Tag Archives: John Piper

Voice of God, Round One!

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So what do you think? Does God still speak today apart from the 66 canonical books of the Christian Bible? Seems to be a topic on the minds of a few people I respect, but whose opinions seem to differ greatly. For instance…

In this corner, hailing from his 13.2-acre farm in the Buckeye State, it’s Dan Edelen!

The Bible provides some basis for making distinctions between wrong and right, while the Spirit fills in the particulars. This is life in the Spirit, and it requires us to know His voice when He speaks to us in our day to day existence. …I can’t read the Bible and not see the mystical. As noted in the passage that starts this post, the Apostle Paul himself thought nothing of mystical experiences, such as being caught up in a heavenly realm where inexpressible realities can be glimpsed. Paul goes so far as to boast about the man who experienced this (likely Paul, as most commentators note).

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God, the Holy One’s train filling the temple. He saw angels and they symbolically purged his sin with a touch of coal to the lips. Ezekiel glimpsed his famous wheel within a wheel. John fell prostrate before an angelic messenger who delivered a vision of the end of all things. Jacob’s ladder. Abraham entertaining three visitors. The inner sanctum of disciples witnessing Jesus’s transfiguration.

The Bible overflows with the mystical. So how is mysticism bad?

And in this corner, the Pastor of Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN… John Piper!

What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence…. I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God.

I have to say that, without discounting the Bible’s importance at all, I have to kinda side with Dan on this one. I can have a very deep relationship with my wife through letter-writing when we’re apart, but if she never speaks to me when we’re in person (but rather simply points to appropriate passages in her letters)? Well, unless she’s mute, that’s going to put a strain in the relationship.

Especially if I know from her own testimony in her letters that she’s spoken audibly to others.

For instance… does a publisher like Crossway use some special “Holy Spirit Ink” when printing copies of a Bible? No, of course not. The characters on the page are not themselves the Living Word of God. They are words inspired by God, but without the Holy Spirit speaking to us (audibly or not), confirming what we’re reading as Good and True and “that which is come from the Father,” the printed letters do nothing to us. It is not the “Biblical communication” (that is, the printed page) which speaks to our hearts, but rather the “extra-biblical communication” (that is, the testimony of the Holy Spirit) which makes the scriptures powerful and affecting.

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:25-26, ESV)

I would say that the Holy Spirit’s “extra-biblical” confirmation of the Scriptures is the primary method he uses (at least in Western culture today), but that selfsame testimony will not allow us to pretend that God is silent apart from the Canon, because as Dan points out in his post, the Canon itself tells us many times that God speaks to men and women apart from the written Scriptures.

[UPDATE: It seems my pastor's wife likes what Dr. Piper has to say. What am I missing here?]

[UPDATE 2: Zoanna (below) said, "I think I’ll do a post, since this comment could go on for a while." Well, she did! :) ]

[UPDATE 3: Laurie posted again to clarify. Cool!]

[UPDATE 4: John Piper's blog has been updated with a clarification of sorts. (HT: Adrian Warnock)]

Pray for John Piper

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(Thanks to Rae for the heads-up.)

Tim Challies has just posted that “John Piper has just announced to the members of Bethlehem Baptist Church that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.” Along with Tim, I ask that you would keep Dr. Piper in prayer; that he would be healed, of course, but moreso that Jesus would be even more wonderful to him through this experience.

In John’s letter to his church (which Tim has posted in its entirety), he wrote the following:

This news has, of course, been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times with Christ in these days have been unusually sweet.

[...]

God has designed this trial for my good and for your good. You can see this in 2 Corinthians 1:9, "Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." And in 2 Corinthians 1:4-6, "He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God . . . If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation."

Oh, that I could have the same attitude in a time such as this!

We Will Die To Make Him Known

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John Piper sends out once a week or so what’s basically an e-mail devotional, called Fresh Words. The one I got today is titled, “Enemies of the Cross and How to Respond to Them,” and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, toward the end of it (yes, I’m spoiling the ending!) Piper says this:

“My greatest longing in response to this enmity is that Christians walk in the way of the cross. Yes, militant Islam is big and threatening. It may even be the true Quranic Islam. There are alarmists whose whole tone seems to awaken political and even militant responses from Christians. My concern is that as the church we distance ourselves from this kind of response and focus on the truth that we will never spread the Christian faith by the sword. Some Muslims may kill to spread their faith. Some Christians have. But it is not the way of Christ. It is not the way of the cross.”

