John Piper

Should Confidence in Sovereignty Make Me Prayerless?

Audio Transcript

We’ve been talking about God’s sovereignty in recent episodes. Does his sovereignty in salvation make him unfair? That was last time, in APJ 2028. We talk about God’s sovereignty over our suffering next Monday, in APJ 2031. Today, though, we ask, Should God’s all-sovereignty make us less prayerful, since we can resign all things into his hands? The question is from a listener named Jenn.

“Dear Pastor John, I have listened to Ask Pastor John for years. The truth of your mantra that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him is something that resonates deep in my spirit. My question for you is this. Do you think a person can be so satisfied in God that it leads to prayerlessness? What I mean is a circumstance in which you feel so confident and satisfied in God’s purposes and designs in your life and others’ that you lack a desire to petition him. Even when things seem to be going wrong, I tend to feel deeply that praise, rather than petition, is on my heart. I often praise the Lord in thanksgiving, which I consider to be a kind of prayer, but rarely ask or seek intervention from God.

“In 1 Samuel, when Israel begs God for a king, God warns them against their prayer, but as they persist, he eventually tells Samuel to listen to the people and give them a king (1 Samuel 8:7, 22). So, prayers can mask desires that are opposed to God’s desires. That haunts me. Would what I pray to change even be a holy desire to begin with? Bottom line: I guess I feel safer and happier accepting, in faith, whatever the Lord brings about in my life, rather than asking for him to change those things. Is this a wrong approach to life?”

Well, yes, it is a wrong approach to life, but maybe not for the reason you think. I’m not disagreeing that you have said several very true, very important things. For example, you say that “prayers can mask desires that are opposed to God’s desires.” That’s true, because James 4:3 says, “You ask [you pray] and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” So, clearly, we can treat God like a bellhop with prayer, and as the bell goes off and we send up our prayer, we tell him to bring us things that we’re going to misuse. So, that’s right. That’s a crucial observation.

You also say that “there are circumstances in which I feel so confident and satisfied in God’s purposes and designs in my life and others’ that I lack a desire to petition him.” Well, yes, there are moments in life when that’s exactly how we should feel. When Christ made it clear to Paul that the thorn in the flesh was God’s will, he stopped praying for the thorn to be removed and said, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Passive and Active Prayers

But the problem with your approach to prayer is that you have framed the question of prayer in such a way that it treats prayer only as a response to what happens to you rather than treating prayer also as an empowerment of what you should make happen for others. For example, you say, “I feel safer and happier accepting, in faith, whatever the Lord brings about in my life, rather than asking him to change those things.” So, you have framed the question entirely in terms of you as a passive recipient of God bringing things into your life rather than framing the question of prayer also in terms of you being an active person in the world, seeking to fulfill God’s gracious will as you love other people.

So, let me try to get at it like this. Ask this question (I think all of us should ask this question of our lives): Is prayer a wartime walkie-talkie, or is it a domestic intercom to call the butler for another pillow? Now, if prayer is mainly a domestic intercom to call the butler to bring another pillow, your approach to life makes sense — namely, leave the butler alone and be content with the pillow he brought yesterday. Right. That’s good.

“None of us has in us the power needed to do what we’re told to do in the Bible. We must have God’s power.”

But if prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie designed to call down divine power from the military headquarters to give you the ability to defeat the devil, and overcome temptation, and take godly risks for the sake of love, and spread the gospel in dangerous places, and rescue the spiritual prisoners from behind demonic lines, and establish justice, and do acts of mercy, your approach to prayer is totally inadequate.

Mission-Minded Prayers

So, the big question is, What’s prayer? What is it mainly in the Bible? Here’s what Jesus said in John 15:16: “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit . . . so that [that’s a crucial phrase] whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Huh. In other words, I put you on a fruit-bearing mission so that you’d get answers to prayer. That’s the logic of that verse. Which means prayer is for the empowering of the mission that you have been given from headquarters. Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie, not a domestic intercom mainly.

Paul said, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). He’s speaking of his Jewish kinsmen. Prayer is for the salvation of lost souls, and there are lots of lost souls in the world. Oh my goodness. It’s for the invading of Satan’s domain and the delivering of captives.

