I came across this quote by John Piper in his short biography on Augustine. After showing how joy and satisfaction in God was Augustine’s chief pursuit, Piper encourages pastors to make this their same goal and provides a quick application of how this should affect the way we understand the doctrines of grace:
“We need to rethink our Reformed doctrine of salvation so that every limb and every branch in the tree is coursing with the sap of Augustinian delight. We need to make plain that total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy; and unconditional election means that the completeness of our joy in Jesus was planned for us before we ever existed; and that limited atonement is the assurance that indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for us by the blood of the covenant; and irresistible grace is the commitment and power of God’s love to make sure we don’t hold on to suicidal pleasures, and to set us free by the sovereign power of superior delights; and that the perseverance of the saints is the almighty work of God to keep us, through all affliction and suffering, for an inheritance of pleasures at God’s right hand forever.”
Man. What an incredible perspective.
I hope that those who discover and embrace the glory of God’s sovereignty in salvation find these doctrines to be not only true, helpful, and encouraging, but also delightful. Because if the end to which we were created is to revel in joy at the glory of God, then for these doctrines to land on us any other way means that we don’t quite fully understand them.