Don’t Do God’s Will Like an Atheist

by John Piper 
September 24, 2013

After my message to the Liberty University student body last week, a perceptive student asked this clarifying question: So you don’t believe that altruistic acts are possible or desirable?

I asked for his definition of altruism so that I could answer what he was really asking. 

He said, “Doing a good deed for others with no view to any reward.” 

I answered: that’s right, whether or not it’s possible, I don’t think it’s desirable, because it’s not what the Bible teaches us to do; and it’s not what people experience as genuine love. 

Because it isn’t genuine love.

When God Is Glorified

I had said in the convocation message: Doing right for right’s sake is atheistic. 

Christians should do what’s right for God’s sake; because the Bible teaches us to do everything for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

But God is not glorified if we leave him out of account, and say that doing a right deed is its own justification. 

Nothing is its own justification, if God is left out.

Christians should do what God says is right because in doing it we enjoy more of God. 

Jesus was motivating us to be generous to others when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). 

I’m simply saying that this motivating, promised “blessedness” is not mainly more money, but more God. 

God delights to reveal more of himself to the generous than to the stingy (John 14:23).

This motive glorifies God. God is glorified when he is desired as a treasure. 

If we want a deeper fellowship with him because he makes us happier than anyone else, we glorify him. 

So to be motivated to do right by the desire for more of God glorifies God.

How Jesus Motivates

Jesus said that when we are slandered as Christians we should rejoice (Matthew 5:12) and love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) “for great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:12), and “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:45). 

The motivation he appeals to is that the path of sacrificial love leads to an increase of joy in our relationship to God as Father.

Jesus motivated us to “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” to our feast “because they cannot repay [us].” 

Then he added: “For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:13–14). 

In other words: Be generous; make sacrifices in this world; because great is your reward in heaven.

This reward, of course, includes everything in God’s inheritance. 

You will be an “heir of the world” (Romans 4:13). 

“All things are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21). 

The meek “shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). 

Yes, the reward includes earthy things. 

But in that day there will be no danger of idolatry. 

The earth and the heavens and all things will declare the glory of God, and the essence of our joy in them will be joy in him. 

What makes our reward truly great is the greater fullness of our fellowship with God: “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

This “fullness” and this “forever” are behind the motivation of the early Christians when they did what was right and suffered for it. 

They visited fellow Christians in prison because they saw this reward: “You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34). 

They rejoiced in persecution because their reward was great in heaven. 

That’s where they got the courage to risk their lives: It “had great reward” (Hebrews 10:35).

So I answer again: “Doing a good deed for others with no view to any reward” is unbiblical and atheistic. 

It dishonors God. 

He offers more joy in his fellowship to those who do right “for his sake” than “for right’s sake.” 

If we don’t embrace the offer of this reward in doing good, we belittle him. 

But if do embrace the offer, we show him as our supremely desired treasure — above all the rewards of doing wrong.

Our Joy in Loving Others

Finally, I said to the student’s good question: Not only does trying to do right for right’s sake dishonor God, it doesn’t show love to others. 

People don’t experience it as love. 

But why would they experience the good we do for them as love, if we are seeking our greater joy in God? 

Aren’t they just being used?

No. It’s because part of the greater joy we seek in God, by doing them good, is the inclusion of them in our joy. 

Our joy in God would be expanded by their joy in God. 

We are not using them for our greater joy. 

We are wooing them into our greater joy, and desiring that they become part of it.

But doing right for right’s sake does not have this effect. 

Suppose I go to visit Ethel in the hospital, an older lady who just had a heart attack. 

I lay my hand on her tiny arm and she opens her eyes and says, “O pastor, you didn’t need to come.” 

Suppose I respond, “I know, but it was my duty to come. 

It was the right thing to do for its own sake. So I came.” That answer does not make Ethel feel loved.

But suppose I say, “I know, but it always makes me happier in God, Ethel, to bring some encouragement to you, and lift you up into what the Lord has promised.” 

Ethel would never say, “You are so selfish. All you ever think about is what makes you happy.” 

She wouldn’t feel this, even though I did say, “It always makes me happier. . .” 

And the reason she wouldn’t is that my pursuit of more joy in God by doing good to her, and wanting her to be part of it, is what genuine love is.

