Delighting in Doing Good
"Whether you eat or drink or whatever
you do, do all to the glory of God" we are commanded in 1 Corinthians
10:31.
But how do we best glorify God? By seeking our own pleasure. I will
argue that pursuit of our own pleasure and
pursuit of God's glory are not two separate pursuits at odds with each
other, but are in fact one and the same pursuit. This is because, as
John Piper has said, "God is most glorified in us when we are most
satisfied in Him." Therefore, to abandon the pursuit of our pleasure is
to abandon the pursuit of God's glory. We will then examine how our
pursuit of joy in God should cause us to do good deeds. This will
provide a further answer to the question of why we cannot love people or
please God if we fail to seek our own pleasure in doing good.
What does it mean to glorify God?
God's glory is the infinite beauty and splendor of His perfect
character. It is the radiance, or shining forth, of His amazing
perfections. God has always been and always will be infinitely glorious
without man's help, and He therefore cannot become any more or less
glorious than He is and always has been. Glorifying God, then, does not
mean making God more glorious and supreme. Rather, glorifying God means
acknowledging, making known, delighting in, reflecting and valuing the
awesome and lovely majesty of God's perfect character. Put another way,
glorifying God simply
means calling attention to the infinite value and excellency of our great
God.
For example, when I tell someone of the love of Christ that moved
Him to die for me, He is being glorified because I am calling attention to
an aspect of His character (His love) and what it caused Him to do (die
for me). When I marvel at God's love
in profound amazement, I am glorifying Him because I am delighting in an
aspect of His character. And delighting in something calls attention to
the excellency of it more than just acknowledging it. This delight in
God expresses itself in praise. "Shout
joyfully to God, all the earth; sing the glory of His name; make His
praise glorious. Say to God, `How awesome are Thy works!'" (Psalm 66:1,
2). You cannot "shout joyfully to God" if you do not have joy in Him.
Because of the excellence and perfection of God's character, those
who are truly born again will naturally cherish and treasure God. For
conversion is the awakening of a taste and love for God in our hearts
(see 2 Cor. 4:6-7; Matt.22:37; 1 Cor. 16:22). Our one passion and
desire in all of life will become to see more and more of Him. And the
pursuit of our own happiness, we find, is not a sinful thing to be denied,
but a wonderful thing to be splurged--on God! Why? Because God is what
makes us happy! God is the object of our delight, since He has granted us
a love and attraction to Himself. So I cannot pursue God without
pursuing my own
pleasure, since He is my pleasure! "O taste and see that the Lord is
good!" (Psalm 34:8). "O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee
earnestly; my soul thirsts for thee, my
flesh yearns for Thee" (Psalm 63:1).
This delighting in God, remember, is one way in which He is
glorified for it shows the worth and excellency of His character. If
God's children were sad and unhappy at seeing His character displayed,
would that show the excellency and beauty of His
character? Absolutely not! God's glory is shown to be marvelous because
it causes us to delight and rejoice! Delight confers more honor than
simple acknowledgment. As John Piper has said "My wife does not accuse me
of selfishness or greed when I tell
her that I am drawn to her because in her presence I feel such happiness
and contentment. This is a way of extolling her power, beauty or
virtue."
We must therefore conclude that God is most glorified in us
when we are most delighted (or happy) in Him. Therefore pursuit of our
own pleasure and our pursuit to glorify God are not at cross-purposes, but
are one and the same pursuit! Isn't this good news! God makes us happy,
because we cherish Him and treasure His fellowship once we are born
again. Therefore, we seek Him more
and more so that we can delight in more of Him. God is more honored when
we seek Him because we want to and because we enjoy Him than if we seek
Him because "it's just right," but He doesn't
make us happy. "Delight yourself in the Lord!" says Psalm 37:4.
I think it should be obvious now why it is not selfish to seek God
out of delight. Selfishness is a matter of where you have your focus,
and in our case the focus is on God. We delight in God, therefore our
focus is on God. We would only be selfish if we delighted in ourselves,
for that would put our focus on
ourselves. We would be self-centered instead of God-centered. But
seeking pleasure in God is necessary to honor Him because this most
glorifies Him and is most God-centered.
How is our delight in God related to doing good?
Glorifying God, as we have seen, is proclaiming, acknowledging,
and delighting in God's character. Good deeds glorify God because they
proclaim who He is and show what He is like. This calls attention to His
infinite worth and thus glorifies Him.
When we delight in God it further glorifies Him because it shows that He
is infinitely valuable and wonderful, since what is wonderful and
valuable will always bring us delight. But how does our passion for the
joy of God's glory result in good deeds to help others?
