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- Herausgeber: Crossway
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Who is Jesus Christ? You've never met him in person, and you don't know anyone who has. But there is a way to know who he is. How? Jesus Christ-the divine Person revealed in the Bible-has a unique excellence and a spiritual beauty that speaks directly to our souls and says, "Yes, this is truth." It's like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light, or tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet. The depth and complexity of Jesus shatter our simple mental frameworks. He baffled proud scribes with his wisdom but was understood and loved by children. He calmed a raging storm with a word but would not get himself down from the cross. Look at the Jesus of the Bible. Keep your eyes open, and fill them with the portrait of Jesus in God's Word. Jesus said, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." Ask God for the grace to do his will, and you will see the truth of his Son. John Piper has written this book in the hope that all will see Jesus for who he really is and will come to enjoy him above all else.
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Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Revised Edition
© 2004 by Desiring God Foundation
Original edition © 2001 by Desiring God Foundation
Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.
Cover design: Josh Dennis
Unless otherwise indicated, all Bible quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
Scripture quotations marked AT are the author’s own translation.
Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® , NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Note: Key words and phrases in Scripture quotations have been distinguished by italics (roman type in all-italics block quotations).
First printing, 2004
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Piper, John, 1946- Seeing and savoring Jesus Christ / John Piper.—Rev. ed. p. cm. ISBN 1-58134-623-9 (tpb : alk. paper) 1. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. I. Title.
BT205.P58 2004 232'.8—dc22 2004008483
VP 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2TO THE MEMORY OF
C. S. Lewis and Clyde Kilby
who taught me there is always
CONTENTS
A
W
ORD TO THE
R
EADER
9
1 SEEING AND SAVORING THE GLORY OF GOD
13
The Ultimate Aim of Jesus Christ
2 JESUS IS THE GLORY OF GOD
21
The Deity of Jesus Christ
3 THE LION AND THE LAMB
29
The Excellence of Jesus Christ
4 THE INDESTRUCTIBLE JOY
35
The Gladness of Jesus Christ
5 THE WAVES AND WINDS STILL KNOW HIS VOICE
43
The Power of Jesus Christ
6 SOMETHING GREATER THAN SOLOMON IS HERE
51
The Wisdom of Jesus Christ
7 THE GLORIOUS POVERTY OF A BAD REPUTATION
59
The Desecration of Jesus Christ
8 THE INCOMPARABLE SUFFERINGS
67
The Anguish of Jesus Christ
9 THE GLORY OF RESCUING SINNERS, NOT REMOVING SATAN
75
The Saving Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
10 THE INCARNATE WEALTH OF THE COMPASSION OF GOD
83
The Mercies of Jesus Christ
11 THE TOUGH SIDE
93
The Severity of Jesus Christ
12 INVINCIBLE LIFE
103
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
13 THE APPEARING OF THE GLORY OF OUR GREAT GOD AND SAVIOR
111
The Second Coming of Jesus Christ
A
FTERWORD
117
How Can We Be Sure About Jesus?
R
ESOURCES FROM
D
ESIRING
G
OD
M
INISTRIES
125
AWORD TO THE READER
Who was Jesus Christ? That’s the question I will try to answer. But my aim is not for you to be neutral about him. That would be cruel. Seeing and savoring Jesus Christ is the most important seeing and savoring you will ever do. Eternity hangs on it. So my aim is that you see him as solid truth and savor him with great joy.
When I speak of seeing Jesus Christ, I don’t mean seeing with the eyes of your head, but the eyes of your heart. When he was about to leave this world and return to God the Father, Jesus said, “You will not see me” until you “see the Son of Man . . . coming with the clouds of heaven” (John 16:17; Mark 14:62). At that time people could see him with their physical eyes. But now , the Bible says, we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). He is not here to see physically. He is in heaven until he comes again to be seen by everyone.
But the Bible does say that we may see Jesus in another sense. It speaks of “the eyes of your hearts” (Ephesians 1:18). It speaks of “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Jesus himself spoke of two kinds of seeing. He said of the uncomprehending crowds, “ Seeing they do not see” (Matthew 13:13). One kind is seeing with physical eyes, and the other is with spiritual eyes. When we see with our spiritual eyes, we see the truth and beauty and value of Jesus Christ for what they really are. Thus a blind person today may see Christ more clearly than many who have eyes.
Everyone can read the stories of Jesus and “see” the portraits painted by the words of those who knew him. But not everyone sees truth and beauty and infinite value. Some see only myth. Some see foolishness. Some see offense. “Seeing they do not see.” It is as though a child should look at a Michelangelo and prefer a comic strip.