May God protect us from the atheistic notion of doing right for right’s sake. 

And may he make us into the kind of strange and wonderful lovers who deny ourselves the “fleeting pleasures of sin,” and “choose to be mistreated with the people of God,” because we “look to the reward” (Hebrews 11:25–26).

Want the Spirit? Go to Jesus

 by John Piper

You want the Spirit ? You go to Jesus. 
You want power ? You go to Jesus. 
You want relief from your burdens by the Spirit ? You go to Jesus. 
Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. He's not available from anyone else.   

"This is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit" (John 1:33). 

So what does that mean? 

It means, first of all, that from now on, now that God has become man, from now on the Holy Spirit will come to people through Jesus Christ alone.

It takes residence on Jesus, so that Jesus is now qualified to be the one who baptizes his people in the Spirit and they get it no other way.

You don't go to a seance for this. 

You don't go out into nature for this. 

The buzz you get out in nature without Jesus won't be the Holy Spirit. 

You don't even want to know what it might be, if you reject Jesus. 

It comes through Jesus. 

The Spirit came upon Jesus, remains upon Jesus, and because of that, Jesus is the baptizer of his people with the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus will be the means by which the Spirit comes to anyone who gets the Spirit.

You want the Spirit ? You go to Jesus. 

You want power ? You go to Jesus. 

You want relief from your burdens by the Spirit ? You go to Jesus. 

Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. 

He's not available from anyone else. 

He's the means. 

He takes away sin. 

And because he takes away sin, we may now be treated with this glorious mercy: the Spirit comes upon us. 

That's the first thing it means. 

Jesus is the only means by which the Spirit is mediated to us.

Read, watch, or listen to the full sermon, "This Is He Who Baptizes with the Holy Spirit":

The X-Factor in Bible Reading

The Bible is no magic book. 

But saying it that way might give the wrong impression.

A strange, enigmatic power stirs when we reach for the Scriptures. Something influential, though invisible, is happening as we hear God’s words read or spoken. 

Something supernatural, but unseen, transpires as we see the text in front of us and take it into our souls. Someone unseen moves.

He is a personal force, fully divine and full of mystery — more a person than you or me, and yet no less an indomitable and ultimately irresistible power. 

He makes the seemingly simple into something supernatural, as reading the Bible transports us beyond the realm of our control. 

There is an x-factor when we read the Book.

More Than Cause and Effect

He loves to strengthen human souls in obvious and subtle ways as they encounter God’s word — whether that Word is the incarnate Christ himself, the gospel word of salvation for sinners, or the written word in the Scriptures.

As much as we may want to master the discipline of Bible intake, to trace the lines of cause and effect from some action we take to some resulting satisfaction of our soul, the Helper resists our efforts to objectify grace. 

He lingers in silence. 

He labors mysteriously. 

He imperceptibly shapes us this morning to make us into who we need to be this afternoon. 

His hands act untraceably as he molds our minds, hews out our hearts, whittles at our wills, and carves at our callouses.

Beyond Our Control

Not only does he hover over the waters, over all created space, standing ready to execute the Father’s will and extend the reign of the glorified Son. 

But he hovers all the more over the divine word — whether incarnate, spoken, or written — standing ready to awaken dead souls and open blind eyes and warm cold hearts.

It was in him that the gospel first came to us “not only in word, but also in power” (1 Thessalonians 1:5), and it was with his joy that we “received the word much affliction” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). It was by him that “God chose [us] to be saved, through sanctification” (2 Thessalonians 2:13).

More Than We Can Muster

With the Helper in view, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23–24).

He is the one through whom now is revealed to us the “secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7–10). 

Our helper is the one who searches everything, even the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10). 

No one comprehends the thoughts of God, except our aid (1 Corinthians 2:11). 

He is the one whom the truly born again have received “that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). 

And so when we — not just apostles, but we Christians — communicate the Christian message and teaching, we “impart this in words not taught by human wisdom,” but taught by him, “interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:13).

He is the promised one, with whom we were sealed when we “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in [Jesus]” (Ephesians 1:13). 

The word of God is said to be his sword (Ephesians 6:17).

More Than Meets the Eye

When we get alone with the Bible, we are not alone. 

