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God's supremacy

The first part of an interview with John Piper

John Piper, the well-known author, conference speaker and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, was in England during October. EN obtained an interview with him at the offices of the Zacharias Trust in Oxford. . .

EN: What was the most significant factor in you becoming a Christian?

JP: I have to remember back 49 years! I grew up in a Christian home. My father is an independent Baptist evangelist and my mother is with the Lord. It was a strong God-centred home with devotions every night. Daddy led us when he was at home and Mum led us when he was on the road. So I never remember a season of unbelief. But I made a conscious profession of faith and pleaded for Christ to come to me and forgive me when I was six. I have only vague memories of this, but my mother was very clear about what happened.

So I'm very big on telling people that it isn't so much the memory of signing a card or praying a prayer that makes you a believer, but where you are with Christ now. My family was absolutely decisive in leading me to Christ. I feel like my associate David Michael who gave his testimony and stood up and said, 'God saved me from a life of drugs, alcoholism and from a broken marriage when I was six years old!' In other words these things never happened to me because God stepped in beforehand. That is the way many people, who like me do not have a dramatic conversion, should think. We sometimes think that we don't have a great testimony to tell. But actually we have a massively great testimony to tell.

Passion for preaching
EN: How were you called into the ministry?

JP: There were steps. A decisive step occurred in autumn 1966. I was heading for a medical career, studying at Wheaton College. I was in summer school to catch up on some organic chemistry with that in mind. But I caught mononucleosis. I was flat on my back in hospital for three weeks. I lay there listening on my radio to the broadcasts of the spiritual emphasis week with John Harold Ockenga - pastor of Park Street Church, Boston in those days. And as I lay there I thought 'I would love to know and be able to handle the Bible like that.' It just became a deep desire. I had always loved and believed the Bible. But there arose a desire to be able to bless people with it like I was being blessed.

When that three weeks in hospital was over I said to my fiancˇe No‘ll (now my wife), 'I don't think I'm going to be a doctor. I think I want to go to seminary and learn how to handle the Scriptures.' I would date a call to the word from then. So I headed for seminary. Then I got a doctorate in the New Testament from Munich. Then I became a seminary teacher of the New Testament and Greek myself. And then came the second decisive step. It was in the autumn of 1979 when the passion to preach became irresistible. I remember being up one night wrestling with the Lord in prayer as to whether I should quit my seminary job. I did and came to Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

EN: Obviously you were to preach the Bible, but was there a particular emphasis you felt burdened to convey?

JP: There was and it has been honed and refined since then. That call was born out of a sabbatical from the seminary in which I was writing a book on Romans 9 later published under the title The Justification of God. As I worked for six months on verses 1-23, trying to settle for myself what vision of God was there, the God of Romans 9 spoke to me right out of that chapter. He said: 'I will be proclaimed not just analysed.' That was the birth of the preaching passion. 'I will be announced and heralded as who I am, and not just explained away.' And I felt: 'If the God of Romans 9 is who he says he is, he needs to be known. He must be loved and honoured and treasured and obeyed and taken to the nations.' So our church's mission statement today is just a refinement of that original call. It says: 'We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.' So all my labours are designed to fulfil that mission.

EN: Could you be more specific about how that burden has been refined?

JP: It has been refined theologically. I have written a dozen books since then and all of them have been intended to get at this issue from different sides. Desiring God is the most seminal in that it refined the supremacy of God and the passion for it for the nations, in terms of Christian hedonism. 'God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.' That sentence captures how I pursue the supremacy of God. So I am very engaged in awakening people's desires and affections for him.

EN: How is that related to the weaknesses you see in the church in the Western world?

JP: It is a corrective from two sides because I don't see a robust theology in those who put a premium on the emotions and I don't see a robust emotional life for God among those who cross their theological 't's and dot their 'i's correctly. In Jonathan Edwards I see a robust theology and a passion for God at the emotional level that I very much want to have in my own life and church and I want to spread. Everywhere I look it's pretty rare to find people who have a high view of the sovereignty of God in Reformed terms and a profound, deep, lively, emotional worshipful life.

God on September 11
EN: Was God saying something to America on September 11? If so, what?

JP: Repent! You don't have to go far in the Scriptures beyond Luke 13 to see what he was saying. The reporter comes to Jesus to ask about when the tower of Siloam fell on 18 people and about Pilate slitting the throats of worshippers. The Jews were appalled, just as our people were appalled on September 11. The reporter asks, 'What do you make of these horrific calamities, Jesus?' And the Lord Jesus blows the reporter's mind away by saying: 'Unless you repent you will likewise perish.' It is as if he is saying: 'The thing you should be stunned about, Mr. Reporter, is that you weren't in the World Trade Centre.'

When this tragedy happened we were in a church staff meeting. We had the radio on the table. We were crying and shaking. And after about an hour we said 'We had better do some planning because our people are going to need us and the city is going to need the Christian church, and someone has got to stand up and say something.'

So we planned three services; one that night of September 11; one the next night; one the following Sunday. We said they would be, in order, a service of sorrow (based on Romans 12.15), a service of self-humbling (based on Luke 13 - we are all going to die one day, are we ready to die?) and a Sunday service of steady hope in our Saviour and King Jesus Christ. He is our Saviour because he is our only hope and he is our King because he did not drop the ball on September 11.

EN: What does America need to repent of?

JP: They need to repent of God-neglect. God is simply not on the agenda of 99% of Americans even though so many go to church. The evangelical church of America is man-centred, as I think it probably is in Britain, too.

We have taken our cues from so many other things rather than the God-centred word of the Bible. And much preaching and worship and ministry is simply trying to make God into a confirmation of our own love affair with ourselves. Self-esteem is the gospel of American psychology. It has infiltrated the church everywhere.

I ask this question everywhere I go. 'Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you or because he freely enables you to make much of him for ever?' Or let me put it another way: 'Do you feel more loved when God moves into your life and enables you to make much of him, or do you feel more loved when he makes much of you?' And when I ask such questions, I think most Americans answer: 'I didn't even know you could define love any other way than being made much of.'

So I think the evangelical church needs to repent and the nation needs to repent of the belittling and the marginalising of God in the life of the church. I would say that before I even get to calling for repentance over particular sins.

The insecurity caused by the anthrax scare right now in America is a gift to us. The shaking of America at the present time is a precious gift to us, because maybe God will use it to awaken people to seek a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
To be continued next month.

Website for Desiring God Ministries is www.desiringGOD.org
John Benton