Joy in God: The Source of Genuine Love

if you abandon the pursuit of your joy you cannot love others because Love by definition for the Apostle Paul is not the raw performance of Duty by willpower it is the Overflow of joy in God or the pursuit of expanded joy in the meeting of others needs if you say I don't care about that Joy I'm indifferent toward the pursuit of that Joy then you're going to be indifferent to an essential element of love and therefore won't be a virtuous person [00:00:06]

I argued that the greatest heart for God in the universe is God's heart that God is passionately concerned with his own reputation his glory his name and that in all that he does in Redemptive history he does to magnify his glory to display his Worth to preserve his honor in the world world and then the next point we made was that even though this sounds very self-centered and therefore unloving to many people it isn't unloving it's the foundation of God's love because in preserving and displaying his glory he is preserving for us and displaying to us that which satisfies our hearts most deeply [00:02:36]

when you are most satisfied in God he is most glorified in you therefore if you try to abandon the Quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God you strive against the glory of God you put yourself in opposition to his eternal purposes to exalt his own name that was last night now the question for tonight is can that be carried through on the horizontal level I find that it's easier to persuade people that Hedonism of this variety is true in the vertical axis of Our Lives namely that we ought to pursue joy in God and that that glorifies God [00:04:32]

the pursuit of pleasure is an essential motive for every good deed and to put it another way if you abandon if you try to abandon the pursuit of full and Lasting pleasure you cannot love people or please God this I find a little harder to convince people of so let let me say it again I State negatively and positively the pursuit of pleasure joy happiness fulfillment satisfaction is an essential motive for every good deed it's very different from what we are customarily taught I think namely that you must in order to be loving forsake the pursuit of your own pleasure [00:05:36]

for in a severe test of Affliction there their Abundance of Joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part now verse eight I say this not as a command but to prove by the earnestness of others namely the macedonians that your love also is genuine now the reason I pick up verse 8 is to get the word love in the equation here he's saying Your Love also should be genuine like their love was genuine well where is their love described their love is described in verses 1 and two so what we have in verses 1 and two is a living illustration of what the Apostle regards true love to be [00:07:58]

love is the Overflow of joy in God which meets the needs of others that's my definition love is the Overflow of joy in God now there I get the godward side love is the Overflow of joy in God that then meets the needs of others or now if I had Desiring God to write over again I would add this sentence I learn as I learn as I as I talk to people about ways to say things better there is a little something missing from that definition and and my my good friend and Mentor Dr Fuller pressed me on it he said John that's too passive it sounds too automatic [00:15:05]

love is the effort that underline the effort to increase your joy in God by extending it to others now that's in the book but it's sort of hidden away in a kind of out of the way Place love is the effort to multiply or increase or double my joy in God by extending it to others and you all know that phenomenon that a shared Joy is a doubled Joy when you're prevented from sharing a great and good thing that has filled you up with others it goes sour on you if you can't let it out somehow and so I I want to add that effort or questing or Pursuit Dimension [00:16:06]

love is the Overflow of joy in God but that overflow has in it a kind of Desire that the that the joy really be embraced by others because when it's embraced by others my joy is increased in God I also mentioned last night this whole issue of whether or not love is a feeling and uh pointed to Joseph Fletcher's book The Situation ethics where he said it's not a feeling because it can be commanded and I rejected that and I want to pick up on that now tonight and say it's not simple enough to say love Is Just action that you do for somebody's good when you might hate their guts or feel no inclination to do it except raw willpower [00:16:48]

love is always more than action not less but more because Jesus said greater love has no man than this than that he lay down his life for his friends this verse says you can lay down your life for your friends and not have any love at all so to put those two together you have to say what more must there be when you lay down your life for your friends what is the element of there and and it's something more than raw action raw action never is equated with love that verse I think demonstr rates that so let's go back to the macedonians and ask well what's missing in raw action [00:19:46]

Paul did not hold up the macedonians in 1 Corinth 2 Corinthians 8 he did not hold up the macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8 as examples of love because they were generous he held them up as examples of love because they were gladly generous because they had been rejoicing and filled up with the grace of God and their Abundance of Joy in poverty overflowed and when he saw that he said that's what I'm after that's what God's after when he commands us to love one another not the raw willpower that is generous out of a sense of of Duty [00:20:32]

love is the Overflow of Joy or Delight in God's grace that goes out to meet the needs of others or love desires to expand once it's been filled it's like a I think I Ed the analogy in the book of a weather high pressure Zone when a high pressure Zone meets a low pressure Zone and this is a needy person what is created wind is created draft it go it's like this you know the high pressure Zone begins to expand to fill the low pressure Zone and I ask now what's what's the moral name of that wind and the answer is love [00:21:21]

if you abandon the pursuit of your joy you cannot love others because Love by definition for the Apostle Paul is not the raw performance of Duty by willpower it is the Overflow of joy in God or the pursuit of expanded joy in the meeting of others needs if you say I don't care about that Joy I'm indifferent toward the pursuit of that Joy you're going to be indifferent to an essential element of love and therefore won't be a virtuous person [00:22:34]