Audio Transcript

And we are back. Good Monday morning. We enter this new week with a great topic on the table. I mentioned it on Friday. I love episodes where we just walk through several texts that have proved most helpful to you over the decades, Pastor John. We’re doing that today, prompted by this question from a listener named Greg: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m so thankful for Desiring God and for you and for this podcast. Here’s my question: What are your favorite verses for when you fight the enemy hardest? What are your go-to verses? I love it when the verses are just there for us, but we also have to go look for them also at times.” Pastor John, what texts would you give Greg, and all of us?

Well, the first thing is, thank you very much. There’s nothing I’d rather do than go looking for my favorite verses, because I need rehearsal just like everybody else does. And so, just giving some thought to this was simply wonderful. It’s wonderful not only because I enjoy it so much, but also because I think this is just good for our listeners. I hope they tune in now for the next ten minutes or so and just soak in the glorious parts of Scripture that are so wonderfully tailor-made for living the Christian life through all of its ups and downs.

I don’t think God wants us to live our lives with a kind of vague sense of trust — like, God is good vaguely; I have trust vaguely; I enter my day vaguely. I think he wants us to have specific promises. Now, since there are hundreds of them in the Bible, you have to make choices about which one you’re going to use like a lozenge in your mouth today. I picture my heart as a mouth with a tongue, and I put a lozenge in it of some juicy promise, and I suck on it all day long. And that means I don’t suck on fifty others, because my brain, at least, will not hold fifty things in consciousness at one time.

“I don’t think God wants us to live with a kind of vague sense of trust. I think he wants us to have specific promises.”

So, here are some of my most common go-to lozenges or passages that I find help in through all kinds of situations. I’m going to just pose a question about a situation that I face and then give you the go-to promises. I think I might hit eleven of these, so I’ll try to go quick.

Lust

I’ll start with lust, the sin of lust. So here I am searching Google, or I’m on some news site, and there’s this sexually titillating link — not to pornography (that’s really not a big temptation for me; I’ve never been to a pornographic site), but just this sexually titillating picture over here where you can go and see more of what that might be about. Will you click through?

And here are my three go-to passages that persuade me, “Don’t do that. That’s not going to be good for you.” One is a warning (which is a negative promise), one is a positive promise, and one is a provision. So first, the warning, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). I’ll tell you, that’s a very powerful disincentive from clicking through to sexually titillating stuff.

And then there’s this positive promise — and this is even more powerful: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). I want to see God. And I know if I linger over some presumably innocent sexual stimulation, the defilement of my mind will obscure the sight of the living God. I know it will.

And then the third thing is the provision: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). And I say to myself, “Christ suffered horribly on the cross so that I would not click on sexually stimulating material, and I don’t want to hammer another nail into his hand.”

Affliction

I am facing some affliction. It’s sickness, maybe — maybe small, maybe big — or some loss. And oh, how precious has Psalm 34:19 been to me: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Now, the reason that’s especially encouraging is because it says that the righteous are in affliction. In other words, it’s not necessarily owing to my sin that I’m in this affliction. And it says I’m coming out in God’s good time.

Injustice

Now — revenge, anger at the way I’ve been mistreated by somebody. Somebody said something false about me. How can I have peace while injustice against me has been done? Answer: the promise that God will be the avenger. “John Piper, love your enemies. You do not need to get the last word here. God will settle things in due time.” So, here’s Romans 12:19–20:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

“John Piper, leave the repayment to God.” Oh, how many times I have been set free from bitterness that way.

Weakness

I feel weak. I feel inadequate. I’m facing a situation and I’m just not up to it. Isaiah 64:4: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you” — well, what’s so unique about him? Here’s what it says: “. . . who works for those who wait for him.” That’s absolutely amazing. Glorious. The glorious uniqueness of our God is that he works for us instead of recruiting slave labor to work for him. Amazing.

“The glorious uniqueness of our God is that he works for us instead of recruiting slave labor to work for him.”

And listen to how 2 Chronicles 16:9 says it: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is [whole] toward him.” God is looking for people for whom, with omnipotence, he can work today. “Can I work for you today?” I’ll sign up God to work for me today. “So, I want to be strong for you today. Will you trust me?” I’ll tell you, that’s amazing.

Need

What about when I don’t have what I think I need — enough money, enough time, enough help? What if I lead a ministry, and they look to me for hope? Now there are two go-to verses I’ve used hundreds of times. Philippians 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” That’s mind-blowing. Both the promise and the resources are mind-blowing. The “riches of glory” is how much he has with which he can help me.

Every need will be met. How many times did I say to our leaders at Bethlehem, while I was a pastor, coming to the end of a year with finances almost always falling short — and I say to them, “Guys, God will give us everything we need. He will. It says so. Period. Let’s go home and sleep.”

