Audio Transcript
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. It’s our slogan. We love it. Many of you love it. Its nice balance makes it easy to memorize. Its nice rhythm paces itself off the tongue. And most importantly, it’s freighted with meaning. In that motto, we summarize God’s plan for his creation, his purpose for our lives, and the aim of Desiring God’s daily ministry labors around the globe. God’s glory and our joy in God are not two things, but one beautiful goal. And so we say it on repeat: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
And our motto turns 36 years old today.
On this anniversary, I want to break into the APJ feed with a special bonus episode, a short one, with the recent discovery.
To do it, let me set the stage. Exactly 36 years ago, Pastor John was the 42-year-old senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. And he was in Chicago in September of 1988 for a four-part seminar at Trinity Baptist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. The seminar was on Christian Hedonism. And he delivered the sessions in four consecutive evenings at seven o’clock, Sunday to Wednesday. Added to his itinerary in the area, Pastor John also agreed to preach the Monday morning chapel message at Wheaton College, his alma mater. And that’s where history was made.
Pastor John titled his Wheaton chapel message “God’s Memorial: Our Joy,” a celebration of Isaiah 55:12–13. The joy of God’s people is a memorial to God. His people’s happiness is a monument to his own honor. And it was here, at the conclusion of his chapel message, that the motto made its first public appearance. Here it is:
Do you see what this implies about the character of God? It implies that his desire for his people to be satisfied and his desire for his name to be glorified come together as one. The renown or the memorial that God makes for himself is your happiness. God is the kind of God who is pursuing his own glory in your joy. The implication of that is that when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.1
Beautiful. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, it’s still a little rough (and backward). But it’s public. Delivered for the first time in this chapel message at Wheaton College on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.
Okay, but how do we know this was the first mention of the motto? That’s what I asked, too. So let’s investigate this for a moment.
First, just a month earlier, Piper had finished preaching a five-part sermon series through Isaiah 55 to his congregation in Minneapolis2 — a precious chapter that invites all thirsty souls to come to the satisfying fountain of the living God. He promised his church, “If you memorize Isaiah 55, it will change your life.” And so, he had his church staff and family memorizing the chapter all summer. He concluded the summer series with this same text, Isaiah 55:12–13, which would be the text he draws his Wheaton chapel message from a month later. But in his Bethlehem Baptist Church version of the sermon earlier in the summer, Piper never said anything resembling the motto.3
“If you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God.”
Second, his monumental book on Christian Hedonism, the book Desiring God, had already been written and published and was on bookstore shelves 19 months prior to the Wheaton College chapel in September 1988. In fact, by the time he arrived in Chicago, his four-part evening series was already billed, according to the promotional flier, as featuring “Dr. John Piper, author of the best-selling book Desiring God.” But as well as his new book had been spreading, two things are missing from the first edition: Isaiah 55 and the motto.
Fresh thoughts on Christian Hedonism continued to build for him as he labored to say things better and more clearly and in ways easier to remember. So, back to Chicago. Recall he’s teaching at Trinity Baptist Church in the evenings. Monday evening, the same evening of the Wheaton chapel message, here’s Pastor John:
I think I said in the chapel this morning over at Wheaton that, uh, when we are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in us. That’s — that’s one of the most crisp statements I can think of to capture Christian Hedonism.4
There it is again — a mention back to his Wheaton chapel that morning, but still not proof that the motto was coined there. Let’s move to the next evening.
Now it’s Tuesday evening, September 20, 1988. He mentions the line again. But note his struggle in drawing it from memory.
And that led us to last night’s message, which was then — the implication would be if we would glorify God most, we must delight in him most. And if I can remember, the sentence that we used both in the Wheaton Chapel and last night was, um, uh . . . I won’t get it just right. Uh, if you . . . when you, when you, when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Yes, that’s the sentence. When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Therefore, if you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God. You put yourself in opposition to his eternal purposes to exalt his own name.5
The motto isn’t easily recalled — not yet. It’s fresh. It’s not something he’s gotten used to — further evidence that it’s new to him.
Then comes a radio interview. Chris Fabry invited Pastor John to his Chicago-based show, OpenLine. This interview is conducted on September 28, 1988, nine days after the Wheaton chapel. And it’s a radio conversation about Christian Hedonism. In it, Fabry is trying to put all the pieces together — God’s glory and our joy. About fifteen minutes into the conversation, Fabry attempts to restate Christian Hedonism in his own words. The concept seems radical, he says.
Because what you’re saying is really transforming our view of what God is out to do. In salvation, God then is not in the business of saving us because we need to be saved or because he wants us to be saved, but he’s doing it for his own glory. Then, as we respond to him, we are responding to that salvation message, not necessarily solely because we want to get away from hell or want to spend eternity with God. We do it for his glory.
That’s muddled, and understandably so. The glories of Christian Hedonism are hard to grasp at first, and people struggle to understand this key point. It’s not simply about God being glorified, but about him being glorified by our joy in him. Here is Pastor John’s immediate reply, an attempt to make Christian Hedonism clearer, using one new sentence that he crafted exactly for a moment like this one.
The genius of Christian Hedonism, and at least what made it a revolutionizing thing for me, was to discover that I am never faced with that alternative. That is, I don’t think . . . the Bible never poses me with the dilemma: God’s glory versus my happiness. Here’s the way I put it now — and I just hit upon this last week as I was thinking. The sentence I like to use to sum it up now is this: “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” Now, if that’s true, if God’s glory rises in proportion to my delight in him, I can never play off his glory against my delight. The more I delight in him, the more glory he gets from me.6
“I just hit upon this last week.” There it is — confirmation of this recent discovery of one pithy statement to capture the heart of Christian Hedonism, forged to help people get the point of Christian Hedonism. And a clear callback to the Wheaton chapel message nine days earlier. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.”
In those nine days, Pastor John has reversed the order. Up to this point, it was “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” It gets two more tweaks in due time. The double mention of God becomes one, and the motto is made collective, from “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God” to its final form today: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
And there it is: John Piper’s favorite motto, first delivered in his Wheaton College chapel message on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.