This message was part of a larger session at the 2022 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society under the title “Receiving Christ as a Treasure: The Affectional Element of Saving Faith.” Watch the entire session here.

I’ll start with an assumption I hope we share: Saving faith is a receiving of Christ. John 1:11–12: “He [Christ] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” So, saving faith is a receiving act, not a giving act or a performing act.

When God justifies the one who has saving faith, he does not have respect to faith as giving him anything or performing anything to prove our merit. God justifies through faith because faith receives Christ as the sole ground of God being one hundred percent for us. That’s my assumption, my starting point.

Question and Proposed Answer

My question is this: More fully, what do we receive Christ as? And more specifically: What is the actual experience of receiving him? What is happening in our soul when we experience saving faith?

My answer to the first question is that whether we are receiving Christ as Savior, or Lord, or Shepherd, or Friend, saving faith receives Christ as a treasured Savior, a treasured Lord, a treasured Shepherd, a treasured Friend, a treasured righteousness. Saving faith receives a treasured Christ.

Thus, the answer to my second question is that what is happening in our souls when we experience saving faith is that we are treasuring Christ. We are experiencing the spiritual affection that corresponds to the greatness and beauty and value of Christ. Therefore, the thesis of my book What Is Saving Faith? and this talk is that “saving faith has in it the affectional dimension of treasuring Christ” (20).

Historically saving faith has been described as including knowledge, assent, and trust. I agree with that. But what needs to be drawn out of this great tradition is that this knowing includes a spiritual sight of the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6), and this assenting includes the consent of the soul to the value of that glory (Philippians 3:7–8), and this trusting includes the treasuring of that value as eternally satisfying (John 6:35). That’s my aim — to draw out this reality from the great tradition by showing it as biblical.

Two Reasons Affection Is Vital

I regard this affectional dimension of faith as essential for salvation. Where it is absent, there is no saving faith. Where Christ is not received as a treasured Savior and treasured Lord, he is being used, not trusted in a saving way. Or to say it another way, “Saving faith does not see Christ as useful to obtain something treasured more than Christ” (224).

To be sure, Christ is useful. He is the means of escape from hell, and forgiveness of sins, and resurrection of a pain-free body, and a new creation. And for these we should be leaping for joy. But if we receive Christ because no-hell, no-guilt, no-pain, and new-creation are our treasure, while Christ himself is not the supreme treasure, then that receiving is not saving faith.

It is possible to trust a surgeon to operate on your brain and have no desire to spend time with him at all. He is simply useful. You trust him because he’s competent and because your health is valuable. When the cancer is removed, or hell is escaped, we may have no interest in him. A pain-free heaven without Jesus would be perfectly acceptable to thousands of professing Christians. Which is one reason I wrote the book.

“Saving faith embraces Christ both as useful for his saving gifts and as precious for his satisfying glory.”

The spiritual affection of treasuring Christ is essential not only because it leads to human salvation, but also because it leads to God’s glorification. The reason this is so is that saving faith embraces Christ both as useful for his saving gifts and as precious for his satisfying glory. The affectional dimension of saving faith is essential both for the salvation of sinners and for the glorification of the Savior. Without it, the all-satisfying worth of Jesus would not be magnified in salvation as God intends.

Substantial Precedent

My defense of this claim — that saving faith has in it an affectional dimension — is not mainly by showing how widespread this truth is in historical theology, but rather to draw it out of biblical texts.
But it is important to me that I not say anything without substantial precedent in the history of God’s people. I am fallible. And it is good that my reading of Scripture be chastened by two thousand years of other people’s reading of the Bible.

So, I do take heart when I read:

Calvin describing saving faith as “a warm embrace of Christ” that consists in “pious affection.”
Turretin describing faith as the “embrace of . . . that inestimable treasure.”
Owen calling it a reception of the “Lord Jesus in his comeliness and eminency.”
Mastricht saying that it “denotes desiring and reception with delight.”
Shedd saying that “evangelical faith . . . involves an affectionate love of Christ.”
Berkhof saying that it is a “hearty reliance on the promises of God.”

To my knowledge, I am not saying anything that has not been said in various ways by others far more gifted than I.

Biblical Support

But in the end we go to our Bibles. So let me point to several of the key Scriptures where I try to show the affectional nature of saving faith. I’ll try to point to the nub of the exegesis, hoping that you might look at the fuller argument in the book or bring it up for discussion in the panel.

2 Corinthians 4:3–7

First, we look at 2 Corinthians 4:3–7. And the thing to look for is, What is missing in the experience of the one who lacks saving faith in verse 4? And then, given what God does to change that in verse 6, what is the experience of the one who has saving faith? And what is it called in verse 7?

Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers [those who do not have saving faith], to keep them from seeing the light [the shining] of the gospel [the good news!] of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said [at the beginning in creation], “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light [shining] of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

So here the gospel is defined in verse 4 as the “good news of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” or as verse 6 describes it, “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” I think those are two ways of describing the one divine glory revealed in the gospel. This glory shines with spiritual “light” through the gospel story of Christ crucified and risen.

On the one hand (according to verse 4), the god of this world, Satan, knows what he must do in order to prevent saving faith from happening when that gospel is proclaimed. He must prevent the spiritual sight of that glory. That is what he does in verse 4. He blinds the minds of those without saving faith.

