, G-A-I-N. And everything is reversed in his life.

Preparing to Suffer

Has that happened to you? That’s what it means to become a Christian, right? The shortest parable, Matthew 13:44, says it this way: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” The man counts everything he has as loss, that he might have the treasure.

It was just a field before — just walking through a field on his way to his treasure. Then he stumbles over King Jesus in glory, and he realizes the field is full of diamonds. It’s full of gold and full of silver. God opened his eyes, and now everything else — it’s all loss.

Once your eyes are open, then your mind also makes that transition. Your mind considers everything in your life that way: “It’s all loss.” This is how you prepare to suffer. You get up in the morning, and you consider your life that way. That’s how Paul says it in Philippians 3:7: “I consider it, I regard it, I consciously, mentally am looking at all the goods in my life and regarding them, compared to Jesus, as loss. They’re in the loss column, and Jesus is in the gain column.”

And if you think, “Well, that was just Paul,” he says in Philippians 3:17, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” This is normal Christianity. Jesus said, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Period.

Now, you’ve got clothes on. You probably have a car out in the snowy parking lot. You might have an apartment or a house and other possessions. You probably have an iPhone or computer. So, you own things. And this text says, “You can’t be a follower of Jesus if you don’t renounce those.” You can check out different translations on that word renounce in Luke 14:33. Wouldn’t that be the same as Paul saying to “count as loss” in Philippians 3:7?

So this coat that I am wearing — this is my coat. It is mine. It’s my preaching coat. And I should count this coat as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15221446/dont-we-still-wrestle-with-flesh-and-blood

Newly engaged, I was searching for a good book on marriage. I remember coming across one, commended as a modern classic, with this memorable question on the cover: “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than make us happy?”

Hmm. I didn’t like that way of framing it. Why pit holy against happy? Granted, it’s a “what if” teaser on the cover. Still, this didn’t seem like a worthwhile risk to me, even if the tagline was taking aim at a common idol in our generation.

Of course, at one level, I understand, and grant, that many people have a superficial definition of, and associations with, happiness. To the degree that “happiness” refers to our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings — and requires no new birth — then yes, true holiness, on God’s terms, will often (if not relentlessly) be at odds with such “happiness.” However, I’m not ready to cede the word happiness to such thin, shallow assumptions. That is not what we find when we come to the Scriptures. Nor do we find a holiness in tension with true happiness. In fact, the two are tied together intimately.

Strange Notions of Holiness

Some of us, favored beyond words to be raised in Christian families and faithful churches, have needed to have our concept of holiness renovated after coming to genuine faith as teens or adults. Looking back, and being sober-minded, the fault was likely not our parents’ or our church’s (for many of us) but our own: we were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), alive in the flesh but lifeless in spirit; we needed to be born again. And when God made us alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5), we began to see our Creator and his world with new eyes, and eventually also his holiness, and our call to be holy as he is.

The challenge to come awake to real holiness is not unique in our generation. Three hundred years ago, a young Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) encountered such a barrier, and found it, with God’s help, to be surmountable. Writing about the 16-year-old Edwards, biographer George Mardsen says,

Self-discipline had failed as much as it had succeeded. Self-examination was not encouraging either. As early as he could remember, he had resented much of the endless tedium of his parents’ teaching and discipline. Holiness seemed “a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing.” He did not find delight in lengthy church services. He still had a rebellious nature. He was proud. He had a difficult and unsociable personality, and he did not have signs of charity that were evidence of grace. He struggled with sexual lusts which, despite prodigious efforts, he could not wholly control. (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 36)

Here Marsden surmises Edwards’s thoughts as a teen (in quotes) based an admission Edwards made later in life, when writing on “the beauty of holiness”: “We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13:163).

Edwards is not alone, in his generation or ours. Many of us, in our own unbelief, have imbibed “strange notions of holiness” that seem at odds with happiness, however thinly sliced and temporal our idea of happiness. Having been born again, we need to consider holiness afresh, starting with God’s own holiness, then ours.

