Where Is God?...Continued from page 5
John Piper
3. The reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is so that followers of Christ can experience and display that no pleasure and no treasure compares to knowing Christ. That is, the loss of every good thing in this world is meant to reveal that Christ himself more than compensates for all losses.
We see it in the New Testament and the Old Testament. The apostle Paul says, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8). The superior worth of Christ is magnified because in all Paul's losses, he experiences Christ as all-satisfying.
The prophet Habakkuk said it with amazing and painful beauty:
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)
Famines, pestilence, persecution—these happen so that the world might see in the followers of Jesus and discover for themselves that God made us for himself and that he is our "exceeding joy" (Psalm 43:4) and at his right hand are pleasures for every more (Psalm 16:11). The losses of life are meant to wean us off the poisonous pleasures of the world and lure us to Christ our everlasting joy.
4. Finally, the reason this terrorized and troubled world exists is to make a place for Jesus Christ the Son of God to suffer and die for our sins. The reason there is terror is so that Christ would be terrorized. The reason there is trouble is so that Christ could be troubled. The reason there is pain is so that Christ could feel pain. This is the world God prepared for the suffering and death of his Son. This is the world where God made the best display of his love in the suffering of his Son.
Romans 5:8, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." All his suffering was the plan of God to reveal redeeming love to us. The sovereignty of God, the evil of the world, and the love of God meet at the cross of Christ. Listen to this amazing statement from Acts 4:27-28 about God's plan for the suffering of his Son—for you! "Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." All the scheming, all the flogging, all the spitting, all the beating with rods, all the mockery, all the abandonment by his friends, all the thorns in his head, all the nails in his hands and feet, the sword in his side, weight of the sins of the world—all of it according to God's plan. For you to see God's love more graphically.
God's deepest answer to terrorism and calamity is the suffering and death of his Son. He entered into our fallen world of sin and misery and death. He bore in himself the cause of it all—sin. And he bought by his death the cure for it all—forgiveness and everlasting joy in the age to come.
On his behalf I invite—I urge—you to receive him as your Savior and Lord and the supreme Treasure of your life.
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