The Joy and Fulfillment of living to please God
By Jay Wegter
At the heart of the universe is the perfect, pure, eternal, holy love of God.
God’s love is a covenant-making, unearned, immutable love. It is the love for which we were made (Peter Jensen, At the Heart of the Universe). It is a sanctifying love that purifies its objects. But the fall into human depravity drove a wedge into the heart of man—replacing the openness and receptivity of that love with dread, fear, and suspicion of God. Man’s heart became as unresponsive to God as a stone. Fallen man loves this world, not God (1 Jn 2:15-17). But man’s created purpose to glorify God and enjoy Him was not changed by the fall. Consequently, the fall erected the godless world system energized by Satan, and the heart of man became an idol factory and a slave to sin.
The nature of idolatry is about false source—i.e. crediting the creation with what only God can provide. C. S. Lewis describes idolatry as the perversion of a virtue. In other words, it is the twisting of God’s good gifts by tearing them from their moral context. The wonderful gift of marital relations when torn from their marriage covenant context becomes smut, sexual immorality, porneia (Grk.). Historically sexually debauched cultures have allowed the spirit of Jezebel to idolize sexual activity. In antiquity, goddesses such as Venus, Diana, Ashtaroth, and Astarte were regarded as deities or symbols of the worship of illicit sex. The woman’s unclothed body depicted in sculpture, painting, film, and photography became the objectified icon of sensual pleasure. Lewdness was normalized. Lawlessness followed. Nothing much has really changed today in our ‘pornified’ society except that the ‘goddesses’ are now cyber harlots offered to the eyes of the unwary via electronic technology.
What was meant to be a glorious gift, guarded by the sacredness of marriage, became the idol of eroticism and animal passion. The devil’s cruel joke of desacralizing the woman’s body became yoked to the male’s lustful flesh. In other words, one of the most beautiful things ever created —the woman’s body—became an object of lewd allurement to be used by the devil as his soul-damning ‘pleasure palace’ (Michael Walsh, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace). For according to Proverbs, sexual immorality with a harlot is a personal spiral staircase to hell (Prov 9:18). By yanking God’s good and wonderful gift from its moral and spiritual context, eroticism moves a person ever further away from the knowledge that marital relations are meant to be a redemptive glory pointer (Eph 5).
Redemption in Christ is pictured in Ephesians chapter five by a godly marriage. The mystery of Christ and His church is deeply embedded in a marriage metaphor. One could compare the parallel between redemption and marriage to a glorious unfinished poem—a poem not completed until Christ and His Bride; the Church are together in the nuptial chamber of heaven. By contrast, inveterate sowing to raw lust—i.e. in service to the idol of eroticism, obscures the redemptive poem. And as author Gordon Dalbey has stated, taking one’s soul thirst to illicit sex is like attempting to drink from a desert mirage. All you get when trying to drink from the mirage, figuratively speaking, is a mouth full of hot sand and tooth-cracking gravel (Gordon Dalby, Healing the Masculine Soul).
Like Balaam’s insane pursuit of sin’s false reward, the sensualist falls for the deception that lust can be satisfied by bigger ‘feeding sessions’ (2 Pet 2:15). Man in his unregenerate state of alienation and spiritual deadness cannot possibly receive God’s love. Only the miracle of the new birth can grant the gracious gift of a new faculty that delights in reconciliation to God. When did God begin loving His elect ones? How humbling to learn that He loved the elect even in their wicked and ungodly state when their faculties of body and soul were fully in willful bondage to sin. But His grace intervened; the cross-work of Christ applied to the sinner produces a spiritual resurrection (Eph 2:1-3ff.). The renewed sinner has been shown the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:6).
The cross of Christ obtains what it offers, and Christ receives what He purchases. Through Christ’s bloody propitiation God reveals that He desires communion with sinful man, and through the cross-work of Christ, spiritually dead sinners are called, made alive, and reconciled to God (Titus 3:5ff.). God has given Himself to us fully in Christ without reservation. What a phenomenal thing; the God of the universe desires to dwell forever in proximity with us (Rev 21:1-7). By His grace, His self-giving work of redemption involves taking possession of us in a work of definitive sanctification (1 Cor 6:19-20). We are set apart from the world—set apart to Him. We now belong to Him as sons. Thus, having been bought with a price, His taking possession of us prepares us for a consecrated, godward life. For we have been purchased out of the slave market of sin, and self, and Satan.
In Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2 argue that the greatness of God’s mercies toward us ought to create in us a particular mindset. Since we are not our own, but belong to the God who bought us, we have a privileged priestly work to do. We are to present ourselves back to God as His possession, as a living sacrifice. In the O.T. the Levitical sacrifice was bound with cords and slain before it was burned up. But the N.T. believer is to present himself as a sacrifice that is alive. This can only mean that he will feel his flesh resist the self-denial involved in presenting oneself to God. Thank the Lord the slaying of our sin nature was accomplished so effectively by our suffering Substitute that we are commanded to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Rom 6:11-13).
The believer’s priestly mindset of giving himself back to the God who owns him, in daily presentation IS our reasonable, rational, service of worship (Rom 12:1-2). In other words, there is nothing irrational or overly demanding about it. To order one’s life before God as a living sacrifice is another way of saying, in overflowing gratitude, we follow Christ by taking up our cross daily in self-denial (Mt 16:24). This principle of presentation is a holistic command that encompasses universal or whole life obedience, as opposed to giving attention to a few select compartments in our lives. That means that our treatment of others in the demonstration of integrity, honesty, compassion, tenderness, love, punctuality, purity, humility, empathy, care, and generosity is intimately joined to presenting ourselves to God as living sacrifice. We are to live as sons and servants who are at our Lord’s disposal in edifying the Body of Christ—ready to carry out His will in obedience (1 Pet 1:14).
God’s good gifts are to be received so that He is glorified in their use (1 Cor 10:31).
God is the Owner of all, we are but stewards, yet He gives us all things freely to enjoy. Paul says it in this way, “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17). “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify” (1 Cor 10:23). The context in that portion of First Corinthians 10 is the brother’s conscience, i.e. whether to eat meat from a market where food has been dedicated to an idol. In summary, the apostle states, “Whether then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). Beyond the immediate context of chapter 10, meat markets, idols, conscience, and brothers, there is a wider application of verse 10:31, and here it is: believers ought to seek to glorify God in the reception and use of His good gifts, even in the gifts are associated with the more mundane rhythms of life such as eating and drinking.
In His magisterial sermon, “The Expulsive Power of a new Affection,” Thomas Chalmers
avers that the human heart was created to pursue a worthy and desirable goal. And because the human heart was created to go after its highest affection, only a superior affection can displace an inferior affection. Chalmer’s point is that it is counterproductive to preach against worldliness if one does not exhibit Christ and His glory as the supreme, or highest affection. Chalmers goes on to say that the heart cannot empty itself of all affections and then settle for an existence wherein it is but a dry salt wasteland. No, the worshipping the heart was created to house and be guided by an animating affection, namely the adoration and enjoyment of God. Now here is the salient point missed by so many pulpiteers. God-glorifying pleasure is a byproduct of pursuing a holy affection.
To pant after God, to seek His face, to press on to know the Lord, to gain Christ (Phil 3:8-16) –these are the godly man’s animating affections in action. Don’t miss this, the gift of righteous or holy pleasure is nearly always a byproduct of pursuing one’s godly affections. In other words, God has so organized the creation that pleasure is a byproduct of a God-honoring pursuit—even if it is a relatively mundane pursuit such as eating and drinking. There are few occasions wherein raw pleasure is to be pursued directly. Which is why we do not drink alcohol alone, medicate ourselves with mood altering drugs, lose ourselves in gluttony, seek comfort in autoeroticism, or binge on 6 hours of action movies. For our Creator has designed our bodies and souls in such a way that the focus and sacrifices involved in a constructive pursuit generate peace and joy, and often, also endorphins.
The corrupting power of controlled substances is witnessed in their abuse. For the abuse of these substances, which is highly addictive involves pursuing pleasure directly. The craving for emotional pleasure when no work has been done, and no worthy goal has been pursued drags a person down morally. The reason why is because it is contrary to the way God has ordered the universe around the principle of delayed gratification, and around the axiom that the sacrificial energy exerted in a noble pursuit generates pleasure as a byproduct. It is easy to see why drug addicts and alcoholics often descend into petty theft and felonious crimes. For, to pursue pleasure directly, and then habitually depend on that pleasure, as if one is entitled to it—exerts a morally corrupting influence on the person. Thus, when pleasure itself becomes the goal, the very essence of one’s highest affection, it will always be idolatrous. No wonder the apostle Peter said, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (1 Pet 2:11).