Holiness Himself

Holiness begins with God. He is its epicenter. In fact, we might think of holy as an adjective for God himself. We would be hard pressed to take our bearings from any place better than Isaiah’s astounding glimpse of God in his holiness in Isaiah 6. In God’s presence, we overhear the seraphim call to each other, ascribing to God his infinite worth,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

Perhaps you’ve heard that God’s holiness refers to his otherness or separateness — that he is set apart from his creatures and their sin and their world. They are common; he is holy.

Otherness does get at an important aspect of God’s holiness, but it doesn’t include a vital dimension of what holiness is, as seen in the worship of the seraphim. When they say, “Holy, holy, holy,” they are not just crying, “Separate, separate, separate.” They call out in worship; they are praising God as holy, and delighting in him as holy. They are not disinterested. He is not just other, but good. The seraphim have seen and perceived God’s infinite intrinsic value and worth, and now declare, in the awe of glad worship, “Holy, holy, holy.”

And before the seraphim, and redeemed humans, see and perceive it, God himself perfectly sees and perceives his own value and worth. In other words, God is happy in himself. He is the blessed, happy God (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15). As Edwards, having put away his formerly “strange notions,” came to see it,

God’s holiness is his having a due, meet, and proper regard to everything, and therefore consists mainly and summarily in his infinite regard or love to himself, he being infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being. (Works, 20:460)

“In Scripture, we do not find a holiness in tension with true happiness. The two are tied together intimately.”

At the heart of God’s own holiness is his perfect regard or love to, or happiness in, himself. Before God is holy with respect to his creation, he is holy with respect to himself — meaning he perfectly sees, perceives, enjoys, loves, and delights in own perfections as “infinitely the greatest and most excellent Being.” Far from holiness in God being in tension with his own blessedness or happiness, they are inextricably linked. The holy God is first and foremost happy in himself.

Heart of Holiness

What about “holiness,” then, in us, his creatures? Unavoidably, holiness refers to our living in this world, our words, our actions, and whether they accord with the value and worth of God. However, we should ask, What is the heart from which springs such external manifestations of creaturely holiness? The essence of holiness in redeemed humans is the heart that regards, loves, and delights in God according to his worth.

The process we call “sanctification” (meaning, to become more holy, to grow in holiness), writes John Piper, is “the action by which we bring our feelings and thoughts and acts into conformity to the worth of God” (Acting the Miracle, 36). Holiness in us, as God’s finite creatures, begins with our truly perceiving and duly prizing God’s excellence and value.

So, not only does true holiness give the greatest happiness, but happiness in God is the heart of holiness. As Piper says elsewhere, “Try to explain holiness without happiness, and you will fail. The essence of holiness is happiness in God.”

And holiness does not end, or stayed contained, in the human soul.

Holiness with Hands and Feet

Holiness also is to be lived in the world. The holiness that has its essence in our hearts is to be expressed and extended into words and actions that make God’s otherwise unheard and unseen value known to other humans. Just as God’s own happiness in himself “went public” in his creating the visible, audible, tangible world, so God means for our happiness in him to “go public” in his created world through our audible words and visible, fruitful lives.

True happiness in God is the heart of true holiness in us. And genuine holiness in us, soul and body, begins with souls happy in God, leading to bodily words and works that conform and testify to his worth.

Happy and Holy

Back to that book tagline that seemed to play off holiness against happiness. I wanted to ask, Why split friends into enemies? Why give place to that ancient scheme, that what God requires of his creatures must inevitably soil our happiness?

“To be truly holy in the world, we must be truly happy in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.”

There is a kernel of truth we can acknowledge: God cares more about our holiness than the “happiness” that comes from mere temporal comforts. If our definition of “happiness” takes its bearings from secular society, as merely our experiencing momentary, superficial, comfort-based, suffering-free, pleasant feelings that require no new birth, then yes, God does indeed care more about our holiness than that. But I’m not ready to let the world have the word happiness without a fight.

When we see true happiness as deep, thick, enduring, God-rooted joy in God — dazzling in the radiance of the person and work of Christ — we find that such happiness, far from having nothing to do with holiness, is the heart of what it means to be holy. Which dispels our strange notions of holiness as melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant. Come, see holiness as beautiful, desirable, and wonderful.

True holiness in the world begins with true happiness in God. And those truly happy in him will be holy.