Did Jesus Die because of Joy or Indifference, Part 4

No one has done more in this day to promote the idea that God acts to magnify his own glory in the world than John Piper. He writes,

Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God’s ultimate goal. These he performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment he has in glorifying himself…If God were not infinitely devoted to the preservation, display, and enjoyment of his own glory, we could have no hope of finding happiness in him. But if he does in fact employ all his sovereign power and infinite wisdom to maximize the enjoyment of his own glory, then we have a foundation on which to stand and rejoice (Desiring God, expanded edition; Multnomah Press, 1996, 33).

Piper is quick, however, to credit those in recent history who influenced his thinking along these lines. Specifically, he mentions Blaise Pascal and C. S. Lewis.

Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician, inventor, and philosopher spoke of the fact that all men seek happiness, so that whatever they do is motivated by a pursuit of joy:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

Some may respond that this is the very reason why we ought to be motivated by duty, and not personal joy. In doing so, they argue for a joy-less existence, hardly the picture in Hebrews 12:2 of Christ, our example. Pascal continues:

There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

Pascal reminds us of a fundamental Christian truth: while unbelievers see humanity as one, in fact, there is a distinct difference between regenerate and unregenerate life, thought and knowledge. I think one of the reasons why some Christians don’t want to accept joy as the motivation for all things is that they don’t trust the human heart (and they shouldn’t!). But we must make a distinction between the redeemed heart and the unredeemed. As regenerate I now know what truly makes me happy, and so can pursue it, always being guided by the Word. Those who want a duty-based love don’t seem to trust the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification to give us new, redeemed desires to pursue.

Piper also credits C. S. Lewis, whose sermon, The Weight of Glory, contains a well-known analogy. Piper says that the first page of the sermon was one of the most influential pages of literature he had ever read. This passage show that the problem with human beings is that they don’t seek pleasure (joy) with nearly the resolve and passion as they should.

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love- You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

 If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

That last line gets to the heart of the issue, I believe. The problem with duty-based love is not that it seeks no pleasure, but it seeks lower pleasures, pleasures that are often subtly very wicked. Duty-based love seeks the pleasure of satisfaction that I have been virtuous, maybe even noble, and feeds my pride. Duty-based love seeks the pleasure of having done what is morally good, and so now I feel good in myself, feeding my self-righteousness. Duty-based love seeks the pleasure of knowing I have done my duty, so that I can justify myself when I judge others for not having done theirs. Oh yes, duty-based love seeks pleasure as much as debased eroticism, just with a more respectable outcome.

But both duty and hedonistic eroticism share a common feature—they seek too little joy, or they seek it in ways that brings only minimal joy. In Part 5, we’ll explore John Piper’s explanation of why the pursuit of joy ought to be the motivating factor for everything we do, for everything we do is worship.

Did Jesus Die because of Joy or Indifference? Part 3

Since neither the context of Hebrews 12:2, nor the rest of the NT portrays ideal love as dispassionate duty, as Kenneth Wuest supposes, the question begs to be asked, where did we get this idea? Significant theological and philosophical objections also can be raised against this view.

In response to Wuest’s second point, that there is a necessary connection between selflessness and a refusal to benefit in any way from a loving act, we must reject this as the case. First, as mentioned above, ekenosen in Philippians 2:7 by no means entails that Christ emptied himself of anything, much less of self. Christ’s “self” is not in conflict with his love and supremacy, such that it needs to be laid aside. However, granting Wuest’s understanding of Christ emptying himself of self, there is still no logical entailment between selflessness and refusing to benefit in any way from the cross. It is entirely possible to act selflessly and still receive joy from one’s act (1 Thess. 3:9). More on this later.

Wuest seems to adopt the idea of duty that was articulated most clearly by Immanuel Kant, an 18^th century German philosopher. Kant believed that for an act to be truly virtuous, it should be done with no consideration for the benefit the individual may receive by performing the act. The purest act would be that in which no benefit could accrue to the performer of the act. If the individual received any benefit whatsoever, said Kant, the act would be of no moral value and meaningless.