On the other hand (according to verse 6), God, the Creator, knows what he must do in order to change that and bring about saving faith. He must cause this divine glory in the gospel (“the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”) to shine in blinded hearts. That is, he must cause the light of the glory of Christ — the glory of God in Christ — to be seen (with what Paul calls “the eyes of your heart” in Ephesians 1:18).

In our unbelief we saw Christ in the gospel as foolish, or a stumbling block, or boring, or mythical, or unimportant, or negligible (1 Corinthians 1:22–24; 2:14). And then the Creator of the universe caused us to see Christ as glorious, true, valuable, all-sufficient, satisfying — all of that I think is implied in “the glory of Christ” (v. 4). And in that miracle of spiritual sight, saving faith came into being.

And how does Paul describe this in verse 7? He says, “And we have this treasure.” What treasure? The glory of Christ seen in the gospel. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” Paul sees the experience of the glory of Christ in the gospel as a great treasure. Christ in his beauty is a treasure. The gift of seeing him that way is a treasure.

Since those who are blind to this treasure in verse 4 are called “unbelievers,” I infer that those who see him this way in verse 6 are believers. What they see now, but could not see before, is glory. The glory of God in the face of Christ. Or, as verse 7 says, they see him as a treasure.

I conclude, therefore, that saving faith includes a treasuring sight of the glory of Christ in the gospel. (Consider also 1 Corinthians 1:21–25; 2:14; Ephesians 1:18; and John 5:44.) The very nature of the new birth that causes the sight of the treasure of Christ, determines the nature of the faith it creates — namely, a treasuring of the treasure of the glory of Christ.

2 Thessalonians 2:9–12

Second, we look at 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12. What to look for here is the relationship between faith in the truth and love for the truth.

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

First, what is the meaning of the strange phrase in verse 10? Another way to put it is: “They did not welcome/receive the love of the truth.” My suggestion is this. At the end of verse 12 it says that these people “had pleasure in unrighteousness.” That is, they loved unrighteousness (cf. 2 Peter 2:15). So, in verse 12 they love unrighteousness, and in verse 10 they will not welcome a love for the truth.

This is similar to Romans 1:18, where men “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (cf. Romans 1:28). And 1 Corinthians 13:6, where love rejoices in truth rather than rejoicing in unrighteousness. So I take 2 Thessalonians 2:10 to mean that in the deception of unrighteousness, these people would not even consider replacing love of unrighteousness with love for the truth. Even if it were offered to them as a gift, they would not receive a love for the truth.

Now, with that clarification, Paul connects faith in the truth and love for the truth in two ways to show how there is no faith in the truth without love for the truth.

“There is no faith in the truth without love for the truth.”

First, he says in the middle of verse 10 that people are “perishing, because they [did not welcome a love for] the truth.” Then, in verse 12 he says that people are “condemned who did not believe the truth.” So, failure to love the truth condemns, and failure to believe the truth condemns.

And then, second, to make the connection between loving the truth and believing the truth one piece, Paul points at the end of verse 12 to a surprising contrast. We would expect him to say, “They did not believe the truth but believed a lie.” But what he says is, “[They] did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Which could be stated, “They did not believe the truth but loved unrighteousness” (cf. 2 Peter 2:15).

Instead of loving or finding pleasure in the truth of the gospel, they loved and found pleasure in unrighteousness. Which I think implies that believing includes loving what is true and right as it is presented in the gospel. And this loving is an affectional element in saving faith, because it is clarified here as “finding pleasure in.”

So, I conclude that the (new birth) miracle of welcoming a love for the truth of the gospel, is part of the miracle of saving faith in the truth of the gospel. And this “loving” is essentially what I mean by “treasuring.” A shift of loves is at the root of saving faith.

Hebrews 11:1, 24–26

The third text we look at is Hebrews 11. The thing to look for here is how the writer describes faith as looking expectantly and confidently for a treasured reward. I’ll read verse 1 and then verses 24–26:

Now faith is the assurance [or substance] of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. . . . By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

When he says, “Faith is the [substance] of things hoped for,” he implies that there is an affectional element in faith because, in the biblical understanding of hope, we only hope when we feel a confident expectation and desire to gain something we treasure.

And this understanding of faith is made explicit in the case of Moses in verses 24–26. By faith Moses turned his back on the “fleeting pleasures” of Egypt (v. 25) and looked to the promised Messiah and hoped in the “reward” to come (v. 26). His faith was the substance — the experienced present reality of that future reward — which he treasured more than the treasures of Egypt.

So, I conclude that the writer to the Hebrews understands saving faith as having in it an affectional dimension, which he would call treasuring the reward that God promises to be for us in Christ.

Gospel of John

Let’s consider one more brief but hugely important cluster of texts from the Gospel of John. John never uses the noun faith, but he uses the verb believe ninety-eight times. I think the reason for this has to do with the affectional nature of saving faith as John presents it. As I read these passages, watch for how John describes believing as drinking, eating, and seeing with satisfaction.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” (John 6:35, 51)

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37–38)

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than [loving!] the light because their works were evil. (John 3:18–19)

From these and other passages in John, I conclude that Jesus treats believing as having an essential affectional dimension. That dimension is described as eating the bread of life so that our souls do not hunger (John 6:35, 51), and as drinking living water so as never to thirst again (John 4:10–11; 6:35; 7:38), and as loving the light of the world for the glorious brightness that he really is: “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14; 3:19).

