God was very kind to me when I was 17. Something came alive and something became wonderful. Something became weighty that until that time, wasn’t weighty or wonderful. And it wasn’t the gospel, per se. I had been a believer since I was six, as far as I could tell. What was wonderful and weighty was the thought that I had one life, and only one, to live, and that all eternity would be shaped and determined by it. My destiny would be determined by what I did with this life and the way I spent eternity. And that seemed simply breathtaking to me. It seemed utterly out of proportion that this one small life, followed by a forever, would be shaped and determined by this life. That became very, very heavy.

Asking Big Questions

In 1964, I was a senior in high school, and I’ve loved looking back just to remind myself of some of the evidences of what God was doing. I was a very mediocre teenage poet and published a poem in our high school literary magazine called Leaves of Grass. The poem was written from the perspective of an old man looking back. And my reason for liking this verse I’m going to read you is not the quality of the poetry at all, but the fact that it revealed the weight I was feeling starting in the 11th grade. It was a year later. Here’s one verse from that mediocre teenage poem:

Long I sought for earth’s hidden meaning,
     Long as a youth was my search in vain.
Now as I approach my last years waning,
     My search, I must begin again.

The overwhelming sense that I had was, “That’s just not going to happen to me.” I thought, “I’m not going to get to my 66th year and look back and say, ‘I never could figure this out. I don’t really know why I was here,’ having no united purpose and no lasting vision, but just a big question mark, limping along every day and intending to be as happy as I can be and not get into too much trouble so that I could make something of these few years.” So I resolved that that was just not going to happen. I thought, “I’m not going to come to the end and say, ‘I could never figure this out.’” I thought, “I must figure this out.”

And for me, the word was why. I discovered very quickly that to figure out the why of my existence, I had to know the meaning of why. The English word why is ambiguous. You know this. In German, there are a whole lot of words for why — at least four — and one of them is wofür and the other is wozu, and they help clarify the ambiguity of the meaning of the word why. So if you say, “Why did you eat?” You could say, “I ate because I was hungry.” Or you could say, “I ate to get some strength.” The first one is the cause. When you say, “Why,” you mean, “What was the cause of your eating?” and the second is the purpose. In the second sense, when you say, “Why did you eat?” you mean, “What was your purpose?” So our word why is ambiguous.

The Purpose of Life

Frankly, I don’t care much about the cause of my life except as it informs the purpose of my life, which means it’s massively important. God caused me. But I really don’t care that God caused me to exist unless that sheds light on what to do tonight, or for the next season of my old life. I don’t care. I don’t care about causes, I want to know purposes. I want to know why I’m here in the wozu sense. Why am I here? And I want you to care about that. I want to know why everything exists; to know why the universe exists. Why color? Why sound? Why love? Why hate? Why evil? Why good? Why sports, leisure, work, souls, bodies, government, art, beauty, mosquitoes, laughter, marriage, disease, war, etc. I want to know why. Why do I exist in particular?

In my house, there was a soffit in the wall hanging over my kitchen sink that came out, and I remember it hung there. Now, that little plaque rests on the window frame in my study at home. So it’s been in my eyes for 60 years. That’s when we moved into the house — when I was six — and I’m 66 now. So I’ve been looking at this plaque for 60 years, and it says:

Only one life, twill soon be past,
     Only what’s done for Christ will last.

So I went to college burning to say, “I’m not going to miss this. I’m not going to come to be 66 years old and not know what this was about.” All the rage in the late 1960s was existentialism, which is just a warmed-over version of what you now know as postmodernism, which is a warmed-over version of that. They’re really not very different. The one difference is that they were really serious about their existentialism, and most postmodernists are joking about it. It was a blood-earnest issue for the people in the late 1960s, as they read Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Nietzsche, and the front of TIME Magazine in April of 1966 said, “Is God Dead?” These were things people were dying about, killing themselves over, and acting on in very radical ways.

And as I listened to existentialism, I just couldn’t see it. Here’s the meaning of existentialism, which is the same thing as postmodernism really if you take it seriously: Existence precedes essence. So existentialism comes from this principle that existence precedes essence, which means you don’t have any essence, you make an essence up out of your existence. So it was kind of a radical freedom that said, “Just choose. Do something wild and free and make a life, make a being, make an essence. There’s no power outside of you. There’s no ultimate reality that’s constraining the meaning of humanity. Be. Make it happen.”

