Good Like a Medicine

In order to continue studying the mystery of God’s gift of joy, today I want dig into something so sobering but so wonderful. This truth conjures up so many emotions: despair, joy, humility, or possibly disgust and rage. It depends on the person. It is the truth of the gospel that we cannot come to God and receive the joy of knowing Him on our own. It is the truth that we cannot do this because of what we do and who we are.

In this part of the chapter Piper lays out the foundation of our comprehension of joy as a gift. First is the understanding that it is not only what we do that makes us unable to see God but who we are. We are spiritually dead before God in our natural state. When God changes us, we become new creatures. In this day and age that just sounds weird, but it is the very climax of our story’s pilgrimage, and it must be counted as true for us to experience the joy God intends for His children.

Some people, even Christians, erroneously believe that everyone is innocent or good at birth. This illogical belief leads one to think that the problem with people is that they are unaware or ignorant and that there is nothing wrong with them. Certainly there is nothing so wrong with them that they would be against God from the very start of their lives, and certainly it must be some outside force that makes people “bad.” Unfortunately for these people who believe this, they are very badly deceived. I say very badly because this is a very bad mistake to hold to this belief as it affects everything said, thought, and done in a way that ultimately man is on the throne (and God becomes the idiot). Piper says about this,

Paul describes our deadness to divine beauty with phrases like “futility of mind” and “darkened in understanding” and “ignorance that is in us.” And he traces it back to “hardness of heart.” You see this in Ephesians 4:17-18: “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Notice that hardness is deeper than ignorance. Ignorance is rooted in hardness, not the other way around. Therefore we are not excused. The problem with our ignorance of God’s beauty is not innocent unawareness, but culpable hardness. Our hardness is our deadness, and our deadness makes us unable to submit to the command, Love the Lord with all your heart.

Second, before I ever cherish and treasure God, my eyes must be opened. My mind must be changed from against God in my hardness to for God and loving God intead of fighting God. Before I am hostile to God (or perhaps simply the idea of a God). After I am in love with God and willing to die to myself to follow Him and be with Him.

When Jesus is presented to us as the most desirable Person, Lord, Savior, and Friend in the universe, we will not come to him on our own. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…. No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:44, 65). Coming to Jesus as the Treasure and Pleasure of our lives is “granted . . . by the Father” or it doesn’t happen. We are too hard and rebellious in ourselves even to see Jesus as attractive, let alone leave all and come to him as our all-satisfying Joy…

Jesus said it another way. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:6-7). Until we are born again by the Spirit of God, all we are is “flesh”—natural people with no spiritual life, no living taste buds in the soul for the sweetness of Christ. How then are we made alive? The next thing out of Jesus’ mouth is, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (v. 8). The point is that the Spirit is free. He blows where he wills. We don’t control him. He controls us. His life-giving work is pure gift. When you see Jesus as your Treasure, the Spirit has blown through your heart. Your joy in Jesus is a gift.

So what am I to think about all those Sundays I sang I Have Decided to Follow Jesus as a little girl? Does this mean I don’t choose to follow Him because I cannot? What about repentance? What about my part in the whole thing?

The transformation we’ve described is indeed repentance. Repentance refers to the experience of a changed mind. Once the mind was hostile to God, but now the mind is in love with God. Once the crucifixion of Christ seemed foolish, but now it is precious to us. It’s the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor. 1:23-24). Once the mind trusted in human ability to achieve happiness and security, but now the mind despairs of itself and looks to Christ for hope and joy. Christ—and all that God is for us in him—has become our happiness and our security…

… in the end, no human means make the miracle of repentance happen. You can see both the means and the miracle in 2 Timothy 2:24-26: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. [That’s the means. Now the miracle.] God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” We teach and we love, but God grants repentance.

Finally a man, woman, or child cannot come to God because of the spiritual deadness of the soul. This is a horrible reality. If someone is living in this reality, it is truly the worst state. A person can even do religious or “good things,” but the motive is misplaced. The deepest most satisfying joy is not there because God is the object of that sacrifice of worship. (I believe that good deeds are grounded in some kind of worship: self-worship or God-worship, and I am ashamed to say that my good deeds are still tainted by self-worship often.) God in his loving mercy changes all of that and sets the mind’s affections toward Him. God gives His Son Jesus to do this work. God takes this hostile sinner and sets the mind free from its bondage to love self, love money, and worship of everything but God. This is a gloriously beautiful mystery and the beginning of eternal joy!

Here is John Piper’s book: When I Don’t Desire God; I am so thankful he puts his books online since I have a husband who takes all of the good ones to his office!! haha!

PS: The opposite of grasping this is perhaps this kind of perspective. I think those of us who belong to God need to digest this and praise God that He is more powerful than this. When googling “joy is a gift” this is the result that shows immediately after my post.