Paul said in Ephesians 6:17–18, “Take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit.” So, “take the sword . . . praying.” Prayer is for the empowerment of wielding “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” as we do battle with the evil one.

Jesus said, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38; Luke 10:2). In other words, prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie to call headquarters and say, “Reinforcements, please! Reinforcements. We’ve got a mission to do, and we don’t have enough people to do it. God, send the reinforcements.”

Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). In other words, pray. He’ll give you good things. And then he says, “Therefore [another crucial phrase] whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). What’s the meaning of that therefore? Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie to call down all necessary empowerment to treat others the way we would like to be treated.

Reframing Prayer

So, I would encourage you to reframe the way you think about prayer. The question is not mainly, Can I be content as a passive recipient of the circumstances God brings? Rather, the question is, Do I have within me all the power necessary in order to do all the things I’m commanded to do in the Bible? And the answer is that you do not. And I don’t either. None of us has in us the power needed to do what we’re told to do in the Bible. We must have God’s power, and he has taught us to ask for it.

We don’t have the power to hallow God’s name. We must ask for it.
We don’t have the power to seek his kingdom first. We must ask for it.
We don’t have the power to do his will the way it’s done in heaven. We must ask for it.
We don’t have the power even to feed ourselves. We have to ask for daily bread.
We don’t have the power to forgive those who trespass against us. We have to ask for that grace.
We don’t have the power to escape temptation. We must ask for it.

In other words, don’t be afraid that you’re going to ask for the wrong thing when you’re asking for divine help to do what God told you to do. And virtually everything that he has told us to do, we cannot and should not do in our own strength, but in the strength that he supplies. And he has ordained that he supply that power in answer to prayer, which is why Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Because we’ve got things to do at every moment of our lives that we can’t do, and he expects us to lean on him to do it.

So, let’s be a people who all day long are using this indispensable wartime walkie-talkie for the help we need to fight the good fight of faith.

Should Confidence in Sovereignty Make Me Prayerless?

If our souls are deeply satisfied in God, what room is there for petitionary prayer? Pastor John reframes the question by clarifying the nature of prayer.

Your Most-Asked-About Bible Verse

If God is sovereign over salvation, do the non-elect even have a chance to repent? Pastor John addresses Romans 9:22, your most-asked-about Bible verse.

Your Most-Asked-About Bible Verse

Audio Transcript

God is all-sovereign. Amen. But in his all-sovereignty, is he fair? That topic of God’s impartiality comes up on the podcast a lot. Is God governed by objectivity, or does his sovereignty somehow excuse a bias, an unfairness, in how he works in this world and deals with each of us? Many episodes on the podcast come at this essential question, which you can see in my episode digest in the new APJ book on pages 355–64. You’ll see the diverse ways this question has come up over the years.

The fairness of God is such a dominant theme for you, our listeners, that I was not surprised at all to discover that Romans 9:22 is the most-asked-about verse in all of the Bible in our inbox. No other verse has been asked about more often in our inbox, your emails to us, in our eleven-plus years of podcasting than Romans 9:22. And this most-asked-about text happens to be next up in our reading tomorrow, if you’re reading along with us through the Navigators Bible Reading Plan.

So, to prepare for that reading in Romans 9 tomorrow, here’s one representative question from a listener named Leslie that captures the heart of a hundred-plus other emails that we have: “Pastor John, hello. I could use your help in my struggle with Romans 9:22. It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent since they were born for destruction. Is this right, that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?”

I’m not surprised that Romans 9 is among the texts that people have the most questions about, because my own history bore that out. Just recently, I’ve been perusing some of my old journal entries from 1977 to 1979. I was in my early thirties, and almost all of my discretionary time was spent studying and writing about Romans 9, especially Romans 9:14–23.

Sent by Sovereignty

It may interest our listeners that this text — which is so problematic for most of us, the text that highlights the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation as clearly, as forcefully as any other text in the Bible — was the text God used in 1979 (I could even date it, December 14) to move me from being an academic theologian (after teaching six years in college) to becoming a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where I served for 33 years. It moved me to become a pastor with a longing that God would use me to save lost sinners from the cradle to the grave, and to grow a strong church that would send hundreds of people to the unreached peoples of the world in world missions.

