John Piper Quotations

Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.

The bloodline of Jesus is thicker, deeper, stronger than the bloodline of race, ethnicity and family.

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

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.

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.

Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. 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.

The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ's 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.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!

My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.

Don't assume that all fat people are gluttons. And don't use the word 'fat.' There is a principle here. Learn from logic and experience not to associate things - especially in preaching - that don't necessarily go together.

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, God's light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.

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

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.

God has ordained that Satan have a long leash with God holding on to the leash because he knows that when we walk in and out of those temptations, struggling with both the physical effects that they bring and the moral effects that they bring, more of God's glory will shine.

Human beings were put on the planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator at every point in every sphere of culture.

Neither Muslims nor anyone else truly worships the true God if they reject Jesus as he really is in the Gospels.

When people think about 'thinking,' they often think 'academia;' they think 'threat.' They think 'coldness.' I want to reverse all those images and say, 'No, the brain God gave you is intended to throw fuel on the fire of your affections for God. It's really good at it if you let it.'

As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.

The saving love of God is his doing whatever must be done, at great cost to himself, and for the least deserving, so that he might enthrall them with what will make them supremely happy forever, namely, himself.

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.

Whether sexual orientation can change or not, hearts can change and turn any sexual orientation into an occasion for the glory of Christ. Those with same-sex attraction glorify Christ through sexual abstinence and through the enrichment of significant Christ-exalting relationships in other ways.

My prayer is that the good news of Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, would flood Jewish communities around the world, that the veil would be lifted, and that we would see a massive turning of Israel to the Lord Jesus.

God created a good world that was subjected to futility because of the sinful, treasonous choice of the first human beings.

Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

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.

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry.

If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command.

The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.

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

I know God's voice. I've seen God's hand. If the Lord is my helper, why should I be afraid?

You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.

The Bible is the ultimate authority and infallible, not the pastor and not the elders. And it doesn't mean that you believe everything he says without examining it.

As much as we can, let's defend the truth by pointing to what the apostles taught, and let's call out sin by pointing to the inconsistencies between what we say we believe and what we do.

You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.

I owe my life and hope to the gospel.

The absence of God in most spheres of life is perceived to be normal, and even Christians feel it as normal - which is why absorbing the culture all around us and its priorities is so dangerous.

I can be poor, I can lose a job, I can have a hospital bill that I don't know how to pay, for I can do all these things through Him who strengthens me.

God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.

I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activity. God is passionate about hallowing the name of God.

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.

Blind people don't decide to see. Jesus says, 'See!' and they see.

God is infinitely valuable. I can't think of anything that would have a greater impact on your life than for you to believe that.

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.

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It's amazing how many people go into the ministry who don't really like to be with people.

God has levels of willing and delighting. He wills and delights in things in different ways so that approval and disapproval can coexist without being contradictory, without canceling each other out. I am making the case here for infinite complexity.

Jesus Christ... came into the world to vindicate the infinite worth of God's holiness which had been desecrated by our sin and which seemed... to be taken lightly because it was being passed over for nothing more than the blood of bulls.

Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.

Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible.

There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.

God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.

Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.

Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.

Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.

The Christian - the biblical - concept of mercy toward wrongdoers only exists in relation to justice. Showing mercy, in relation to wrongdoing, means treating someone better than they deserve.

I am not a good example of an urban pastor. Because of the way I believe God calls me to use my time, I don't have significant relationships with most of my neighbors.

There are many pointers in the Bible concerning the rightness, the goodness, the beauty, the justice, the preciousness of racial harmony and diversity.

God was alive when this universe exploded into existence. He was alive when Socrates drank his poison. He was the living God when William Bradford governed Plymouth Colony. He was the living God in 1966 when Thomas Altizer proclaimed him dead and Time magazine absolutely absurdly put it on the front cover.

The giving of the Quran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity. If this is so, then Quran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.

You do the hundreds of things that a Christward heart does in the hope that God will put a match to those little sparks to cause it to become a conflagration in a community or in a nation.

I owe my life and hope to the gospel. Without it I would still be strutting with racist pride, or I would be suffering the moral paralysis of 'white guilt.' But the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.

I just want to preach so bad I can hardly stand it. I love what I do.

I believe God has a future for ethnic Israel.

I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.

One way to appreciate C.S. Lewis is to see how his Christian humility shaped his life and work.

The astonishing thing is that people can become religious without being converted. That is, they join churches and start reading the Bible and doing religious things with no change in the foundation of their happiness: It is still themselves. They are the ground of their joy.

We send out mass e-mails to the handlers we have signed up, and we include in our mailings to them the dates of our training, ... We make sure that there is a mixture of veteran handlers and new handlers.

The training is more extensive, the training has been upgraded, the training is very successful, and the training is monitored by the police department of New York City,

We want to warn boaters that they are not licensed in the state of Oregon to do business in the state of Oregon.

Being happy in God is the way we glorify Him. This is the reason we were created. Delighting in God is not a mere preference or option of life; it is our joyful duty and should be the single passion of our lives.

You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.

The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ—the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death.

There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy.

God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.

Whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.

Death is like my car. It takes me where I want to go.

I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.

Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery. Enough for us; abundance for others.

This assumes that the glory of Christ is our highest treasure, not health, wealth, family or even life. So preaching must continually show not that Jesus is the means to prosperity but that he is better than prosperity.

We do not smirk at the misery or the merrymaking of immoral culture. We weep. Being pilgrims does not mean being cynical. The salt of the earth does not mock rotting meat. Where it can, it saves and seasons. And where it can’t, it weeps.

I will not waste my life! I will finish my course and finish it well. I will display the Gospel of the grace of God in all I do. I will run my race to the end.” - Paul

The Meaning of Mature Femininity: At the heart of mature felinity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships.

To love God passionately is to love truth passionately.

If you want to be a conduit for God's grace, you don't have to be lined with gold. Copper will do.

When you are deeply peaceful and confident that, because of Christ, God will bring you safely to his eternal kingdom and be the all-satisfying Treasure of your life forever, then you are free to see the truth, and love the truth, and speak the truth no matter what, and joyfully spread a passion for the truth whose name is Jesus.

What defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.

The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.

A woman who fears the Lord will not run away from God to satisfy her longings and relieve her anxieties. She will wait for the Lord. She will hope in God. She will stay close to the heart of God and trust in his promises. The prospect of departing into the way of sin will be too fearful to pursue; and the benefits of abiding in the shadow of the Almighty too glorious to forsake.

God tests His people through hardship.

It is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself.

The wonder of marriage is woven into the wonder of the gospel of the cross of Christ, and the message of the cross is foolishness to the natural man, and so the meaning of marriage is foolishness to the natural man.

God is at work in the worst of times. He is at work doing a thousand things no one can see but him.

All the money needed to send and support an army of self-sacrificing, joy-spreading ambassadors is already in the church.

CHRISTIAN LIVING MOVES from what God has freely done for us in Christ to what we should freely do for others.

It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.

I measure Your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved, and the wonder of Your mercy by putting Christ in my place.

Christ died that we might live. This is the opposite of abortion. Abortion kills that someone might live differently.

heaven is a place of unparalleled and indescribable joy

The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.