And then there’s Hebrews 13:5–6: “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’” That’s as sweet as it gets.

Anxiety

Does he care? You come into moments where you say, “Yeah, I know all the big promises: he’s powerful; he’s wise. But does he care?” Does he care about me personally? I’m such a little teeny-weeny human being, and the universe as big. How could God possibly care for me?

First Peter 5:6–7: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” — yes, yes, of course we know that; that’s our theology — “so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” I’ve said that little phrase walking into situations so many times. “He cares for you. He cares for you. He’s God, and he cares for you.”

There is a mighty hand, and there is a caring heart. So he says, don’t shrink back from humility, thinking that you’re going to be too vulnerable if you’re humble. But rather, remind yourself, “No, every single anxiety goes onto his broad shoulders because he cares.” He cares for you.

Insecurity

How much does he care? Is this a mild care? Is this kind of a begrudging care? “Yeah, God’s a God of love, and therefore Jesus died. So he has to care for me.” Oh my goodness, how horrible can our minds talk to us? How much does he care?

Luke 12:32: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s his good pleasure. He loves to care for you. Or better than this is Jeremiah 32:41 (this is God talking): “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” What more can God say than that he loves, he rejoices, to do good to us with all his heart and all his soul? There isn’t anything conceivably bigger than all of God’s heart and all of God’s soul. And that’s what he says is behind his doing good for us.

Fear

Will he help me in this crisis that I am feeling very afraid of right now? This is probably the verse that I have gone to, Tony, more than any other verse in all my 76 years of life. And I’ll bet lots of people who’ve listened over the years would already know what verse it is. It’s Isaiah 41:10: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” The reason that verse is number one for the struggle with fear, which is almost every day — something fearful happens every day (little fears, big fears) — is because it’s not general. It’s the voice of God himself speaking with a direct, “I will, I will, I will.”

Spurgeon said, “I love the ‘I wills’ and ‘I shalls’ of God.” Me too. The “he wills” (“He will help”) — those are good. But “I will” — when I step into the pulpit anxious that God act in spite of my inadequacies, and I hear him say (because I’m preaching it to myself by his authority from his word), “I will help you,” that’s just glorious, because you actually hear God by his word say it to you.

Depression

What about depression? What about melancholy? Times of deep, deep discouragement? Countless times. We used to have a sign on the side of the building because I quoted this so often — back in the days when people thought, “This is the ‘Hope in God’ church,” because of the sign. “There it is on the side of the wall. Why did they put that up there?” They put it up there because they have a depressed pastor who needs encouragement as he walks to church.

And here’s what I go to: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” So you’re preaching to yourself, right? John Piper’s preaching to himself. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:11). Oh my goodness. I have preached that to myself in low times, hundreds and hundreds of times.

Death

We’re almost done; just two more quick ones. Death. Okay, I’m old, right? Age 76 is old. I think I just read somebody died yesterday at 76. Every time I read that, or 74, or 63, or 42, I think, “Wow, I’m living on borrowed time.” It could be any night, right?

So, what do you say to yourself when that fact overwhelms you? For months I have recited this to myself before I go to sleep every night (maybe one or two exceptions). First Thessalonians 5:9–10: “God has not destined you [John Piper] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through [your] Lord Jesus Christ, who died for [you] so that whether [you] are awake or asleep [you] might live with him.” Tony, that’s going onto my gravestone, unless I change my mind.

Promise of Promises

Now, the last one. And this I’ve saved for last because it’s all-encompassing. In other words, it provides foundation for all the promises, and it is the Vesuvius of all the promises. And you probably know what it is. Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son [think of it] but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In other words, because Christ died for us, God will give his children everything — absolutely everything — we need to be supremely holy and happy forever.

So, thank you, Greg, for the question. May the Lord grant to all of us the faith to live joyfully, boldly, lovingly by these amazing treasures.

Last year, eighteen more people died climbing Mount Everest, the most lives the great mountain has taken in a single year. The eighteen brought the tragic total to more than 340 in the last century — and the death toll is manifestly rising. Climbers die from falls, from avalanches, from frostbite and other health crises, from serac collapses (a house-sized block of ice that breaks off from a glacier). The dangers are every bit as enormous as the peaks.

So, why are more people dying now than ever before? Well, because so many more are climbing. In the nineties, less than a hundred brave souls reached the summit each year. Today, the number has crested six times that figure — even while the deaths multiply. Why would that be? Why would someone pay $100,000 to spend two whole months climbing this mountain of death? Because the human soul is inescapably drawn to grandeur. Call it “adventure” or “challenge” or “triumph” — I call it glory, and Everest threatens us with 29,000 feet of it.

