When The Joy Of Obedience Is Less Than The Pleasure Of Sin

By Larry Crabb

A friend of mine is right now fighting the battle of his life - and at this moment he is losing. The dark side seems to be winning. He has turned his back on his wife and children and ministry in order to keep experiencing the satisfaction he is finding in a relationship with another woman. The satisfaction is not sexual. That would be easier to explain and argue against.

He believes the prevailing heresy of the evangelical church that the experience of satisfaction is for now, that living by faith does not delay satisfaction in hope, but provides satisfaction in experience.

He describes his experience as soul joy, the profound sensation of feeling alive, free, connected, and wanted. It is an intensity of fulfillment that he does feel, that decades of (as best he knew) seriously and fervently following Christ really never provided. He sees himself as built for this joy, and can recognize only two options: pursue the experience and walk away from what he has always understood the Bible commands or come back to the Christian fold and give up all hope of deep joy in this life. That's how he sees things. How should I respond? How should I pray? How should the community of family and friends that love him - and cannot and should not give up on him - respond? How should they pray?

As a younger man, I can recall persuading myself that the clean pleasure of coming home to my wife having not looked at pornography on the hotel television was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow path. The argument is typically "Christian": the felt joys of obedience exceed the felt pleasures of sin. We hear it all the time.

But that's true only when, as in my case, I really like my wife. As long as I have blessings that I sincerely enjoy, then the moral path allows me to keep on enjoying those blessings. But notice, the joy is not the enjoyment of God. It is the enjoyment of blessings. Remove the blessings, give the man a wife that for whatever complex of reasons he does not enjoy, and the pleasures of sin may exceed the pleasures of holiness.

The old hymn says "There is joy in serving Jesus". And there is. But if we are counting on an experience of soul satisfaction to reliably accompany obedience and if we expect that our felt pleasure in doing good will exceed the pleasure we could enjoy by indulging our favorite sin, then it won't take long till sin will seem irresistible.

Here's the point: if we live for an experience of joy, if we elevate desire to central status and live for nothing higher than its felt satisfaction, then we no longer are living by faith. We are worshipping desire. We are no longer living for God.

I agree with Jonathan Edwards that there is no incompatibility between our unquenchable longing for happiness and the command to worship God. But if God becomes the means and our happiness becomes the point, then we are self-obsessed pragmatists, not worshippers. When God is the point and obedience designed to bring him pleasure becomes the focus, then there will eventually be a fullness of joy that makes sin unthinkable and unappealing, thoroughly repulsive.

But that fullness of joy comes later, in heaven. In this life, it's more about hope than about joy. If we're living for the maximum sense of pleasurable satisfaction now, we will obey God only if he provides blessings that obedience allows us to continue enjoying. Take away the blessings and live life to gain satisfaction of even the noblest human desires and eventually you'll find yourself moving away from God.

One prevailing heresy in evangelical culture is that living for Jesus reliably provides the soul with a depth of satisfaction that exceeds the satisfaction found in sin.

We're trying very hard in Christian circles to convince ourselves that even without the prospect of heaven, the Christian life is worth living. It's not. Unless, like me, you've been blessed with a spouse you genuinely like, kids who delight your heart, a job or ministry that provides both meaning and income, and decent health. Then keeping your nose clean makes sense as long as the blessings keep coming. Why give up the enjoyment of what you have? Christian living then is pragmatically smart.

If the real battle is to keep from making an idol of desire, if the real battle is to let our choices be ruled by a desire for God that sometimes leaves us empty and lonely, then, though we can rightly celebrate whatever blessings come our way and enjoy the pleasure they bring, we must never deposit that pleasure in the bank and write checks on that account.