For this experience of saving faith to happen in hearts that are mere flesh (John 3:6), Jesus says that we must be born again (John 3:3, 7). When that happens, saving belief comes into being as a compelling preference — thirst, hunger, longing — for Christ as living water, heavenly bread, and the light of the world.

As Peter puts it, we are born again as infants who “have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:3). The life-giving milk of Christ is pleasing. This tasting is not a neutral act. Saving faith comes into being as a God-given preference — desire, hunger, thirst — for the water and bread and light that Christ is. And it exists as a satisfied drinking and eating and beholding of Christ.

“Christ is most magnified in our faith when our faith is most satisfied in him.”

I suggest that John never uses the noun faith but uses the verb believe ninety-eight times because he wants to foreground the spiritual act of the soul in receiving and coming and drinking and eating and loving. He prefers not to speak of believing as a state or position of the soul but as an act of the soul — a spiritual imbibing, ingesting, embracing, and savoring of the all-satisfying glories of Christ.

Magnify Jesus

My main point has been that saving faith has in it the affectional dimension of treasuring Christ. The ultimate reason this matters is that God designed saving faith such that he would be maximally glorified through it in salvation. That happens because such faith glorifies Christ not only as useful but also as precious. As a treasuring grace, saving faith magnifies Christ’s all-satisfying worth.

Or we might say Christ is most magnified in our faith when our faith is most satisfied in him.

“Could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part would have been perfect.” So thinks Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If only her sister were there, if only they could go for walks together, all would be complete — then she would be perfectly happy.

Yet another moment’s reflection teaches her a lesson untraveled by much of humanity:

“But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain. But here, my carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my sister’s absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized. A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defense of some little particular vexation.” (166)

Did you catch it? This paragraph will be surgical if you let it. Upon reflection, Elizabeth discovers that she doesn’t really want her sister there at all. Why? Because she wants to maintain at least one excuse for why she isn’t finally happy. She knows that if her sister comes — if they go for their walks through the gardens — she will still not possess that happiness she longs for. And what is worse: she will no longer possess any reason for why not. What then?

Then she would have to turn and face it: she does not know what will finally make her happy, what will finally banish the ache. Maybe in the end, all hopes are false. Should she risk touching bottom? No, thinks she, the shallow disappointment of a missing sister must shield from the deeper, tongueless throb silenced of rebuttals.

Chasing Our Tail

What makes Elizabeth’s reasoning so unsettling is that she knows her sister would not fulfill her happiness — yet she prefers deception to reality. Her passions rise in mutiny against reason; she allows them the helm without struggle. She prefers to wish for her sister than to have her sister (and so break the spell). Does that sound familiar (though we are less honest)? Sure, we sigh loudly enough, but have we ever noticed the relief that comes from realizing at least one of our Janes is elsewhere, and so certain disappointment is kept at bay?

Peter Kreeft describes man’s plight this way:

If he experiences winning, he is not happy for long; but if he plays with the hope of winning, he can be happy for a long time by being both diverted (by playing) and deluded (believing he’d be truly happy if he won). Success is the sure spoiler. We are happy only climbing the mountain, not staying peacefully on the summit; only chasing the fox, not catching it; only courting, not marrying; only traveling, not arriving; only fighting wars, not keeping a boring peace. (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 181)

Success is the sure spoiler. And so, the 27-year-old Tom Brady gives an interview with 60 Minutes atop the world’s mountain — three Super Bowl rings, fame, money, power — only to question, Is this it? There has to be more . . . And so, Yo-Yo Ma tells the story of getting halfway through a perfect concert — for which he trained his whole life — only to notice, of all things, his own perfect boredom. And so, the king of Ecclesiastes, who denied his heart no pleasure, writes over and over from within a stupor, “All is vanity.” Elizabeth, with great foresight, knows the yawn found at the world’s mountaintop, as we should too, if only we were brave enough to sit in a silent room and consider it.

Well at the World’s End

I wonder if our love for the chase but not the catch, the distraction but not the dominion, doesn’t also explain some of envy’s saltiness. If jealousy be that “green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” have we no pleasure in being consumed?

We have a saying for finding our unmet desires (our Janes) living in another’s lawn: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But what if we almost prefer it that way? What if our neighbor’s green grass (so pristine from this side of the fence) keeps our hopes of greater happiness watered and fed? Perhaps if we were unfortunate enough to receive an invitation into our neighbor’s yard, we might make the ill-fated discovery that our grass, in fact, is just as green (if not greener). What now?

This is orphaned man: we have not known what we desire, yet we say it is just over there. Boys chasing dragons through the forest. “On whatever plane you take it, it is not what we were looking for,” C.S. Lewis writes. He whispers what we already know over our shoulders:

Lust can be gratified. Another personality can become to us “our America, our New-found-land.” A happy marriage can be achieved. But what has any of the three, or any mixture of the three, to do with that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? (Afterword to The Pilgrim’s Regress, 237)

No idol has yet stayed true to its promises — but who could live in a world without worship? Should the next love, next promotion, next child finally be that ladder who makes a name for itself by placing its top in the heavens? We know (oh, we know). They too will fail to punctuate; our desires will remain running sentences. We thirst but cannot find the Stream, but our thirst proves there is a stream somewhere. “Nature makes nothing in vain” (237). “Nearly there now” — the refrain of our lives. But we’ve been “there” before. The nearer we got, the browner the water. We are lovers of if only.