God’s good legal gifts are to be received and enjoyed by our bodies and souls to His glory (1 Cor 10:31). Whether fine dining, aged wine, laughter with friends, the marriage bed, parenthood, children, music, poetry, art, foreign travel, or home ownership, it is possible to glorify God in the reception of these gifts. God’s good gifts are to be utilized in a way that glorifies Him. They are to be received with thanksgiving and treated as glory pointers—illuminators of God’s goodness (1 Tim 4:4-5). God’s good gifts have a moral context. And as His image and likeness, our reception of His good gifts ought to strengthen our love for God and as well as our gratitude to Him. What a weighty thing of gravitas it is to bear forever the image of the one true God. For we are created to reflect Him, and it is the bearing of His image that fits us to know Him in a personal relationship. And with that image as our creational identity comes great responsibility. We are to make sure that the virtues of Christ are evident and visible in all our relationships, for ultimately, we are representing God and not ourselves.
The reception of God’s gifts is only safely done IF pleasing God is ever our goal. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please
Him
in all respects
, bearing fruit in every good work and
increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Col 1:8-12). Paul indicates that being filled with the knowledge of God’s will is closely tied to pleasing Him in all respects. But that is where so many professed believers part company with the apostle. To please God in all areas of life is a function of diligently seeking to be filled with the knowledge of His will. In other words, filled with the knowledge of His commands.
Paul knew that at the Judgment Seat of Christ, he would be evaluated by a particular standard, by his fidelity to Christ’s commands. Thus, he states, “Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor 5:9-10). The genuine believer will keep a close watch on himself, knowing that what remains of his lower nature tends to produce a fickle if not truant heart.
How do I eat and drink to God’s glory? Do all to God’s glory is a command extending even to the partaking of the basic rudiments of life. Americans are experiencing life in the freest country in the world. There is a nearly endless variety of foods, drinks, desserts, and stimulating experiences, all which place believers in situations which require discernment. It is wise to ask: will this activity strengthen my love for God? Will it glorify Him? Can I legitimately give thanks for this thing? Will it edify my bond with others? Am I redeeming the time? Is this thing or activity self-focused or others focused? Will it make me more self-absorbed, or will it nurture and strengthen my relational ties? Is there ‘legal’ under Christ rest and refreshment in this? Some things might be quite neutral in terms of the above questions. And it is true that rest and reflection, rustication and recreation have their place, for the demands of life can be phrenetic and exhausting. Vacations are designed around the beauty of creation, granting a temporary respite from our daily humdrum routines.
The affections and loyalties of the soul are expressed by the deeds of our bodies. But a great deal of dualism has infected the Christian’s mind. That dualism tends to sever or create a rend or tear in the bi-unity of body and soul. The symptom of which is the misnomer that God cares about the soul, the heart, but not as much about the use of the body. This error rooted in ancient Gnosticism manifests itself in the turning of a blind eye to the desacralization of the human body. Immodesty, lewdness, fornication, and pornography are treated as if they were but areas of human weakness such as forgetfulness, or oversleeping. That oversight is not insignificant, for the desacralizing of the human body is a frontal attack on the reality that we humans bear the image of God.
When a good gift of God becomes an idol, it is a false integration point (Francis Schaeffer). In other words, the idol offers to integrate us, fulfill us, make us whole, and enhance our genuine humanness. Only loving God first and supremely in Christ can guard our hearts from idols (1 Jn 5:21). How to get through this world unstained was a theme heavy on John Bunyan’s heart when he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. The devil aims his rage at God at the image of God. The evil one knows we were made for God, and he knows that devotion to idols mangles the image of God in us. In countless cases, habitual idolatry can mutilate the image of God beyond recognition. The present culture war that is raging in the West is a battle between two mutually exclusive worldviews. This war to the death has two rival views of freedom and fulfillment. As Thomas Sowell has quipped, one view proposes that freedom and fulfillment are tied to unrestrained human expression. The other, the worldview of biblical theism states that freedom is found in restraint, i.e. in submission to God by obedience to His moral order. The world has declared war on God’s self-revelation in the gospel. For the evangel proclaims that we only, and solely find our story in God’s story—and not in ourselves. God’s story is a love story—not of a hero’s self-discovery but of a hero’s ultimate self-denial and self-sacrifice. And only by faith in the One who made that sacrifice will we discover the meaning of life, of human existence, and why we were born—namely to know the God of the universe. “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Eph 5:1-2).
