The other analogy I used was the crystal or the prism. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father” (Matthew 5:16). You’re supposed to be a polished mirror, so that when your life is in the right angle, the right biblical angle, the glory of God shines out in a commendable and attractive way to the world. I said last time that we are supposed to be mirrors of God’s glory, like the light coming through there this morning. Now here’s the way I’m going to show that to you. “God’s demand for love from you is a way to glorify him that is not burdensome.” It is not restricting and confining and a hardship.

I want to show you that God’s demand for love from you, gratitude from you, trust from you, and obedience from you is a way to glorify him that is not burdensome. So now what do you do here? Because in people’s minds you got this oppressive sense - duty, law, burden. We don’t want anybody telling us we should or ought to do something. We are libertarians to the core when it comes to our own personal religion and morality. And so at this point, you’re up against it saying to somebody, “You ought to do something” or “You should do something.” Those words in our culture are fighting words. They sound burdensome they sound oppressive they sound limiting and constricting. “Duty” and “law” are words that sound negative. Here’s Pastor John, explaining how it all connects in a 1989 sermon. And on that point, we see disagreements (or misunderstandings) between Pastor John and other theologians, which we saw in APJ 1584, just as one example.Īt the core of Christian Hedonism is a bringing together of our obedience to God, our delight in God, and our glorifying of him.

This casting of our cheerfulness and joy in God as a point of obedience is something that causes a lot of Christians to scratch their heads.

Those nine texts I just mentioned, in total, have made close to 90 appearances on this podcast now. We see this all over our Bibles, in a cluster of texts we’ve talked about many times over the years: Deuteronomy 28:47 Psalm 32:11 37:4 100:2 Romans 12:8 2 Corinthians 9:7 Philippians 3:1 4:4 1 Thessalonians 5:16, to name a few.

Desiring God by John Piper