Does obedience secure your right standing with God? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Romans 8:1–4 to explain why pardon comes before progress.

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How can we show Christ’s love to a dying, unbelieving loved one? Pastor John shares ten ways believers can embody God’s love.

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What reward motivates missionaries to make great sacrifices for the sake of Christ? We might think first of the expectation that they will see the fruits of their labors in their lifetime. The work is hard, but the reward is imminent — right?

Forty years after her husband and four others were martyred, Elisabeth Elliot cautioned against hidden assumptions as she reflected on the fruit of evangelism that followed the men’s deaths. “There is always the urge to oversimplify. . . . We are tempted to assume a simple equation here. Five men died. This will mean x-number of Waorani Christians” (Through Gates of Splendor, 264).

Her warning exposes a lie many of us believe, one by which we attempt to keep some measure of control: Our painful afflictions are worthwhile because of the rewards we will receive in this life.

The instinct to be motivated by future reward is right. And hoping for temporal rewards in missionary labor has its place (see Acts 18:9–11). The question is, to what degree does the promise of heavenly rewards motivate us to stay the course?

Hope of Glory

In 1 Thessalonians 2:17–20, we learn about Paul and his missionary team being torn away from the church in Thessalonica. Paul emphasizes that this hardship couldn’t be alleviated by a quick return, for Satan hindered them. Paul could have lost heart, but instead he kept praying and laboring for the good of the Thessalonians — and he did so by looking to a reward yet to come:

What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. (1 Thessalonians 2:19–20)

Paul looked well beyond his present tribulations to the day when Christ returns. On that day, the church he was torn from and labored so hard to gain would be his glory and joy. He labored on in the midst of trials because he knew the future glory would make all of his anguish worth it.

Paul returns to the same theme in 2 Corinthians. After rehearsing his sufferings, he explains why he doesn’t lose heart in difficult ministry. He stays the course even though his “outer self is wasting away.” Why? “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:16–18).

It wasn’t only the potential evangelistic fruit of his labors that kept Paul persevering. His confidence in a great future glory made his present sufferings appear like so many feathers.

Your heart will remain committed to the work of missions as you remain committed to rehearsing the future glories of heaven. If you labor only for imminent rewards, you will likely not last. But if you understand and live inside the reality that Christ will reward you for your faithful work when he returns, you’ll have what you need in the power of the Spirit to remain faithful as you labor to fulfill your calling.

We already know how future glory motivates present sufferings. Think of the doctoral student pressing on through years of study because of the prospect of a career in medicine. Consider the cancer patient enduring chemotherapy in the hope of future health. Look to the laborer sticking to a mediocre job for decades because of the promise of a future pension. We all persevere in difficult tasks because we are motivated by the hope of future rewards. Sometimes we just need to be reminded which reward is ultimate and truly lasting.

Where and How to Look

To what rewards do we look? Crowns made up of the lives of fellow saints whom we’ve pointed to Christ. Redeemed bodies that no longer labor with thorns or thistles. Desires that no longer doubt, deny, or disobey God’s good commands. Unity among all the churches from all nations. Most of all, John assures us that when Christ returns, “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Here is our greatest reward, to gaze with unhindered access on the greatness of the glory of God, who will be with us forever and always. These are the heavenly rewards that motivate sacrificial obedience on earth.

How can we work to guard our hearts and look with Paul to the hope of glory?

• Learn: Study the Scriptures to understand what motivated past saints. Read good books, like Jonathan Edwards’s Heaven Is a World of Love, that will make heaven less ethereal and more real.
• Meditate: Don’t just read. Let your thoughts linger over heaven’s realities. Let them sink from your head down into your heart.
• Sing: There is a litany of songs that we can sing both personally and corporately that comfort us with the hope of heaven. A few personal favorites are “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand,” “Jerusalem, My Happy Home,” and “Hark! I Hear the Harps Eternal.”
• Pray: Offer prayers of praise and thanksgiving for all that you are seeing about heaven. Then pray that heaven would come down now and forevermore.
• Counsel: From the pulpit to the pew, from the coffee shop to the local park, counsel one another in the coming realities of eternal glory. You don’t have to give a lecture; just regularly remind yourself and others that all is not wasted.

