Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Wednesday, a rare Wednesday episode, with Pastor John and myself together. No sermon clip today. We’re both in the studio with an update. This is John Piper’s year-in-review — I guess we could call it that, Pastor John — as we look back at God’s kindness in 2022. It was a busy year for you. We have a lot of ground to cover today. So let’s start with the personal life of John Piper. Don’t go into the books or conferences or ministry memories just yet. Start by giving us highlights from your life. What stands out to you personally?

That’s a trick question in a sense because personal pleasure and pleasure from ministry are really hard to distinguish. So it seems to me like you’re asking the impossible, but I think I get what you’re asking: the joys of the personal dimension of my life, apart from the work I do for Desiring God and Bethlehem College & Seminary. Let me mention maybe two or three things.

Probably the least important thing to mention, but amazingly ever-present in our home life, is that we got a new dog, a goldendoodle. Now, we had a goldendoodle for fourteen years. This dog, however, is more doodle than golden. We’re trying to come to terms with that and having a little bit of a hard time. That’s the least important thing to mention, and yet there she is all the time in the kitchen as part of our lives now.

Far more important was a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip with all four of my sons and two grandsons at a wilderness lake in Canada where you have to fly in, land on the water, and fish for walleye and northern pike. And these fish were so hungry — they were so hungry! — we were catching them with hooks and pieces of orange duct tape. That’s not an exaggeration. My boys were having a blast experimenting. “What will they bite?” These were big fish — big edible fish. I love the sounds of my sons laughing, and when you get four quick-witted, fast-tongued Piper brothers together in one place, you better be prepared to be knocked over by the verbal rough-and-tumble and laughter. It was a really precious high point, which I pray God will use in their lives for good.

Let me just mention one more. I know it’s cheating because it mingles ministry pleasure and personal, but I can’t help but mention that I get a tremendous personal pleasure from teaching the preaching course at Bethlehem College & Seminary, where I serve as chancellor. The give-and-take with these fourteen guys this fall, for example, in the class about the glories of preaching God’s word is simply too satisfying for me personally to leave out.

Ask Pastor John

I think probably most of us feel the same way you do about ministry joys being some of the best personal joys. But let’s move into your ministry joys or ministry highlights from 2022. The fact that you and I are talking right now, of course, means that in 2022 God enabled us to record another 150 episodes of this podcast, Ask Pastor John. We’re closing in now on 1,900 total episodes as we finish up ten years together on this podcast.

Absolutely amazing. I won’t get to say very often, Tony (in public, at least, though I might say it to you more often), that I am so profoundly thankful for your partnership particularly. I know a lot of people make things happen at Desiring God. But the amount of planning, praying, curating, editing, and hosting that you do for this podcast to make it possible is mostly invisible but absolutely essential to the life of this ministry. I am so thankful.

Wow. That’s very meaningful to me, Pastor John. Thank you. As I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again, Ask Pastor John is the honor of a lifetime for me. This will be — I am very sure of it — the most impactful ministry I will ever be a part of. You tell me I cannot know that.

Right, you cannot know that.

But I’m saying I know that. And I thank God for APJ, and I thank God for you and your very hard work that is really the engine behind it all. I love building this podcast with you. I enjoy every single week of this work because I know one day our building of it will end. And I do not look forward to that day.

Look at the Book

But APJ is not the only podcast you spent time on this year. Maybe we shouldn’t even classify it as a podcast. You spent a lot of time creating these almost-unique visual online teaching videos called Look at the Book. I think we have almost a thousand of those episodes available now at Desiring God. Anything unusual about this past year on the Look at the Book front?

Well, there is, but let me step back and give the bigger picture, because what’s special won’t make as much sense without that. Several years ago, God, I believe, put it in my heart to try to create a Look at the Book episode — these are about ten-to-fourteen minutes long — on all thirteen of Paul’s letters. The team at Desiring God thought that was an amazing thing and a good idea and got behind it and began to structure my life to that end, weaving Look at the Book creation into my weekly routine.

But we discovered that, at the pace we were going, that probably was not going to happen in my lifetime because that’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes, given all of Paul’s letters and how long some of them are. So we decided to experiment last summer — so just a few months ago — with what we call a “lab blitz.” Desiring God sends me away for about seven weeks where that’s all I do. And bless their hearts, 9Marks and Capitol Hill Baptist Church provided Noël and me with a nice secluded place to stay, and the guys from Desiring God set up a studio in a bedroom. And so, for nine hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks, all I did was Look at the Book creation. We did about 150 episodes in that time and did all of 1 and 2 Timothy.