So, I’m saying, I’m bearing witness, that the most controversial chapter in the Bible with regard to the sovereignty of God in saving sinners was the chapter that God used in those years to move me out of an academic dealing with the word of God into a frontline effort to save lost sinners and strengthen the church and reach the nations.

“The moral accountability of man is not destroyed by the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.”

That’s important, and I say it because people think that if you believe in the absolute sovereignty of God over the salvation of sinners, you would be disinclined to be a soul-winning pastor and a missions-driven church. That’s not true. It had the opposite effect on me, as it did on William Carey, as it did on John Paton, as it did on Adoniram Judson and hundreds of other missionaries and pastors who laid down their lives to reach lost people with the gospel.

Open-Armed Calvinism

There is such a thing as hyper-Calvinism, which is not historic Calvinism. It’s always been a tiny group who have twisted the Bible by their unbiblical logic to say that the only people you should invite to Christ are those who give evidence of being among God’s elect. So, you don’t share the gospel indiscriminately (like I do). You wait and you look for signs among unbelievers that they might be elect. That’s absolutely wrong. It is not what Romans 9 teaches or implies. It’s not what any other text in the Bible teaches or implies.

The lover of God’s sovereignty who is saturated with a big, biblical view of God’s power in saving sinners says to every human being, without exception, words like these:

Listen, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. You who have no money, come, buy and eat. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and labor for that which does not satisfy? Come to the water of life. Drink freely.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, who receives Jesus Christ as the Son of God, crucified for sinners, risen from the dead — every one of you who puts your trust in him as your only and precious Savior will receive with him everything that God has done through him, everything that God is for you in him. You will have it all, nothing good withheld from you. If you will have the Lord Jesus Christ, you have everything that he achieved, climaxing in everlasting joy in the presence of God.

That’s what you say. If people will let you talk a full minute like that, that’s what you say to every single human being.

Challenge of Romans 9

Now, here are the words from Romans 9 that cause people to stumble. Let me say a word about them. Romans 9:18–19: “So then [God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault?’” In other words, we’re not asking a question Paul didn’t ask. We’re not thinking, “I’ve got a question, Paul, that you never thought of.” No, you don’t. The questioner asks, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” And now Paul did not say, “Well, everybody can resist his will. We’ve all got free will. Everybody can resist his will.” That’s not the way he answered the question “Who can resist his will?”

He says, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:20). Now, he did not mean by that question that we should never ask God questions. That’s not what he meant. He meant that you should never react with disapproval when he answers. And he goes on:

Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory? (Romans 9:20–23)

Two Compatible Truths

Now, Leslie asks, “It seems to imply that those who are not elect are not given a chance — even a chance — to repent since they were born for destruction. Is this right — that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?” My answer: no, that would not be a faithful, biblical way of stating the situation. Let me put beside each other two biblical truths that many people consider contradictory but are not. And then I’ll draw out of those two truths an implication for Leslie’s statement.

The first truth is that, from all eternity, God has chosen from among the entire fallen, sinful humanity a people for himself, but not everyone. Thus, this selection is owing to no merit at all in those chosen people. God pursues their salvation not only by effectively achieving the atonement for their sin through Christ, but also by sovereignly overcoming all their rebellion, and bringing them to saving faith. So, that’s the first truth.

Here’s the second. Everyone who perishes and is finally lost and cut off from God perishes because of real, blameworthy self-exaltation — sin — and because they are hardened against the revelations of God’s power and glory in nature or in the gospel. No innocent people perish. Nobody who humbly wants Christ for a Savior is lost. No one is judged or condemned for not knowing or believing or obeying reality to which they had no access. All lostness and all judgment are owing to sin and rebellion against the revelation that we have. That’s the second truth.

Now, what keeps those two truths from being contradictory is this: the moral accountability of man is not destroyed by the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. Or to say it another way, God’s final and decisive governance of all things, including who comes to faith, is compatible — it fits — with all humans being morally accountable to God for whether they believe or not.

