Inter-Varsity Press

Contents
What’s New in the 2003 Edition?
Preface
Introduction: How I Became a Christian Hedonist
1. The Happiness of God: Foundation for Christian Hedonism
2. Conversion: The Creation of a Christian Hedonist
3. Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism
4. Love: The Labor of Christian Hedonism
5. Scripture: Kindling for Christian Hedonism
6. Prayer: The Power of Christian Hedonism
7. Money: The Currency of Christian Hedonism
8. Marriage: A Matrix for Christian Hedonism
9. Missions: The Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism
10. Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism
Epilogue: Why I Have Written This Book: Seven Reasons
Appendix 1: The Goal of God in Redemptive History
Appendix 2: Is the Bible a Reliable Guide to Lasting Joy?
Appendix 3: Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?
Jonathan Edwards on the Divine Decrees
Appendix 4: How Then Shall We Fight for Joy? An Outline
Appendix 5: Why Call It Christian Hedonism?

(From the) Preface

This is a serious book about being happy in God. It’s about happiness because that is what our Creator commands: “Delight yourself in the LORD” (Psalm 37:4). And it is serious because, as Jeremy Taylor said, “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.”

The heroes of this book are Jesus Christ, who “endured the cross for the joy that was set before him”; and St. Paul, who was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”; and Jonathan Edwards, who deeply savoured the sweet sovereignty of God; and C. S. Lewis, who knew that the Lord “finds our desires not too strong but too weak”; and all the missionaries who have left everything for Christ and in the end said, “I never made a sacrifice.”

During these seventeen years since Desiring God first appeared, I have been testing it and applying its vision in connection with more of life and ministry and God. The more I do so, the more persuaded I become that it will bear all the weight I can put on it. The more I reflect and the more I minister and the more I live, the more all-encompassing the vision of God and life in this book becomes.

The older I get, the more I am persuaded that Nehemiah 8:10 is crucial for living and dying well: “The joy of the LORD is your strength.” As we grow older and our bodies weaken, we must learn from the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (who died in 1691) to redouble our efforts to find strength from spiritual joy, not natural supplies. He prayed, “May the Living God, who is the portion and rest of the saints, make these our carnal minds so spiritual, and our earthly hearts so heavenly, that loving him, and delighting in him, may be the work of our lives.” When delighting in God is the work of our lives (which I call Christian Hedonism), there will be an inner strength for ministries of love to the very end.

J. I. Packer described this dynamic in Baxter’s life: “The hope of heaven brought him joy, and joy brought him strength, and so, like John Calvin before him and George Whitefield after him (two verifiable examples) and, it would seem, like the apostle Paul himself…he was astoundingly enabled to labour on, accomplishing more than would ever have seemed possible in a single lifetime.”

But not only does the pursuit of joy in God give strength to endure; it is the key to breaking the power of sin on our way to heaven. Matthew Henry, another Puritan pastor, put it like this: “The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks.”

This is the great business of life—to “put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks.” I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God. One of the reasons this book is still “working” after seventeen years is that this truth simply does not and will not change. God remains gloriously all-satisfying. The human heart remains a ceaseless factory of desires. Sin remains powerfully and suicidally appealing. The battle remains: Where will we drink? Where will we feast? Therefore, Desiring God is still a compelling and urgent message: Feast on God.

(From the) Introduction

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF CHRISTIAN HEDONISM

Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:
1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honour God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is:

The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

(Extract from ) Chapter 8

Marriage - a Matrix for Christian Hedonism
The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse. Make marriage a matrix for Christian Hedonism.

TO MAKE A WIFE OF SPLENDOR
There is scarcely a more hedonistic passage in the Bible than the one on marriage in Ephesians 5:25–30:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Husbands are told to love their wives the way Christ loved the church. How did He love the church? “He gave himself up for her.” But why? “That he might sanctify and cleanse her.” But why did He want to do that? “That he might present the church to himself in splendor”! Ah! There it is! “For the joy that was set before him He endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). What joy? The joy of marriage to His bride, the church. Jesus does not want a dirty and unholy wife. Therefore, He was willing to die to “sanctify and cleanse” His betrothed so He could present to Himself a wife “in splendor.”

PURSUING JOY IN THE JOY OF THE BELOVED
And what is the church’s ultimate joy? Is it not to be cleansed and sanctified, and then presented as a bride to the sovereign, all-glorious Christ? So Christ sought His own joy, yes—but He sought it in the joy of the church! That is what love is: the pursuit of our own joy in the joy of the beloved.

In Ephesians 5:29–30, Paul pushes the hedonism of Christ even further: “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”Why does Christ nourish and cherish the church? Because we are members of His own body, and no man ever hates his own body. In other words, the union between Christ and His bride is so close (“one flesh”) that any good done to her is a good done to Himself. The blatant assertion of this text is that this fact motivates the Lord to nourish, cherish, sanctify, and cleanse His bride.

By some definitions, this cannot be love. Love, they say, must be free of self-interest—especially Christlike love, especially Calvary love. I have never seen such a view of love made to square with this passage of Scripture. Yet what Christ does for His bride, this text plainly calls love: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church...” Why not let the text define love for us, instead of bringing our definition from ethics or philosophy?

According to this text, love is the pursuit of our joy in the holy joy of the beloved. There is no way to exclude self-interest from love, for self-interest is not the same as selfishness. Selfishness seeks its own private happiness at the expense of others. Love seeks its happiness in the happiness of the beloved. It will even suffer and die for the beloved in order that its joy might be full in the life and purity of the beloved.

BUT DID NOT JESUS SAY,“HATE YOUR LIFE ”?
When Paul says, “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it,” and then uses Christ Himself as an example, is he contradicting John 12:25, where Jesus says, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”? No! There is no contradiction. On the contrary, the agreement is remarkable.

The key phrase is “in this world”: He who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. This is not an ultimate hating, because by doing it, you keep your life forever. So there is a kind of hating of life that is good and necessary, and this is not what Paul denies when he says no one hates his life. This kind of hating is a means to saving and is therefore a kind of love. That’s why Jesus has to limit the hating He commends with the words in this world. If you take the future world into view, it can’t be called hating anymore. Hating life in this world is what Jesus did when He “gave himself for the church.” But He did it for the joy set before Him. He did it that He might present His bride to Himself in splendor.

Hating His own life was the deepest love for His own life—and for the church! Nor is Paul’s word here a contradiction of Revelation 12:11: “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” They were willing to be killed for Jesus, but by hating their lives in this way, they “conquered” Satan and gained the glory of heaven: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). This “not loving life unto death” was indeed a loving of life beyond death.

EVERYONE SEEKS HAPPINESS
No man in this world ever hates his own flesh in the ultimate sense of choosing what he is sure will produce the greater misery. This has been the conclusion of many great knowers of the human heart. Blaise Pascal put it like this:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.