If we now take that model of these blitzes and do that for the next two or three years, the goal actually looks doable. It looks doable. We could drop dead any time, no matter how old we are. But if I stay healthy, if my mind stays clear for the next two or three years, then it actually looks doable. I love doing it this way. I am so thankful. Staying really focused day in and day out is so much more efficient than fitting in those efforts at Look at the Book to a day here and there during my other responsibilities. We’ll probably be doing both, and I’m excited that it looks like, if God gives me life, I could do Look at the Book on all of Paul’s letters.

‘Come, Lord Jesus’

Wonderful. Any special takeaways from seven weeks of your attention being riveted on Paul’s letters?

Yes, but we don’t have time to talk about them. They’re so good, so deep, so many. You can’t look at God’s book as long as I have looked at it and not be amazed — at least I can’t. My prayer every time I start one of those days of focusing all day long on looking at God’s book is, “Lord, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things out of your word,” like the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18.

But maybe what would be most interesting for folks is to see the connection between doing Look at the Book on 2 Timothy and a new book that will be out in a few weeks — namely, a book on the second coming of Christ, which we’re calling Come, Lord Jesus and that Crossway is publishing.

I’ve wanted to write a book on Christ’s coming for many years. Well, here I was focused. Now this wasn’t last summer, this was earlier, as I was pondering 2 Timothy in preparation. I was focused on 2 Timothy, and I got to the end. This was probably Paul’s last letter, and these are among the last verses that he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7–8:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

All who have loved his appearing. That was it. That’s what it took to get me over the edge to say, “Now I know how I want to write this book on the second coming.” So I wrote a book focused mainly on helping myself, and I hope others, love — not just hope for or understand or think about, but love — the appearing of the Lord Jesus. I finished the editing earlier this year, and it’s scheduled to be out I believe in January sometime.

Learning, Technology, Eldership

Yes, and it’s a great read. And I guess that answers one of my other questions: whether this new Look at the Book blitz that you just mentioned earlier will replace your other writing priorities.

Well, it might. I’m not sure yet about what it will look like over the summers for the next two or three years. In fact, it’s not going to replace writing in the foreseeable future because we’ve set aside some time, just a few weeks from now in January, to team up with Joe Rigney, the president of Bethlehem College & Seminary, to write a short book on how to be a lifelong learner. I know that book is in the planning stages, and the blitzes aren’t going to preempt that one, but I am, as you know, not the only writer of books or articles at DG.

When I look back over this year, what an amazing stream of substantial, insightful, Bible-saturated articles flow out daily at Desiring God. Not to mention in this past year the new books that you and David Mathis published. I mean, Tony, your book God, Technology, and the Christian Life is still, in my mind, in a class by itself. I don’t know anything like it with the combination of rich biblical reflection, a high view of providence, and a fascinating grasp of the present lay of the land of technology. I’ve got juicy favorite quotes. You’re a good writer, and you rise to some sweet levels of quotability. Here’s two of them: “Angels don’t bend down in awe of Silicon Valley. Angels kneel in awe to study the glories and agonies of Jesus Christ” (278). That’s gold. Or, “Obviously, we can escape from God’s providence like a fish can escape water for a life in outer space” (269). That’s great. Your book is worthy of people’s getting just to poke around and find those nuggets like that.

As if that were not enough for a great year at Desiring God, Mathis — David Mathis, our executive editor — published a book for church leaders. It’s called Workers for Your Joy. I think it’s one-of-a-kind because there are a lot of books on eldership, a lot of books on pastoring — goodness, there are hundreds of them — but there are not a lot built on 2 Corinthians 1:24, with the point that we are workers with our people for their joy. That’s the note of the book. This is Christian Hedonism pressed into the corners of the leader’s life.

It was a great year of publishing, I think.

‘What Is Saving Faith?’

You have not mentioned yet your book: What Is Saving Faith? That was also published in 2022. In fact, just a few weeks ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Denver, a whole three-hour block was devoted to your book. Why was that? That’s never happened before, has it, that one of your books would be part of a debate at ETS.

“True saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ.”

