What Jesus Purchased with His Life Is the Greatest Act of Love Imaginable
So what does it mean then that we are the light of the world? How do good deeds grow from who we are in such a way that they make God look glorious? Here it would be wise to stay close to the context of Jesus’s words. He has just spoken the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who suffer for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:3–10). Here is a kind of identity that is very unusual in the world. It is like savory salt when things are tasteless and flat, and it is like hope-filled light when people are stumbling around in the dark.
But the closest beatitude to the command to let your light shine for the glory of God is that you are blessed when you are reviled. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11–12). Immediately following this command to rejoice in persecution comes the statement: “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14). Therefore, I conclude that what is most salty and bright in this insipid and dark world is the almost incomprehensible joy of Jesus’s followers in the midst of persecution and the hardships of life.
It is a joy that is meek and merciful and pure and peaceable, but these things alone do not awaken people to the glory of God. In order to waken people to consider God as an explanation for our good works there generally must be an obstacle of suffering that would ordinarily cause them to be angry or despairing but does not have that effect on us. Rather they see us “rejoice” in hardship. They see that this hardship does not make us self-centered and self-pitying and mean-spirited. Instead they see our joy and wonder what we are hoping in when ordinary props for hope have been knocked away. The answer, Jesus says, is that we have great reward in heaven (Matt. 5:12). That is, Jesus has become a treasure for us that is more precious than what the world offers. Therefore, when persecution or calamity take natural pleasures away, we still have Jesus, and we still have joy.
Now when our good works get their flavor from this salt and glow with this light, the world may well be awakened to taste something they have never tasted before and to see something they have never seen before, namely, the glory of God in Jesus. If we give a word of testimony concerning the truth and beauty of Jesus, and if the Spirit mercifully blows on the hearts of those who see the evidence of that beauty in our lives, then people will “give glory to [our] Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
Is the Glory of God an “Ulterior Motive” for Love?
The supremacy of the value of the glory of God is seen in the way Jesus makes the command of Matthew 5:16—“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” He explicitly says that our aim in doing good works for others is that they might glorify God. Sometimes people who talk much of love but are not God-centered the way Jesus is say things like, “If you do good to people to get them to glorify your God, you are not loving them, for you have ulterior motives.”
This kind of criticism results from a failure to experience the glory of God as the greatest gift and highest joy imaginable. How could it not be love to lay down your life for someone (in doing good for them) specifically with a view to satisfying them with the glory of God forever? This motive is not ulterior; it is open and front and center. It is the very essence of love: followers of Jesus are not do-gooders with no eternal aims for those they love. They know exactly what the greatest and highest and most joyful good is: seeing and savoring God in Jesus forever. This is their aim and they are unashamed of it. They think any lesser aim is a failure of love.
Jesus Loved Us by Obtaining for Us at the Cost of His Life God’s Glory
We have seen it already, but it is so important we should see it again from different texts: Jesus loved like this. In his darkest hour he let his light shine most brightly in a “good work.” As he did the greatest “good work” that has ever been done, he pondered out loud, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” His answer is no. Instead he described the ultimate reason why he came to the hour of his death: “But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28). D. A. Carson rightly calls this “nothing other than an articulation of the principle that has controlled his life and ministry (John 7:18; 8:29, 50).” From beginning (John 2:11) to end (John 12:28) Jesus let his light shine—did his good works—to vindicate and display the glory of God.
The way he thought of this as the supreme act of love was not only that it cost him his life (John 15:13) but that it obtained freely for sinners the greatest gift possible. He prayed for it in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” This was the final, greatest, and most satisfying gift obtained by Jesus in the “good work” that he did on the cross.
This will make no sense at all to a person who does not see and savor the glory of God above all other gifts. But for those who have renounced all that this world offers (Luke 14:33) and set their heart on the “great reward” in heaven, namely, the enjoyment of the glory of Jesus, Jesus’s purchase of this reward at the cost of his life will be the greatest act of love imaginable.
Content taken from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life according to the Gospels by John Piper, ©2023. Used by permission of Crossway.
John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.