Interview with John Piper

There is a pretty good article over at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association web site which is an interview with John Piper. Here are a couple of quotes.

A: The fight to delight in God is a fight to see God in and through the Word, by the Spirit. Since revealing is a spiritual thing, and because the Lord is not visible, He reveals Himself to the eyes of our heart by the Word of God. This is the beauty of the Word, combined with the Spirit, so that when we read the Word a seeing happens. I'm not thinking of imagining pictures in the brain, I'm thinking of glory in and through the work of God depicted in the Bible. The glory streams forth out of God's character into our heart and we perceive it, we taste it spiritually; we apprehend it with the eyes of our heart. That's the way we fight for joy. In my own fight, I use the acronym IOUS, and I plead with the Lord:

Incline my heart to Your testimonies (Psalm 119:36), because there are days when I don't even want to pick up the Bible. If that feeling survives, I'm dead. So I plead, "Lord, don't let me not want to pick up the Bible. Incline my heart to Your Word."

Open the eyes of my heart to see wondrous things in the Word (Psalm 119:18), not just black marks on a page. Make Your truth glorious and beautiful and attractive and satisfying and delighting.

Unite my heart to fear Your Name (Psalm 86:11). My heart is fragmented and going every which way—I'm worried about the kids, I'm worried about the church, I'm worried about the car I need to fix. So I ask God to get my heart together to have a reverential demeanor toward Him.

Satisfy me with Your lovingkindness (Psalm 90:14). Make my heart so content in You that pornography is not attractive, money is not attractive, fame is not attractive. I want an attraction to You to dominate my life.

I've actually added one more "S" and that's Spread. Evangelism. The mission statement of our church is, "We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ."

Does anyone else connect with that? I do. Also this.

God is angry at sinners. It's not wrong to talk about sinners in the hands of an angry God. We just need to complete the picture by adding that He wants to get us out of His anger into His mercy. He couldn't do that as a just and Holy God by sweeping sins under the rug. They had to be carried by a substitute, and only the Son of God could bear them. So He sends Christ His Son to live a perfect life. His death is the consummation of two things. It's the consummation of His righteousness, so that I could have a righteousness imputed to me that's not my own. And it's the consummation of the sufferings that I should have borne because of my sin. I should have suffered in hell, but He suffered on the cross for me because He was the divine Son of God who came and took all my suffering. He provided all my righteousness so that Paul can say, "[God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV).

That, I believe, is the gospel ladies and gentlemen. As Justin Taylor said, the whole article is a good summary of John Piper's theology. Check it out.

(THFP: Justin Taylor)