“There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.”

Now, we live in a world that, by and large, refuses to embrace God’s purposeful sovereignty in all things. That is Ephesians 1:11: “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
People reject this largely because the only solution their minds can embrace for maintaining human accountability is the presumption of ultimate human self-determination, otherwise known as “free will.” But ultimate human self-determination is not found anywhere in the Bible — nowhere. But God’s sovereignty is, and man’s accountability is, and nowhere are these considered contradictory.

No Innocent People in Hell

Therefore, my response to Leslie’s statement — that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved — is to say that everyone is being wooed and invited by God every day, either through natural revelation (the sun rising on the good and the evil, or the rain falling on the good and the bad, Matthew 5:45) or through conscience, or they’re being wooed and invited by gospel truth.

These revelations of God are their chance to be saved. It is a real invitation. It is real precisely because if they humbled themselves and received God’s grace, they would be saved. Those who do that, those who humble themselves and receive God’s grace, know that it was only the sovereign grace of God that enabled them to believe. And those who don’t do it know that it is because of their own sin that they loved something else more than God; that is why they didn’t believe.

There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.

The Spirit’s Irresistible Call

Part 8 Episode 241 What do we mean when we say that the Spirit’s work in the new birth is irresistible? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper looks at John 3:1–10 to explore the beauty of this aspect of the Spirit’s sovereign work.

Christ Became a Curse for Us: Galatians 3:10–14, Part 3

The Spirit’s Irresistible Call
What do we mean when we say that the Spirit’s work in the new birth is irresistible? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper looks at John 3:1–10 to explore the beauty of this aspect of the Spirit’s sovereign work.

How Much Error Can I Believe and Still Be Saved?

Some biblical truths are essential to believe for salvation — but not all. So, how much error can someone hold and still be saved?

How Much Error Can I Believe and Still Be Saved?

Audio Transcript

What must I believe to be saved? And what truth, if I deny, will prove that I am unsaved? Theology and personal salvation is a hot topic in the inbox, based on your questions to us over the years. And it’s a broad category too, one that encompasses a lot of related questions, as we will see today.

This time the email comes from a twenty-year-old woman who writes this: “Pastor John, hello! I have been to many funerals in my young life — far too many, actually. The running theme of them all is that the person in the casket was nice and therefore is now in a better place. It’s all very thin cliché. Such a setting confronts me again and again with a massive question. And I think I know the answer intuitively, but I would like for you to put words to this.

“What role do personal theological convictions play in personal salvation? That’s what I never hear in these funerals. A text like Romans 10:9–10 has always come to my mind. What are some others? And how would you suggest a normal person like me, who doesn’t preach or write books, document my own theological heart convictions, the confessions of my mouth, in a way that can be recalled and remembered at my funeral, ‘when this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent’?”

This is a multilayered question. And every one of the layers — I see three, at least — is very important. And here they are (as I hear them) in the order that moves from the least to the most important, even though they’re all important.

Number one, the first layer relates to the kind of things that get said at a funeral that seem so disconnected from what really matters in a person’s life, especially in regard to the theological convictions that a person had.

Number two, another layer is how to live your life in such a way that you document your heart convictions so that they can be recalled at your funeral.

And the third layer of the question (to use her very words) is this: “What role do personal theological convictions play in personal salvation?” Now, that’s really big. So, let me take these one at a time. I think they are moving increasingly important in order.

Live Your Convictions

Two things have to happen if you want the truth to be told about your spiritual life and your heart convictions at your own funeral. One is that you live that life (that’s the most important) and that you hold those convictions. The other is that spiritually discerning people need to speak at your funeral, because, if they’re not spiritually discerning, you know what they’re going to say. “She had a nice sense of humor.” “She made really good desserts.” “She made people really feel at home.”

“There needs to be a heart embrace of Jesus and a life of love that confirms the reality of our faith.”

Now, those are good things. It is good to be remembered for those things. But honestly, when we’re standing on the brink of eternity at a funeral, looking over the edge into heaven and hell, and a person has lived a life of devotion to Jesus and obedience to his word and worship of his glory and advancement of his mission — that person ought to have somebody who is able to articulate what they believed and how they lived it out, delicious desserts and all. All of it.

