John Piper Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by John Piper:
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.
~John Piper
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Sin carries in it its own misery.
~John Piper
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I owe my life and hope to the gospel.
~John Piper
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I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.
~John Piper
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Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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Life is in God's hand.
~John Piper
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There are many pointers in the Bible concerning the rightness, the goodness, the beauty, the justice, the preciousness of racial harmony and diversity.
~John Piper
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.
~John Piper
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I believe God has a future for ethnic Israel.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.
~John Piper
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You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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God tests His people through hardship.
~John Piper
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I want to learn from everybody.
~John Piper
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Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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Neither Muslims nor anyone else truly worships the true God if they reject Jesus as he really is in the Gospels.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.
~John Piper
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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!
~John Piper
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Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.
~John Piper
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God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.
~John Piper
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The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.
~John Piper
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It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry.
~John Piper
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I just want to preach so bad I can hardly stand it. I love what I do.
~John Piper
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I know God's voice. I've seen God's hand. If the Lord is my helper, why should I be afraid?
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
~John Piper
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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
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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Blind people don't decide to see. Jesus says, 'See!' and they see.
~John Piper
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One way to appreciate C.S. Lewis is to see how his Christian humility shaped his life and work.
~John Piper
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You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.
~John Piper
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God created a good world that was subjected to futility because of the sinful, treasonous choice of the first human beings.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.
~John Piper
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The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.
~John Piper
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The bloodline of Jesus is thicker, deeper, stronger than the bloodline of race, ethnicity and family.
~John Piper
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Supernatural does not mean methodological stupidity.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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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
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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.
~John Piper
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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.
~John Piper
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