Category Archives: John Piper

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God

John Piper

Crossway, 2010

Our chief role in life is to love and worship God. But we can’t love or worship Him if we don’t know Him. How do we know Him? He reveals Himself through His word and His world. But, in order for us to see and know what He wants us to see and know, we have to think. That’s the point of John Piper’s book, Think: “That thinking is essential in knowing God.”

We cannot love God without knowing God; and the way we know God is by the Spirit-enabled use of our minds. So to ‘love God with all you mind’ means engaging all your powers of thought to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure him for all that he is worth.

What does Piper mean when he says, “think”? What are we to think about? Is Piper calling us to unguided thinking about whatever pops into our mind? No. His appeal is for thinking that is guided by reading good books, particularly the Bible: “That is mainly what I have in mind by thinking—working hard with our minds to figure out meaning from texts.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean we ought to read more. Lots of people read lots of books, including the Bible, without growing in understanding. And there are many reasons why, but the main culprit is a lack of thinking: “If we don’t choose to think harder, we will settle for an adolescent level of understanding the rest of our lives.”

Piper defends rigorous, biblical thinking from the most common foes. There are two chapters on relativism, or the belief that “No standard is valid for everyone.” Piper shows that this thinking is so common that it is often unrecognized, describes “seven harmful and immoral things about it,” and tells how to face it. The other main enemy of thought that he deals with comes from within the church: anti-intellectualism, which he divides further into pragmatism and subjectivism. Piper explains these attitudes, shows what’s wrong them, and shows how the biblical texts used to support them are used wrongly.

So, what of all this thinking, learning, and scholarship? Doesn’t it produce pride and quench the Spirit? Is Piper encouraging believers to build their minds but neglect their hearts? If we know anything about John Piper, we know that can’t be the case. Throughout the book, he pleads for a balance of light and heat:

[This book] is a plea to reject either-or thinking when it comes to head and heart, thinking and feeling, reason and faith, theology and doxology, mental labor and the ministry of love…All branches of learning exist ultimately for the purpose of knowing God, loving God, and loving man through Jesus…True knowing and true thinking produce not pride but love for God and love for people.

We need this book. One doesn’t have to be in the Church long to see that. And no one better to write it than John Piper, a New Testament scholar and thinker with a burning passion for God’s glory. Think is clear, convincing, helpful, and biblical. If you already think, this book will encourage you to keep thinking, help you think more clearly, and help to keep you from cold intellectualism and pride. If you are not a thinker, here’s a great place to start.

I received a review copy of this book from Crossway.

A Sweet & Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God

John Piper

Crossway, 2010

My mother loves the book of Ruth. I hear her every time that I read the words, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God (Ruth 1:16). There was a time when I didn’t understand what she was seeing, what was so sweet. She would talk about Ruth’s love for God’s people reflecting her love for Him. Ho-hum, I thought. But, by grace, I eventually saw it. Now I share my mother’s love for this little gem in the Old Testament. And I love this new little gem from John Piper, too.

In A Sweet & Bitter Providence, Dr. Piper takes us through the book of Ruth. Each of his four chapters begins with the corresponding chapter from the Bible. Piper then deals with the text, one passage at a time, drawing from both the Old and New Testaments to support his exegesis. That’s a lot of Bible for a 145 page book.

The overarching theme of this book (and, according to Piper, of Ruth) is that God is in control. Regardless of how bleak our situation, we can trust Him. “Our providences may be bitter, but God is at work for our good—whether we can see it or not.” Naomi has to leave home to keep from starving. Her husband dies. Her sons die. She’s stuck with this Moabite daughter-in-law. Yet God is working. He’s doing things—great things. And we see it unfold. And it’s good for us, and glorifying to Him. Though there is so much writing on God’s sovereignty, Piper always presents it in a powerful and fresh way.

Another main theme, as suggested by the subtitle, is sex. Sexual purity, says Dr. Piper, leads to greater pleasure in the Lord. He appeals to men and women to be strong, looking to Jesus, who never had sex, but “is the most fully human person who has ever existed.” Piper also urges readers to hold to biblical views of manhood and womanhood, using Ruth and Boaz as role models. As a young husband and father, I find these exhortations helpful and encouraging. We need to be reminded again and again. Relationships, and all of life, work out best when arranged as God intended.

The last topic covered by Piper that I’ll mention is that of race. If I had any disappointment with the book, it would be that race doesn’t occupy as much space as I had hoped. But Piper still makes strong and compelling points on the issue. I love his appeal for believers to embrace ethnic diversity: “Whatever country we live in, we are ‘sojourners and exiles’ (1 Peter 2:11). A follower of Christ in any ethnic group is a closer relative to us than any blood relative who rejects our Savior.” Amen. Piper goes further: “As the history of his people progressed, God would make it clearer and clearer that the real issue in intermarriage was not race but faith.” There are, after all, interracial marriages recorded in the genealogy of the Lord himself, Ruth and Boaz included. So we should, according to Piper, look beyond “race,” and see fellow believers as our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I normally don’t mention the aesthetics and layout of a book, but for those who care, this one is exceptional. (Yes, I judged the book by its cover, but in this case I didn’t go wrong.) Underneath the dust jacket, on the front of the hard cover, is the full painting of what we see in part on the jacket. On the back of the hardcover is a nice looking map of Palestine. As for the layout, the text is double spaced. This makes for easier reading. And the margins are wide, so there is room for notes. The chapters are broken into small chunks separated by sub-titles, which also aids in reading. I realize that this is all secondary to content, but I appreciate it none the less.

Besides the double spacing, Piper’s style is easy to read (more now than in his earlier works). The sentences are short and simple. The words are plain. That’s my kind of book.

Needless to say, I recommend A Sweet & Bitter Providence. It points us to Christ. It reminds us of God’s goodness. It encourages us to love one another. It has good, biblical theology that is easy to read. It brings out the beauty in the book of Ruth. And to top it all off, it looks good.