Active and Verbal

Second, she asks, “How do I live my life in such a way that I document my heart conviction so that they can be recalled at my funeral?” And I think the answer is this: Be active in your obedience to Jesus, and be verbal about your foundational biblical convictions. The Bible teaches both of these: active in your obedience, verbal in articulating what you believe biblically.

Jesus said that we should “let [our] light shine before others, so that they may see [our] good works and give glory to [our] Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16), which is what you’d like people to do at your funeral: give glory to God because of your good deeds (1 Peter 2:12). And in Peter’s first epistle, he said that we Christians have been shown mercy so that we might “proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). So, our lives are supposed to be visible in their good deeds and audible as we declare the truth of our biblical convictions about God, which are the foundation of those visible good deeds.

Lots of people think that all Christians need to do is live a life of good deeds, and that will be sufficient for blessing the world. That’s absolutely not true. It’s not sufficient. Nobody can read a saving message from our good deeds alone. A life of loving good deeds is essential, but it is not sufficient to lead anyone to saving faith in Jesus. There must be a verbal message about the truth of God and Christ and the way of salvation.

Paul said that saving “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). “The word.” “The word” means statements, propositions that carry clear meaning about the reality of God and his work in the world, his work in Christ, and the necessity of faith.

What Must I Believe?

Which brings me now to the third and hardest question. What role do personal theological convictions play in personal salvation? There are two (I think) crucial things to say in answer to that question.

First, there are true statements about God’s saving work that, if a person denies, shows by that denial that they’re not a Christian. The second thing to say is that the Bible teaches that believing that those statements are true in the Bible is not sufficient to show that you are a Christian.

The biblical support for the first statement is 1 John 4:2–3: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” In other words, there are doctrines like the incarnation (Christ come in the flesh) that are essential. If a person denies that the Son of God has become a human, he cannot be a Christian.

The biblical support for the second statement is James 2:26: “Faith apart from works is dead.” Demons have faith in that sense — that things are true; we believe things are true. So, it’s not enough if you want to be saved just to believe that things about God are true. There are some doctrinal statements that are necessary to affirm by a Christian, but that affirmation is not sufficient to prove that saving faith in Jesus is genuine. There needs to be a heart embrace of Jesus and a life of love that confirms the reality of our faith.

In the Hands of God

There’s one other related issue we just might have time to say a word about. People will ask at this point, “How much biblical truth do you need to believe to be a Christian? And how much error can you believe until you’re not a Christian?” Now, I have two responses to those two questions.

First, let’s not focus on minimums, but on maximums. In other words, let’s take as many people into as much biblical truth as we possibly can, rather than dwelling on the question, How little can people believe and still be saved?

And my second response is this: I think only God can answer the question, How much error can you believe until it shows you’re not saved? Now, I’m not contradicting 1 John 4:2–3 when I say that. There are some doctrines so essential that to deny them is not to be a Christian. What I’m saying is that there are hundreds of statements and commands in the Bible — ethical, theological, historical — and they are more or less essential for preserving the saving gospel. How many of those can a person deny until they show that their heart is not right with God, that they’re in rebellion? And I think only God, in the end, can answer that question.

We have to make decisions. Yes, we do. Practically speaking, we all have to make decisions on how we will define doctrinally our church membership, belonging to our organization or ministry. But when it comes to final salvation and the judgment of who’s finally saved and who’s not, after we have taken 1 John 4 into account, I think we better leave to God the call as to how much denial of biblical truth a person can make until it shows that his heart is really in rebellion against God.

The Law Is Not of Faith? Galatians 3:10–14, Part 2

The Spirit’s Irresistible Call
What do we mean when we say that the Spirit’s work in the new birth is irresistible? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper looks at John 3:1–10 to explore the beauty of this aspect of the Spirit’s sovereign work.

Look and Live

Part 6 Episode 239 What does it mean to look at Jesus and live? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens John 3:1–15 to explore how Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness helps us understand how the death of Jesus changes us.

Scroll to top