Pleasure - A Reflex Effect And Not A Pursuit

What should be the Christian outlook on “pleasure”? The US Constitution talks about the “pursuit of happiness”. This is not the same as the pursuit of pleasure. Happiness is a deeper thing of the spirit than pleasure which resides in the soul, the intellect, emotions and will.

We are real human selves as well as it being Christ living in us. Therefore we do have pleasure as well as giving Him pleasure; we do have motives as well as being motivated by Him.

If a person thanks me because something I have said or written has made Christ more real to him, I have no necessity every time to stop him short and say, “Give the thanks to God.” In thanking me, he really means as a channel, and I as a channel am rightly also pleased that I have been a channel for Christ. I must not accuse myself of pride because I do feel pleasure.

Equally, when my main motive in some action has been believing it to be God’s will, Yet I see also that I had a personal motive of the gain or enjoyment or pleasure I also get from it, I must not therefore accuse myself of pride. As a real human self, I have my pleasure, my motives, my sense of personal gain in a thing.

The point is that, as a Christian with Jesus Christ in a living union with me, Christ’s motives are being established day be day in my soul AS MY MAIN MOTIVE. God’s will, God’s work, and God’s glory are becoming my main objective – as it is He by me, I too anticipate pleasure, satisfaction and gain from it.

This is how it is with God himself. Years ago I began to justify my conscious ego of pleasure by discovering that the Bible said of God that “for My pleasure they are and were created,” and of Jesus Christ that “for the joy set before Him He endured the cross.”

“Then God does things for selfish reasons,” I said, “the same as I do.” Of course, that missed the point which I saw later, as I began to exchange my self-centeredness for God-centeredness. I saw that true living is when the purpose is for others, and the secondary effect is the pleasure or gain I have from it.

False living is when my pleasure or gain is primary and the purposes of my living for others incidental. This is true in all life’s activities, such as the simple difference between eating to live (and incidentally getting pleasure out of it), and living to eat!

God’s pleasure, Christ’s joy are an outcome of His giving Himself, not pleasing Himself. True pleasure is when my self-pleasing is fulfilled in self-giving, and my self-love finds full satisfaction in other-love. There is total self-fulfillment, a combination of spirit happiness and soul pleasure.

As Jesus said, we find ourselves by losing ourselves in God’s love activities, and the REFLEX EFFECT of such living is the pleasure, gain and satisfaction it brings us.

We, the redeemed, though we do not live a life of continued sinning, do commit sins of attempted independent pleasure – pleasure not derived from godly motives. What then do we do? We have not broken relationship with Christ dwelling in us; we have just temporarily forgotten that relationship. We have interrupted fellowship from our side of the relationship. We have asserted our freedom by acting as if we were not one with Him and looking for some form of pleasure separate from His motives.

Just because we ARE one with Christ, we know that pleasure we were after was wrong. The way back is as simple and plain as on our first coming to God. If we are quickly born again by accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord in a quick cleansing, then we are just as quickly accepted back into that indwelling relationship by humble repentance. It is as if God says to me, “Yes, you sinned, and honest confession and repentance were necessary. But as for the sin, I settled the whole sin question 2,000 years ago in the atoning death of my son. Through Him sins are no more. I have forgotten them. You can forget them.”

At this point we have to be careful not to add a second sin to the first. The first was the sin itself, the second and greater is if I don’t believe at once that what God has cleansed, He has cleansed. Not to believe in the efficacy of the blood of Christ for all sins both before and after conversion is a worse sin than the first. For unbelief, Jesus said, is the only REAL sin (John 16:9).

Some are also troubled by the repetition of sins and their human pleasure in their lives. How can they be delivered from doing it again and again? We do not find deliverance by looking to the past or future for some foolproof formula; but forgetting our search for deliverance, we become occupied by the simple say to day walk with the Deliverer.

Live in the “now moment” of His presence. The past is no longer there through the atoning sacrifice of Christ; the future is not my business; so if at this moment you are walking in a union with Jesus within, be thankful. Take pleasure in that walk. If and when the sudden fall comes again, get in the clear again with God, and walk on – looking neither to past nor future. We are much less likely to be tripped up in such a simple single-eyed walk than if we are tense about the past or future and holding on to some supposed formula of deliverance.

Even if we are bound by a sinful pleasure-seeking habit, or even if we are not willing to be delivered from a habit, the deliverance or the change of will to make us willing can never come by our attention being centered on the habit. It is only by a daring leap of faith and awareness which affirms that Christ is our deliverer and that He is the one living in us promising to bring us along on a day by day basis to “will and do after His good pleasure.”

So let’s not get the cart before the horse in our pleasure seeking. God wants our human pleasure – but He wants it as a reflex effect of following His purposes.

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