Walk with Elizabeth

If I were to go on a walk with Elizabeth, I would tell her exactly what she fears to know: The child of her joy is too thin and frail to survive. Her honeyed hope is false, and she is but half-serious about living to be so freely swallowed by a dream. But the irrepressible longing to crown something her mirth’s monarch is not given in vain.

Her God has placed it there.

But she stands evicted from such heights of happiness, gripping a branch below with broken wings because of sin. Justice holds a rifle at her; her life (and joy) hang by a thread sustained by the God she has sought to find happiness without. She has not honored him or given him thanks, and so that “God-shaped hole in her heart” — along with her God-programmed conscience — bears witness (graciously) to her estrangement (Romans 1:21; 2:15). Both denounce her pride and her prejudice, and point her, if she has eyes to see, to the Lord of glory who authored her.

“If only” cannot defend against the inevitable disappointment (and what is much worse) of a life unreconciled to God. Only Christ can, who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And this Christ, fully God and fully man, through his sinless life and substitutionary death and subsequent resurrection, received by faith and repentance and evidenced by living obedience, offers to put his joy — supernatural joy — in you. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Here, and nowhere else, can your joy be made full. One drink from this well, says he, and you shall never thirst again.

We want to do what we did a few years ago and have a conversation with Pastor John Piper. Pastor John, thank you so much for being here again, for being at CROSS Conference.

My pleasure.

I want to pick up where we left off last time. You made a very interesting statement. You said that when you were twenty years old, you had maybe the three most important weeks of your life, lying in a hospital bed. Why might those be the three most important weeks of your life?

Well, there are at least two specific reasons why. It was 1966, and it was right after summer school. I had just met and fallen madly in love with Noël Henry, and I had just heard from the Lord in April — I thought, unmistakably — that I should be a pre-med student and head for medical school. So, I took chemistry in summer school and signed up for organic chemistry in the fall and found myself flat on my back with mononucleosis as the semester began. I watched my organic chemistry possibilities falling away as I lay there.

Harold John Ockenga, a pastor from Boston, was speaking at the Spiritual Emphasis week in the chapel about two hundred yards to my right as I lay in bed. I was listening on the college radio station and everything in me said, “I would love to be able to handle the Bible like that.” It was so compelling after three days that I knew it didn’t matter whether I could catch up on organic chemistry — I was going to drop that course anyway — and I was heading for theological education. That was totally life-shaping, right? I missed it in April. So, if you think you know God’s will for your life, you probably don’t. All my subjective senses of God’s leading were wrong, I hope. My whole life would be misdirected if that were not the case.

Noël had a doctor for a dad and thought she was falling in love with a pre-med student, which she was. And she came in one day to the hospital room and I said to her, “These chapel messages have just undone me, and I’m not going to pursue medical school. I’m going to go to seminary, and I want to learn how to handle the Bible like that. What do you think about that?” And she said what she always has said for 57 years now: “I fell in love with you, not your vocation.” And it’s been that way ever since. She’s been an absolutely glorious, God-sent support for my life and ministry.

“You don’t plan your life; God plans your life.”

Those two things I think warranted that statement. Under submitting to Jesus, who you marry and what you do with your whole life are, I think, about the two biggest decisions you could make. And if it takes God to put you in the hospital to make those things clear, then don’t begrudge a little seminary of suffering.

I think it’s just good for you guys who are 18, 19, and 20, that this could be the week or the year in which God radically changes and alters your life forever. And you should believe he’s able and willing to do that. On the line of that, you’ve said before that you didn’t plan your life and that nobody plans their life. Why is that encouraging? Why is that important for us to know?

Well, it’s important to know because it’s true. James 4:13–16 says,

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

You are arrogant in saying, “I’m going back to my hotel tonight,” unless there is this deep sense of, “If the Lord wills, I’ll go back to my hotel tonight. And if he doesn’t, then I may die between now and then.” Those two words are all-encompassing. You ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live,” which means every heartbeat right now is a gift. You don’t deserve it. And he could stop it just like that and he will have done you no wrong.

Second, when he says, “We will live and do this or that,” you should think that the posture you’re in right now is dictated by the Lord. If you have your legs crossed, that’s because God willed it ten million years ago. If you don’t believe that, then you ought to be at this conference because that’s what we stand for — the all-pervasive sovereignty of God and his total governance of the world. So, it’s true that God plans our lives and we don’t, ultimately.

Now secondly, it just fits with experience. How many of you chose the family in which you were born? How many of you chose to be male or female? That’s a controversial question, but you’ll hear more about that and that’s a serious issue today. But you know what I mean. You didn’t choose. You didn’t choose your ethnicity. You didn’t choose the town you were born in, the socioeconomic status you were born into, or the nation you were born into. You didn’t choose anything to get started in this world. And almost all of it dictates what you’ve become. That’s a piece.

Now, just take my own life and let’s just start in college. Why did I go to the seminary I went to? Well, there were palm trees in the catalog. That’s a crummy reason to go to a seminary. I met Dan Fuller at Fuller Seminary and everything changed. That was the most important event of my life after those two big events. I sat in eight classes with this man who gave me the big-God theology I have today. He gave me Christian Hedonism and assiduous attentiveness to the word of God. What would’ve happened to me if I had not gone? And I went for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t plan this. It was a gift to me.

Then I came to the end of seminary. I had been in seminary for three years and didn’t know what to do. I was 25. And the teacher said, “Well, if you don’t know what to do, just go ahead and get the last degree and then you can do anything.” I said, “Okay. Where should I go to graduate school?” I got turned down at the one place I applied in America. I applied to Basel and Munich and Durham, and the only place where Noël could get a job and support us for a year and a half till she got pregnant was Munich. So, we went to Munich. I didn’t choose Munich. God chose Munich. Then I was done with three years of graduate school. I had a wife, a kid, and I had to put bread on the table.

Nobody in America knew I existed. I had been out of the country for three years. I would do anything for Jesus, but I just wanted to use my Bible. Along came a graduate student who said, “Well, I think they need a one-year sabbatical replacement at Bethel College in St. Paul.” I had never heard of Bethel College. I thought, “Where’s St. Paul?” I mean, I’m really provincial. I don’t know anything. I had never been to Minnesota in my life, but I had to have a job. They took me for one year, and it turned into six. I was born in South Carolina and I’ve been in Minnesota for fifty years. Do you think I chose that? That’s crazy. Why would anybody live in Minnesota, right?

So, I went to Minnesota and that one year turned into six years. I loved all of it, and God just moved in so mighty and said, “I want you to preach, not just teach. I want you to herald these truths from Romans 9, not just analyze the God of Romans 9. So, move toward a pastorate.” I went to the denominational headquarters and I said, “I’m going to leave teaching and I’m going to look for a church. What would you suggest?” And they said, “We know the church. Go to Bethlehem.” I said, “Where’s Bethlehem?” They said, “It’s in downtown Minneapolis. They’re just building nearby.”

I got in the car, went down there and looked around, and that’s where they called me. I was at the church for 33 years. I mean, you don’t plan your life, just get over it. You don’t plan your life. Here’s what the Lord wants from you, and we’ve heard it already several times. He wants your flat-out, 24/7 devotion to him and his calling of holiness in your life. The will of God for your life is holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3). He will guide you if your life is absolutely devoted. Just say, “I’ll go anywhere; I’ll do anything” — you ought to be able to say that every day — “I will go anywhere and do anything. Just lead me. I’m flat-out, totally devoted to Jesus.” You don’t plan your life; God plans your life.

Amen. So with that, you weren’t aimless in your life. You had some ambition. I assume it wasn’t your ambition to be famous, to make Calvinism cool, to speak at conferences, or to write all these books, right? Did you have ambition? Is ambition okay, though we trust that God plans our lives? Is it okay for us to have desires and ambitions and pursue different things?

Ambition is okay because Paul said, “My ambition is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named” (see Romans 15:20). You talk about ambition, this man was totally devoted to getting the gospel to places where it wasn’t yet known. Holy ambition is of the Lord and not nearly enough of you have it. One of the reasons we have this conference is to awaken holy ambition. An unholy ambition is to make a lot of money and be famous and live in the suburbs and live the American dream. A holy ambition is to be willing to lay your life down for Jesus, whatever he calls you to do.

I would probably be naive to say that at every single point in my life there was no successful temptation to want to be noticed for the wrong reasons. But as far as my conscious aim was concerned, money didn’t mean anything to me and being famous didn’t mean anything. But I’ll tell you, when it comes to how God saves us — the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners, called Calvinism — I have ambitions. I want all of you to be Calvinists. I want all of you to believe in the total depravity of the soul, in the unconditional election of God, in the definite atonement of the Lord, in the irresistibility of his grace, and in the perseverance of the saints.

This is just glorious gospel truth called Calvinism. That’s why we exist. The leader of Reaching and Teaching was up here, and he said, “We’re Reformed and baptistic and we’re complementarian.” Well, this is not a baptistic conference, though a lot of you are baptists. In that part we’re going to tolerate a lot of differences.

We’d be happy for you all to be baptists. I mean, you’re welcome. The water is nice.

But as far as being Reformed and complementarian, that’s what we are, and we’re not going to sweep it under the rug. So, the answer is yes, I have ambitions. I have ambitions to this day. I sit there in my chair with Noël in our living room, thinking, “Good night, my life is easy. Whatever happened to the pressures I used to live under?”

So, I got out my little booklet that I carry around, this little field notebook. I have a field book and I got it out and I wrote down my goals for 2024, just the things that are expected of me working for Desiring God full-time. At the end I thought, “Okay, I didn’t put down anything for the three hours free I have every night and the 8 to 12 hours I have free every Saturday. And I just won’t put anything on the calendar for Sunday.” Three times five is fifteen, and fifteen plus ten for Saturday is twenty-five hours.

Everything in me says, “What can I do with that? What can I do with that? Just watch stuff? Watch stuff on TV?” We don’t even have a TV. We haven’t had a TV for fifty years in our marriage. Of course, we have computers, which is the same thing now. I get that. But I don’t want to do that. I have ambitions. I want my life to count for those 25 hours. I don’t want to just veg every night and spend Saturday putzing around in the yard and in the garage — and I believe in keeping a nice yard for the neighborhood.

So yes, I do have ambitions, and I suspect the forms and kinds of ambition I have have produced books and conferences and things like that. But fame is very relative. I’m a big fish in a little, teeny pond. We just crossed 8 billion people in the world, right? What percentage of those people know who John Piper is? Maybe it’s 0.001 percent. I’ve never done the math, but that’s it more or less. Don’t get a big head if you’re popular among twelve people, or twelve thousand, or a million. It’s no big deal.