Savoring Jesus Christ is the response to this second kind of seeing. When you see something as true and beautiful and valuable, you savor it. That is, you treasure it. You cherish and admire and prize it. Spiritual seeing and spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be fair to say: If you don’ t savor Christ, you haven’ t seen Christ for who he is. If you don’ t prize him above all things, you haven’t apprehended his true worth.
The aim of this book is to help you see and savor Christ. The only way for this to happen is to use your physical eyes and ears to see or hear the testimonies to Jesus Christ told by those who knew him when he was here. That is why these chapters are permeated with Bible quotations. It is not my word that counts, but God’ s. He has borne witness to his Son. His witness is compelling. May he give you eyes to see and hearts to savor.
The heavens declare
the glory of God.
PSALM 1 9 : 1
God, who said, “Light shall
shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 CORINTHIANS 4 : 6
1
SEEING AND SAVORING THE GLORY OF GOD
The Ultimate Aim of Jesus Christ
The created universe is all about glory. The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: the glory of God. The universe was made to show it, and we were made to see it and savor it. Nothing less will do. Which is why the world is as disordered and as dysfunctional as it is. W e have exchanged the glory of God for other things (Romans 1:23).
“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). That is why all the universe exists. It’s all about glory. The Hubble Space Telescope sends back infrared images of faint galaxies perhaps twelve billion light-years away (twelve billion times six trillion miles). Even within our Milky W ay there are stars so great as to defy description, like Eta Carinae, which is five million times brighter than our sun.
Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God. “The heavens declare the glory ofGod,” says the Scripture. The reason for “wasting” so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our Maker, not us. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these [stars]? He who brings out their host by number , calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).
The deepest longing of the human heart is to know and enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this. “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth ... whom I created for my glory,” says the Lord (Isaiah 43:6-7). To see it, to savor it, and to show it—that is why we exist. The untracked, unimaginable stretches of the created universe are a parable about the inexhaustible “riches of his glory” (Romans 9:23). The physical eye is meant to say to the spiritual eye, “Not this, but the Maker of this, is the Desire of your soul.” Saint Paul said, “W e rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). Or, even more precisely, he said that we were “prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). This is why we were created—that he might “make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:23).
The ache in every human heart is an ache for this. But we suppress it and do not see fit to have God in our knowledge (Romans 1:28). Therefore the entire creation has fallen into disorder. The most prominent example of this in the Bible is the disordering of our sexual lives. Paul says that the exchange of the glory of God for other things is the root cause for the homosexual (and heterosexual) disordering of our relationships. “Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature .. . the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (Romans 1:2627). If we exchange God’s glory for lesser things, he gives us up to lived-out parables of depravity—the other exchanges that mirror, in our misery, the ultimate sellout.
The point is this: We were made to know and treasure the glory of God above all things; and when we trade that treasure for images, everything is disordered. The sun of God’s glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system of our soul. And when it does, all the planets of our life are held in their proper orbit. But when the sun is displaced, everything flies apart. The healing of the soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attracting place at the center.
We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self. Indeed, what could be more ludicrous in a vast and glorious universe like this than a human being, on the speck called earth, standing in front of a mirror trying to find significance in his own self-image? It is a great sadness that this is the gospel of the modern world.
But it is not the Christian Gospel. Into the darkness of petty self-preoccupation has shone “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The Christian Gospel is about “the glory of Christ,” not about me. And when it is—in some measure—about me, it is not about my being made much of by God, but about God mercifully enabling me to enjoy making much of him forever.
What was the most loving thing Jesus could do for us? What was the endpoint, the highest good, of the Gospel? Redemption? Forgiveness? Justification? Reconciliation? Sanctification? Adoption? Are not all of these great wonders simply means to something greater? Something final? Something that Jesus asked his Father to give us? “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me” (John 17:24).
The Christian Gospel is “the gospel of the glory of Christ” because its final aim is that we would see and savor and show the glory of Christ. For this is none other than the glory of God. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). When the light of the Gospel shines in our hearts, it is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). And when we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2), that hope is “our blessed hope, the appearing of the gloryof our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). The glory of Christ is the glory of God. (See Chapter Two.)
In one sense, Christ laid the glory of God aside when he came: “And now, Father, glorify me together in your own presence with the glory thatI had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). But in another sense, Christ manifested the glory of God in his coming: “The W ord became flesh and dwelt among us, andwe have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Therefore, in the Gospel we see and savor “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). And this kind of “seeing” is the healing of our disordered lives. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