Through prayerful study and meditation, by God’s good gifts of song and fellowship, let the joys of heaven capture your heart in every season — when you can see the fruit of your ministry and when you can’t, when temporal rewards seem big and when they seem absent.

Solid Hope

In the aftermath of the loss of their husbands, Elisabeth Elliot and the other grieving widows had to explain to their small children that their fathers had died on account of their hope in the life to come. One of those children, Stevie, said, “I know my daddy is with Jesus, but I miss him, and I wish he would just come down and play with me once in a while.” Weeks later, Stevie’s little brother was born into a world in which he had no earthly father. As that newborn child cried, little Stevie picked him up and said, “Never you mind; when we get to Heaven I’ll show you which one is our daddy” (Through Gates of Splendor, 247). He knew the solidity of heaven is the best explanation and inspiration for not losing heart on the field of mission.

May it be the same for us all who are laboring to sow the good seed. Press in and press on, dear brother or sister. Your sacrifices for the gospel “[fill] up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Colossians 1:24). They aren’t wasted. Soon and very soon, the eternal weight of glory will be honey upon your lips, and you will be glad you gave him your all.

Sharing God’s nature and upholding creation by his word, the heir of all things suffered in our place to purify us from sin. Who is like Jesus Christ?

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Some prayers tick like time bombs. We ask for contentment and humility while squinting, afraid we might just get what we’ve asked for. We are superstitious and fearful, worried that if we surrender all, God will send us to a remote island dressed like John the Baptist. Or worse, we’ll wallow in our mundane circumstances, wearing a badge of contentment while our longings are pushed aside like junk mail.

When we pray the hard prayers dutifully, we do so to a malicious God of our own making. This God looks less like a loving Father and more like the bully in a snowball fight with a storehouse of icy artillery. But God is no boogeyman. If we want to join the choir of believers who authentically sing, “I surrender all,” we must pray to the God of the Scriptures and no less. We will hand over the keys to the metaphorical car of our dreams only when we trust Jesus is worthy of them (and so much more).

Glory Hurts

I knelt around a blazing bonfire at summer camp as a twelve-year-old and said yes to my Father’s question, “Will you go anywhere for me?” Little did I know that, decades later, I would find myself weeping in an isolated mountain range like a prisoner of war. Missions was gloriously romantic on the page, but the power outages, water shortages, stomach viruses, monsoon mold, and repeated question, “Why isn’t your language as good as your husband’s?” made me mad.

Hadn’t I, like Peter, stepped off the boat into uncharted territory in zealous obedience? Yet the waves were rougher than I expected. My surrender had always felt safe in God’s hands until my heart broke on the mission field of my dreams.

Many of us have lain on the altar in surrender only to see the knife. We ask for more of Jesus, forgetting that “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” is painful, even death, to the old man in us (2 Corinthians 3:18). Like Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we have layers and layers of dragon skin that require cutting. Christ says like Aslan, “You will have to let me undress you.” Desperate to be rid of his scales, Eustace submits. Yet he later recalls, “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt” (474–75).

Faith calculates as crazy to the world, but those who know God’s fatherly heart and tender pursuit see zero risk to our souls. We were created to rest and work and play in the good intentions of our God, believing he cares for us deeply, even when the boat rocks (Mark 4:35–41). We are never pioneers in laying down our lives, but copycats of Christ’s example. Naked on a tree, Jesus surrendered to his last breath, never once doubting his Father’s good intentions.

If God wasn’t amputating the rebellious parts of myself in these mountains, Psalm 84:10 might be just another verse, not my morning sacrifice and meditation at night while the street dogs howl. A day in his courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I do not blend into the fabric of this village as I had hoped, and the mountains here will never clap their hands for my labors, but they will continue to applaud the One who chiseled their every cleft and peak (Isaiah 55:12). I’m a happy doorkeeper in his house, even as my tears continue to salt these hills.

Saints Surrender

Imagine what surrender could mean for you. What anxiety tightens your jaw and knots your neck? What question do you pose to ChatGPT a dozen different ways? Imagine shedding the scales of perfectionism, people-pleasing, or control. What if the pride that keeps our cards close and real friends distant were yanked like old shingles from a leaky roof? In time, surrender becomes life with no shadows, windows open, the breeze in your lungs. Held by the nail-pierced hands that cradle the cosmos, we have no more to hide.