Kept From Error

That produced some pretty wild and amazing dramas and books. I couldn’t see it. I simply couldn’t buy it. The Lord was kind to me again to protect me because so much of that was around me, and everybody was thinking, “It’s so avant-garde, so fashionable, so cool, and so relevant.” And I was saying it’s just so insane because I knew one of the implications of it was that if there is no intrinsic essence to me as a human being — no soul, no mind that’s more than chemicals and energy — then love is chemicals and hate is chemicals and joy is chemicals. And everything in me said, “That’s not true. I would die that that’s not true. You will not tell me that my loves and my hates and my sorrows and my joys are merely chemicals.”

The Lord protected me very, very profoundly — in a very existential way, you might say — against existentialism. He was very kind to me between the ages of 17 and 24. Those are just awesome years for me. And that’s where most of you are, I presume. Those were simply amazing years. Everything that has shaped me fell into place in those years. All the major things fell into place between 17 and 24. They were really big things. I’m going to tell you what three of those are in the hopes that they will have a similar effect on you as they’ve had on me. Because as I look back now over the last 50 years, I don’t think I’ve wasted it.

That’s a big assumption, but you’ll hear why. I don’t think I’m ignorant about why I’m here, and I don’t think I’m ignorant about why you’re here, either tonight or on the planet. I know why you’re on the planet and you do too, probably, but I’m going to tell you from the Bible and from God, with great authority, why you’re here. And then the working out of that is a beautiful lifelong thing.

In the Grip of Great Truth

But before I tell you those three things, let me say to you what I said to the students gathered in OneDay in 2000 down there in Memphis. I said — and this is just so important to me — “You don’t have to know a lot of things in order for your life to make a big difference. You just have to know a few massively important things and be willing to die for them.” The reason that is so important for me, and I think will be important for you, is that even though you may think I’m a big shot, I am very average in very many ways that made me very insecure as a person your age. I’ll just give you a few of those.

I can’t read fast. I can’t read any faster than I can talk. There’s some kind of glitch in my brain. I took all kinds of Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics courses and paid a lot of money so I could be more successful and read. I still can’t. It’s useless. It’s hopeless. I just read as fast as I can talk.

Second, I have a really lousy memory. If you introduce yourself to me tonight, don’t come up and say, “Hi,” tomorrow. It isn’t going to help any. I’m also not a comprehensive thinker — that is, I can’t hold lots and lots of things. I look at historians. Historians are people who have to know everything, and I can’t begin to hold in my head what needs to be held if you’re going to be a great scholar.

I have mood swings. Ask my wife. I go from really deep disappointment — I’m going to avoid the word depression because you might give me pills if I say that, though I’m not intrinsically opposed to pills — to really, really high exhilaration. So I’m not always easy to live with.

A Litany of Weaknesses

The last thing I wrote down, so you get a feel for what felt like massive obstacles to me when I was your age, is that I feel I’m an introvert. Now, I’ve come to terms with that and I would like to write a book someday about it. I just thought of this today. I’ve got a new book idea. I would like to write a book someday on how introverts love people because when they’re around people, they’re being drained, and when they’re by themselves, they’re being energized. That’s what an introvert is. I’m energized when I sit with a book and read and write. I get a lot of energy that way, and then I go and I spend it at church.

One way to talk about that is why you don’t really love people. People joke that people love the church and just don’t like people. I want to write a book about that because I have to stand before my God and give an account for the last 32 years of pastoring. I pastor people. I don’t pastor books. And I’ll have to give an account. I have some ideas of what I’ll say. I hope he likes it.

The point here is that as you sit there and you catalog in your head all your weaknesses, and all the reasons why you’ll never make any waves in this world for Jesus, I just want to tell you that it ain’t necessarily so. I have made a few waves. Why? What happened? Why have I written all these books and whatever else? I think the reason is I know a few things. It only takes a while to name them. I just know a few things, and I say them over and over again because I think they are massively important. They just can’t be any more important. I took hold of them and they took hold of me, and I try to say them in as many different ways as I can say them. I try to live them as well as I can live them. And I can hold them in my little head. There are only three or four.

It’s wonderful. It’s just a freeing thing to realize as you’re a student, and as you’re reading all these books and then forgetting. All you do is read and forget, read and forget, and you wonder, “What’s the point of it all?” I’m going to try to tell you what the point of it all is.

