Puritan Thomas Watson says it well. “After the fall, the affections were misplaced on wrong objects; in sanctification, they are turned into a sweet order and harmony, the grief placed on sin, the love on God, the joy on heaven.”*…

Greg Beale titled his landmark book We Become What We Worship. His thesis is simple: “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or for restoration.” He traces the theme throughout Scripture to show that we are worshippers, and…

For much of my Christian life I have had a one-sided view of “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). I assumed that the verse meant only that when hard news or rebuke needed to be brought, it should be…

Jeremiah 32:40–41: "I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I…

Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne (1813–1843) left us with one quote that has become quite famous, and for good reason. It goes like this: “For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.” The quote is short, sticky, and…

Today many of us will gather in local churches to hear the preaching of God’s word from faithful ministers. So what is the proper spiritual posture we should take for listening to the sermon? In our recently released ebook, Take…

What follows is a collection of 20 quotes that caught my attention as I read Kevin DeYoung's forthcoming book The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway; August 31, 2012): “Not…

What is union with Christ? And how does this union help us advance in personal holiness? We asked J. I. Packer recently, and he answered in this rich 9-minute video: Transcribed Excerpt “[As a Christian] you have to face a…

Slate recently reported that spanking children may not be such a bad form of discipline after all. Surprisingly, the reporter pushed past a lot of the cultural anti-spanking prejudice to ask some reasonable questions about what the studies indicate. Although…

Americans since the 1960s are increasingly expressing themselves in terms that are individual-focused (“me”) rather than community-focused (“we”). So reports USA Today. Such a trend may not be hard to imagine in society, but what about within the American…

What follows is a collection of 20 quotes that caught my attention as I read Greg Dutcher’s new book Killing Calvinism: How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Theology from the Inside (Cruciform Press, June, 2012): “I am…

It is easy to misinterpret the place of voting in the Christian life. For example, a recent StarTribune headline announced that Pastor John was "opting out of the marriage fight" in Minnesota. That is not the case (and today's counterpoint…

The stakes could not be higher in the homosexuality debate, because — to put it rather bluntly — homosexual activity is a sin that parallels idolatry. The Apostle Paul seems to draw this connection in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5…

Pastor John originally penned this poem when Noël’s father, George Henry, passed away. He would later dedicate it to his own father, William Piper, when he died. It is a standing reminder of the profound gift of a godly father’s…

In Ephesians 3:14–15, Paul prays, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father [patēr], from whom every family [patria] in heaven and on earth is named." In the Greek it is easy to pick…

Writes John Piper in his book, A Sweet and Bitter Providence (Crossway, 2010), page 132: The story of Ruth and Boaz is the kind of story that can awaken and feed the masculine and feminine soul in ways that we…

From Pastor John's sermon, “Songs that Shape the Heart and Mind” (May 25, 2008): If you read the Psalms only for doctrine, you’re not reading them for what they are. They are psalms, songs, poetry. They’re musical, and…

In our egalitarian culture, the debate over a wife’s submission to her husband is not going away anytime soon. Of course we start with Scripture, and the Bible is clear in calling the first-century Greco-Roman wife to submit to her…

The Apostle Paul and the Corinthian church had a complicated relationship, and Second Corinthians is a personal letter from Paul that captures the tension. It's a letter that speaks to ministry, leadership, and preaching, and it's a letter that speaks…

Is there a greater thrill than to know someone's life has been permanently transformed because you reached out to them? It is sweet to know your sister was saved through your series of conversations, or that you helped to disciple…

The “Mommy Wars” have found a place in the middle of a cultural discussion, recently appearing on the cover of Time magazine and surfacing in the Mitt Romney presidential run. But the church is not immune to the temptation of…

However the terms are refined, the main tenets of Calvinism are structured around the five-petaled acronym TULIP. But too often missing in this structure is the “sap of delight,” as Pastor John calls it in his biography of Augustine…

The creation surrounding us is the product of the triune God. That is incredible enough. But take one more profound step and we discover, as Pastor John explains in The Pleasures of God, that “creation is an expression of…