John Piper Quotes & Sayings

God created the world to exhibit the fullness of His glory in the God-centered joy of His people. — John Piper

In our proud love affair with ourselves we pour contempt, whether we know it or not, on the worth of God's glory. As our pride pours contempt upon God's glory, His righteousness obliges Him to pour wrath upon our pride. — John Piper

We foolishly assume that our real struggles with sin are in the areas where we are "weak." We do not well understand the depth of sin until we realize that it has made its home far more subtly where we are "strong," and in our gifts rather than in our weaknesses and inadequacies. It is in the very giftedness God has given that sin has been at its most perverse and subtle! But when we are brought to see this, stripped bare of our layers of self-deceit, and led to repentance, then God may make something of us. — John Piper

When all your favorite preachers are gone, and all their books forgotten, you will have your Bible. Master it. MASTER IT! — John Piper

Don't leave Christmas in the abstract. Your sin. Your conflict with the Devil. Your victory. He came for this. — John Piper

The vast majority of abortions are performed between the seventh and tenth week when the baby is already sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All his organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. His genetic code is uniquely and unquestionably human. And, if we are willing, he can be seen by ultrasound. — John Piper

I asked, can work and leisure and relationships and eating and lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together? Can sex and cars and work and war, and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God exalting, soul satisfying unity? Now we see that every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ. Or to say it another way, every good thing in life (or bad thing graciously turned for good) is meant to magnify Christ and Him crucified.
Not to aim to show God is not to love, because God is what we need most deeply ... If you don't point people to God for everlasting joy, you don't love. You waste your life. — John Piper

In obedience to God's Word we should fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings. But when and how they come is God's to decide, not ours. If they delay, we trust the wisdom of our Father's timing, and we wait. In this way joy remains a gift, while we work patiently in the field of obedience and fight against the weeds and the crows and the rodents. Here is where joy will come. Here is where Christ will reveal himself (John 14:21). But that revelation and that joy will come when and how Christ chooses. It will be a gift. — John Piper

In demanding our praise God is demanding the completion of our pleasure (in him). — John Piper

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. — John Piper

In the end, the only 'good name' that matters is not how men feel about us, but how God feels about us. — John Piper

We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry. — John Piper

If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life. — John Piper

O, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant. — John Piper

Every Christian who struggles with depression struggles to keep their hope clear. There is nothing wrong with the object of their hope - Jesus Christ is not defective in any way whatsoever. But the view from the struggling Christian's heart of their objective hope could be obscured by disease and pain, the pressures of life, and by Satanic fiery darts shot against them ... All discouragement and depression is related to the obscuring of our hope, and we need to get those clouds out of the way and fight like crazy to see clearly how precious Christ is. — John Piper

O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have. — John Piper

Paradise will not be a hall of mirrors, it will be a display of majesty, and it won't be ours — John Piper

Salvation is the creation of new desires, not just new goodies. — John Piper

The task of all Christian scholarship - not just biblical studies - is to study reality as a manifestation of God's glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it, and to make it serve the good of man. It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God's glory is not scholarship but insurrection. — John Piper

But we also need stories. Great stories. — John Piper

There is no point in romanticizing other religions that reject the deity and saving work of Christ. They do not know God. And those who follow them tragically waste their lives. — John Piper

Every criticism or slight against you, warranted or not, received or endured humbly, is written in heaven for your reward. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

The ultimate meaning of true womanhood is this: It is a distinctive calling of God to display the glory of his Son in ways that would not be displayed if there were no womanhood. — John Piper

Both are manifestations of pride. Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering. Boasting says, "I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much." Self-pity says, "I deserve admiration because I have sacrificed so much." Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong. Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.
The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy. But the need arises from a wounded ego and the desire of the self-pitying is not really for others to see them as helpless, but heroes. The need self-pity feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness, but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness. It is the response of unapplauded pride. — John Piper

One might think that those who feast most often on communion with God are least hungry. They turn often from the innocent pleasures of the world to linger more directly in the presence of God through the revelation of his Word. And there they eat the Bread of Heaven and drink the Living Water by meditation and faith. But, paradoxically, it is not so that they are the least hungry saints. The opposite is the case. The strongest, most mature Christians I have ever met are the hungriest for God. It might seem that those who eat most would be least hungry. But that's not the way it works with an inexhaustible fountain, and an infinite feast, and a glorious Lord. When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, — John Piper