J.I. Packer once called Romans 8 “the Everest of the New Testament and a high peak of all biblical writing” (Atonement, 2). John Piper climbs up alongside Packer and says,

Romans chapter 8 is so dense and so constant with good news, good news that is so great and so glorious and so vastly superior to all the good news in this world — whether health good news, or family good news, or church good news, or job good news, or political good news, or international good news, or financial good news — so vastly superior to all earthly good news and so relentless, that you can scarcely feel the full force of it until you take virtually every verse and restate it as the good news that it is.

This October, our team at Desiring God will be your happy sherpas, leading you up the cliffs and around the turns to the breathtaking views in this greatest of all chapters. The journey weaves through eight articles spread throughout the month.

Mountain Climbing with Desiring God

At Desiring God, our team of teachers — John Piper, David Mathis, Tony Reinke, Jon Bloom, Greg Morse, Scott Hubbard, and myself — think, pray, and work hard together to craft our teaching strategy across all our channels. All of that dreaming and planning is shaped by our mission:

As a Christian Hedonist publishing platform, persuaded by the indispensable biblical reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist to move people to live for the glory of God, by helping them be satisfied in God above all else, especially in their suffering, by communicating the truth, and beauty, and worth of all God is for us in Christ, grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

That sentence (one of my favorite sentences in all the world) is the highway that guides all we say and do as a ministry — and I’m so eager to spend my life on that highway.

“Our suffering, even severe suffering, will not and cannot sever us from the promises we enjoy.”

At the center of our article strategy, in particular, is a monthly theme — an issue, topic, biblical chapter, or doctrine that we take up as a team and attempt to cover more thoroughly. Months in advance, we brainstorm the persistent needs we see and what we might tackle next. In that triage, we gladly and heavily lean on our Desiring God Affirmation of Faith. We prayerfully choose a theme for each month, and then we sketch out articles to cover that theme (we usually develop thirty to forty ideas and then select eight to ten to prioritize from that larger group).

For the next several months, we’ve lined up themes on the local church, the names of Christ (for Advent), and practical helps for prayer. For this month, we’re strapping on our harnesses and braving that great mountain of sovereign grace, Romans 8.

Peeks Inside the Peak

When you begin scaling this chapter, you don’t have to go far to see serious glory. In fact, the first six words explode with majesty: “There is therefore now no condemnation” (Romans 8:1). Later this week, our first leg of the climb will focus on the wonders of our justification in Christ. Believers still experience painful discipline from our Father this side of heaven, but we will never taste a drop of divine judgment.

Further into the month, we’ll be reminded that Christ himself lives in us by his Spirit. What does that indwelling mean, and how does it transform our ordinary, difficult lives? We’ll also look at how to walk by that Spirit who lives in us, putting to death the deeds of the body with supernatural power and resolve. Jon Bloom will take on the groaning of verses 17–25, showing us how our suffering, in God’s gracious hands, leads to our exaltation in the end, a future glory we cannot now imagine. At the end of the month, we’ll spend an article looking at the ways Romans 8 has been misunderstood and misapplied, including that most famous promise: “All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

In addition to our teaching team, we’ve asked Joni Eareckson Tada, Joshua Greever (associate professor of New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary), and Clinton Manley (the latest addition to our editorial team) to take the climb with us and serve as fellow guides, so you’ll see new articles by each of them along the way.

Costly Climbing

The glories of Romans 8 are obvious when you see them, but they’re not all easy to see or understand. No one tries to climb Everest without the right gear and a good guide, and that’s the kind of help we hope to provide in this series: to give you better sight lines into the life-changing, soul-stabilizing, joy-inflaming realities rising out of these 39 verses.

Like the Christian life, this climb won’t be easy. Paul asks at one point, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Romans 8:35). And why does he ask that? Because Christians suffer and even die from each of those afflictions. If we follow Christ, we will suffer trials of various and serious kinds. But our suffering, even severe suffering, will not and cannot sever us from the promises we enjoy.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37–39)

Come along with us if you dare, and see again what glory this great Everest holds.

As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. (1 Peter 1:15)

My hunch is that you are not a glib and shallow person. You are not the kind of person who would “pervert the grace of God into sensuality” (Jude 4). You are in earnest with the Lord, and you long to be holy. So do I. Indeed, what we deeply desire is nothing less than — may I come right out and say it? — sainthood.

But Christians like us — who care so sincerely about holiness and are reaching so diligently for its high standards — we face our own temptation. Let’s come right out and say that too. If others pervert the grace of God, we can “nullify the grace of God” (Galatians 2:21). We can have “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2). We can “go beyond what is written . . . being puffed up in favor of one against another” (1 Corinthians 4:6). How could it be otherwise? There is always, in this life, more than one way to lose our way!