First, we will do good deeds because they glorify God by
demonstrating His character and calling attention to His greatness.
Since God's glory is our delight, we will naturally want to see Him
glorified in our everyday life. If we cherish God, we
will naturally want to see His character displayed, not just pondered in
our heads. So I forgive one who has hurt me because God is a forgiving
God and therefore I delight in forgiveness more than bitterness. "Thy
testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul observes them" (Psalm
119:129).
From this it should be clear that pursuit of our own pleasure is a
necessary motive to any good deed -- since we are to seek the joy of
God's glory, and good deeds glorify God, must therefore pursue the joy of
promoting God's glory in every good deed. We cannot be indifferent
towards an act that displays our greatest delight! So, to phrase this
first point another way, we do good deeds because we delight to see God
glorified. "I delight to do Thy will, O God" (Psalm 40:8).
Second, our joy in God will cause us to do good deeds because
it is the nature of joy to share and expand itself. "But even if
I am
being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of
your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. And you too, I urge
you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me," Paul writes in
Philippians 2:17, 18. From 2 Corinthians 1:24-2:4, John Piper shows
that love is "the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of
others" (Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist,
p. 96). He notes four things from this passage. First, it shows that
love is a work of divine grace (v. 1). Second, this experience of God's
grace fills us with joy (v. 2). Third, this "joy in God's grace
overflows in generosity to meet the needs of others. [As Paul
wrote], Their abundance of joy...overflowed in a wealth of liberality'"
(v. 2).'" Fourth, we are to give because we want (i.e., delight) to
(vv. 3-4).
When we do good we are not attempting to make up for a lack of joy
in ourselves that can only be met by our good deed. Rather, as this
passage shows, we are already full of joy from our relationship with God
and our delight in His character. Then,
since it is the nature of joy expand itself and share itself, our joy in
God overflows to gladly meet the needs of others. When you
experience
something good, you naturally want to share it so that others can rejoice
with you! We give because it is our joy--the extension of our joy in
God. When I do good for someone, I am
seeking to double my joy in God through the delight of sharing my joy.
Third, we will do good to others because we delight to help
them.
Because it is our joy! This is different from just saying "do good to
others because it helps them." The moral value of a good deed is not
diminished to the extent that we pursue our
own pleasure. In fact, the deed is only morally valuable to the extent
that we do seek our own pleasure. I am not saying we should use others
for our own selfish gain. I am trying to correct the notion that pursuit
of our own pleasure is separate from
pursuit of another's welfare. The truth is that they are not two
separate, mutually exclusive pursuits, but that they are one and the
same pursuit.
I do not seek to get joy from using others to my own ends; rather,
my joy is in the joy of the one I help. My joy is not "from" the
one I
help but "in" the welfare of the one I help. In other words, I am not
loving just by seeking my neighbor's joy. I am loving if I seek
their
joy as my joy. Isn't this what it means to take an interest in
another
person's welfare--that your joy is tied up with their joy? And if you
are not really interested in another's welfare (which means seeking your
joy in their joy), how can we call your good deed genuine? "For he who loves
seeks his satisfaction in the happiness or perfection of the loved one,"
said the philosopher Leibniz.
A simple example should clarify this. Let's say I give food to a
friend in need. He thanks me and says "I really appreciate you doing
this." What if I shrug off His comments with "No problem, its my duty as
your friend. I do not take pleasure in
this." My act is absolutely free from self-interest. Yet, something is
wrong. He is not honored in my giving Him food. Why? Because delight
honors more than duty. He would have been honored if my motives had been
something like this: "It's my pleasure. I enjoy helping you because I
love to see you happy."
As we can see, true love seeks its joy in the joy of others. Paul
brings this out in 1 Cor. 1:24-2:4 when he says "We work with you for
your
joy...for if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one
whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so
that when I came I might not be pained by those who should have made me
rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of
you all. For I wrote you...to let you know the abundant love that I
have for you." Here Paul says that their
joy is his joy and his joy is their joy. Since Paul further says that
he wrote to let them "know the abundant love I have for you" he makes the
connection between joy and love explicit: "Love abounds between us when
your joy is mine and my joy is yours. I am not loving just because I
seek your joy, but because I seek it as mine" (Piper, p. 99).
Clearly, then, it is not selfish to seek your joy in the joy of
the one you help. Selfishness is seeking your own interests at the
expense or exclusion of others. It means either using others or refusing
to share with others, or both. But doing good out of delight in the way
I am advocating is not at the expense of others, but means that you put
such a value on their welfare (since their welfare will declare God's
glory) that you cherish it. And what you cherish always delights you.
