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2008·12·12 · 3 Comments |
| Why Do You Want Forgiveness? |
John Piper writes that “Justification is the heart of the gospel, not its highest good.” By that he means that justification is the most important action that takes place in the gospel transaction, but as great as it is, it is only the means to an end. What, then, is the “highest good” of the gospel? Is it simply to get us to heaven, and if so, why would you want to go there? Is it because there is suffering and injustice here, and in heaven “justice and beauty will finally be everywhere”? Or perhaps it is just because the alternative is so painful. Those answers seem very reasonable, but they miss the point. Piper offers the following illustration:
Suppose I get up in the morning and as I am walking to the bathroom I trip over some of my wife’s laundry that she left lying on the hall floor. Instead of simply moving the laundry myself and assuming the best in her, I react in a way that is all out of proportion to the situation and say something very harsh to my wife as she is waking up. She gets up, puts the laundry away, and walks downstairs ahead of me. I can tell by the silence and from my own conscience that our relationship is in serious trouble.
As I go downstairs my conscience is condemning me. Yes, the laundry should not have been there. Yes, I might have broken my neck. But those thoughts are mainly the self-defending flesh talking. The truth is that my words were way out of line. Not only was the emotional harshness way out of proportion to the fault, “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?” (1 Cor. 6:7).
So as I enter the kitchen there is ice in the air, and her back is blatantly toward me as she works at the kitchen counter. What needs to happen here? The answer is plain: I need to apologize and ask her forgiveness. That would be the right thing to do. But here’s the analogy: Why do I want her forgiveness? So that she will make me my favorite breakfast? So that my guilt feelings will go away and I will be able to concentrate at work today? So there will be good sex tonight? So the kids won’t see us at odds? So that she will finally admit that the laundry shouldn’t have been there?
It may be that every one of those desires will come true. But they are all defective motives for wanting forgiveness. What’s missing is this: I want to be forgiven so that I can have the sweet fellowship of my wife back. She is the reason I want to be forgiven. I want the relationship restored. Forgiveness is simply a way of getting obstacles out of the way so that we can look at each other again with joy.
—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 44.
by David
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3 Comments:
Daniel
I can't believe you haven't received a bunch of hearty AMENs to this post yet. I really like Piper's illustration, as I have tried to express the same thing many times - that the reason we come to God (if and when we truly do come to God) is for God alone, and not the side benefit of everlasting life.
I will have to use this illustration from now on.
David
I first heard this illustration a T4G. I was glad to find it preserved in print. I must confess I had never thought of it that way before.
Daniel
I can't say how or when I first came to understand and teach this. The puritan Walter Marshall likened hungering and thirsting after righteousness to desiring God himself, as opposed to desiring the benefits of everlasting life - and I recall now that an example given by Paris Reidhead in his (famous?) meandoring, extemporaneous sermon, "ten shekels and a shirt" illucidating one way in which humanism has corrupted the gospel - which I don't recall being exactly formative - but certainly was something I agreed with, he said:
"But again! The end of all of the religion it was proclaimed was the happiness of man. And where as the liberal says, "By social change and political order we're going to do away with funds, we're going to do away with alcoholism and dope addiction and poverty. And we're going to make HEAVEN ON EARTH! AND MAKE YOU HAPPY WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE! We don't know anything about after that, but we want you to be happy while you're alive!" They went ahead to try and do it only to be brought to a terrifying shock at the first World War and utterly staggered by the second World War, because they seemed to be getting no where fast.
And then the fundamentalists, along the same line, are now tuning in along this same wavelength of humanism. Until we find it something like this:
"Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! you don't want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell when there is a beautiful heaven up there! now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!"
And the appeal could be as much to selfishness as a couple of men sitting in a coffee shop deciding they are going to rob a bank to get something for nothing! There's a way that you can give an invitation to sinners, that just sounds for all the world like a plot to take up a filling station proprietor's Saturday night earnings without working for them.
Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the philosophical stenches that's crepted up through the grating over the pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion. AND IT IS IN UTTER AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY! Unfortunately it's seldom seen. And here we find Micah, wants to have a little chapel, and he wants to have a priest, and he wants to have prayer, and he wants to have devotion, because "I KNOW THE LORD WILL DO ME GOOD!" AND THIS IS SELFISHNESS !!! AND THIS IS SIN !!! And the Levite comes along and falls right in with it! Because he wants a place! He wants ten shekels and a shirt and his food! And so in order that he can have what he wants, and Micah can have what they want, THEY SELL OUT GOD! For ten shekels and a shirt. AND THIS IS THE BETRAYAL OF THE AGES !!! And it is the betrayal in which we live. And I don't see HOW GOD CAN REVIVE IT! Until we come back to Christianity. As in DIRECT AND TOTAL CONTRAST WITH THE STENCHFUL HUMANISM that's perpetrated in our generation in the name of Christ. "
It goes on, but the point was that the idea of coming to God to get something for our benefit is not the gospel, it is humanism, it is selfishness masquerading as the gospel, and there is no wonder that men follow after it - it caters to their flesh, not their soul.