John Piper Quotes

Preaching is the pastor's main work, and preaching is heart work, not just mental work.

I do not aim to be immediately practical but eternally helpful.

Every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ.

It is a myth that man in his natural state is genuinely seeking God. Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God.

Worship is what we were created for. This is the final end of all existence-the worship of God. God created the universe so that it would display the worth of His glory. And He created us so that we would see this glory and reflect it by knowing and loving it-with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. The church needs to build a common vision of what worship is and what she is gathering to do on Sunday morning and scattering to do on Monday morning.

We will wait. We will wait till all is made righteous (glorious) according to the word of God.

The point is not that the resurrection is the price paid for our sins. The point point is that the resurrection proves the death of Jesus is an all-sufficient price. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then his death was a failure, God did not vindicate his sin-bearing achievement, and we are still in our sins.

Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth.

Lavish giving and open homes are close to the center of life in Christ.

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.

Betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, abandoned by the eleven, forsaken by God. Darkness, you get one hour. Then you die.

When it comes to killing my sin, I don't wait for the miracle, I act the miracle.

The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.

Every sin flows from the failure to treasure the glory of God above all things.

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

You ought to marry someone who’s willing to go anywhere for God. If they’re not, they're out.

If God's love for his children is to be measured by our health, wealth, and comfort in this life, God hated the apostle Paul.

My take on tithing in America is that it's a middle-class way of robbing God. Tithing to the church and spending the rest on your family is not a Christian goal. It's a diversion. The real issue is: How shall we use God's trust fund-namely, all we have-for His glory? In a world with so much misery, what lifestyle should we call our people to live? What example are we setting?

How do you get from, "We do not know whether this is protectable human life," to "Therefore, we will not protect it?" Wouldn't the logic just as likely (some would say far more likely) be, "Since we do not know whether this is protectable human life, therefore we will protect it?" Why does the judicial uncertainty about the humanity of the unborn lead to unbridled license to destroy it?

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.

Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.

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.

If grace is to be free - which is the very meaning of grace - we cannot view it as something to be repaid.

James says, "You desire and do not have; so you kill" (Jas. 4:2). We kill marriages and we kill unborn babies because they cut across our desires; they stand in the way of our unencumbered self-enhancement. And we live in a culture where self-enhancement and self-advancement is god. And if self-enhancement is god, then the One who is at work in the womb shaping a person in His own image is not God and the assault on His work is not sacrilegious, but obedience to the god of self.

When the heart no longer feels the truth of hell, the gospel passes from good news to simply news

There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.

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