No, that was a first, I think, and I was really glad for it. I feel privileged that that happened. The book has stirred up some discussion because not everyone agrees with my main point — namely, that true saving faith has in it an affectional or heartfelt dimension, which I call treasuring Christ. Saving faith is a receiving of Christ as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord. Without that treasuring aspect, I think we may be just using Christ as competent, but not trusting him as an all-satisfying Savior. So I was really glad for the ETS event to try to bring some clarity to the pushback we’ve received, and I hope people will read it for themselves rather than just what others are saying. I think there are not many issues more important than whether we really have true saving faith.

Global Expansion

Yes. Well, we need to wrap this up. Any other encouraging things you see at Desiring God, more broadly, that you think our listeners might be interested in?

“It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God.”

I think what is most exciting and most worthy of thanksgiving to God and to our financial supporters is the incredible expansion of the ministry globally. We now have something like thirty partners worldwide translating Ask Pastor John, books, articles. It’s simply remarkable what God is doing globally to raise up young leaders with a passion for the glory of God and for publishing — and who are amazingly savvy on the Internet — for everywhere in the world. This is invisible to most people. This growth, this exciting dimension of our ministry, is mostly invisible for people, and yet it may be the most important thing we are doing right now at Desiring God — namely, partnering with these brothers and sisters as an increasing part of our annual plan and our annual budget. I think this is a great place to end the year, thanking God for what he’s doing outside of our little sphere called America through this ministry.

Amen. Speaking of God’s work outside America, this year included my first international trip, preaching in Brazil in June, to launch my technology book in Portuguese. It launched there this summer. I got to hold the translation in hand. I met and spent time with the translator there and had lunch with our publishing partner in Brazil. So all this international work you just mentioned became very tangible for me in 2022. Because I think, if all you know of Desiring God is the English website and English resources that we create, there’s a whole other world of labor happening right now that we want to introduce you to. And we are going to introduce you to that work, beginning next time. We have thirty international partners, as you said, Pastor John. And we’re going to hear from seven of them in the next seven APJ episodes — brief updates from leaders reaching the world through the languages of French, Portuguese, Farsi, Dutch, German, Arabic, and Albanian. Each of these seven updates inspires me. And it is my joy to share them with you in these final weeks of the year.

And if you’re hearing all these updates and you want in, you can join us today. We’re looking for new ministry partners like you to come alongside us to support us as we continue to make new resources in English — including our books and articles and Look at the Book videos and this podcast — and as we get these resources translated and distributed across the globe in dozens of languages. We can only do all this with your help. So consider becoming a monthly ministry partner with us today. Much of our financial support comes from friends of ours who give, on average, $30 a month to support all of this work, everything we mentioned today (and more). To set up monthly giving, go to give.desiringGod.org. Very much appreciated.

Pastor John and I are back next time. We’ll see you Friday.

I can remember my first time hearing Luther’s famous first thesis: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” While others around me offered solemn nods, the less-sacred thought flashed across my mind, Well, that sure sounds like fun.

I knew the repentant life to be good for me, as I knew going to the dentist to be good for me. I did not look forward to a life of feeling bad about myself. Wasn’t it punishment to bring the dog’s nose back to its mess? My childlike faith heard, “The Christian life is one of sitting in the corner, muttering apologies.” Necessary? Perhaps. Exciting? Far from.

My life of repentance so far had been the same somber note on repeat. Whenever I felt an elevated sense of my own sin, I threw myself into the deep pit of penance. Like Jonah, I marked myself guilty and consented to being cast into the sea. Or like the prodigal, I made my long return home, rehearsing how unworthy I was to be his son, and how I ought to be treated as a hired hand.

I deserved despair. I wouldn’t, couldn’t pursue happiness. I had sinned. I needed to serve my time before I could freely smile again. I did not know — indeed, I am still learning — about the joyful life of repentance.

Have Mercy on Me

King David confronted how I think in his beloved psalm of penitence.

The desperate and fallen king wrote Psalm 51 in the bleakest of days, detailed at the very beginning: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

In the time when kings go to war, David saw the naked woman from his rooftop. He called for her and took her for himself; she conceived. To cover his sin, David arranged her husband’s death. After Uriah lay dead, God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his adultery and murder. Under sin’s thick clouds, David sits to pen this psalm, beginning the only way sinners can: beseeching God for mercy.

Have mercy on me, O God,     according to your steadfast love;according to your abundant mercy     blot out my transgressions. (Psalm 51:1)

Sinner’s Broken Bones

I understood David’s sorrow for sin. I knew how sin upbraids my spirit, sends my conscience to berate me, and lays a crushing weight of God’s displeasure upon my soul.

