“How good is God,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “that he has created man for this very end, to make him happy in the enjoyment of himself, the Almighty, who was happy from the days of eternity in himself … that he might make them blessed in the beholding of his excellency, and might this way glorify himself.”

A more profound sentence can hardly be found outside of the Bible. We were created to enjoy God now and for all eternity. The only profound discovery that tops this is that, from eternity past to eternity future, God delights in himself.

Wading into these deep waters is Jonathan Edwards scholar Kyle Strobel. In his new book Jonathan Edwards’s Theology: A Reinterpretation (T&T Clark, 201…

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Anyone working in a “secular” job will be tempted to think of work as less significant or less God honoring than that of, say, a pastor. I have struggled here, and over the years I have met many others who struggle with a sense of purpose in their daily work — wondering if they need instead to give themselves to pastoral work or Christian ministry in order to truly “do God’s will.”

Done rightly and in the fear of God, ministry is an excellent God-honoring vocation, but ministry is not the only work that can be God-honoring. So often businessmen like me think this way because we fail to really take hold of the doctrine of vocation. To put it simply, vocation is the specific work that God ha…

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Fear is like the monster under my kids’ beds — its power is fueled not by what’s really there, but by what might be, what we imagine could be. Fear is a hollow darkness in the future that reaches back through time to rob our joy now by belittling the sovereign goodness of God.

But if we are in Christ, if we cling to him by faith, we don’t have to fear. Really, we don’t.

John Piper explains why in a 2001 letter he wrote to the people of Bethlehem. The point of the letter is to highlight several promises in the Bible that we can remember when the temptation of fear assaults us.

13 Reasons Not to Be Afraid

1. We will not die apart from God’s gracious decree for his children.

   James 4:14-15; Ma…

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We released eight new episodes of the newly relaunched Ask Pastor John (APJ) podcast this week. And in episode 13 — “The Essential Warfare for Holiness” — we talked with Pastor John about the connection between happiness and holiness.

There Pastor John said this:

When we say God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, we are saying the essential warfare of holiness, or sanctification, is the warfare to be satisfied in God. It is a fight to see him as beautiful and to savor him as beautiful. That is the number one fight. Take pornography or theft or the desire for applause, any of those sins, the fundamental way that you sever the root of those sins is by strivin…

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Unpacking in our new home in a new state far from our families, I opened a box marked Fragile in big black letters. Inside, buried under bubble wrap, I found my framed wedding vows. While I searched the master bedroom for the perfect spot where the frame could hang, I read what I had committed to Kyle on our wedding day. Just as it had when I had first written the words, my heart stopped on one line.

I vow to support the ministry that God gives you.

An Overarching Willingness

When I wrote those vows in the weeks leading up to our wedding, I read them several times, each time imagining myself speaking them on our wedding day and, each time, hesitating at the promise to support Kyle’s ca…

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The greatest commandment is to love God (Matthew 22:36–37). But what that looks like can shock us, as it did Simon in Luke 7:36–50.

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He had the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 54:5) in his house, reclining at his table. The Prophet that Moses had foretold (Deuteronomy 18:15) was sharing dinner with him. The Lord of glory, the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), was speaking with him face to face. The great climactic moment of history he claimed to be living for had arrived. It should have been a deliriously wonderful, breathtaking honor for Simon to host the Messiah.

But Simon was not amazed.  As he looked at Jesus, all he saw was a dusty Nazarene whose claims could be interpreted as, wel…

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Retreat or risk?

Throughout redemptive history, that question has confronted God's people. As John Piper references in the pages of the new book Risk Is Right (Crossway, 2013), it was the decision facing the Israelites on a crucial day at Kadesh Barnea. Standing on the brink of the Promised Land, with the guarantee of God within their grasp, they ran from risk and chose to retreat. Instead of staking their lives on the faithfulness of God, they recoiled in fear. The cost was great, and the Lord left an entire generation to waste away in a wilderness until they died.

The Commission Is Clear

Fast-forward a few thousand years, and you come to the people of God standing in a similar mo…

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Bible prophecy is the key, John Piper explains in the 1980 sermon, “All the Prophets Proclaimed These Days.” The text is Acts 3:17–26. Peter is preaching his first sermon since Pentecost to a crowd of his Jewish brothers. His charge to them is straightforward: Repent therefore, and turn again, so that your sins may be blotted out, and so that times of refreshing may come.

The timing of Peter’s words are especially important. In fact, as he goes on to say in verse 24, all the Old Testament prophets spoke of “these days” — the days when God holds out the opportunity to turn from sin and believe the gospel.

Peter calls it the “times of refreshing.” It's that era in human history which began a…

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Christian marriage has been caught up into the cosmic drama of the gospel.

In this first Authors on the Line podcast of 2013 we talk with Bible scholar G. K. Beale, the Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. His research on Ephesians sheds light on how Christian marriage is shaped by the finished work of Christ in the inauguration of the New Creation. The patient reader will eventually encounter this material in his book A New Testament Biblical Theology (Baker Academic, 2011), around pages 880–884.

There Dr. Beale writes this summary statement:

As husbands unconditionally love their wives and as wives respond to this love in a faithf…

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“I believe wives should be submissive to their husbands. And so do you. See? We’re the same.”

My neighbor was mistaken.

Her argument is quite common. Living overseas, we often hear people drawing the same conclusion when they compare the traditionally conservative values of world religions. “See? We’re the same.”

Early on in our time here in Dubai, I was confronted with this question: How can I help my neighbor see a difference in the hope that I have if my submission to my husband seems to her as “the same”?

Instead of agreeing that all of our virtues and conservative values are signposts on different roads going up the same mountain, I see an opportunity to give a defense of my …

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