Here are some of my favorite quotes from two of the most faithful and true teachers of God’s Word — John Piper and Paul Washer. I hope that they, too, encourage you and spur you on to examine your Christian walk.
John Piper
“Many people are willing to be God-centered as long as they feel that God is man-centered”
“One of the reasons we are not as Christ-centered and cross-saturated as we should be is that we have not realized that everything — everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good of his redeemed children — was purchased by the death of Christ for us. We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right. We are doubly undeserving of it.”
“At these moments, when the trifling fog of life clears and I see what I am really on earth to do, I groan over the petty pursuits that waste so many lives — and so much of mine. Just think of the magnitude of sports — a whole section of the daily newspaper. But there is no section on God. Think of the endless resources for making your home and garden more comfortable and impressive. Think of how many tens of thousands of dollars you can spend to buy more cars than you need. Think of the time and energy and conversation that go into entertainment and leisure and what we call ‘fun stuff.’ And add to that now the computer that artificially recreates the very games that are already so distant from reality; it is like a multi-layered dream world of insignificance expanding into nothingness.”
Paul Washer
“The cross is not a sign of our great worth, but of our great depravity… that we were so evil that the only way we could be saved is by God’s Son being crushed under the full force of the wrath that was due us.”
“Not enough is preached about separation, not enough is preached against the world and the things of the world and its pleasures and its trinkets… how can you love the very things for which Christ was crucified? Can you love the nails? Can you bless the hammer? Would you kiss the hands that crushed His head with a crown of thorns? Because when you say you know Christ and you are a disciple of Christ and yet you love the world, you do that very thing. Oh my friend, there is a great divide; a great separation. The Scripture warns us that those who are not separate now will be separated on that Great Day from the sheep and they will be labeled goats and they will find their place in Hell.”
“The Bible never says that God is love, love love. And it never says that God is merciful, merciful, merciful. But it does say God is holy, holy, holy. And the repetition is important, very important. You want to know what God is — who God is? God is holy. And if there was ever a message we needed to hear in America today, it’s that.”
“We honor the old prophets, we honor the Tozer’s and Spurgen’s but we don’t want to pay the price they paid, and they paid the price by being men who walked alone who lived with God and who loved his word.”
“What’s the will of God for my life? You don’t need to know the will of God in your life, you need to know the God of your life!”
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Encouragement, John Piper, Paul Washer, Quotes, Saints
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JOHN PIPER
“Many people are willing to be God-centered as long as they feel that God is man-centered”I appreciated this quote. It seems as if people only want to focus on God as long as he fits comfortably into their lifestyle.
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“Love does not delight in evil” [1 Corinthians 13:6]
I think Washer has taken love to exclude holiness. Love is the essence of Christianity, and not holiness.
To be holy means “to be set apart”. This has a picture of marriage. According to the Ketubah, before entering into the intimacy in marriage, both the man and the woman have to immerse themselves in a ritual bath to purify their bodies. The woman has to take this bath monthly, which also symbolized her virginity.
Holiness isn’t just being set apart from sin and the world, but it goes beyond that to cleave with and being one with the Lord. This intimate love is the essence of holiness.
I can testify that majority of Christians struggle living a holy life, because of lack of true genuine love for the Lord. *snaps* I know what many will think here, “I have to start loving God more…”. Yes, but NO! What you need is to experience God’s love, and then you’d be able to say with Paul “His love compels me….”. Thats how God wants it. This may seem a very simple and familiar statement to many in here, but this is the secret to living holy: His love that will compel us to love Him back.
Majority in the Body of Christ “knows” about the love of Christ, but has missed the experiential love. I’m sure many who will read that statement will read it very causally. But I tell you my friends, thats where the problem is! I have heard others go out telling others that God loved them without experiencing Gods love in their personal lives.
Whenever people move from Agape love to some other topic including Holiness, they are straying away from the Gospel.
Sidharth
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Sidharth,
although it is stated that God is love, and our relationship with God is because of love, yet I still think you are wrong. We are not told to love because human love can never approach God in and of itself. Read the OT to see that a love for God is created in us because of our reflection upon His demands upon us based upon His holiness. Those who cannot see the holiness of God can never love God as He truly is. Is it any wonder that the entire focus in the OT is on the holiness of God, and the love of God is only introduced both in the OT and in the NT as something God proactively expresses for His elect people out of His supreme good pleasure (Eph. 1:11)?
I thus disagree with your assertion that ‘whenever people move from Agape love to some other topic including Holiness, they are straying away from the Gospel’. According to the Bible, without holiness, there is no such thing as agape love, period. The Gospel is not a message of how much God thinks we are worthwhile to save, but of how God loves us despite our wickedness and depravity. As Isaiah quoted from Paul Washer (and I have heard that sermon btw):
The cross is not a sign of our great worth, but of our great depravity…
I think that would suffice.
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Daniel Chew,
Firstly, You are wrong in trying to assume I meant human love.
Secondly, the message of the Gospel isn’t : You have to live holy. The message of the Gospel is you are incapable of saving yourself by trying to live holy, God calls you to Himself out of His unconditional love for you and His unconditional love will cause us to love Him back and this calls us to live a holy life.