Foundations of an Unwasted Life

I’ve got three great truths that if you knew them and they took you, you wouldn’t waste your life. This event is about not wasting your one and only, solitary, eternity-shaping life. So here they are. The first one is the longest and then there are two quick ones. These are three big truths that took me between the ages of 17 and 24. That’s where they all fell into place. There’s been very little adjustment since I was 24 years old. It’s really an amazing thing. I have learned some things, but the big things haven’t changed. God was so massively precious and powerful for me in those years.

1. God does all things for his glory.

This is long. I’m going to read you a long sentence, and then I’ll give you a short version. There is an absolutely sovereign, transcendently pure, self-existing, self-sustaining, incomparably beautiful, all-knowing, all-wise, all-governing, all-upholding, all-defining, infinitely valuable, all-satisfying God whose ultimate purpose of all creation and all redemption and all history and all culture and my life is to communicate his glory — that is, his greatness and his beauty — for the everlasting and ever-increasing enjoyment of his redeemed people. That’s number one, which has a shorter version that says: God is, and he means to be known truly and treasured, or enjoyed, duly by his redeemed people. That’s why he created the universe and why he put you on it and brought you here tonight.

When Moses asked God, “What shall I say to the people of Israel when they ask, who sent you? What’s his name?” (Exodus 3:13), God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. Tell them, ‘I AM sent you.’ I have no beginning and no end. I don’t depend on anything; everything depends on me. Nothing defines me; I define everything. I’m not kept in being by anything; I keep all things in being. I simply and absolutely am — self-sustaining and self-existing. Tell them that’s who sent you.” And when I discovered this great, sovereign God, I knew one thing for sure: I will not define my purpose for life, he will. To me, it is so crystal clear and obvious that if there is such a God, which I settled that there was in those years, then I’m not telling him anything about what I’m supposed to do. I’m listening, totally. I am saying, “You are God, and I am not. I am utterly dependent; you are totally self-dependent, and I will learn what I’m on the planet for from you.”

That set me on a course to try to discern what God’s ultimate purpose is. What’s he up to in the world? And oh, what a difference it has made in reading outside the Bible in people like Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, and John Owen. It has been a life-defining, ministry-defining discovery to learn why God does all that he does in his great sovereignty. And it separates the whole world. Over here is Oprah, Brad Pitt, the early C. S. Lewis, Michael Prowse (the Financial Times commentator in London), and Eric Reese (the American social critic), and over here are those who take no offense that God does everything for his glory.

For His Name’s Sake

I mention all those people because I have files on all those people where they narrate that they walked away from the historic Christian faith because God was presented to them at some point as being self-exalting and self-promoting, which he is everywhere, all the time, and they would not have it. It didn’t sound like love and it didn’t sound morally virtuous that God would be so God-exalting. And for me, in those days, God touched me, though I don’t know why, and he made me love that truth. I love it to this day. There are few things when I read the Bible that make my spirits soar more than texts like these.

Isaiah 43:6–7 says:

Bring my sons from afar
     and my daughters from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name,
     whom I created for my glory,
     whom I formed and made.

Jeremiah 13:11 says:

I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory . . .

Psalm 106:7–8 says:

Our fathers . . . rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
     that he might make known his mighty power.

Isaiah 48:9–11, the most God-centered verse in the Bible, says:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you . . .

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
     My glory I will not give to another.

When Oprah and Brad Pitt hear that, they walk away. They don’t want anything to do with a God like that. They said so. When I hear it, I’m on my face saying, “You are God, and that’s exactly the way a God who is God should be.”

John 17:1 says:

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you . . .

This is an intra-Trinitarian conspiracy to glorify each other in the world.

Second Thessalonians 1:9 says:

[Jesus] comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed . . .

Our Indespensible Joy

It became clearer and clearer to me that God, as the creator and the redeemer and the ruler of all things, has done everything to put his glory on display. God does everything he does to communicate his glory. Why? What does that have to do with me and the way I’m wired and you’re wired? Every single person in this room is wired to want to be happy. You cannot not want to be happy any more than you can not get hungry.

God made you to want satisfaction. Nobody can want to be permanently miserable long-term. The reason people commit suicide is that they become so miserable that they can’t take it anymore, and it looks (wrongly) like the best way not to be miserable anymore. Suicide is not a contradiction to the fact that every human being is wired to want to be happy. So I want to know, if God set it up that way, what does this massive self-promotion of God have to do with that?