That’s helpful. You said before, if you go back to when you were 22, you would join a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, Bible-structured, Bible-obedient church. That’s a lot of Bible. Why do Christians need the local church? We have God’s Spirit. We have God’s word. We have Look at the Book and Desiring God. Why do we need the local church? Why should they commit their life to the local church?

They should do that because God says, “Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together” (see Hebrews 10:25). The whole assumption of everything Paul wrote was that Christ has a body on the earth, and that all people are members of the body. And it’s just crazy to think you can be a member of a body while living in the woods and not relating to the other members of the body. That’s just crazy. You just don’t believe the Bible if you try to live a life isolated from the body manifest in its local expressions.

Here’s the payoff. I think I can mention two or three things. Number one, God has saved my marriage more than once through corporate worship. I don’t doubt it. Noël and I have been married 55 years. They have been embattled years sometimes, not knowing why we hurt each other with our words, not knowing why we can’t communicate the way we’d like. There have been seasons of Christian counseling, and life has not always been easy at home. I’ll get my back up about something that Noël said.

But I’m a pastor, right? I go to church to preach, and things are crummy at home. That’s a nice word for it. I’m on the front pew and Chuck is leading us in songs like these. And the mercy of God lifted up in song and his patience and his kindness have broken over me like a wave that has often said, “You’re an idiot, Piper, for prioritizing your little pain over her, or over the gospel, or over the church. Get real. Wake up. Get the world sorted out here.”

In other words, corporate worship has sorted out my life. It has made things look real. It has made big things look big and little things little, and it has rescued me from pouting and self-pity. If you’re totally engaged in corporate worship, surrounded by people who are engaged, it will save your marriage, it will save your job, it will save your calling, and it will save your sanity.

Number two, my guess is that most of you here are asking the question, “How can I know what to do with the rest of my life?” I mean, practically, it is nice to say, “You should just try to be holy.” But you might think, “Come on Piper, we have to do something. I have to make some money and I have to have a place to live. If I’m going to get married, I have to be able to support or be a part of a support team. How do I do that?” And my answer is that you’ll find out what your gifts are and what your calling is not by going off by yourself and pleading with God to reveal it to you, but by embedding yourself in a local church and using whatever gifts you can to serve other people. That’s absolutely the way it happened with me.

I went off to seminary not knowing at all what I should do with this precious book that I love, the Bible. After one semester I realized, “I have to be involved in the church.” So, I embedded myself and Noël in Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. I said to John McClure, “John, I need to do something.” He said, “Can you teach seventh grade boys?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll try.” He put me in the seventh grade boys group, and I did it. And the next year he said, “How about ninth grade boys?” I said, “Sure.” Because they split them up, boys and girls. And then I taught ninth grade boys. I devoted about four hours every Saturday to get ready for this class. I wanted to give them my very best on Sunday morning.

At the end of that year, there was one more year to go. The Galilean young adult Sunday school class came to me and said, “Would you teach us?” The upshot of this was knowing, “I’m a teacher. These seventh grade boys loved it. These ninth grade boys loved it. This young marriage class loved it. I’m a teacher. That’s who I am.” So, I went to get trained to be a teacher. I taught for six years, and then God said, “Actually, I have another chapter. I want you to proclaim. You’ve explained long enough, okay? I want you to proclaim. I want you to herald like a town crier that says, ‘Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.’” That’s the second thing. You will find out who you are in relation to other people.

I’ve been trying to help folks to find their way recently. They think they want to do something, and I ask, “Has anybody encouraged you in that and said that you’re especially fruitful in that?” They said, “No.” I said, “Well, that’s probably not it.” That’s really a big deal.

“Corporate worship has sorted out my life. It has made big things look big and little things little.”

Then the third thing is that you’re probably going to find your spouse at church, or in some church-related thing. We have a strange culture, right? You have to go searching to find a spouse. Praise God for cultures where they just set it up. It would be a lot simpler. But that’s not going to change. It’s not going to happen. We live in a very individualistic culture. So, you’re going to have to sort this out, which is not easy, but it sure helps if you have Christian community.

Most people see the church as an event on the calendar, but in the New Testament we see it as a people to center our life around. You’re not meant to live this Christian life alone. You’re meant to be involved in a local church, center your life around those people, and let God minister to you through those people. You’re going to go through difficulty and trial in this life. And with that, I kind of want to talk about affliction in the Christian life.

In Luke 22:31, Jesus says to Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.” Now, most of us would assume that Jesus would say, “But I told him he couldn’t have you.” But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says, “I’ve prayed that your faith would not fail” (see Luke 22:32). What does it mean to be sifted by Satan? Have you yourself been sifted? And why does God allow his people to be sifted?

Well, I think I could give one clear answer from 2 Corinthians, but let me just stay with Peter for a minute. Jesus told Peter, “You’re going to deny me three times.” This is a done deal. Jesus doesn’t make mistakes. He says, “You’re going to fail.” And then he tells Peter,

Behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when [not if] you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31–32)

I’m assuming that little interchange there is part of the answer to why. Jesus is saying, “I want you to be stronger than you are. You’re not as strong as you think you are. You are not strong. Do you think you’re going to last tonight? Do you think you’re going to die with me? You’re not. You’re going to wimp out and deny me three times, but I have prayed.”

Now, I think what Jesus means when he says he prayed “that your faith not fail,” is not that Peter wouldn’t fail in that moment. I think his faith failed. He did not trust God for the strength or the courage to be honest and true, and say, “That’s my Lord. I’ll die with him.” He didn’t have the faith for that. He failed. But he didn’t fail utterly. He went out and he wept bitterly and he turned and he became a valiant spokesman. So, I think the answer to why God lets Satan sift us is for that reason.