It doesn’t require much imagination when we’re “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). Watch the surrender of those in your small group, church, and wider world, whose lives boast like the Israelites (after slavery, wilderness, and war), “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:45).

Corrie ten Boom quipped after years in concentration camps, “If God sends us on stony paths, he provides strong shoes.” In similar surrender, Dr. Helen Roseveare, who labored amid Congo’s political unrest and suffered rape, beatings, and imprisonment, reflected,

Could I see that God wanted to transform my life from a somewhat ugly, useless branch to an arrow, a tool usable in His hands, for the furtherance of His purposes? . . . To be thus transformed, was I willing — am I still willing — for the whittling, sandpapering, stripping processes necessary in my Christian life? (Living Sacrifice, 26)

Observe the surrender of our prolific hymnwriter and prayer instructor, the hors d’oeuvre who whets our appetite for King Jesus, the “man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). David champions God’s character no matter the giant, flying spear, or moral failure. Even as a boy, David believes what all Israel forgets: that when anyone belittles God, their boasts end as food for the birds (1 Samuel 17:45–47). When his own son wants him dead, David doesn’t lift his sword but exalts the Lord as his shield and glory (Psalm 3:3). You’d think feigning madness and drooling in Abimelech’s courts wouldn’t inspire a praise chorus about God’s nearness, provision, and deliverance, but that’s where David’s heart flies (Psalm 34).

Even after grievous sin that few recover from, David knows that if the Lord washes him, he’ll be whiter than snow (Psalm 51:7). At the end of his life, David tells all who wonder if surrender is safe, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25).

God Works

Surrender isn’t a downward staircase into a dank basement but an open field where “the sun of righteousness” releases us “like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:2). God is not surprised that we rise and fall on repeat in our attempts to surrender. He masters our affections patiently, over the long haul; he ripens our trust like a peach in the summer sun. His promise “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20) is not for an elite class, but for everyone who looks to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ, with all the authority that commission entails. But as he writes to Philemon, he approaches as a friend.

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When pain hits, do you assume God is against you? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Romans 8:1 to show that “no condemnation” means God is unfailingly for you.

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Westerners are wealthy. Look around, and what do you see? Well-maintained roads, grocery carts overflowing with food, college degrees, a full coffee shop on every corner. Even the poorer among us are, compared with much of the world, rich beyond measure. This is a straightforward fact. We don’t need to apologize for what has been given. But we do need to keep our eyes wide open to the reality of our abundance — otherwise, our Lord may send a locust plague.

No, that is not a non sequitur.

What do you think when you hear the word locust? For many who have grown up in the West, the only association may be to the eighth plague (Exodus 10:1–20). But I grew up in West Africa — and I remember the day the locusts came. They didn’t come all at once. At first, we noticed just a few of the big, yellow, ugly creatures. They stuck out because we didn’t typically see locusts like these, and certainly not en masse. The swarm didn’t quite reach biblical proportions, covering the land so thick that it was darkened (Exodus 10:15). But they did form an army, invading our city for a few short days.

Why would our Lord send an army of locusts on our West African city? Why would he send an army of locusts — or another destructive force — anywhere at all?

The prophet Joel provides a good answer, one that comes with a stark warning for those who live amid an abundance of wealth: Our Lord sends plagues of locusts on people because he wants our whole hearts.

For those who have never and may never see a locust, how might this principle apply to us today? To answer that, we turn to Joel 1.

The Lord’s Army

The Lord’s brief word to Judah through the prophet Joel begins with a stark reality: Locusts had come; the land was in ruins. Disaster of this scale was unprecedented (Joel 1:2). Waves of determined and devouring insects had washed over Judah, stripping both bark from fruit-bearing trees (verse 7) and gladness from the people (verse 12). The army was unstoppable, the destruction complete — and yet the hearts of the people were still hard.

