1. Everyone else to stop sinning in ways that annoy me, inconvenience me, or make me feel like I need to rebuke them or tell them to stop.
2. Everyone else to focus on making me happy, meeting my needs, fixing my problems.

Simple enough, right?  I feel like I’m not too unique here.

Here’s Jesus’ approach: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Mark 10:45

I can’t “give my life as a ransom for many” and atone for sin.  But I can stop looking at myself and start looking at Jesus because of His atonement for sin. And I can serve others, for His glory, as Jesus enabled me and showed me how to do.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. – 1 Peter 4:10-11

How to really be happy?  Live pointing at, relying on, and hoping in Jesus.

-Ben

”If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” – Luke 6:32-35

We love and serve not out of disinterested obedience.  Jesus certainly never suggested we do that.  We love and serve for our benefit – our joy – both now and in heaven.

-Ben

In the end, there will be only one commandment for God’s servants to obey forever and ever: “Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Isaiah 65:18).  For those who refuse to rejoice in what God creates, Jeremy Taylor, the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop, summed it up: “God threatens terrible things, if we will not be happy.” How could it be otherwise?  Hell is simply eternal souls, who don’t want God, getting their way.  And Heaven is eternal souls, who long for God, getting all they want – God himself in infinite, joyful measure. And new as it will be, the setting for our lasting joy will be new heavens and a new earth, analogous to where we live now.  It will not be alien but recognizable.  We will finally be home – with God.

-Ben

1.  “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” – Philippians 1:21

As I’m writing this, I happen to be listening to the song “Center” by Charlie Hall.  Here’s the chorus:

Oh, Christ be the center of our lives
Be the place we fix our eyes
Be the center of our lives

A Christians, we need to be Christ-centered, Cross-centered, and Gospel-centered in our thinking, in our feeling, and in our acting.  When Christ is the center of our lives, everything revolves around Him.  Everything is done in light of Him.   As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

So often we like to think that we are our own – we are accountable only to ourselves and we can do anything we want.  That there is no reality outside ourselves.  Even more often, we intellectually acknowledge that “we are not our own”, but we still don’t “glorify God in our bodies.”

Why?  Peter diagnoses it perfectly in 1 Peter 2:9 – “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”  We’ve forgotten the Gospel.  We don’t live in light of what Christ has done.

Christ, and the Gospel, are no longer at the center.

And so we can no longer honestly declare, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  Because to live isn’t Christ, and dying sucks because all the things we think life is can’t come with us when we die.

But as “to live is Christ” becomes more of a reality, we can think and make decisions in light of the fact that dying is gain.  How radically transformative is that?   We decide to do things – get a job, get married, get a new house, etc. – knowing that they are only temporary, they aren’t the biggest deal, and that Jesus and life with Jesus forever is so much greater.

2.  “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1

An observation: we need to be discerning of seasons.  That is, sometimes it is the right time to do something and we don’t realize it and so we don’t do it.  And equally often, it is the wrong time to do something, and we don’t realize it, and we do it anyway.

Just because something is good in general doesn’t mean it is right for you RIGHT NOW.

An obvious example: college is good.  If you’re 5 years old, though, you probably shouldn’t be in college.

Marriage is good (for most – some are called to singleness, but most aren’t).  But right now might not be the right time.  Moving to an unreached people group to tell them about Jesus is good.  But right now might not be the right time.

3.  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2

What this verse is saying:

1. The “will of God” is “what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  We should want to know these things.
2. It is possible to discern the will of God.
3. Discerning is done by us
4. We are evil and need to be changed before we can properly discern what God’s will is
5. WE (our whole selves) are transformed as our minds are transformed
6. Our minds are transformed through scripture (2 Tim 3:16 – scripture is useful for training in righteousness)

Bottom line – there is a will of God, it is revealed to us through scripture, and we should try to know it and follow it.

4.  “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

This verse is important as you look at this question from a Christian Hedonistic perspective.  As you delight in God – as He becomes your joy and your treasure – then He will give you new desires, in line with what will increase your joy in Him.  As Christ becomes your treasure, you will long for more and more of Him.

Similarly, if you are not delighting in God, you should be skeptical of your desires.  Your mind may deceive you as you know what categories of things are “good”, but you don’t know which one is “right”, and so human desires – for comfort, security, status, approval, etc. – take over and your heart desires for you to be made much of instead of Jesus.

5.  “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” – 1 Corinthians 10:31

All of life is worship.  That is, we are always worshiping (making much of) something.  It may be God, it may be something else.  Our job as Christians is to repent of sin (worshiping things other than God) and worship God.  Everything we do should be done to make God – not that which we are doing – look great.

This is one of the most important questions we need to ask as Christians, and I fear we think about it far too little – “How do I do ______ to the glory of God.”  How do I walk to class to the glory of God?  How do I do homework to the glory of God?  How do I go shopping for food to the glory of God?

As Christians we know we’re supposed to avoid “sin”.  Too often we try to do that by asking questions like, “How far is too far?” or “This isn’t bad, is it?”.  Those questions betray us, as they reveal a self-centered heart that wants to assuage its guilt, not glorify God.  Glorifying God should be the primary question, motive, and desire of our hearts and lives.

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” – Romans 11:36

-Ben

I am a Calvinistic, charismatic, complementarian, Christian hedonist. If that weren’t enough to confuse you, I am also amillennial and baptistic, though I believe in rule by a plurality of Elders and maintain a moderately sacramental perspective on the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist (there’s a word that reflects my four years in an Anglican church!).

It’s very interesting, but I think I agree with most everything he writes, at least the stuff I’m familiar with.  I don’t know enough eschatology to be “amillennial” yet.  I grew up Anglican, so his comments about the Eucharist are very interesting to me (and I think will spur me to a little study/research to develop a more thorough position).  He says that he’s tentatively old earth – I would say I’m the opposite.  Some of the finer points, I haven’t thought too much about: are infants who die elect?  how precisely does the theology of physical healing work?

-Ben