So the second half of my first point, if you remember that long list — there is an all-glorious God, an all-powerful God, an all-wise God, an all-good God, a self-sustaining God who has made all things — is that he does that for the everlasting and ever-increasing joy of his redeemed people. What clicked with the help of C. S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards was that God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him. And therefore, he is summoning me to see his glory so that I would be satisfied in his glory. And in that satisfaction, he will be shown to be supremely valuable and I will be satisfied in my soul. These two massive longings — God’s passion to be glorified and my passion be satisfied — came together in perfect harmony. That’s the first amazing discovery that happened to me between the ages of 17 and 24.

Listen to Romans 9:22–23:

God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy . . .

When this says that God does everything he does — including the enduring of evil and the managing of evil in the world — for the riches of his glory to be known by the vessels of mercy, he doesn’t mean so that the vessels of mercy would be moderately interested in his riches of glory, but that they would be ravished by them. If we are only moderately interested in God’s glory, we don’t make much of it and he’s not honored in our lives. For God to be honored in our lives and magnified in our lives, which is why he made us, then we need to be thrilled with his glory, which is why he keeps presenting it to us in so many ways. God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in him is the first point.

For Me to Live Is Christ

It’s what you say when you’re in tune with the apostle Paul in Philippians 1:20–21, where he says:

It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

He is saying, “I want Christ to be magnified. I want God to be seen to be great in my life. And the way it happens is for my life to be Christ and my death to be gain,” which I paraphrase like this: When Christ is so precious to you that he is a greater treasure than all that life can give and all that death can take, then he is magnified in your life.

The first discovery that I made, and the first truth I think you can grasp as an average or a below average or an above average person, is that God made us to display and communicate his glory, and he brings that to fulfillment by bringing us to enjoy it because when we enjoy him so much, we can let goods and kindred go and this mortal life also. Then, he looks really great in my death and in my life.

Few things will make your death look more Christ-exalting than if you are so satisfied in him that when you lose everything life gives you, you say, “Gain.” That’s what’s got to happen in your heart. You see him so clearly and you savor him so dearly that you can lay your life down for him and not feel massive loss, but rather huge gain. That’s discovery number one. There’s a great, glorious, all-satisfying God who made the world and does everything he does, including bringing you into existence with your unique gifts, in order that you might glorify him by being satisfied in him forever.

2. God demonstrates his glory most ultimately through the cross.

What necessitates number two is that there’s a huge obstacle between your present condition and your seeing and savoring the glory of Christ, the glory of God, to the degree that it will satisfy your soul and enable you to take risks for him. There’s a huge obstacle, and it’s called your depravity and your sin, and the corresponding reality in God, namely wrath. God is very angry at you for your sin. And if he’s very angry at you in your sin, then there’s not going to be a good connection there. You won’t see his glory as satisfying; you’ll be angry at it and running from it. And he won’t be pouring himself out in beautiful ways upon you so that you can see him because he’s angry at you.

The second discovery might make you think, “Didn’t you know this already from 17 to 24, that God had done something about that called the gospel? That God has sent his Son into the world to bear your sin and absorb God’s wrath and provide you with righteousness? Didn’t you know that already?” Yes, I did. But here’s what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that in sending Jesus, his one and only Son, into the world to remove the obstacle that was between me and him — namely my guilt and his wrath, my depravity and his anger — in the very act of becoming the means of my reconciliation, the means of my seeing and savoring God as my all-satisfying treasure, he would become the highest expression of that glory. I didn’t know that. That’s what today marvels me most.

In other words, God didn’t merely look down and say, “Here’s a big problem. I want all these people to glorify me by enjoying me. None of them enjoys me because they’re all sinners in rebellion against me and my anger is on them. I will fix that. I will send my Son down there. He will become a curse for them (Galatians 3:13), he will take their condemnation (Romans 8:3), he will bear their sin and become sin for them (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he will impute his righteousness to them (Romans 5:19).” He did do that, but God also said, “And that will be the apex of my display of the very glory I created them to enjoy.”

The Glory of Calvary

This is mind-boggling because what it says — and I’ll give to you just three passages of Scripture so maybe you can begin to feel what I’m saying — is that the purpose of God to create the universe and thus communicate his glory to a redeemed people who would savor it and be satisfied in it, and in that satisfaction, show how precious it is, necessarily involved Jesus entering the world to save sinners in the most excruciating, substitutionary death imaginable because that’s where the glory of grace shown most brightly, which is the pinnacle of the glory. That’s what I had not seen. And here, let me give you three passages of Scripture to show what I’m saying.