Joel was not sent to a humble people who were on their knees in sackcloth and ashes before the Lord of hosts. The hearts of God’s people were recalcitrant, their eyes blind. While they could see that their crops and vineyards were devoured by a swarm of hungry insects, they did not understand why. Though “severely smitten by God, [they] did not feel their evils,” John Calvin writes.

God had to send his word by a prophet to wake the people from their stupor. Like Pharaoh’s officials (Exodus 10:7), Joel had to ask, likely with incredulity, “Can you not see that Judah is ruined?” Joel had to teach them the grammar of repentance: Wake up and weep, lament, be ashamed, wear sackcloth, and fast and “cry out to the Lord” (Joel 1:5–14). And he had to warn them of worse danger looming on the horizon.

The stark destruction brought about by the locusts was a harbinger. From the north, another, greater threat drew near:

Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains
     a great and powerful people;
their like has never been before,
     nor will be again after them
     through the years of all generations. (Joel 2:2)

The judgment brought by the locust plague anticipated a future judgment, a coming “day of the Lord” that would fall on the people with far greater consequences than the lost produce of a single crop cycle. The prophet charges the people to repent before that day, casting themselves before the Lord and returning to him who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and [who] relents over disaster” (Joel 2:13).

Folly in Plenty

But repent of what? Unlike some of the other prophets, Joel does not present a litany of indictments against the people of God. The means of chastisement, however, provides a significant clue. The Lord struck down the abundance he gave his people. Their grain had perished. The rich fruit trees — figs, pomegranates, dates, apples — were now bare. The vines, from which had once come sweet wine, had dried up. And along with their material losses, the joy of the people had withered (Joel 1:11–12).

Before they entered the promised land, the Lord warned his people of such folly. “Take care,” he said, “lest, when you have eaten and are full . . . your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:11–14). Beware that your plenty does not lead you to trust in the overflow instead of the Fountain. Beware lest your gladness grow from the produce in your barns and not the Lord of the harvest.

The people of God had fallen into folly. Weighed down by the abundance of rich and varied harvests, their hearts grew fat, their eyes and ears dull. And so the locusts came.

Aching for More

For the majority of those reading this article, locusts probably do not pose a tangible threat (though they do still bring devastation to many parts of the world today). In fact, you may never have encountered the creatures. But you likely face the danger that brought destruction upon Judah: a full pantry.

Many of our lives are remarkably well provided for. And for that we may rightly give thanks. As our God told his people before they entered the promised land, the bounty that would be theirs was a gift from his hand (Deuteronomy 8:7–10). No less so is the wealth we Westerners enjoy. But wealth poses a threat, for abundance has the tendency to shrink a doorway down to a needle’s eye (Matthew 19:23–24).

Wealth — whether in the form of a full barn, secure income, or picture-perfect family — can lead us to fall in love with the present world, drawing us away from the living God. We live in Vanity Fair, in which “all year long . . . houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts” are presented to us as worthy of our dogged pursuit and as the true source of our gladness (The Pilgrim’s Progress, 71–72.) We are catechized daily to order our lives around a plentiful harvest — around that which could be devoured by locusts (or moths).

Every minor ache of our hearts for more, every covetous glance, every inclination to turn off the path and settle down for a little while reveals the fruit of that catechesis. Do you feel this evil?

Glad in the Giver

Oh, Christian, be not blind to the danger abundance poses! Let not your gladness reside in good harvests, your joy in full barns. Pray against a divided heart that needs sudden loss to awaken you to your dependence on God for all things. Be not like Judah. Receive good gifts from God with gratitude and gladness, remembering that they are gifts given as an expression of his fatherly care. But do not let them turn your heart so that you revel in what you’ve received. Rather, bow humbly before him to whom all this world belongs.

And if he sends “locusts” upon you to dwindle your stores, turn not a blind eye to his providence. Receive the invaders as an opportunity to test your heart. Perhaps he has taken what he gave to test and strengthen your faith. If so, rejoice as he propels you forward toward perfection (James 1:2–4).

But perhaps you have followed the path of your forebears, and you store your confidence in earthly barns. If so, rejoice in his discipline. Revel in his mercy. Repent of folly and seek forgiveness, lest greater wrath be stored up for you. For the Lord of the locusts is the Lord of love. And he created you to be glad in him.

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