It’s been a few days now since most of us gathered with family and close friends to eat more than we should have and give thanks less than we ought to. So I thought it would be instructive and challenging to consider some thoughts that appeared from John Piper on the Solid Joys daily app on November 28. Continue reading . . .

It’s been a few days now since most of us gathered with family and close friends to eat more than we should have and give thanks less than we ought to. So I thought it would be instructive and challenging to consider some thoughts that appeared from John Piper on the Solid Joys daily app on November 28.

The Apostle Paul wrote this about ingratitude in Romans 1:21 – “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Piper then comments:

“When gratitude springs up in the human heart toward God, he is magnified as the wealthy source of our blessing. He is acknowledged as giver and benefactor and therefore as glorious.

But when gratitude does not spring up in our hearts at God’s great goodness to us, it probably means that we don’t want to pay him a compliment; we don’t want to magnify him as our benefactor.

And there is a very good reason that human beings by nature do not want to magnify God with thanksgiving or glorify him as their benefactor. The reason is that it detracts from their own glory, and all people by nature love their own glory more than the glory of God.

At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one’s own greatness. For genuine gratitude admits that we are beneficiaries of an unearned bequest. We are cripples leaning on the cross-shaped crutch of Jesus Christ. We are paralytics living minute by minute in the iron lung of God’s mercy. We are children asleep in heaven’s stroller.

Natural man hates to think of himself in these images: unworthy, beneficiary, cripple, paralytic, child. They rob him of all his glory by giving it all to God.

Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel any genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God, but only himself.

‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mark 2:17).

Jesus has nothing to do for those who insist they are well. He demands something great: that we admit we are not great. This is bad news to the arrogant, but words of honey to those who have given up their charade of self-sufficiency and are seeking God.”

Perhaps, then, we should pause and think again of all that we have (such as heaven), every ounce of which we don’t deserve. And then let’s add to that all that we do deserve (such as hell), not one second of which we will ever experience. Now that’s something to be thankful for every day of the year!