John Piper is a well-known author, pastor, and speaker. He has written many books that have been translated into different languages. His quotes are used often to encourage others in their walk with God. Today we will look at some of his best quotes about life as a Christian and what it means to be transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Who Is John Piper?
John Piper was born on January 11, 1946, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Bill and Ruth Piper. When John was still a small boy, the family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where he grew up.
His father was an itinerant preacher, and his mother perished in a bus accident while on pilgrimage to Israel in 1974.
After hearing an irresistible calling of the Lord to preach, John became the senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he preached for almost 33 years.
John Piper Quotes
John Piper Quotes On Life
“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”
John Piper
“If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.”
John Piper
“It is better to lose your life than to waste it.”
John Piper
“Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.”
John Piper
“Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.”
John Piper
“God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.”
John Piper
“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”
John Piper
“I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth “home.” Before you know it, I am calling luxeries “needs” and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don’t think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.”
John Piper
“God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On The Bible
“My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes – many times – my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens – and it happens every day in some measure – I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.”
John Piper
“But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.”
John Piper
“If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don’t get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.”
John Piper
“The logic of the Bible says: Act according to God’s “will of command,” not according to his “will of decree.” God’s “will of decree” is whatever comes to pass. “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). God’s “will of decree” ordained that his Son be betrayed (Luke 22:22), ridiculed (Isaiah 53:3), mocked (Luke 18:32), flogged (Matthew 20:19), forsaken (Matthew 26:31), pierced (John 19:37), and killed (Mark 9:31). But the Bible teaches us plainly that we should not betray, ridicule, mock, flog, forsake, pierce, or kill innocent people. That is God’s “will of command.” We do not look at the death of Jesus, clearly willed by God, and conclude that killing Jesus is good and that we should join the mockers.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On Joy
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”
John Piper
“Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.”
John Piper
“Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?”John Piper
“The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.”
John Piper
“The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.”
John Piper
“There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in
God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On The Gospel
“Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It’s a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don’t want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.”
John Piper
“Do you love the cross because it makes much of you? Or do you love it because it enables you to enjoy and eternity of making much of God?”
John Piper
“We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ.”
John Piper
“The ultimate good of the gospel is seeing and savoring the beauty and value of God. God’s wrath and our sin obstruct that vision and that pleasure. You can’t see and savor God as supremely satisfying while you are full of rebellion against Him and He is full of wrath against you. The removal of this wrath and this rebellion is what the gospel is for. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s glory and the removal of every obstacle to our seeing it and savoring it as our highest treasure. “Behold Your God!” is the most gracious command and the best gift of the gospel. If we do not see Him and savor Him as our greatest fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On Marriage
“Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Knowing Christ is more important than making a living. Treasuring Christ is more important than bearing children. Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of marital success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity.”
John Piper
“Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and His church.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On Perseverance
“The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours.”
John Piper
“Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy – because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) – is the clearest display of the worth of God in our lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ.”
John Piper
John Piper Quotes On Family
“America today is a “save yourself” society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.”
John Piper
“The “war” is being fought along the line between sin and righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth and falsehood in every school… Between justice and injustice in every legislature… Between integrity and corruption in every office… Between love and hate in every ethnic group… Between pride and humility in every sport… Between the beautiful and the ugly in every art… Between right doctrine and wrong doctrine in every church… Between sloth and diligence between coffee breaks. It is not a waste to fight the battle for truth and faith and love on any of these fronts.”
John Piper
The Ministry Of John Piper
Piper served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 1980 until March 31, 2013, as pastor for preaching and vision.
After publishing his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist in 1986, Piper became involved in evangelical Christianity and has since written many more books to develop his theological perspective.
Piper established Desiring God Ministries in 1994 with the objective of “spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the pleasure of all people through Jesus Christ.”
Piper’s sermons and articles from the previous three decades—and most of his books —are free at Desiring God Ministries.
From May 1, 2010, to January 9, 2011, Piper took an eight-month sabbatical from his ministry. In June 2011, he stated that he would be stepping down from his position as pastor shortly.
In March 2012, a replacement for him was chosen; on May 20, 2012, Jason Meyer (784 yes to 8 no) was elected as the next pastor for preaching and vision, replacing Piper.
Piper preached his final sermon as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist on April 21, 2013 (Easter Monday), in which he announced that he and his family would be moving to Tennessee for at least a year so that the church’s new leadership could develop a long-term vision for the church without distractions.
He still goes to church and is referred to as pastor emeritus with no official position in the hierarchy.