God has not left us to ourselves to understand his words and feed our own souls. 

No matter how thin your training, no matter how spotty your routine, the Helper stands ready. 

Take up the text in confidence that God is primed to bless your being with his very breath.

There is more than meets the eye to this spiritual discipline. 

A variable we can’t control. An enigmatic power we cannot command. 

A mysterious goodness we can only receive.

The x-factor in Bible reading is the Holy Spirit.

by David Mathis | September 11, 2013

How Jesus Exposed the Idol of Self-Glory

by Jon Bloom | July 26, 2013

The love of our own glory is the greatest competitor with God in our hearts. 

And sometimes we cloak this idol in a pious disguise. 

In Matthew 21, Jesus exposed this idol in the hearts of a few men with a single question.

It was the final week before Jesus’s day of judgment — the day he would stand before his Father’s bar of justice bearing the sins of all who ever had or would believe in him, and in their place be crushed by the Father’s wrath.

He no longer avoided the treacherous Jewish political and religious leaders. 

He openly confronted their errors and duplicity, pouring fuel on the fire of their fear and hatred of him.

As the Jewish leaders saw it, Jesus was out of control. 

He had been a growing problem for a couple of years. 

But Sunday, he had wreaked havoc in the temple, driving out the sacrifice merchants as if he owned the place. 

And this after he rode into Jerusalem like a king to the wild cheers of thousands — many of whom proclaimed him the Messiah. 

And he did not refute them!

Trying to Win the People

The leaders rejected Jesus as the Christ. 

After all, he was from God-forsaken Galilee. 

And he was a blasphemer and a chronic Sabbath-breaker — yet he called them hypocrites!

Now he had spawned a full-blown crisis. 

If they didn’t take decisive action soon, the Romans would get involved.

The problem was the crowd. 

They had to find a way to win the people to their side.

Jesus’s Stunning Response

After some deliberation, they conceived a question that would surely hang Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. 

Either answer would incriminate him, divide the crowd, and give them cause to arrest him.

On Monday morning, as Jesus was teaching in the temple, the appointed delegation made their way to him through the crowd. 

The spokesman loudly asked, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus, sitting, leaned back a bit and squinted up at them. 

The tension was thick.

Then he answered, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where did it come from? From heaven or from man?”

This was a stunning counter. They faltered. The crowd began to murmur. Their hesitation was humiliating.

Their Politically Expedient Lie

They huddled for a quick conference. “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” How had Jesus managed to flip the horns around on them?

They decided to retreat. “We do not know.” It was a politically expedient lie.

Restrained anger flashed in Jesus’s eyes. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

The question the Jewish leaders asked, had it been sincere, would not have been wrong. 

They were supposed to guard God’s truth and God’s people. That’s why Jesus was willing to answer it. 

But his prerequisite question revealed that their apparent truth-guarding was a sham.

John the Baptist’s love for God’s glory and truth had cost him his head. 

Jesus’s love for God’s glory and truth would get him crushed by God’s wrath. 

Jesus’s question was designed to reveal whether these leaders loved God’s glory and truth more than public approval. 

If they answered him straight, he would give them a straight answer.

But they were “afraid of the crowd.” In other words, they loved human approval and their own reputations more than they loved the truth — more than they loved God. So they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:25).

Rigorously Truthful in What We Profess

We must remember that we do the same thing every time we distort or deny the truth for the sake of people’s approval. 

Self-glory is revealed to be an idol in our heart when the Lord presents us with an opportunity to glorify him by speaking the truth about our convictions or our sins, yet we are unwilling to do it for fear of what someone else will think of us.

Now, we have all done this. So thank God for the cross that covers such sins! “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

But today, let’s resolve not to be afraid of the crowd. 

Rather, let’s love God’s glory more than our own by being rigorously truthful in what we profess or confess.

He Loved Me and Gave Himself for Me

by John Piper | July 30, 2013

I want believers in Christ to enjoy being loved by God to the greatest degree possible. 

And I want God to be magnified to the greatest degree possible for loving us the way he does. This is why it matters to me what Jesus really accomplished for us when he died.

There is a common way of thinking about Christ’s death that diminishes our experience of his love. 