This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

Tasks don't have to be high-impact to be worthy of high effort. Most things we do in any given day are relatively low impact. The cumulative impact of thousands of low-impact test is huge. These tasks can be transposed into worship. — John Piper

The highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself. — John Piper

The thought of building a life around minimal morality or minimal significance - a life defined by the question, "What is permissible?" - felt almost disgusting to me. I didn't want a minimal life. I didn't want to live on the outskirts of reality. I wanted to understand the main thing about life and pursue it. — John Piper

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

On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. — John Piper

Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure in Jesus is eternal. — John Piper

Therefore, Christ crucified is the foundation of all honest and everlast- ing joy. No self-deception is necessary to enjoy it. Indeed all deception must cease in order to enjoy it to the full. — John Piper

We should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties. — John Piper

Hold your possessions so loosely that when they are lost in the sacrifices of love, your confidence in a supreme Treasure in heaven will fill you with joy. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

In other words, all the highest aims of language are decisively the work
of God. They are decisively supernatural. And no amount of poetic
effort or expertise in the use of words can bring about the great aims
of life if God withholds his saving power. — John Piper

The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death. — John Piper

You're not all that God has called you to be, as a follower of Jesus, if you're missions-minded but not engaged in God's mission here and now. — John Piper

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

I've never heard anyone say the really deep lessons of life have come in times of ease and comfort. But, I have heard many saints say every significant advance I've ever made in grasping in the depth of God's love and growing deep with Him, have come through suffering. — John Piper

So when I say that everything that exists - including evil - is ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly, I mean that, one way or the other, God sees to it that all things serve to glorify his Son. Whether he causes or permits, he does so with purpose. For an infinitely wise and all-knowing God, both causing and permitting are purposeful. They are part of the big picture of what God plans to bring to pass. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

God seldom calls us for an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace. — John Piper

The mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fires of the heart. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

I wrote this poem called "The Calvinist" to capture a glimpse of God's sovereign intersection with the life of a sinful man. There is no part of life where the greatness of God does not penetrate deeply. I want to help you feel that. — John Piper

Advent is a season for thinking about the mission of God to seek and to save lost people from the wrath to come. God raised him from the dead, "Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thess. 1:10). It's a season for cherishing and worshiping this characteristic of God - that he is a searching and saving God, that he is a God on a mission, that he is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving. That's the meaning of Advent. — John Piper

It was good of you to look for Quentin." "Good!" she exclaimed. "Good! O Anthony!" "Well, so it was," he answered. "Or good in you. How accurate one has to be with one's prepositions! Perhaps it was a preposition wrong that set the whole world awry." CHARLES WILLIAMS The Place of the Lion — John Piper

I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry. — John Piper

The suffering of sickness and the suffering of persecution have this in common: they are both intended by Satan for the destruction of our faith, and governed by God for the purifying of our faith ... Christ sovereignly accomplishes His loving, purifying purpose, by overruling Satan's destructive attempts. Satan is always aiming to destroy our faith; but Christ magnifies His power in weakness. — John Piper

Desire for and delight in God's Word are inseparable. — John Piper

The ministry and mission of the church is at the center of Christian giving. — John Piper

I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, — John Piper

[H]ealing displays the works of God in John 9,
and sustaining grace displays the works of God in 2 Corinthians
12. What is common in the two cases is the supreme value
of the glory of God. The blindness is for the glory of God. The
thorn in the flesh is for the glory of God. The healing is for his
glory, and the non-healing is for his glory.
Suffering can only have ultimate meaning in relation to God. — John Piper

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

When a sinful person meets the holy God in Christ, what he hears is Yes. God, do you love me? Yes. Will you forgive me? Yes. Will you accept me? Yes. Will you help me change? Yes. Will you give me power to serve you? Yes. Will you keep me? Yes. Will you show me your glory? Yes. — John Piper

If we love God's fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions. — John Piper

The entire life and work of Jesus is one great argument why we should listen to his word. Page after page of the New Testament Gospels pile up reasons to turn off the television and listen to Jesus. — John Piper

Evangelicals are distraught over the state of America because they have not been taught that we're aliens here. — John Piper

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

(3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity, which means singing songs that unite us instead of divide us, recognizing that musical creativity in the church has functional limits and that it is ultimately the gospel, not music, that unites us in Christ. — John Piper

