Note: these are devotional posts based on John Piper’s new book What Jesus Demands from the World.

Note: For this chapter, I would highly recommend reading it online (pg. 84), since it is so good. It brings together much of John Piper’s teachings regarding joy and delight together in an accessible and highly helpful 8 pages or so.

Demand #10 — Rejoice and Leap for Joy

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.    (Luke 6:22-23)

Behold, I have given you authority to  tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice  that your names are written in  heaven.    (Luke 10:19-20)

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a  man found and covered up.    Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.    (Matt. 13:44)

These things  I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.    (John 15:11)

Staggering and Shocking

For many reasons, this demand to “rejoice and leap for joy” is surprising, startling, staggering, and shocking! In fact, John Piper has written several books and devoted much of his resources to delving deeper into the command to rejoice in Jesus. So there is way too much to say on this topic in one small chapter.

For this post, I will be doing a lot of quoting, because I want to capture the spirit of this chapter adequately. First, let me provide a  quote from C.S. Lewis which Piper has reproduced in this chapter. Then I will quote Piper on this point and move on.

…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. (C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory)

…the demand that we be happy is not marginal or superfluous. It is a shocking wake-up call to people who are finding their happiness in all the wrong places. Jesus’ solution to our love affair with sin is not merely that we tear out our sin-loving eyes (Matt. 5:29), but that we be mastered by joy in a new reality, namely, God.

Unspeakably Good News!!

The news about Jesus is not ordinary. No, it is good news. In Matt. 13:44, Jesus describes the value of the Gospel (the Good News) as a priceless treasure. It is something so great and so good that people would die for it, so to speak. People would do anything they could to get that priceless treasure.

And so Piper claims, “[God] does not call us to a willpower religion that feels only duty and no delight. He calls us to himself and to his Father. Therefore, he calls us to joy…joy in God and in his Son.”

Self Denial and Joy

The call to experience indescribable joy (see 1 Pet. 1:8) is not opposed to the call to deny yourself and take up the cross. Piper explains:

The demand for joy does not encourage us to retreat one millimeter from the radical demand of Luke 14:33, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” We renounce all those joy-giving things because we have found the treasure hidden in the field and we have been given eyes to see that this treasure—this glorious God—is infinitely more valuable than everything we possess or could possess in this world. This is why we renounce it all with joy.

Piper goes on to give  a quote by C.S. Lewis which points out that Jesus’ demand for self denial is not an end to 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.” Did you catch the last part of that C.S. Lewis quote? Jesus specifies the rewards we will get if we go ahead and deny ourselves in almost every place he calls us to deny ourselves! Jesus sees no problem with motivating us with glorious rewards—because the reward is infinite joy in Christ Himself!

Sober, not Superficial Joy

Let me quote Piper on this point.

What astonishes us most immediately when Jesus says, “Rejoice…and leap for joy” is that he is saying it precisely in the context of pain….

…Therefore, the joy he demands now (“in that day,” Luke 6:23) is not chipper. It is not joy-lite. It is not superficial or marked with levity. This is the mistake of too many people and too many churches. They think that Jesus’ demand for joy is a demand to tell jokes or weave slapstick into Christian corporate life. I don’t smell the Jerusalem-bound Jesus in that atmosphere. Something has gone wrong.

What’s wrong is that the aroma of suffering is missing. For Jesus the demand for joy is a way to live with suffering and to outlast suffering. Therefore this joy is serious. It’s the kind you fight for by cutting off your hand (Matt. 5:30) and selling your possessions (Matt. 13:44) and carrying a cross with Jesus to Calvary (Matt. 10:38-39). It has scars. It sings happy songs with tears. It remembers the dark hours and knows that more are coming. The road to heaven is a hard road, but it is not joyless.

The Fruit of Joy

Piper sees holiness as intimately connected to joy. He sees “the power of a superior pleasure” as the power that sets us free from the “cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). Listen to a few sentences by Piper on this point:

Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensuality. It isn’t. it is hopelessly weak and ineffective. Willpower religion usually fails, and even when it succeeds, it gets glory for the will, not for God. It produces legalists, not lovers.