It involves thinking that the death of Christ expressed no more love for me than for anyone else in the human race. 

If that’s the way you think about God’s love for you in the death of Jesus, you will not enjoy being loved by God as greatly as you really are.

Feeling Specially Loved by God

I wonder if you have ever felt especially loved by God because of Ephesians 2:4–5? “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”

Six things stand out here in Ephesians 2:4–5.

1. The phrase “great love.”

“Because of the great love with which he loved us.” That phrase is used only here in the New Testament. Let it sink in. God loves his own with a “great love.” Surely Paul writes this so that we will enjoy being greatly loved.

2. The peculiar greatness of this love that moves God to “make us alive.”

“Because of the great love with which he loved us, God made us alive.” His great love is the cause of our life. Our life did not cause the greatness of his love for us. It’s the other way around. The greatness of his love made us alive.

3. Before he made us alive, we were “dead.”

“Even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive.” 

There is such a thing as the living dead. Jesus said, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60). 

Before God made us alive, we were the living dead.

We could breathe and think and feel and will. But we were spiritually dead. 

We were blind to the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:3–4); we were stone-hearted to his law and could not submit to him (Ephesians 4:18; Romans 8:7–8); and we were not able to discern spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14). 

Only God could overcome this deadness so that we could see the glory of Christ and believe (2 Corinthians 4:6). 

That’s what he did when he “made us alive” (Ephesians 2:5).

4. God does not make everyone alive.

What happened to you, to bring you to faith, has not happened to everyone. 

And remember, you don’t deserve to be made alive. 

You were dead. You were “by nature a child of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). 

You did not do anything to move God to make you alive. That’s what it means to be dead.

5. Therefore, God’s great love for you is really for you, particularly for you.

It is not a general love for everyone. 

Otherwise, everyone would be spiritually alive. 

He chose specifically to make you alive. 

You did not deserve this any more than anyone else. 

But for unfathomable reasons, he set his great love particularly on you.

6. He has wronged no one. For no one deserves to be saved.

No one deserves to be made alive. We have all sinned and deserve death (Romans 3:23; 6:23). He could have left all of us in the deadness of our rebellion, and done no wrong.

But if you have seen the wisdom of his cross, and trusted his promise, and treasured his glory, he has made you alive. 

Unlike many others, no more dead than you, you have been greatly loved.

The Special Love of the New Covenant

Now here is the connection with the death of Christ. 

When Jesus died, he secured for us the removal of our deadness, and purchased for us the gift of life and faith. 

In other words, God’s “great love” could make us alive, because in Christ that same great love had provided the punishment of all our sins and the provision of all our righteousness.

We know this because Jesus said at the Last Supper, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). 

The blood of Jesus is the price God paid to establish the new covenant. 

And the new covenant, at its heart, is God’s securing, by the blood of Jesus, living hearts for dead sinners.

“I will make a new covenant. . . . I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31, 34). 

“I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19).

 “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27).

Jesus Purchased the Activation

This is what Jesus bought for us when he died. 

And this is what the great love of God did for us when he made us alive in Christ Jesus. 

Therefore, God’s specific purpose in the death of Jesus was not the same for everyone. 

The great love of God, shown for you in the death of Jesus, was the purchase of your faith when you were dead.

He did not merely purchase the possibility of your life that you then would activate. 

Dead people don’t activate. 

What he purchased was the activation. 

Christ did not purchase the possibility for you to raise yourself from the dead. 

He purchased your resurrection. 

Because of a great love for you in particular.

Feel the Greatness of His Love for You

So when Ephesians 2:4–5 says, “Because of the great love with which he loved us, God made us alive,” and Luke 22:20 says, the blood of Jesus establishes the new covenant, and Ezekiel 11:19 says that in the new covenant God gives us living hearts, we know that the blood-shedding of Jesus was an expression of the great love that made us alive.

Whatever else the death of Christ does or is, it is not less than this. 

And this is what I want every believer to enjoy. 

The great love of God for you is not the same as the love he has for the whole human race. 

The love God has for you moved him to make you alive when you could do nothing to make yourself alive. 

And that same love moved him to purchase your life by the death of his Son.

So when you say with the apostle Paul, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), feel the greatness of the words, “He loved me.” 

He loved me.