To be sifted means you have this sieve and you put the grain in it and push it through and the grain comes through without anything else in it. He wants to sift your faith out of your life and just rub you over these harsh things so that what comes through is you minus faith. That’s the sifting of the devil. Whether it’s pleasure or whether it’s pain, he’s going to sift your faith out of your life. That’s his goal. And Jesus is praying for you. If you’re a believer, Jesus is praying for you that it would not happen utterly.

So, how did he fix it? We all know what Jesus did when they were out in the boat and they were not catching anything. Jesus said, “Throw the net on the other side” (see John 21:6). They caught a lot of fish. John said, “It’s the Lord” (see John 21:7). Peter put his clothes on and jumped into the water and swam ashore. And Jesus said something to Peter. I want some of you right now to hear Jesus say this to you because you have blown it. You have totally blown it the way Peter did. You have denied the Lord in whatever ways. I want you to hear Jesus say this:

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15–17)

Why three times? It was to rebuild this man who blew it three times, right? He said, “I deny you. I deny you. I deny you.” And now he says, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” That’s what I hope is happening at this conference. I hope you hear the Lord Jesus say, “Do you love me?” And you hear him say, “Feed my lambs.” It might be in a Sunday school class, or it might be in Afghanistan or India or North Korea or Cuba or Vietnam.

Amen. We’ve talked about sovereignty and suffering, and we don’t plan our life. God is the one who plans our life, which means he plans our suffering. For me when I was in my teens and twenties, I felt invincible. My life was up and to the right. Why wouldn’t I get to do what I want to do? I didn’t sense my own frailty. When I got into my thirties, it’s almost like God removed this veil and I realized how broken this thing actually is and how vulnerable I actually am, and I realized how thin the line between life and death actually is. It can cause you to despair when you see that.

So, how do we remain sober about our own vulnerability in the world without being paralyzed by fear, without being paralyzed that the sifting is coming, and I just want to flee from it? How can we not be paralyzed but trust God in the midst of these trials?

Let me go back and close the arc to James 4 and say something about the ballast in your boat. Do you know what ballast is for? Your life is a boat, the world is a sea, and the waves are suffering of any kind — adversity, frustration, or things that are going to upset your boat and drown you. Ballast is weight in the bottom of the boat that makes it harder for the waves to tip you over, because the weight at the bottom of the boat keeps you stable. I think the heart of the ballast is the sovereignty of God — that God is absolutely sovereign. He says,

I am God, and there is no other;     I am God, and there is none like me,declaring the end from the beginning     and from ancient times things not yet done,saying, “My counsel shall stand,     and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9–10)

Or consider Job at the end of his life. After all his sufferings, he said,

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,     but now my eye sees you;therefore I despise myself,     and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:5–6)

And he says,

I know that you can do all things,     and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

So, if you, in this conference, confirm, “I really believe in the absolute, all-pervasive, sovereign God,” you will not be fragile. You live among millions of your peers who have been coddled. Books have been written about your generation regarding how you are emotionally fragile, meaning when somebody gets in your face and says something critical, you pout or you blame or you sue or you cuss or you just say, “I will not be treated that way.” And you can’t read your Bible, which says,

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11–12)

I mean, come on. Do any of you rejoice when you are reviled? We need miracles to happen in this room. We want you to go home able to be so strong, so deep, so knowing who you are in Christ, that anybody can revile you and it won’t paralyze you. It won’t blow you over. That’s the only way that the nations are going to be reached. So, the sovereignty of God is the ballast in your boat.

And I’ll just add one other thing. The sovereignty of God will do nobody any good unless God is for you. Scripture says,

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:29–32)

You have to be confident of that. God is going to give you all things. In fact, you have them already. Let me go back to fame for a moment. In the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul is mainly dealing with pride — pride in intellect and pride in oratory. People were boasting about their favorite teachers for vicarious praise. They said, “I’m of Paul,” or, “I’m of Apollos,” or, “I’m of Cephas.” And do you know what Paul’s final word against that kind of pride is? He said:

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23)

So, alongside the sovereignty of God, you say, “I own the world.” John Newton just nailed it and helped me so much years ago, when I heard him tell the story of a man who was headed for a city to inherit a million dollars. He was in an old-fashioned carriage. And one mile outside the city, the carriage broke down and he got out and he had to walk. He had to walk a whole mile to inherit a million dollars. And all the way into the city, he was complaining. He said, “My carriage is broken. My carriage is broken.” That’s the way you and I live. We complain and complain. And Paul would say, “You own everything. It’s just a vapor’s breath, and then you come into your inheritance, a fellow heir with Christ forever.”

So, those two things go together, in answer to your question about how not to be paralyzed in a world that’s going to hell in a handbasket — namely, a sovereign God is the ballast in your boat, and he’s totally for you, and he’s proven it by the death of his Son, Jesus.

I cling to the psalmist’s statement in those moments. “God is good and he does good” (see Psalm 119:68). What a comfort in times of suffering and trial. We’re going to ask two more questions. You clearly love Noël. You’re just deeply in love with her, which is awesome.

I wrote a poem for her last week. I write a poem for my wife on every anniversary and on every birthday.

John, my wife is right over here and she’s hearing you say this, and I might have to write some poems. But you called your wife a radical, risk-taking, go-anywhere-for-Jesus woman. She sounds amazing.