Amen! I’ve also got a new candidate for my e-mail signature: “We will die to make [Christ] known. But we will not kill to make him known.”

Sex And The Supremacy Of Christ

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John Piper and Justin Taylor (Editors)

[cover: Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.]

Sex isn’t primarily about procreation, partnership or pleasure. First and foremost, it’s designed to bring glory and honor to Jesus Christ.

From the very beginning John Piper and Justin Taylor make it abundantly clear that this book will blaze a trail almost completely ignored in other "Christian sex books": namely, that if "all things" are to be done to the glory of God, and sex must logically be included in "all things," a Christian must learn how sex brings glory to God, and then seek to thus glorify him.

In the first two chapters Piper lays out and expounds on two main points: "sexuality is designed by God as a way to know God in Christ more fully," and "knowing God in Christ more fully is designed as a way of guarding and guiding our sexuality." While I was immediately ready to assent to this thesis, I was blown away by Piper’s unpacking of it. I honestly felt as if the scales had fallen from my eyes: where before I would have casually agreed with the statement, now I was overwhelmed as I began to finally understand its implications.

Chapter one opens with beheadings—not what one assumes will launch a book on Christian sexuality. But Piper has a good reason, based on chapter 5 of Matthew’s gospel: "there is something far more important than to keep your eye or your hand—or your head—namely, to receive eternal life and not to perish in hell. And Jesus links it with the war that we are waging not in Iraq but in our hearts. And the issue is sexual desire and what we do with it." While most books in this genre are—at best—books where God has been invited as a guest speaker, this is a book about God. All of the authors do a fantastic job of making sure He stays at the forefront of each discussion.

As the “book form” of the Desiring God 2004 National Conference, chapters 6-9 serve as “breakout sessions” for four groups of people: single men, married men, single women and married women, respectively. Sadly, I think these chapters fail to address much of anything in a new light; readers of these chapters will find what amounts to condensed versions of Not Even a Hint Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is), Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Husband Needs to Know, Feminine Appeal, and Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? Trusting God with a Hope Deferred — books which this title’s audience are likely to have read already, and were already listed as recommended reading for the conference. But perhaps you haven’t read those books. In that case, these chapters are excellent summations of that material (and for a fraction of the price).

Other chapters cover topics such as the goodness of sex (Chapter 3), why battling lust is so difficult (Chapter 4), how Christians should approach “homosexual marriage” (Chapter 5) and how Martin Luther and the Puritans really viewed sex (Chapters 10 and 11, respectively).

This is a book I would highly recommend for the first two chapters alone! While I wasn’t crazy about the repeated efforts of the “breakout session” chapters, they served as a good refresher, and none of this content disappointed me. Therefore, I heartily recommend Sex and the Supremacy of Christ to you.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or [make love to your spouse], do all to the glory of God.” — 1 Corinthians 10:31

What Is the Essence of the Unwasted Life?

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So if you ask me tonight, “All right, tell us then, what is the unwasted life? What does it look like? What is the essence of the unwasted life�” I just mentioned it: A life that puts the infinite value of Christ on display for the world to see. The passion of the unwasted life is to joyfully display the supreme excellence of Christ by the way we live. Life is given to us so that we can use it to make much of Christ. Possessions are given to us so that by the way we use them, we can show that they are not our treasure, but Christ is our treasure. Money is given to us so that we will use it in a way that shows money is not treasure, but Christ is our treasure.

The great passion of the unwasted life is to magnify Christ. Here is the text that, perhaps more than any other, governs what life is really about: Philippians 1:20-21. Paul says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.“

Paul’s all-consuming passion was that in his life and in his death Jesus Christ be honored, that is, that Jesus Christ be made to look like the infinite treasure that he is. The reason you have life is to make Jesus Christ look great. There is one central criterion that should govern all the decisions you make in life and in death: Will this help make Jesus Christ look like the treasure he is?