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Overview
Piper opens by admitting that he has “put his oar in a very large sea.” A wall of older, wiser books—Baxter, Sibbes, Bridge, Burroughs, Owen, Bunyan, Edwards, Lloyd-Jones and others—already speaks about the care and cure of sad Christian souls, and he urges readers to seek those books out. His own aim is narrower: to give guidance and hope to believers for whom joy seems to stay out of reach.
The Introduction lays the foundation for everything that follows. Before any practical counsel is given, the reader must stand on the objective, finished work of Christ outside of us. That is why a book about feelings begins with a doctrine.
To Help Those for Whom Joy Stays Out of Reach
Nearly every Bible-saturated physician of the soul has written about long seasons of darkness, which earlier generations called melancholy. Richard Baxter (d. 1691) observed that delighting in God is “the flower and life of true religion,” yet some believers seem able to delight in nothing—not God, not his Word, not any duty.
Piper gently corrects the overstatement. He prefers to say that every true believer carries within the seed of joy. They may lack the flower, but they have the life—perhaps only a mustard seed of joy in Christ. They have “tasted and seen” that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8; 1 Peter 2:2–3), even if that taste is easily overwhelmed by floods of darkness. These are the people the book is written to help.
Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
The Foundation of Gutsy Guilt
One foundation from the larger book is essential here: learning to fight for joy like a justified sinner. Piper calls this “gutsy guilt.” It means living on the rock-solid truth of what happened when Jesus died and rose again, while realizing that in this life we will always be sinful and imperfect—and therefore, in ourselves, always guilty. That reality is emotionally devastating unless we discover justification by faith.
Justification means that my rescue from sin and wrath is first a legal rescue, and only then a moral one. In the courtroom of heaven I am declared righteous and credited with a righteousness I do not have. “Justify” does not mean make just but declare just—as when the people “justified God” in Luke 7:29, declaring him to be just. Because we have no righteousness of our own, our guilt is the deepest root of all our misery; God’s gift of justification on the basis of Christ’s blood severs that root.
The Great Work of Christ Outside of Us
God sent Christ to live a perfect divine-human life and to die an obedient death. Christ thus became both the substitute punishment for our sins (Matthew 26:28; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18) and the substitute performer of our righteousness (Romans 5:19; 10:4; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Philippians 3:9). In God’s courtroom my guilt is removed by Christ’s blood, and my title to heaven is provided by Christ’s obedience.
The capstone of this joy-producing glory is that justification is by faith alone, apart from works of the law. For the “ungodly” who grieve under a cloud of darkness and guilt, the best news in the world is that God counts them righteous because of Christ. This is the rock: justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. … And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. … By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Confusing Justification and Sanctification Will Kill Joy
Only on the basis of this forgiveness and declared righteousness does God give his Spirit and progressively transform us into the image of his Son. That progressive change is sanctification—not justification, but based on it (Romans 6:22). The legal issue is settled first, in the twinkling of an eye; then the moral progress goes forward, all too slowly.
Both are gifts of God, both bought by Christ’s blood, both by faith alone: justification, because only faith receives the declaration that the ungodly are counted righteous; sanctification, because only faith receives the power to bear the fruit of love. To confuse or combine them turns justification by faith into justification by performance, and the great gospel weapon in the fight for joy falls from our hands. Our slow growth in Christlikeness matters—it is the necessary evidence that faith is real—but what a difference it makes, in the discouraging darkness of our imperfection, to know that we have a perfect righteousness outside ourselves: Christ’s.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
John Bunyan Sees His Righteousness in Heaven
John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, spent over twelve years in prison for refusing to stop preaching. John Owen reportedly told King Charles that he would gladly trade all his learning for “the tinker’s power of touching men’s hearts.” But in his twenties Bunyan endured terrible struggles—floods of blasphemous thoughts, a heart so hard he could not shed a tear, and the fear that he had committed the unpardonable sin.
The decisive moment of triumph over despair came as he walked into a field and the sentence fell upon his soul: “Thy righteousness is in heaven.” He saw with the eyes of his soul that Jesus Christ at God’s right hand was his righteousness—so that wherever he was or whatever he was doing, God could not say he lacked it. His good frame of heart did not make that righteousness better, nor his bad frame make it worse, for his righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). His chains fell off, his temptations fled, and he went home rejoicing.
“One day as I was passing into the field … this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven. And … I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness. … Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed.”
— John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666)
Start with Despair in Yourself
Where should a person in darkness start? Piper answers: start at the easiest place—despair. Despair of finding any answer in yourself. Cease all efforts to look inside for the rescue you need, and do what only desperate people can do: cast yourself on Christ. Tell him that he is your only hope, that you have no righteousness of your own, that you are overwhelmed with sin and guilt and darkness—and that you trust him.
He has promised not to turn you away (John 6:37). By this act of faith God unites you to Jesus; “in him” you are now and forever loved, forgiven and righteous. The light will rise in due time. God will hold on to you (Jude 24); those whom he justified he will also glorify (Romans 8:30). In the meantime, this slight momentary affliction is preparing an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17–18).
Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
And those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.