The sticky problem of self-love. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:31; Mt 19:19b; Mt 22:39; Lev 19:18b). In the mid-decades of the 20th century, psychology, posing as authoritative science, pressed for the idea that self-love is a vital part of mental health. The change in magazine titles indirectly reflects the evolution of selfism in America; Life Magazine; People Magazine; Us Magazine, Self Magazine. Sadly, countless professing Christians bought into the idea that self-love is a positive trait—even supposedly finding a defense for that sentiment from Scripture. Popular culture began clinging to that belief as their mantra, chanting the benefits of self-love—even positing that one’s self-love was a reliable measure of one’s potential to love others. And as with the most persuasive errors, what has some truth to it can be the most seductive and destructive. But is self-love as our culture envisions, what our Lord meant in the texts about loving one’s neighbor?
The love for neighbor commanded in Scripture is inseparable from the command to love God first, for the two commands are commonly joined together—the two summing up both tablets of the Law. This links who God is with His establishment of moral order in creation. Thus, to love neighbor as oneself is to give to neighbor the same kindness, respect, and compassion you’d want for yourself. In other words, God’s moral order requires a reciprocal execution of its norms for the good of individuals and societies to be realized. By way of illustration, my safety on the highway depends on another’s safety. How different this is from the narcissistic self-love championed by popular culture— self-absorbed drivers have little concern for my safety. Well, the thoroughly psychologized church-goer may not yet be convinced of the definitions above. So, perhaps he may cite the text in Ephesians chapter five. “So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body” (Eph 5:28-30). “Doesn’t that settle it” he says. “The man who loves his wife loves himself.”
The husband’s calling to cherish his wife does not mean he cherishes her but despises himself. A husband should care for and prioritize his wife’s wellbeing and happiness just as much as he does his own. He is to do so by showing the same level of dedication, respect, and concern in the relationship that he himself appreciates. That means treating her as an equal, as part of himself, not as someone secondary to his own needs. This will involve making sacrifices for her in his decisions which show her personal care and time provision as if his own life depended on it (www.bibleref.com). The fact that husbands naturally care for their own bodies to the point of cherishing their flesh is set forth as standard for nurturing the wife. Cherish your wife as much as you tenderly care for and protect the flesh of your own body. That is Paul’s injunction to husbands. He who loves wife in this way loves himself. To lay your life down for your wife in day to day living means mortifying your egoism and selfishness. When you love your wife sacrificially, she will respond; she will be the wife you dream of. The marital commands to the husband in Ephesians chapter five undergird the reality that husband and wife are one flesh. So close is the bond, that what happens to one is deeply experienced by the other. Therefore, the husband’s sacrificial love for his wife cannot help but come back to him; the wife will find joy and purpose in submitting to her husband and in pleasing him.
Self-love is listed in 2 Timothy chapter three as one of the marks of an apostate age. “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these” (2 Tim 3:1-5). This present author recalls speaking to a man outside of Grace Community Church where John MacArthur pastors. The disheveled man spoke articulately though he appeared to live on the street. He said, “for a few years I lived solely for pleasure. I can tell you from experience that it cancels out the ability to love God.” That certainly is a life parable illustrating 2 Timothy 3. The carnal flesh fruit, self-love is cited in this Bible chapter as displacing God at the center of one’s affections (Ralph Earle in NIV Bible Commentary, Barker, Kohlenberger, Eds, p. 914). ‘Looking out solely for number one, for self’ is also targeted in the book of Jude. For apostates are described as, “. . . caring for themselves” (Jude 12).