This puts your joy not at their expense, but genuinely in their welfare.
Further, this is not a private joy I seek or a delight in my own welfare;
it is a
delight in the welfare of others. That is not selfish, but most honoring
to the one I am helping.
Fourth, we will do good deeds so that we can participate in
what we love, not just observe it. For example, if someone loves
football, they are usually not content just to sit back and watch it on
TV (if they are physically able to play). Rather, they want to also play
football themselves (say, in the backyard). They want to participate in
it, not just watch it. In the same
way, we want to participate in God's holiness and love by having it work
through us, not just consider God's holiness in our
minds. We want to be a part of God's plan to glorify Himself, not just an
observer. So, we are moved to actions which display the love and
character of the God we cherish. This is perhaps a hidden key to
motivation to godly living that is missing very
much in our church today. "Serve the Lord with gladness, come before
Him with joyful singing" (Psalm 100:2). "The precepts of the Lord are
right, rejoicing the heart" (Psalm 19:8).
So here I have suggested four ways in which our love for God and
our joy in His glory will motivate us to do good deeds for others. When
others benefit from our acts of kindness, they see God's character in
action and delight in Him and praise Him f
or who He is. When God works His grace in our heart we are filled with a
joy that overflows to gladly meet the needs of others and in doing this
my joy is doubled by being shared. When God's character is reflected and
shown in the world He is glorified
because His name is being proclaimed, made known, and delighted in by the
people who are helped, the people who do the helping, and the people who
see the helping. And when we delight in something we want to
participate in it, not just observe it.
This, I suggest, is how to own up to the commands to "love
mercy,"
not just do mercy. (Micah 6:8) and to "remember the words of the Lord
Jesus. It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35) and that
"God loves a cheerfull giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). This is how to
delight in doing God's will (Psalm 40:8) and
"serve the Lord with gladness" (Psalm 100:2).
This is the ultimate welfare we should seek in doing good to
another person: That they will praise God more fully and deeply by seeing
more of Him and experiencing more of Him and therefore delighting more in
Him. God is glorified not just by His na
me being proclaimed (spoken), observed (seen), or experienced
(participated in), but most fully by being delighted in. However, before
God's name can be delighted in, it must first be proclaimed, observed,
and experienced.
This is how our delight in God causes us to do genuine, sincere,
and loving deeds. And it is important to have these reasons in view, for
it is possible to seek to glorify God in the wrong way. For example, if
we have as our hidden motives the idea
that we will be exalted when people see us act kindly, and think God will
be gloried by that, we are deluding ourselves. Pursuing God's glory in
doing good requires doing it for the right reasons--because God makes me
happy and I cherish seeing more of
Him and I delight in the joy of meeting another's need so that they may
glorify God.
Motives to guard against
To ensure that we guard against the danger of selfishness, we must
continually examine ourselves with two quesitons. The first is:
Why do
I delight in doing this good deed? If my honest answer is because it
will make me look good and exalt myself by showing how "smart" or
"righteous" I am, I have sinful motives. The
only answer can be because I rejoice in helping others and it also
demonstrates and reflects God's character, which I delight in because God
is my greatest joy.
The second question must be: Why do I cherish God? The
answer
must be because He is magnificiently wonderful and supremely excellent;
because He is a worthy God. If my answer is simply because He can help
me and I do not have a delight in His character, then there is a
problem. Our delight in God must be a respon se to
His worth, not a response to my welfare.
True happiness
As you can see by now, a Christian's delight should be in making
much of God, not making much of ourselves. This is the road to true
humility because it puts the focus wholly on God and not at all on
ourselves. And this is where true happiness is.
I will leave you with the following thought I had one night: "The
treasure that will fulfill you is of another world, and you must deny
yourself to find it. It is totally oppposite of the sinfull pleasures
the world seeks, and you cannot even desire it
unless God opens up the path of a new capacity in you to desire and
cherish the glory and purity of Himself."
For more information on this issue, consult the works of John Piper.
Over sixteen years of sermons, articles and eight of his books are
available by writing to the following address and requesting a resource
catalogue:
< a href = "http://www.desiringgod.org/">Desiring God Ministries
Bethlehem Baptist Church
720 13th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Or you can read over sixteen years of Piper's sermons and access a
resource catalouge on-line. Check out Piper's Notes
MP
All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, by the Lockman Foundation.
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