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8th July 2025
TuesdayReflection
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John Piper
founder and teacher of Desiring God.com
"Live Peaceably with All,
If Possible"
Romans 12:14-18
14 Ask God to bless those who persecute you - yes, ask him to bless, not to curse. 15 Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep. 16 Have the same concern for everyone. Do not be proud, but accept humble duties. Do not think of yourselves as wise.
17 If someone has done you wrong, do not repay him with a wrong. Try to do what everyone considers to be good. 18 Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody. "
One of the reasons you might not rejoice with those who rejoice or weep with those who weep (v. 15) is that you are glad they are weeping or mad that they are rejoicing.
In other words, you are angry because of something they have done, and you want things to go bad for them.
So if they do, you are glad. And if they don't, you are mad.
We saw that this is the opposite of what verse 14 is calling for. "Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them."
God is calling you in this text to be a different kind of person.
Not one who wants your adversary to have trouble, but one who wants your adversary to be blessed.
And remember that this is radical inner change, not superficial external change.
The issue is what you feel in your heart, not just what you do with your fists or your words.
"Bless, don't curse" means "from the heart want things to go well with them, both now and forever."
The root cause of not being the kind of people who feel genuine empathy with the weeping and the rejoicing is pride
But we know the difference between the tears of an actor and the tears of a tender heart.
What is the opposite of this pride that kills sympathy and empathy and other-oriented joy and other-oriented sorrow?
The opposite can be described in two ways.
One, of course, is to call it humility.
Humility would be not thinking of ourselves all the time.
It would be not being infatuated with ourselves, but finding others interesting and even superior in many ways.
Humility would be not exalting ourselves but loving to exalt others.
That's one way to describe the opposite of pride.
But there is a problem with that description of the alternative to pride.
There's not God in it.
There's no Christ in it.
Strictly speaking, this humility is atheistic.
The biblical, Christian alternative to pride is not natural humility, but faith in Jesus Christ, the creator and redeemer of the universe.
The Christian alternative to self-preoccupation and self-infatuation and self-exaltation is Christ-preoccupation and Christ-infatuation and Christ-exaltation.
The Christian alternative to thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to is faith - that is, turning away from self to Christ.
Thinking much and thinking highly of Christ.
Let's be more precise.
The reason faith is the Christian alternative to empathy-killing pride is that faith is humbly resting in Christ.
Faith is being self-forgettingly satisfied with Christ.
Faith is turning from self to Christ as our all in all.
So humility is not something merely added to faith - as fruit grown from faith - but humility is part of what faith is.
Let me say this even more radically and more universally.
Without faith in Christ, there is not humility among men, but only pride.
For this reason: If I cease to be self-preoccupied and self-infatuated and self-exalting and become other-person-occupied and other-person-infatuated and other-person-exalting but don't bring Christ into the picture, I am still locked in the prison of pride.
Why? Because I am looking to other humans, beings like myself, for my joy, and not looking to Christ, my Maker and my God,
and the one through whom and for whom all things exist (Colossians 1:16).
><(((°>
Un-edited version, (MUCH MORE) available on request
(and Bible references)
John Piper
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.
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