Other passages cautioning about preoccupation with self are: “Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor” (1 Cor 10:24). “And, now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification” (Rom 15:1-2). The context of the Romans chapter 15 passage is a hearty willingness to set aside my Christian liberty for the sake of a brother with a weak conscience. In other words, if asserting my Christian liberty would cause my brother to be scandalized in his conscience, to stumble, then I will gladly please him by setting aside my privilege. This is a function of loving my neighbor as myself. Certainly, in the life of the Body of Christ there are countless opportunities to edify our brothers and sisters. But to do so with alertness involves heart preparation, a mindset in which we determine to place our brother’s needs on a par with, or above our own. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4). Consider how this attitude is the opposite of the attraction church model. The consumer-oriented designer churches that have popped up in the last few decades tend to leave the self quite comfortable and undisturbed.
The Christian understanding of aesthetics directly opposes the world’s conventional wisdom concerning beauty.
Biblical worldview suggests that what is beautiful is simultaneously the good, the true, and the real (Albert Mohler). Plato recognized that the good, the beautiful, the true and the real are all essentially reducible to the same thing. In other words, “if there is one good, then that good must also be true, which must also be the real, which also must be the beautiful. So, the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real, the four great transcendentals—are unified in the One. For Plato, however, the One had no name” (Al Mohler, A Christian Vision of Beauty, Part One, p. 2). But we know the One as Christ, the Logos, the perfect revelation of God (Heb 1:1-3).
Augustine identified the One as the true and living God who is perfectly revealed in Christ. Augustine took Plato’s speculations into the heart of the Gospel—suggesting that Christians understand that our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is altogether beautiful; for He alone is absolute good, truth, and reality. His creation reflects His beauty, truth, and goodness. As self-existent Creator of all, ex nihilo, out of nothing, He is the Source, the Goal, and the Judge of all that is good, beautiful, true, and real (Ibid.). Our Christian worldview ought to bring us to a greater awareness of the ‘transcendentals’ which are inseparable from beauty—namely that every question of beauty is joined to a moral context and a truth context. When we affirm that these God-given transcendentals are an eternal constant, then we are required as believers to “see beauty as a matter of truth to which taste is accountable, rather than beauty as a matter of taste to which truth is accountable” (Ibid.).
It is precisely at this point in the unity of transcendentals that biblical worldview is on a collision course with the world’s philosophy of beauty. The world is eager to call something “beautiful” which is NOT good, or true, or in many cases real. We as believers are called to be ‘salt and light’; therefore, a substantial part of living out our Christian worldview is to keep these transcendentals joined—goodness, beauty, truth, and reality. And that is vital if we are to glorify God in all things. We violate Scripture and depart from Christian worldview if we “sever the good from the true, the true from the beautiful, the beautiful from the real, and the real from the good” (Ibid.).
When we view history through the biblical lens of creation, fall, and redemption; we can quickly see what has gone wrong in the realm of beauty. The original satanic lie in Eden yanked beauty and goodness from its moral context. The forbidden fruit was beautiful to look at, delicious to the taste, but deadly. Since the Fall, we humans have willingly severed the unity which exists “between the good and the beautiful, between the true and the real, and between the beautiful and the true. Why would we want to call something that is ugly ‘true’ or ‘good’? . . . . To do so is a symptom of human sickness, and that sickness is sin” (Ibid, p. 3).
Since the beginning, Satan has sought to tempt by means of a false understanding of beauty. By his lies the evil one separates beauty from truth and goodness—then draws into sin by offering evil as a greater allure than good. “Thus, the confusion over beauty is not merely an item of cultural consternation, nor is it merely a matter of theological debate. It is a matter of redemption. The only way out of our confusion is to know the Creator” (Ibid.). Only in Christ are we made ‘new creatures’ with the ‘mind of Christ’ (1 Cor 2:16). In Him alone redeemed sinners find the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real—and find them restored in unbroken unity. The fallen world has an axe to grind. Because the kingdom of darkness is made up of ‘truth suppressors’ (Rom 1:18-23), unbelievers suggest that beauty is merely a matter of taste, not truth. By contrast, the believer affirms the unity of transcendentals, “we are required to see beauty fundamentally as a matter of truth to which taste is accountable, rather than as a matter of taste to which truth is accountable” (Ibid, Part Two, p. 1).
