Kingdom Currency (2)
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16.11
Not a bad thing
Psychologists, since the beginning of the discipline, have argued about the essence of what it means to be human.
Some, like Freud, insist that we are motivated by physical pleasure, while others, like Victor Frankl or Abraham Maslow, believe that some higher purpose or “peak experience” defines us – a more inward sense of pleasure that takes the form of fulfillment or ecstasy. Humanistic psychologists argue that something like “self-actualization” is our reason for being, that human pleasure is maximized by each of us discovering and living the life which is uniquely our own.
When we consider what the Bible teaches about humankind, we find that each of these psychologies has hit upon the truth, if only in part.
According to the Bible, human beings are made for pleasure. But not just any old pleasure. Certainly not merely the pleasures of the flesh or of material bounty. Not even the pleasure of “being somebody” or achieving some higher purpose in life. None of these gets at the essence of the kind of pleasure that makes human beings what they are.
Human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, only realize their full potential and pleasure as they participate in the very being of God and know and experience the pleasure He takes in Himself and His glory. As Augustine put it on the opening page of His Confessions, “You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” In God, that is—our lives hidden in God and bathed in His pleasure.
Pleasure, in other words, is not a bad thing. Indeed, we’re made for pleasure, but for the pleasure of God above all.
Made for eternal pleasures
God wants us to know fullness of joy and pleasures without end. But He does not want us to be satisfied with merely fleetingpleasures—the kind that moth and rust can corrupt or thieves can break through and steal. God has made us for eternal pleasures, pleasures that are, first, spiritual—and therefore cannot be affected by any material dearth or deprivation. Such pleasures are bound up in God Himself, and to know them, we must abide in Him.
We are made for pleasure, and every human being’s highest pleasure is to participate in the very being of God.
God promises that we can know such pleasure, and that, knowing pleasure in Him, we will want for nothing else. In Jesus Christ, God has brought all His precious and very great promises to fullness and fruition, so that, as we rest in Christ and stretch out toward God’s promises in Him, we may actually partake of the divine essence—we may know and enjoy and dwell in God Himself, and thus know fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (2 Pet. 1.4; 2 Cor. 1.20).
Seeking pleasure in the wrong places
This is what God was promising the people of Israel as they returned to the land of promise from exile in Babylon and Persia. Having received grace from Him, He would give them more grace if they would believe in Him and, trusting in His promises, build the temple as His dwelling place before they concentrated on building dwellings for themselves. With God firmly established in their midst, the people would know all the fullness, bounty, security, joy, and pleasure they could possibly enjoy, and they would want for nothing.
The accounts and trusts and security and complete happiness would be bound up in Him and His grace, not in paneled houses.
But the people of Israel did not believe the promises of God. They sought pleasure in things, possessions, and money in the bank, rather than in the Presence of God. They worked for a currency that could not last rather than one which would endure forever.
And too many Christians live most of their lives just like that. They read the precious and very great promises of God. They know that Jesus calls them to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and that He promises everything they need or want will be supplied as they do.
Yet, rather than abide and grow in His grace, they become distracted by the ways of the world, thinking these to be the source of true pleasure. They profess to live in the Kingdom of God and to know His grace, yet they default to the economy of getting-and-spending to acquire and possess the pleasure and happiness they seek.
In the divine economy of the Kingdom of God, we must learn how to manage our currency, the currency of grace. We praise and thank God for the infinite “treasury” of grace we have in Jesus Christ, and we daily consider how best to spend that grace on others and thus to know the pleasure of God in so doing.
Living in grace, and spending it lavishly on others: This is the way to the pleasure of God’s Presence in the Kingdom economy.
For reflection
1. Do you think it’s right to say that human beings were made for pleasure? Why or why not?
2. How do people misconstrue this notion, and what does it lead them to do?
3. What do we mean by eternal pleasures? Why is it important that we should seek these?
Next steps—Demonstration: What do you think it means to “spend grace on others”? How will you do that today? How do you expect to know the pleasure of the Lord as you do so?
T. M. Moore
If you have found this meditation helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Cor. 4.15).
Other columns of interest this week: In our Read Moore column this week, we begin readings from the book, Such a Great Salvation. Our Crosfigell series on Brendan of Clonfert finds him in a bit of a setback, sailing back to Ireland to start all over again. You can subscribe to Read Moore and Crosfigell and receive them in your email regularly. Use the Subscriptions box at the bottom of the page to update your subscriptions. All subscriptions are free. Click the Articles tab on the home page to see all the selections available to you.
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Except as indicated, all Scriptures are taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. For sources of all quotations, see the weekly PDF of this study. All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter.
