Below is the second of 3 videos John Piper recorded just before taking his leave. In it he addresses the question of whether or not it is OK to seek your own gain in the way you love other people (see the first one about justification).

The following is an edited transcript of the video.

One of the issues in Christian Hedonism—which is the name I love to give to my philosophy of life and my understanding of the Bible—is that you read in 1 Corinthians 13:5, "Love seeks not its own." Another version says, "Love doesn't insist on its own way." But here comes John Piper saying that all of life is a relentless quest for my own joy in God, spilling over in love to people. How does that fit? It sounds like love seeks not its own and here you come and say, "Seek your own joy."

Is that a contradiction? Is this Bible verse against Christian Hedonism? Here is a way to think about it. Back up to verses 1-3, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I am a noisy gong and a clanging symbol. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and have all knowledge and have all faith so as to remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing." And then it says, "If I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." Or the old version—"it profits me nothing."

Now what kind of argument is that? This is an argument that says, "Don't do that. Don't be the kind of person who gives away all that you have and who delivers your body to be burned lovelessly, because"—here's the argument—"you won't gain anything! Pharisees don't gain anything by trying to call all attention to their sacrificial labors when they are loveless inside. You want gain don't you? Then love authentically!" How does that argument work if love seeks not its own? See where I'm going? The argument is from gain, and yet it seeks not its own.

So here's the way I put it together: It is right to want our loving to be a certain kind of gain, and very wrong to want it to be another kind of gain. If my gain comes from stepping on you, manipulating you, exploiting you, being indifferent or insensitive to you, or using you, then I'm not loving. And it is this kind of gain being denounced in verse 5 with "Love seeks not its own." I don't seek my own at your expense.

What is the alternative? The alternative is that I seek my joy in your blessing. I seek my joy in your joy. I seek my joy in your salvation. I seek my joy in loving you as I long to be loved. That is the gain that verse 3 tells us we receive when we love. So I want to let verse five chasten me and say, "Be careful John Piper lest you take your Christian Hedonism to become a kind of selfish manipulation and exploitation of people."

But I don't want to let verse 5 undermine the truth that God wants us to seek our joy in loving people. You know as well as I do that if someone is loving you in a begrudging way, like, "I really don't want to do this for you, but I'm a Christian and I'm supposed to, so I'll do it," you don't feel very loved. You don't feel very loved when they are dutifully helping you fix your flat tire.

But, if they say, "You know what, it is my delight to do this for you. I just get a lot of joy out of seeing you get helped"—when someone says that to you, and you sense that they really do enjoy blessing you and putting themselves out in order that you might be built up or strengthened or have some need met, you feel wonderfully loved. Christian hedonism goes for that. It says yes, don't renounce the pursuit of that joy! Find your joy in the joy of the beloved, because you get the best joy that way, and they really feel loved that way.