Another fruit, or rather, result of joy is this. God is glorified. Piper elsewhere and often declares “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” In this chapter, Piper finds proof for the position that joy in God glorifies God from Jesus’ prayer in Jn. 17. “…[Jesus’] intention to sustain our joy in him is part of what it means for us to glorify the Father and the Son.” So this should make us see joy in God as a duty we are to pursue.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Is it possible to be hung up on joy too much?    Is it wrong to strive for continual joy and fulfillment in all that Jesus is to us? Well Song of Solomon 5:1 says “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” From this text, Jonathan Edwards said the following:

Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value…. [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement… There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food.    There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.

There is so much to be gleaned from this chapter, and I did not get into everything. But I think what arrested me the most was this final quote by Edwards. I understand that joy is very important, but so often I lack that joy. Edwards counsels us to put ourselves “in the way of allurement”. I need to be utilizing the means of grace and being in the word and reading and listening concerning heavenly things. I need to place myself there, and God-willing Jesus will share His joy with me in ever greater measures. May He do the same for all of us.

—See all posts on, the Demands of Jesus

Note: these are devotional posts based on John Piper’s new book What Jesus Demands from the World.

Demand #9 — Love God with All your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

Jesus answered, “The most important [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'”   (Mark 12:29-30)

Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.   (Luke 11:42)

But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.   (John 5:42-43)

As I am progressing through the book, I am painfully aware that posting about each chapter slows my reading down. But on the other hand, it causes me to meditate and think on each chapter twice. So I am determined to continue blogging through the demands of Jesus. While I am talking about this series, I should mention that these posts are more than just a summary of Piper. They include some reflection and some rearranging of material for my own benefit. For instance, the alliteration below is not Piper’s. All that is to say you really should get the book, or at least read it online.

The End of Love

This seems a simple point: we are required to love God. But I think it is important. Piper writes:

To love God we must know him. God would not be honored by groundless love. In fact, there is no such thing. If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point in calling it love for God….

Since love is directed to God and depends upon a knowledge of God, the fact that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God (cf. Jn. 14:7-9, Matt. 11:27) becomes important. As the John 5 passage above indicates, one cannot love God and reject Jesus. Further, the revelation of Jesus will enhance our love for God.

A practical application of this point would be that as our understanding and knowledge of God grows, our capacity to love God more also increases. Thus doctrine is not a hindrance to love, but rather it should increase our love.

The Emotion of Love

Piper states that Jesus “changes our hearts to know God so that we see him as compellingly beautiful.” That phrase “compellingly beautiful” is an attempt to stress the fact that love is inherently emotional. It is not a mere decision. You can’t turn it off and on like a light bulb. You can’t just love spinach, for instance. Something must change inside of you to make you love it. Similarly, you don’t just love baseball, it must be something wondeful to you before you can love it.

More than just a decision, many people talk of love for God in strictly “duty” terms. Verses like John 14:15, 21 are used to emphasize that love is more an action not just a feeling. Some argue that the essence of love for God is love for your neighbors. But as Piper points out, Jesus distinguishes between love for God and love for neighbors when he lists the two most important commandments. So, love for God cannot be defined by love for neighbor. This is not to say they are not connected, however.

Two verses reveal that “love for God is most essentially an experience of the affections, not behavior.” First, Mk. 7:6-7 talks of people who “[honor God] with their lips, but their heart is far from [Him]…”. The external actions that the Pharisees rigorously observed did not make their worship acceptable to God. God expected worship to come from a heart of love. [On the New Pauline Perspective, and its view of the Pharisees, see this recent post.] Second, Matt. 6:24 states “…either he will hate the one and love the other…”, from which we can rightly infer that the opposite of love is hate. The word “despise” is also used in that verse. Both “despise” and “hate” are “strong emotional words”. So in contrast, “loving God is a strong inward emotion, not a mere outward action.”

It is the above reasons, supported by many other verses, which lead Piper to conclude that loving God happens when, “we begin to prefer above all else to know him and see him and be with him and be like him.” In short, “God’s glory becomes our supreme pleasure.”