She is amazing.

But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:8 that if you can be single, be single. So, knowing what you know now, why wouldn’t you go back to 22 and just be single the rest of your life?

We have Genesis 2:18 and 1 Corinthians 7. Duke it out in your life. Genesis 2:18 says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He made a helper fit and suitable for Adam. The normal creation pattern is marriage. That’s normal. It’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s the way you fulfill the mandate to fill the earth and a lot of other things. The main thing is representing Christ and the church in marriage. When Paul talks in Ephesians 5 about men being the head and the woman being the body in the marriage, and he says, “This refers to Christ and the church” (see Ephesians 5:32), after quoting from Genesis 2:24.

What we know is that God did not look around the world for an analogy for what Jesus and the church would be like and say, “Oh, marriage would work. Let’s use marriage as an analogy.” It’s just the other way around. He knew from eternity he was going to marry his Son to the church, and he created marriage to show it.

So, this is massive. Marriage is massive, and the way people treat it today is just flat-out blasphemous. Where in the world is anybody your age who believes in keeping promises anymore? I hope you do. We said, “For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” Do you mean that? I don’t know if you’ll even say that, but if you don’t say it and you don’t mean it, you probably won’t last, because the whole culture says it doesn’t matter. They don’t think marriage counts for anything. So, marriage is big. That’s all to justify my marriage, I suppose. You said, “Why wouldn’t you remain single?”

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says, “I wish you were all like me. Those who are married have to give a lot of attention to the concerns of their wives or husbands, and those who are single can be utterly devoted to the Lord.” I’ve thought a lot about that, and it’s totally true. I must take into consideration another human being with every decision I make. That’s very limiting, and it’s intended to be. In that limitation, I represent a Christlike husband, which is a beautiful thing if I do it right. And she represents an obedient church, if she does it right, and it portrays to the world a beautiful thing. So, it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening. It’s not like singleness is set against something that’s not beautiful and not significant.

However, there are often times I just want to throw myself into something and I think, “I better check with Noël,” and she’s not at that level there. So, I think the answer is that as you try to discern, Paul says, “Each has his own gift” (1 Corinthians 7:7). You ask, “Do I, in the Lord Jesus, have the gift of singleness and celibacy?”

Celibacy, by the way — being a virgin until you die — is a glorious thing. And we know that because Jesus was one. And right now you can tune in to the New York Times or any other major news thing, and there are these big conversations among cutting-edge 20-somethings about virginity. That’s been going on for a long time. That is the call on your life if you’re not married. And if somebody says, “Man, you can’t even be human if you haven’t had sex. Come on.” I’ve had guys say that to me. They say, “Are you kidding me? You can’t even be fully human if you don’t express that part of your reality.” And I say, “Jesus never did. And I’ll take Jesus’s kind of humanity over your kind of humanity any day.” So, you do not have to have sex to be fully human.

“My highest and longest happiness and God’s glory are never at odds — ever.”

The gift of singleness you will discover by the providence of God. If you are not led into a marital relationship, he expects you to be chaste and single and serve him joyfully. Maybe the last thing to say on this is this: Don’t come to God and say, “If you don’t give me a husband or if you don’t give me a wife, I’m going to be miserable.” God doesn’t want to hear that, because it’s not true if he’s your treasure.

Go to him and say, “Lord, as I know myself, there’s so much in me that would love to give myself away to a man or a woman who’s godly and holy, and link arms together to serve you in missions, or whatever the calling is. I would love to do it, but God, you are supreme. You are the treasure of my life. I will take whatever you’ve given me, and I will rejoice and be a happy, productive single person or a happy, productive married person.”

Amen. Here’s one last question. Lord willing, on January 11, you’ll be 78 years old. Praise God for your life. We pray that he gives you many more years of faithfulness to him and encouragement to others to know him and love him. But if this were your last CROSS Conference, what would you want this group of people to know?

Everything I’ve just said, but if this is really the end, I’ll end on one of the most important discoveries I made in the fall of 1968, and that is that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. I call that Christian Hedonism, and it’s important because, at your age, one of my biggest battles was trying to figure out how my irresistible desire for happiness fit into God’s passion for his glory.

My parents taught me, “Johnny, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” I knew that. But I had this sneaking suspicion that to want to be happy — not to mention to pursue happiness — was defective. It cramped my worship, it cramped my obedience, and it cramped my relationships, because I thought when Jesus said, “Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself,” meant, “deny himself happiness” (see Matthew 16:24). If he meant that, then Psalm 37:4 is a command to sin. It says,

Delight yourself in the Lord,     and he will give you the desires of your heart.

And he also says,

In your presence there is fullness of joy;at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

Here was the solution, and that’s why I say it was a great discovery. If in fact that’s true — God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him — then those two are never in competition. My highest and longest happiness and God’s glory are never at odds — ever.

Which means I can say to ten thousand students that you should leave this place utterly, totally devoted to the pursuit of your happiness as long as it’s the biggest happiness and the longest happiness. Don’t settle for eighty years. Who cares about eighty years of happiness if you go to hell? Don’t settle for 90 percent happiness. Insist on 100 percent, forever. The Bible is really clear where that’s found. It’s found in God, and it’s found in the overflow of the enjoyment of God onto other people, especially the nations who don’t know anything about this joy.

Thank you, brother. I always enjoy talking with you. Thank you for the time and for the conversation.