David describes this experience by saying God broke his bones (Psalm 51:8). The weight of sin pressed upon the very core of him, down to the bones, fracturing his inner man. Sin eroded him, as he describes in another psalm: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3). I’ve known how sin deteriorates a man.

And while some today might seek to rescue us from feeling the brokenness our iniquity produces, David knows such a severe response to sin as fitting.

You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;     you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;     a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16–17)

“The truly repentant heart, the one God will in no way despise, is broken and contrite toward God.”

The truly repentant heart, the one God will in no way despise, is broken and contrite toward God, not unconcerned and insensible. Brokenness I knew; the bitter cup of contriteness I tasted. Thus, when I pictured a life of repentance, I imagined living only in this dark and stormy night, sitting under its pouring rain, rubbing mud on my head remorsefully, waiting for God’s favor to return.

Make Me Smile Again

But David says more. He requests something that changed how I view repentance:

Let me hear joy and gladness;     let the bones that you have broken rejoice. (Psalm 51:8)

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,     and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:12)

Joy and gladness? Let the broken bones rejoice?

David, you committed adultery with Bathsheba, and orchestrated the death of her husband — and you ask God to restore your joy? Are you taking your sin seriously? Do you care about the pain you caused? How can you so quickly ask for restoration of joy, while Uriah’s body still lies fresh in the tomb? Or so I am tempted to ask.

Behold the beautiful collage of true repentance: it bows low in brokenness and contrition, leads us to confess gross sin to the God we have offended, and yet it also bids us to request more happiness in this God. With broken bones, David boldly asks for the inheritance of the righteous: joy. He hears accusations and groans and torturing silence, but he asks to hear former music and festive song; he is caught in caves of guilt but wants to again feel the sunshine of salvation.

His repentance before God is a plea for mercy and a return to God for more joy in God. He wants forgiveness, cleansing, a renewed spirit — to walk again with God, as it were, naked and unashamed. This prodigal knows the scandalous love of the Father, and asks to be received as a son, as loved. Though unworthy in himself, he pants to return to his Father’s table, asks for close communion again, for his broken bones to laugh again, according to his Father’s steadfast love.

Restore Me, Then Others

In David’s prayer, I learned that Luther’s vision of lifelong repentance means turning from broken cisterns to the fountain of living water (Jeremiah 2:13). A life of restoration, renewal, happiness, closeness to God. I learned that the life of unrepentance leads us to take steps farther and farther away from God and hides us from happiness. And this joy, rather than being whipped cream atop salvation, is essential to continue in it, the fuel to persevere in faith and obedience.

And lest we assume this is selfish, note how he plans his joy extend beyond himself.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,     and sinners will return to you. (Psalm 51:13)

Though repentance is inescapably personal, it is not only personal.

Unlike a stagnant swamp, true repentance flows onward and outward. Here, David resolves that the cleansing, the joy, the renewed spirit, will send him forth to teach others caught in sin. He determines that if God grants him his pardon and presence, he will go forth and encourage the repentance of others, leading to their return.

New Year, New Repentance

Is your Christian life one of repentance?

Perhaps some of us need to resolve differently this year. Often, we look away from the past year and its failures toward what we hope to be a brighter future. The whole sense of New Year’s resolutions usually gives exclusive attention to what’s ahead — we resolve to do better, be better, live better, starting now.

“Sin needs to be acknowledged, confessed, repented of, not buried beneath a few good intentions.”

But as Christians, we remember that we can’t just leave everything behind us. We have said things and done things this past year — things maybe no person alive knows — that will not die quietly before promises of never again. Some of our sharpest disappointments this past year resulted from sin — and sin needs to be acknowledged, confessed, repented of, not buried beneath a few good intentions.

So let January mark a fresh beginning of repentance. Repentance is, in itself, a kind of January, a newness through which God renews a right spirit within us and restores our first joy in salvation. Take one or two sins to your gracious Father, ask for forgiveness through the blood of Christ, ask for freshness of happiness in your salvation, and go forth, telling others of the joyful repentance you’ve found in your Lord.

Audio Transcript

We love receiving emails that crystallize abstract thoughts into concrete questions. Today, we have an intriguing question from Jacob about the importance of popularity and likeability in our gospel witness. Jacob wonders if being disliked by others makes him a bad representative of Christ. Here’s his email: “Pastor John, am I wrong if people around me don’t like me? Does being unliked by others make me a bad representative of Christ? We can’t be people-pleasers all the time, or we will be pushovers. At what point does our seeking to be accepted by people compromise our faithfulness to God?”