Number one is Ephesians 1:5–6, which says:

[God] predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace . . .

What that verse says is we were predestined by God through Christ to praise the glory of grace. So now I know that the ultimate purpose is not just to see and savor his glory, but to see and savor the glory of his grace. That’s what that verse says. The ultimate purpose of creation and predestination and all the saving works that go into getting me to see is that I would see and savor, not just glory, but the glory of grace.

Here’s number two. Second Timothy 1:9 says:

[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began . . .

Now, that simply underlines the fact that before there was any universe, God had a purpose. He was going to be praised by a redeemed people who experienced and saw his glory, and specifically, the glory of his grace. And here it says he gave us that grace in Christ Jesus before the ages began, which means that was the plan. Before there was any sin that needed grace or any universe in which anybody could sin, there was a plan to give us grace so that we would see it, taste it, be stunned out of our minds by it, and spend the rest of our eternities praising it — the glory of grace.

The Slain Lamb’s Book of Life

Here’s the third text. Revelation 13:8 says:

All who dwell on earth will worship [the beast], everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.

Listen carefully. He’s describing what will keep some people from submitting to this antichrist power. He says, “They’re all going to fall before him except those whose names are written before the foundation of the world in a book.” And what’s the name of the book? This is the name: The book of the life of the Lamb who was slain is the name of the book that was written before there was a universe, before the foundation of the world.

God had in his mind, “I’m going to create a universe where my glory goes on display for the enjoyment of my people. The apex of my glory is going to be my grace, my absolutely undeserved, demerited favor, where I pour out my riches in glory about undeserving sinners, and the way I’m going to do it and the way it will reach its apex is through a lamb slain, my Son. That’s the plan so that when they see it, they will spend the rest of their eternities, just like it says in Revelation 5:9, singing the song, ‘Worthy are you who were slain and did ransom men for God from every people and tribe and tongue and nation.’”

We’re going to sing about slaughter forever. That’s the word — slaughter. Slain is just a nice English word for sphazō, which is slaughter. As a lamb, he went to the slaughter and did not open his mouth. And we will be amazed by that with increasing degrees of amazement as eternity progresses forever because it is an inexhaustible display of the glory of grace.

The second truth that I’m unpacking right here wasn’t merely — and I hate to even use the word merely — that he would send his Son to remove the obstacle that kept you and me from seeing and savoring his glory so that we could reach our fullest satisfaction. I had some sense of that even as a boy. That’s what salvation and the gospel meant, but what I hadn’t seen was that God’s purpose is to be glorified, to be praised for his glory, reaching its apex in grace, reaching its apex in Christ, reaching its apex in the slaughter of the Christ for sinners like me, so that in the very moment of becoming the means of my salvation, he was the glorification I was designed to see. He didn’t just help me see something else. What he did to help me see was what I needed to see. And I hadn’t seen that. That’s the second point.

So, number one was that there’s a great, glorious, holy, self-sufficient, sovereign, all-wise God who created a world in order to display his glory for the everlasting, ever-increasing enjoyment of a redeemed people. And number two was that there’s a huge obstacle that has to be removed, and he didn’t just remove it through Christ. That whole purpose of displaying his glory for the enjoyment of his people came to consummation at Calvary, so that all of history was looking toward it and all of eternity will look back and praise the apex of the glory of his grace.

3. Love flows from deep satisfaction in God.

Finally, this is number three. This is an event that has a strong and beautiful missions thrust to it, and I am happy about that. This point will come close to pushing in that direction. Here’s my third truth that came clear in the years between 17 to 24: The life that, when you walk out of here tonight, will most clearly draw attention to the beauty of the glory of the grace of God in Jesus crucified for his enemies is a life of sacrificial love for other people, which is the overflow of your joy in God. Oh, I’d love to talk for an hour on this from the book of Hebrews, but I’ll not even go to the book of Hebrews. I’m going to go to Jesus and just use one text and wrap it up with this one and see if I can show you something you might not have noticed before.

Here we are in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:10–16, and at the end of the Beatitudes, he shifts gears around from the “blessed are you” statements to this:

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad (this is crazy), for your reward is great in heaven (hold onto that), for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth (I’m just continuing on), but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Now, my question is, what would get him glory? That’s why I’m on the planet. That’s why you’re on the planet. You are supposed to live a life that inclines people to give glory to God — that is, to see him as great, to see him as beautiful, to see him as all-satisfying, to see him as the greatest treasure that there is. So what kind of life does that?