My Paradise: With Christ. Not sinning. No pain. New earth. Precious in that order. — John Piper

You may be going through things right now that are painfully preparing you for some precious service to Jesus and to his people. When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of nothingness or helplessness, he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages — John Piper

What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin. — John Piper

Part of what we pick up in looking at Jesus in the gospel is a way of viewing the whole world. That worldview informs all our values and deeply shapes our thinking and decision-making. Another part of what we absorb is greater confidence in Jesus' counsel and his promises. This has its own powerful effect on what we fear and desire and choose. Another part of what we take up from beholding the glory of Christ is greater delight in his fellowship and deeper longing to see him in heaven. This has its own liberating effect from the temptations of this world. All these have their own peculiar way of changing us into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we should not think that pursuing likeness to Christ has no other components than just looking at Jesus. Looking at Jesus produces holiness along many different paths. — John Piper

The gospel at Christmas is: Christ has trampled this enemy underfoot at the cross. So for everyone who trusts in him, their sins are cast into the depths of the sea. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

Husbands are not Christ. But they are called to be like him. And the specific point of likeness is the husband's readiness to suffer for his wife's good without threatening or abusing her. This includes suffering to protect her from any outside forces that would harm her, as well as suffering disappointments of abuses even from her. This kind of love is possible because Christ died for both husband and wife. Their sins are forgiven. Neither needs to make the other suffer for sins. Christ has borne that suffering. Now as two sinful and forgiven people we can return good for evil. — John Piper

Don't marry so you can stop pursuing women. Marry so you can perfect the pursuit of ONE woman for a lifetime. — John Piper

Abstraction is the way to the heart - it is not the heart itself. — John Piper

God communicates himself to the understanding of the creature, in giving him the knowledge of his glory; and to the will of the creature, in giving him holiness, consisting primarily in the love of God: and in giving the creature happiness, chiefly consisting in joy in God.108 These are the sum of that emanation of divine fullness called in Scripture, the glory of God. The first part of this glory is called truth, the latter, grace, — John Piper

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. — John Piper

What this means is that if you want to grow up and feast on the fullness of God's revelation, you don't do it by jumping from milk to meat. You do it by the way you drink the milk. The milk has to make you a certain kind of discerning person before you can digest the meat. — John Piper

We need a Savior. Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. — John Piper

The discipline to rise early is not as difficult as the discipline of going to bed. This did not used to be so. Before electricity and radio and television and the Internet, going to bed soon after dark was not so difficult. There was not much to do. Today the strongest allurements to stay up and be entertained are against us. Therefore, the battle against weariness, which makes us drowsy as soon as we open our Bible in the morning, has to be fought in the evening, not just in the morning. — John Piper

Theology is a means to enjoying and worshiping God, or it is useless. — John Piper

The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can't be changed - these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. — John Piper

It is possible to experience true divine wonders in your conversion but never to be taught a true description of what your experience is. Then someone starts to describe your experience in words you have never heard, and in ways you have never understood, and suddenly the strange words all sound exactly right. — John Piper

Prayer causes things to happen that wouldn't happen if you didn't pray. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

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

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. — John Piper

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. — John Piper

Nothing sobers a wandering philosophical imagination like the thought of having a wife and children to support. — John Piper

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all. — John Piper

Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God's delight in being God. — John Piper

There are a thousand needs in the world, and none of them compares to the global need for the gospel. — John Piper

Knowledge about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden. — John Piper

So you can see what is happening in the New Testament. Worship is being significantly deinstitutionalized, delocalized, de-externalized. The whole thrust is being taken off of ceremony and seasons and places and forms and is being shifted to what is happening in the heart - not just on Sunday but every day and all the time in all of life. — John Piper

The glory of Christ in the gospel is the decisive ground of saving faith because saving faith is the receiving of Christ as infinitely glorious and supremely valuable. — John Piper

Seeing the glory of Jesus Christ in the gospel awakens joy. — John Piper

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.' — John Piper

Adjust your doctrine - or just minimize doctrine - to attract the world, and in the very process of attracting them, lose the radical truth that alone can set them free. — John Piper

The deepest longing of the human heart is to know and enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this. — John Piper

By nature, we get more pleasure from God's gifts then from Himself. — John Piper

Too many Christians are fighting graduate school sins with a grammar school knowledge of God. — John Piper