Lack of sovereign joy
A lesson in love taught by Augustine
- In the history of the Church.
- Few people have surpassed Augustine by describing the greatness.
- Beauty.
- And quality of being desired inherent in God.
- Augustine was quite convinced.
- From experience and by the Word of God.
- That “Blessed was he who possesses God?”(Thomas A.
- Hand.
- Augustine on Prayer.
- New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co.
- 1986.
- P.
- 17).
- ” Have you created us for yourself and our hearts find peace only when they rest in you?(Augustine.
- Confessions.
- I.
- 1).
- Augustine worked with all his might to make known and loved the God of sovereign grace and joy in the world.
You’re always active, but always at rest, do you collect everything for yourself, even if you don’t need anything?Mistake saddens you, but you don’t suffer any pain. You may be angry, but serene. Your works are varied, but is your goal the same?You receive those who come to you, even if I have never lost them. You never need to, but rejoice in conquest; Are you never greedy, even if you demand the return of your gifts?You forgive our debts, but you don’t suffer. You are my God, my life, my holy joy, but is it enough to say that about you?Can anyone say enough when they talk about you? However, to those who keep silent about you!(Augustine, Confessions, I, 4)
If true, as RCSproul said, that today we are not freed from Pelagian captivity in the church (“Augustine and Pelage”, in Tabletalk, June 1996, p. 52), we must pray, preach, write, Pelage, a British monk, was a popular preacher in the years 401 to 409 AD. He was Augustine’s sworn enemy because he rejected the idea that man’s will be enslaved by sin and needed a special grace to believe in Christ and do good. He rejected Augustine’s prayer: “Give me the grace [Lord] to do what you command me to do and command me to do whatever you want” (Confessions, X, 31). RCSproul said, “Do we need an Augustine or a Luther to speak to us again, unkehether God’s grace is darkened or erased these days?(? Augustine and Pelage ?, 52).
Yes, we really do. But we also need thousands of ordinary shepherds who rejoice in the extraordinary sovereignty of the joy that belongs to God and comes only from Him. And do we need to rediscover Augustine’s particular point of view?A very biblical vision of grace as a spontaneous gift of sovereign. joy in God that frees us from the bondage of sin. We must reconsider our reformed vision of salvation, so that the sap of Augustinian joy may flow through every branch and branch of the tree.
We must clarify that total depravity is not only malignancy, it is also not to see beauty and to be dead to joy; this unconditional choice means that all our joy in Jesus was planned for us before we existed; this limited atonement is the certainty that the indestructible joy we have in God is infallibly bestowed upon us by the blood of the covenant; that irresistible grace is the commitment and power of God’s love to ensure that we are not bound by suicidal pleasures and also to be freed by the supreme power of higher pleasures; and that the perseverance of the saints is God’s powerful work to preserve us, in the midst of all afflictions and sufferings, for a legacy of pleasures that are at the right hand of God, forever.
This note of triumphant and sovereign joy is a largely absent element of theology and reformed worship. Perhaps we should ask ourselves: is it because we have not experienced the triumph of sovereign joy in our lives?
How wonderful it was that I suddenly freed myself from those barren joys that I was once afraid to lose!”You cast them out of me; You, who are the true and sovereign joy, expelled them from me and took their place?O Lord, my God, my light, my wealth, my salvation (Confessions, IX, 1).
We are slaves to the pleasures of this world, so despite all our conversations about god’s glory, we love television, food, sleep, sex, money, and human praise, just as others love them. If this is true, let us repent and set our eyes decisively on the Word of God, praying: Lord, open my eyes so that I may have the sovereign vision that in your presence there is fullness of joy and to your right pleasures. forever (Psalm 16:11).
Devotion of John Piper’s book Provai e Vede
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