The Fall severed the unity of the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real—and we were plunged into confusion and rebellion. Having chosen estrangement from God, we aimed our ‘worshipping capacity’ toward the creature and the creation (Rom 1:25). “We began to look at the human creature as beautiful in and of himself [and herself] rather than beautiful because he or she is made in the image of God. Thus, we adopt and bring into the very center of our hearts a corrupted understanding of beauty that bears more signs of the Fall than of common grace which allows us— even as fallen creatures to see this beauty [Ps 19]” (Ibid, p. 2).
The following is an incisive example of severed transcendentals commonly found in the world’s standard of beauty. A fashion magazine cover girl is ‘beautiful’ when compared to the face of a child with Down’s syndrome. But the fashion magazine has offered us something that is less than real. Through make-up, lighting, and digital airbrushing we are presented with a woman who is less than real. The ‘perfect’ face of the model in the fashion magazine answers our desire for ‘prettiness’ but not beauty. Conversely, genuine beauty involves the unity of the good, the true, and the real. When these are in unity, they call us “to look below the surface and to understand that the ontological reality of every human being is that we are made in the image of God. The imago Dei is the beauty in each of us, and the rest is but cosmetic irrelevance” (Ibid., Part Three, p. 1).
Media-driven concepts of prettiness bid us to gaze into society’s mirror for our concept of attractiveness rather than gazing into our neighbor and seeing the image of God in them. Christian worldview explains why the Fall has produced cultural standards which “tend to dehumanize our fellow human beings. We delude ourselves into thinking that attractiveness means beauty. . .. [W]e lie with the attractiveness we portray on the newsstands, on the television, in Hollywood, or in the mirror. . . The whole category of pornography is one big mutual co-conspiracy to deny the beautiful in favor of a perverted ideal of attractiveness. The real is denied, because given the insatiable desire of the sinner toward erotic attractiveness, the real no longer suffices” (Ibid., pp. 1-2).
The restored union of transcendentals, which the Gospel alone can bring, is the destiny of the cosmos. In speaking of the beauty as an evangelistic category, Dostoevsky put it this way in The Brothers Karamazov, “’Beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men.’ . . . the evil one tempts with prettiness, and lies about beauty, and corrupts the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real, sundering them from each other and celebrating confusion. . . Evangelism then is a matter of restoring unity of the transcendentals. . . [That unity] can only be put back together again by the One who created the world, and thus redeems” (Ibid., p. 3).
Says Mohler, “Beauty for us is an evangelistic mandate, a missiological purpose. We are the people who know what beauty is. . . we have seen it in a foretaste, and we have been promised it in an assured promise. In this life we live amidst the pretty, the corrupt, and the artificial. We live among those who do not believe beauty exists, and among those who think beauty can be manufactured. In such a context, we are the ones who have to say we know beauty, and it none other than Jesus Christ the Lord” (Ibid., p. 3-4). When He returns; the reconciliation He accomplished at the cross will be consummated. He will ultimately make a New Heavens and a New Earth “in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3:14). “[I]t was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself. . .” (Col 1:19-20a).
The long-predicted apostasy or ‘great falling away from the faith’ is unfolding right before our eyes. Love of self has replaced the love for God (2 Tim 3:1-7). The psychology of self has become the ubiquitous theology of our age. It is breathtaking that psychology, ‘the science of mental health and human behavior’ is being used to justify self-worship, self-love, and human autonomy from God. We will not make it safely through this world unstained unless Christ is our first love (Jas 1:27; 2 Pet 3:14; Rev 2:4-7). Love for God is our soul’s great fortress. God warned through Moses long ago that loving God is life. The kindest thing you can possibly do for your soul is to love God with all your faculties of soul. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So, choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them” (Deut 30:19-20).
How true and how practical, the kindest possible thing one can do for his or her eternal soul is to love God supremely. In our journey to the celestial city, we must pass by countless idols. The idols of this world are like a black hole. They exert a powerful gravitational pull. They, like Sheol are never satisfied. They spew a litany of false promises. They continually make a bid for a portion of one’s time, talent, and affection. Dear saint, learn to explain to your own heart how receiving the Father’s love, how seeking His face, and constantly returning to Him guards and garrisons the heart so that it is protected from idols. Christian minister, make certain that you explain these things to your own heart so that you can proclaim these truths to the flock.