Quotes by John Piper

The gospel of the glory of Christ spreads better and flourishes more because of 6,500 languages, not in spite of them.

Go, send, or disobey.

So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is Gods giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be.

You cant ever be your heroes, but you can love their gifts.

Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Dont. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.

Whenever the strength of God is not recognized as the source of our strength, we are breaking the First Commandment: Do not have any gods before me.

The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christs death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty.

The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.

We look at life from the back side of the tapestry. And most of the time, what we see is loose threads, tangled knots and the like. But occasionally, Gods light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.

Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve.

The Gospel is not a theory the Gospel is not a philosophy or an idea the Gospel is not a way of thinking or feeling. The Gospel is an event in history.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.

God revealed himself through the Law, which pointed to Christ as its end and goal, commanded the obedience that comes from faith, increased transgressions, and shut the mouths of all humans because no one has performed the righteousness of the Law so as not to need a substitute.

When I believe in Jesus, I am united to Christ. Therefore, what he did and achieved becomes mine by this union through faith alone. His righteous life is imputed to me. What Christ achieved is counted as mine.

We are all responsible to Jesus first, and then, under him, to various other persons and offices. Discerning the path of love and obedience when two or more of these submissive relationships collide is a call to humble, Bible-saturated, spiritual wisdom.

“... the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.”

“Here was an absolutely compelling road sign. Stay on the road of objective truth - there is objective being and objective value. Stay on the road. There is Truth. There is a Point and Purpose and Essence to it all. Keep searching. You will find it.”

“In all of knowable reality, God is unique. He is knowable not like the multiplication table or the table of elements; he alone is knowable as the one totally in control of being known. He is not at the disposal of the human mind. He is known when he wills to be known. Yet he is known in and through created reality, which is known naturally. Therefore the glory of God is exalted most not when we know God apart from observation and reading and study, but when we know God as a result of his free and gracious self-revelation in and through our earnest observation of and meditation on his work and Word in history.”

“The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature”