Is Love Fake If Motivated by Reward?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2016

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pastor John urges Christians to remember the reward when loving others.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, and today we have an anonymous
0:09.9	question in the inbox.
0:11.5	Here it is, Pastor John.
0:12.9	Pastor John, I've heard you say that while you were working on your doctoral dissertation
0:16.6	about Jesus' command to love your enemies, you read a lot of scholars who argued against
0:21.8	being motivated to love by the promise of reward.
0:25.5	But you said that this is simply unbiblical that Jesus and the apostles motivate love
0:30.7	all the time by encouraging us to pursue our own greater happiness.
0:34.7	My question is, how then can that be love?
0:38.2	How is this not just using other people for our own selfish ends?
0:42.2	Didn't Paul say love seeks not its own in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 5?
0:48.0	Pastor John, what would you say to these questions?
0:50.6	I think that this is one of the most important questions that can be asked in the Christian
0:58.3	life.
0:59.5	We really need to settle it whether we're going to feel guilty for being motivated by the
1:06.5	promises of joy in God's presence that he offers us as a motivation for sacrifice in this
1:14.6	world.
1:15.8	This is absolutely huge.
1:18.0	The Bible is full of commands to love people at cost to ourselves.
1:27.4	We are often called to make great sacrifices in this world, even risking our lives or intentionally
1:36.4	laying them down for others.
1:39.0	If the Bible offers us motivations and incentives to do this by promising that there will be
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Desiring God, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Desiring God and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.