Well, it says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory . . .” But how often does that happen? Secular people are celebrating the good works of Christians all the time without seeing anything about God in it. In fact, that’s what unites Christians with liberal unbelievers. They think, “Finally, Christians are doing something worthwhile for a change — none of that God talk. They’re helping the poor.” But it’s not working. So did Jesus blow it when he said, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who’s in heaven”?

True Salt and Light

Here’s another way to ask the question. What is the light and what is the salt? Are the light and the salt merely that I help you fix your tire on a frigid night in Minnesota? Is it that I see you stopped in the road, so I stop and I get out and my hands get cold while you warm yours up? I’ll try to loosen these bolts, and I’m going to help you. Is that the light?

Well, try this. If you just keep Matthew 5:10–16 together and ask, “Do these verses have anything to do with each other? It says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Blessed are you when men revile you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and be glad, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you. You have a great reward in heaven.”

In other words, be so fixed on Christ on Christ that you see that he is enough. That’s the reward because Paul said to die is gain because it’s to go and be with Jesus. So the great reward of the Christian is that you get more of Christ. Love him so fully that when you set your minds on things that are above, you see Christ shining in all of his crucified glory, and you say, “Oh, you are enough. I don’t need to hate my enemies. I don’t need to get payback here. I can just spend myself because you are everything to me. I have resources inside flowing from you and your all-sufficiency so that I can give my life away and rejoice in doing it.”

Now, my argument is that’s the light. Every Joe on the planet does a good deed every now and then. But how many people have you met that, in the doing of the good deed, when they’re being harassed, when they’re being called names for being a Christian, or worse, when they’re being ostracized or persecuted or killed for being a Christian, they rejoice and don’t return evil for evil? Matthew 5:11 and Matthew 5:44 go together, which says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . .

So in both Matthew 5:44 and Matthew 5:11, you have persecution going on. Here in Matthew 5:44, we’re praying for them, and here in Matthew 5:11, we’re happy as doves to go into the slaughter.

A Reason for the Hope That Is in You

The world doesn’t see that very often, and my argument is that Matthew 5:16 really does work when that’s the context. In other words, if your whole life becomes a grumble-free rejoicing in pain, sorrow, grief, and loss because of your reward in heaven, the world cannot explain that, which is why Peter said in 1 Peter 3:15:

[Be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you . . .

Nothing causes people to ask that question except for when your hope makes you act weird on the planet, and the weirdness should be sacrifices with joy that they can’t explain.

So I think light and salt in this context are the works done in a certain way — namely, “I’m so satisfied in Jesus, my reward, and I’m so confident in the hope of the gospel and what I will inherit just on the other side of my death, that right now I have some resources within to not despair and not murmur and not hate and not return evil for evil, but to keep on doing the right thing and the good thing and the beautiful thing with some element of cheer in my life so that the world will shake their heads and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.”

Seeing and Savoring Christ

Let me just put these three points together. The first one was that God is awesome, self-existent, infinitely holy, pure, wise, good, all-glorious, and he made the universe and me in order to communicate his glory for my everlasting, ever-increasing enjoyment. That’s number one.

Number two is that he removed an obstacle, my sin and his wrath, by sending his Son, not just to become means of my seeing that glory, but to become the supreme expression of that glory in his Calvary work. That’s what I’m supposed to enjoy most fully, be satisfied in most fully, and display most clearly.

And now the third one is, what life will help you do that? What is the unwasted life? It’s a life of sacrificial love — a lay-your-life-down kind of love that is rooted in firm confidence in the all-satisfying reward of being closer to Jesus, which is why you must fight for joy in your life and why the unwasted life is a life of pursuing satisfying joy in Jesus, not in stuff.

It’s the stuff that makes us so angry when people plunder our houses or threaten our health because we’re valuing our health more than we’re valuing Jesus, and we’re valuing our iPhones more than we’re valuing Jesus. And so we’re going to get really angry if somebody steals our phone or wrecks our house or threatens our health because our God is very much here instead of our satisfaction being very much there.

I’m just going to close by pleading with you. Turn away from all non-God, turn away from all non-Jesus as your supreme treasure, and reach out and embrace the glory of God, the glory of the grace of God, the glory of the grace of God manifest in Jesus, the glory of the grace of God manifest in Jesus supremely at the moment when he, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross so that you could see and savor, not just glory in general, but that glory.