Satan's aim is to destroy our joy and trust and delight in God, and to make God look worthless in the world's eyes. Everytime someone forsakes God for the world, gets angry at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable... and everytime someone stays with God, when the world is taken away, and praises God, they highlight the value and glory of God.
John PiperJesus' teaching in general [implies] that happy and fulfilling sexual relations in marriage depend on each partner aiming to give satisfaction to the other. If it is the joy of each to make the other happy, a hundred problems will be solved before they happen.
John PiperThere is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow - especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.
John PiperIf grace is to be free - which is the very meaning of grace - we cannot view it as something to be repaid.
John PiperIt is not saving faith to confess Christ as true. Saving faith receives Christ as a Treasure.
John PiperChrist did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
John Piper