Our very earnestness can become an opening to corruption, rot, and death. The great pastor and saint Robert Murray McCheyne warned his congregation, “Study sanctification to the utmost, but do not make a Christ of it. God hates this idol more than all others.” We should be serious about that too. So, let’s think about one way we can go so wrong, even while feeling we are so right.

Two Kinds of Holiness

Here is what we must understand. There are two kinds of holiness. One kind is Jesus’s holiness, and the other is our own self-invented holiness. Or to put it in other ways: There is the holiness of the Spirit, and there is the holiness of the flesh. There is the holiness from above, and the holiness from below. There is real holiness, and false holiness.

“Real holiness from Jesus is, of course, like Jesus.”

The difference is profound, even stark. But for us, it isn’t always easy to see the difference. Both kinds of holiness quote the Bible. Both talk about Jesus. Both go to church. Both are strict and firm and resolute. How then do these two holinesses differ?

Real holiness from Jesus is, of course, like Jesus. Look carefully at what our key verse actually says: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). His kind of holiness does not simply insist on a high moral standard. Any sinner can turn over a new leaf, and with enough willpower align externally with biblical norms. But real holiness reflects Jesus, it thinks like Jesus, its instincts resonate with Jesus. Real holiness embodies Jesus.

Beauty of True Holiness

When our Lord said, “Follow me” (Mark 1:17), he wasn’t recruiting our moral strengths to advance his cause. His call was and is, “I will teach you a new way of perceiving everything, including morality. I myself am how you avoid sin and become holy.”

Jesus is why the Bible speaks of “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9, KJV). His holiness is humane, life-giving, and desirable in every worthy way. His holiness is both serious enough to warn and light enough to laugh (1 Peter 5:8; Zechariah 8:5); it’s firm and yet also freeing (Deuteronomy 5:32; Malachi 4:2). When we encounter our Lord’s real holiness in someone today, it’s both dignifying and delightful.

But false holiness from us is, well, just us. It’s us at our worst, because it’s us exalting our smug superiority, us reinforcing our divisive preferences, us absolutizing our narrow rigidity, and so forth. It’s us asserting ourselves, in the name of the Lord, so that we become more demanding, more grim, more shaming of others.

Great Divide

I’ll make it still worse. Because false holiness comes so naturally to us, it feels good. Our moral fervor feels moral. But it isn’t. Our moral fervor is immoral. In those moments when we have enough self-awareness to see our carnal holiness for what it is, we are peering into a pit of hell. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis teaches us,

The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither. (102–103)

If this is so, and it is, then our pursuit of holiness is complicated. We might have expected a choice between two simple categories: sin versus holiness. But in reality, we are facing three categories: (1) sin, (2) our kind of holiness, and, (3) Jesus’s kind of holiness. And the great divide is not between (1) and (2). The great divide is between (2) and (3).

Heart of His Holiness

If our holiness is no more than that — our wretched rightness — then our holiness is a polished form of evil. The Pharisees proved that. They were morally earnest people and the archvillains of the Gospels.

“If our holiness is no more than our wretched rightness, then our holiness is a polished form of evil.”

The Pharisees hated Jesus, even while many sinners gravitated to him. Why? Because his kind of holiness has no pride at all. He isn’t pushy and strident and harsh. He really is “gentle and lowly” (Matthew 11:29). And that part of him isn’t a concession, moderating his holiness. It’s at the very heart of his holiness, because it is the very heart of Jesus himself. His kind of holiness melts in the mouths of all who humble themselves before him.

This distinction explains something that perplexed me for years. The most repulsive people I’ve encountered along the way are not the worldly party boys on their weekend binges; they are harsh “church people” with their high standards — and no forgiveness. But the loveliest people I’ve ever known have been sinners of many kinds who are turning from both their coarsened evil and their refined evil, and they are humbly opening up to Jesus and his grace for the undeserving.

When I hang out with them, Jesus is present. Sometimes I am moved to tears. But among genuinely holy people, I do not feel cornered, pressured, or shamed by their negative scrutiny. The real saints are too holy for that arrogant foolishness. And I hope you have a ton of friends like that!

Not Righteousness of My Own

It isn’t just our blatant sins that need correction. Our counterfeit holiness needs correction too. It doesn’t need intensification. A. W. Tozer wrote of his generation, “A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years” (Keys to the Deeper Life, 18). I believe that applies even more today.

What self-righteous holiness needs is not success, power, and prominence, but failure, collapse, and devastation. Then we can humbly receive Jesus, with the empty hands of faith, and enter into the profound experience Philippians 3:8–9 describes:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.