The Extent of Love

On this point, I am referring to the command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Let me just quote Piper’s conclusion here:

When Jesus demands that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, he means that every faculty and every capacity of our being should express the fullness of our affection for God—the fullness of all the ways we treasure him…. “Heart” highlights the center of our volitional and emotional life without excluding thought (Luke 1:51).   “Soul” highlights our life as a whole, though sometimes distinguished from the body (Matt. 10:28).   “Mind” highlights our thinking capacity.   And “strength” highlights the capacity to make vigorous efforts both bodily and mentally (Mark 5:4; Luke 21:36).”…. the point is that every faculty and capacity that we have should display at every moment that God is our supreme treasure.

The Essence of Love

Quote: “Loving God is most essentially treasuring God.”

The  Endurance  of Love

Piper ends with a warning from Matt. 24:12. In the last days, many people will see their love “grow cold” (cf. Matt. 24:12 NASB). To ensure that our love remains fervent, to ensure that all of our faculties continue to treasure God, we need to “look steadily at Jesus and pray that he would reveal God as compellingly beautiful.” Since Jesus reveals God fully (Jn. 14:9), studying Jesus as revealed in Scripture should help us know God more and love Him more.

To conclude, let us be reminded afresh that love for God is a feeling. And that God is not pleased with mere external worship—He wants our hearts to be fervent towards Him. Let us look to Jesus and trust Him to make God compellingly beautiful to us. Let us ask that God pour His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

—See all posts on, the Demands of Jesus

Note: these are devotional posts based on John Piper’s new book What Jesus Demands from the World.

Demand #6 — Listen to Jesus

He called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand.” (Mark 7:14)

As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 8:8)

Take care how you hear. (Luke 8:18)

Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. (John 8:47)

Jesus’ Words are Special

• No one ever spoke like Jesus did — Jn. 7:46
• Jesus’  words were given Him by  God  — Jn. 14:24, 12:49
• Jesus’ words are powerful — (all the miracles in response to Jesus’ spoken words)
• Jesus’ words lead to eternal life — Jn. 6:68, 63

Jesus’ Words and Faith

Jesus’ words are said to give eternal life, yet faith is the condition for eternal life. How are these two concepts, faith and words, related? Jesus’ words awaken faith and thus result in eternal life. Ro. 10:17 says that faith comes from hearing the Word of God. And, the parable of the sower in Luke 8 presents the word of Jesus as the seed from which faith sprouts and flourishes  in the hearts of those whose hearts  are good ground. Further, Jn. 5:24 says you must hear and believe.

Jesus’ words awaken faith because they declare Who He is, and what He is going to (or has) accomplish, namely His atoning work for us on the cross. In short, Jesus’ words are the Gospel. They describe what He came to testify to — the truth (cf. Jn. 18:37a).

This point is important. God only saves by means of the spoken word of the Gospel. We must take the Gospel to the lost for them to become saved. More than this, the words of Jesus in and of themselves are not magical. They carry a message. And it is the message that saves and awakens faith. The message comes to us in words, but nonetheless it is the message that saves.

Jesus’ Words — Rejected or Received

Yet just because Jesus’ words are shared, does not mean faith is awakened. Jesus’ words are either received or rejected.

Why is it that some do not receive those words? Jesus tells us this much in the following verses.

You seek to kill me because my words find no place in you. (Jn. 8:37)

…Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. (Jn. 18:37b)

Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not of God. (Jn. 8:47)

Some have no place for truth. They are not “of the truth” or “of God” and thus do not receive God’s words are hear the message of Christ. Piper comments on these verses as follows:

This is a sobering revelation. It means that our condition as fallen sinners unfits us for hearing the truth—especially as it comes from Jesus….When Jesus speaks, unless God acts to give us ears to hear and eyes to see, there will be no place in us for the words of Jesus.

Piper then quotes Luke 10:21-22

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. [cf. Luke 8:8]

Those  who are graciously given the new birth and granted repentance and faith, they are Jesus’ sheep and thus “hear his voice”, Jn. 10:27.

Jesus’ Words and Me

In application of this chapter, a particular sentence jumped out at me.

The entire life and work of Jesus is one great argument why we should listen to his word. Page after page of the New Testament Gospels pile up reasons to turn off the television and listen to Jesus.

Ponder that sentence with me, will you? Let us purpose to feast on the glories of Jesus rather than the fleeting and often sinful distractions of this world.

—See all posts on, the Demands of Jesus

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∼striving for the unity of the faith for the glory of God∼ Eph. 4:3,13 “¢ Rom. 15:5-7