I think what might be helpful to do in answer to Jacob’s question is to illustrate how he might go about answering his own question from Scripture. I hope, in doing it this way, that one hundred questions of this nature might be answered, in the sense that people will realize that all John Piper does to get ready for these little ten-minute talks is to open his Bible, find some Scriptures that come close to relating to the issue, think about them, and then put his thoughts down.

Frankly, I think most people who listen to APJ, which is a particular kind of people, could do this if they were encouraged to work at it. So, that’s what I’m doing — I’m encouraging you. You could do this. You could have your own little APJ. I’d like to empower you to do that.

How to Ask Scripture

The first thing I did was to type the word please, because we’re talking about when it is right to please people and when it is not right to please people. So, I typed the word please into my Logos. There are a lot of different Bible programs out there. I happen to use Logos. I told it to find all the places where please or pleased is used in Paul, because I knew that there are a bunch of places in Paul that I couldn’t think of where this very issue is dealt with — of sometimes pleasing people and sometimes not pleasing people.

A bunch of uses of please, not all of them relevant, came up. I picked out the five that were relevant, isolated them, and began to read them. And as I read them, I circled, and I underlined, and I emboldened words that seemed relevant for answering the question.

Now, when is it right to please people? When is it wrong to please people? Is Paul tipping me off in these verses as to when he does it and when he doesn’t do it? I assume Paul is not contradicting himself, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to read you these five verses and show you what I saw. Because I think if you could see it for yourself, then you wouldn’t have to write APJ. We’re into empowering people to go to the Bible and to find God and help there, not to be dependent on me.

Galatians 1:10

So, here we go — Galatians 1:10. Paul has just said some unbelievably harsh things about those who are bringing a different gospel. He says, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” — damned (Galatians 1:9). Now, those are not pleasing words to the false teachers, I dare say. Should Paul worry about that? He has just displeased somebody, big time. My guess is that lots of contemporary readers don’t like his words either.

Then he says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” The least we can conclude from these words is that sometimes, when the gospel is being corrupted, being a faithful servant of Christ will require harsh words. We should not let that stand in our way, that those words are displeasing to some people.

1 Thessalonians 2:4–6

Number two is 1 Thessalonians 2:4–6. Here’s what Paul says:

Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed — God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others.

That seems to me to be really helpful, because Paul mentions three things (at least) that he is trying to avoid when it comes to pleasing other people in the way he talks. He’s avoiding flattery, he’s avoiding giving a pretext for greed, and he’s avoiding trying to get glory from people. In other words, what Paul was opposed to here was trying to please people by buttering them up in the hope of getting money or getting praise and glory.

The key issue in 1 Thessalonians 2 is not primarily whether somebody likes or doesn’t like what you say. The issue is, Are you self-serving, or are you others-serving? Are you manipulating the relationship to try to say what they want to hear because you want money, or you want glory, or you want something that they don’t expect you to want, given what you’re saying?

Colossians 3:22

Here’s the third text, Colossians 3:22, which says, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” It seems to me that what Paul means by “eye-service” is that the goal of somebody who talks or acts with eye-service is not to go any deeper than what meets the eye, which is why Paul contrasts it with “sincerity of heart” and “fearing the Lord.” In other words, pleasing someone might be fine if it is not insincere and if it doesn’t compromise fearing the Lord.

1 Corinthians 10:31–33; Romans 15:1–2

Really quickly, the two passages that tell us Paul does try to please people are 1 Corinthians 10:31–33 and Romans 15:1–2, which go like this:

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of [you] please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.

When Paul is trying to please others, he says five things that make it good:

I’m not seeking my own advantage.
I’m seeking their advantage.
I’m trying to bring them to salvation.
I’m seeking their good.
I’m seeking to build them up — that is, in faith and holiness.

On to the Answer

In summary, I think the answer to Jacob’s question about when it’s right and when it’s wrong to please people would go something like this. Again, all I’m doing now is trying to summarize. This doesn’t come out of nowhere. I’m just trying to summarize what we’ve seen in these verses.

If you are not motivated by flattery, and if you are not motivated by trying to manipulate people to get money, glory, or praise for yourself, and if you are not speaking or acting insincerely, but in the fear of God, and if you are seeking their advantage, their good, their salvation, and their upbuilding — if all those things characterize your behavior and your speech, then yes, seek to please people. Your effort to please them will be protected from sin, and it will be used for righteousness and for the glory of God.