Kant’s morals were consistent with his philosophy, which divided knowledge between the phenomenal (that which can be empirically observed), and the noumenal (that which is known apart from the senses, such as God, the soul, and the thing in itself). We can believe the noumenal, said Kant, but we can only know the phenomenal. Therefore, in judging an individual’s act, the motive is inaccessible to the senses, and therefore all that counts is the act itself. The nobility of an act of love or duty is intrinsic in the act itself, with no consideration for the motives of the individual performing the act. According to Kant, then, it wouldn’t matter why Jesus went to the cross, just that he went to the cross. And even more, if Jesus received no benefit from his crucifixion, his death would be morally superior and purer. And since it’s Jesus, we must assign to him only the purest motives.

This distorted view of love and selflessness has unfortunately infected many definitions of love in Christian writing and teaching. And it is simply not biblical. God does not act dispassionately. While God is essentially impassible, in his creation of the world and covenanting together with us through Christ, he condescended and bound himself to us in Christ. His relationship is one of genuine emotion, including love, joy, wrath, and jealousy. This distinction between the essential attributes of God and the creational (or covenantal) attributes understands God to be immutable, yet genuinely respond to his creation with real emotion. As a result, there is no need to deprive Jesus of a motivation of joy in his death.

In addition, the preceding context of Hebrews 11 makes it clear that the heroes of the faith did not live from a sense of “pure” duty and Kantian indifference. Rather, they were motivated by the reward that “lay before them.” Hebrews 11:13-16 presents the paradigm, which is followed by several examples of heroes who lived for (the joy of) future reward:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

For he [Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (11:10)

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 than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (11:24-26)

Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. (11:35)

As these verses demonstrate, these heroes of the faith had a motivation of reward, or we could say, the joy of reward for what they did. This joy for what they would receive did not conflict in any way with their God-pleasing faith. In fact the opposite is true. We have already shown that there is no necessary connection between selflessness and a refusal to benefit in any way from a loving act. But it goes one step further. There is a necessary connection between an act of faith or obedience and the motivation for that act. Here is the principle: if an act of obedience or faith is not done out of a cheerful heart (seeking joy), it is not acceptable to God (2 Cor. 9:7).

Now we have turned Wuest’s essay on Greek prepositions on its head. While the Greek text certainly allows the sense of substitution or exchange in the use of anti, it is most certainly not a valid argument to say, as he does, that the rest of Scripture conflicts with our conclusion. Rather, the rest of Scripture stands in testimony against a Jesus who would die out of Kantian indifference.

Hebrews 12:2 depicts Jesus as seeking maximum joy for his own glory. He thought little of the shame of the cross because of the magnitude of the joy that would be his after securing redemption for his people. By securing redemption, he guaranteed that there would be for all eternity a people who would magnify his glory (Heb. 12:28-29). His motivation, then, was ultimately for his glory.

In Part 4 of this essay, we will look at the richness of joy-motivated love in the writings of men such as Blaise Pascal, C. S. Lewis, and John Piper. These men help reshape our faulty ideas about Christ’s love and ours.

The Mystery of God’s Essence Contemplated

Reference to God’s incomprehensible essence also warns us against imagining what God is like, which would lead us inexorably down the road to idolatry. Recognizing God’s infinite and spiritual essence keeps us from thinking that God can be represented in imagery.

Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford, 2004), 20.

Here Paul Helm touches on Calvin’s view that the essence of God cannot be understood by the human mind. We can know about God all that he reveals about himself in his Word, but we can’t know more than that. As Helm notes later, the activities of God, which can be known, should not be confused with the essence of God, which cannot be known by the human mind. I often use the illustration (flawed, I know) that God is like Windows 7 and the human mind is like a calculator. A calculator simply does not have the capacity to run Windows 7. Likewise, we do not have the cognitive faculties to comprehend the essence of God, no matter how hard we try.

Calvin warned against philosophical speculation about the essence of God that goes beyond what Scripture has revealed:

Here, indeed, if anywhere in the secret mysteries of Scripture, we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great moderation; let us use caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends. For how can the human mind measure off the measureless essence of God according to its own little measure, a mind as yet unable to establish for certain the nature of the sun’s body, though men’s eyes daily gaze upon it? Indeed, how can the mind by its own leading come to search out God’s essence when it cannot even get to its own? Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself. For, as Hilary says, he is the one fit witness to himself, and is not known except through himself. But we shall be “leaving it to him” if we conceive him to be as he reveals himself to us (Institutes1.13.21).

What does this mean for us? We should worship God as he has revealed himself in Scripture, and not try to understand things for which we were never made (Deut. 29:29)!