If I were the last man on the planet to think so, I would want the honor of saying no woman should go before me into combat to defend my country. A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he’s a wimp. He should be ashamed. For most of history, in most cultures, he would have been utterly scorned as a coward to promote such an idea. Part of the meaning of manhood as God created us is the sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of our women.

Back in the seventies, when I taught in college, feminism was new and cool. So my ideas on manhood were viewed as the social construct of a dying chauvinistic era. I had not yet been enlightened that competencies, not divine wir…

Continue Reading →

A couple years ago, the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship passed the following resolution, “On the Ministry of John Piper.” I mention it here just so I can use the occasion to say something good about fundamentalists.

While recognizing much that is commendable in the ministry of John Piper, including his emphasis on a passionately God-centered life and his identity as a theological conservative, the FBFI has some genuine concerns about his doctrine and practice. John Piper teaches in his local ministry that miraculous sign gifts are continuing. Piper has also failed to separate from the Baptist General Conference which has deliberately chosen to tolerate the heresy known as open …

Continue Reading →

There has been a good discussion on my article “Make It Free” over at Joshua Blankenship’s blog. It inspired me to address some of the main objections I often hear against my perspective that media ministries should post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

Objection 1: People value what they pay for. Therefore, if you make all of your online sermon audio and other online content free, people won’t value it.

Response: This is the least powerful objection for a media ministry, in my opinion, simply because the gospel is free. Does that lead us to not value the gospel? Of course, some people will want to say, “Yes! Look around!…

Continue Reading →

The vision that we follow for our website is this: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface. I've just written an article setting forth this vision in more detail. It is called Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.

We love the way this vision serves others through the internet and commend it to all media ministries. We make no claims to have everything figured out. We offer this article as a service to any other organizations that think the same or are considering whether to pursue a similar approach.

Update: Read answers to some common objections. 

The October issue of Christianity Today carried an astonishing article on divorce and remarriage by David Instone-Brewer. What makes it especially amazing is that CT simply published it as if it were faithful to Scripture, with no counterpoint, and used the phrase on the cover “when to separate,” not “whether to separate”—even though Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9).

To put it bluntly, the implication of this article is that every marriage I am aware of could already have legitimately ended in divorce. I knew I disagreed with Instone-Brewer’s position. I wrote three chapters on marriage and divorce and remarriage in What Jesus Demand…

Continue Reading →

Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology defines the Trinity as follows: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God” (p. 226).

Broken down, this amounts to three propositions:

• God is three persons.
• Each person is fully God.
• There is one God.

In addition, it’s helpful to elaborate on the fact that when we say “God is three persons,” we mean that he is not just one person, and that the persons of the Trinity are not to be confused. So we can also say:

• The Father is God.
• The Son is God.
• The Holy Spirit is God.
• The Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Fathe…

Continue Reading →

Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” (John 17) is only about 650 words. It takes only 3 minutes and 30 seconds to read it aloud. But it will take all eternity for us to fully understand it!

I recently found it helpful to break down Jesus’ petitions and propositions into the following categories:

The Father Gave the Son...	John 17
authority to give eternal life	v. 2
people out of this world	vv. 2, 6, 9, 24
work to accomplish	v. 4
words	v. 8
his name	vv. 11, 12

…

Continue Reading →

Thank God for one of Desiring God's least thanked.

Matt Lund pours himself out to make the Desiring God Conference Bookstore the life-giving source of bargain-priced books it is.

Matt's been working faithfully for DG since 2002. Two years ago, he moved into his present bookstore role.

During a normal week, he stays almost invisible ordering, cataloguing, and shelving books at the Bethlehem bookstore--a mile from the DG offices and four thick floors from the Bethlehem offices where most of the weekday activity is.

Even at one of our Desiring God events, he's almost invisible--except to the trained eye who knows that this man runs the bookstore show, in the most holy …

Continue Reading →

After my first day of work at DG, Abraham and Molly had me over for dinner. I remember asking then--since Molly was already showing--what their daughter's name would be. Their reply was a gentle rejection. They had resolved to tell no one until she was born.

We have learned your name, Felicity Margaret Piper, too soon. But your life shall not have been in vain. Our hearts now mourn and hope.

Felicity

Felicity, that happy name
was hidden with your forming frame
next to the heart of mom and dad
until the day you came.

You did not come as we presumed—
a place upstairs at home was groomed.
Yet other plans our Sovereign had
and took you from the womb.

Life is never ill-conce…

Continue Reading →

Nearly four years ago our friends Dustin and Kellie Shramek lost their precious son, Owen. In the book Suffering and the Sovereignty of GodDustin wrote a chapter about some of the lessons that God taught him--lessons about God, and also lessons about how and how not to minister to those in nearly unbearable grief and pain.

After the book was published, Women Today Radio did a brief interview with Dustin, that I thought might be helpful to reprint here:

If some female member of your household has influenced your life for Christ, share her story.

My wife has had a significant impact on my life for Christ. One thing I didn't mention in my chapter was what too…

Continue Reading →