Jesus plainly said, IF you LOVE me, keep my commandments . Anything apart from that love, which of course is propelled by His love, is legalism.
Let me ask you, in your relationship with your wife….are you keeping away from another woman because of some law that you’ve made up or are you keeping away from having relations with another woman because of your love for your wife?
Legalism is sickening….I lived in it once and I never want to go back there all my life. I live a holy life now more than I have ever lived while I lived a legalistic life, simply because of the revelation of His love for me.
Sidharth
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Oh by the way, I believe in holiness more than any “Holiness” folk. But my focus is not on “living holy”, my focus is His love.
You either haven’t studied the OT, Daniel. And if you have , you haven’t studied them in the light of the New Covenant. =)
Love is the message of the Gospel: God so loved the world He gave His only begotten.
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Amen, Tom! Thank you for visiting and sharing your thoughts on that quote.
God has become a ‘bling bling’ — an accessory to our ‘glorious’ lives — issuing out of so many pulpits nowadays.
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Sidharth, Daniel:
I hope you don’t mind me interjecting here.
Just to share my opinion on what both of you have been discussing: I believe that we cannot love God if He doesn’t love us first. Just as a son or daughter cannot love their parents back if the parents didn’t first show love to him or her.
And my take on a holy life is this — that when a son or daughter loves their parents and look up to them, then it is a very natural (and I stress the ‘very natural’ part of the equation) that the children will want to be like their parents.
Just talk to some children whom you know love and respect their parents very much — many of them would say they want to grow up to be like their dad/mom, even right down to following in their footsteps in whatever vocation their parents are in.
And that’s what I think it’s all about.
As for how God is holy, and that we must recognize that fact, it is akin to a child knowing that while his father loves him, he also knows that his father shall not tolerate certain misdeeds that he commits.
And if a child truly loves his father, then that child accepts that his father will not tolerate the misdeeds, and seeks to obey his father and does what his father teaches him to do.
I don’t know if my position is right or wrong in the eyes of those who have a better grasp of theology than I do, but it is how I explain my relationship with God.
I have much to learn, and I’m blessed to have been able to do so from your exchange.
Shabbat Shalom.
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Sidharth,
I think we have a misunderstanding. Who ever said the message of the Gospel was that you have to live holy lives? Yet how do you love a God you do not know as holy since he is indeed holy? Is it possible for you to love someone you don’t know?
I see Paul Washer as going against the syruppy sentimentalism prevalent within contemporary Evangelicalidom/ Churchianity, who treat God like a ….. Santa Claus? Ever loving, never against sin (especially theirs), ever blessing, ever forgiving, always concerned that they will have all their material wants (not only needs)
And Sidharth, I hope you will refrain next time from making blanket statements like ‘You either haven’t studied the OT’ or something along those lines which are typically false (This one certinly is not true). The focus of the entire Bible is about God first and foremost, not us. God’s love for us is important, but it is not the most important. As the Reformers realized, Soli Deo Gloria, for the glory of God alone. Everything exists for the glory of God alone. Our salvation is also for God’s glory primarily. God can always chose not to save anyone; He does not have to love anyone for that matter. That is the reason why I agree with Paul Washer. Yes, we are to love God, and faith in Christ is a relationship with Him. But that is never the focus of the relationship. The focus is always on the glory, the honor and the heavenly character of our beloved, and who marvelous He truly is, and how we want to praise His name forever and ever and ever ad infinitum non nauseum. Just as in a marriage relationship, although you love your husband/wife, you do not make that love between the two of you the main focus, as if love was a thing to be admired in and of itself, but you focus on the things you like about each other; love being the means of expression not the target of focus.
I love the traditional Lutheran focus on the law/gospel antithesis. As it is written, the law is our tutor to lead us to Christ (Gal. 3:24 -NASB). Only when we despair of sin and of ourselves will we surrender to God and allow Him to bring us to salvation. Love is not the central theme of the Gospl, it underlies it, but it is not the theme itself. The central theme of the Gospel is the Cross of Christ, that Jesus has through His propitiatory death on the cross satisfies the justice and wrath of God in order to save a people for Himself. Unless we can see that, ‘love’ just becomes another empty word devoid of any true spirituality.
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(Sorry about hijacking your blog for this Isaiah)
Sidharth,I would be doing a series on various topics relating to this sometime this year on my blog, so if you are interested, you may look through (Not now though, busy with other stuff)
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Not at all, Daniel, I like that there’s a genuine discussion going on, and that I can learn from both you and Sidharth.
Shalom. -
What is God’s glory, brother? =)
Read this article: Major in Glory
You have again misinterpreted love. Love does not permit sin. Love hates sin. Gospel isn’t a license to sin, Gospel is deliverance from sin.
You’re not putting forth your point, Daniel. I dont care what tradition believes in, what matters is what God says. God says, this is how we know His true disciples: by Love [John 13:34-35]
I rest my case here.
Sidharth
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Joh 3:16 For God so LOVED the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.
Gal 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.
Gal 5:14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Eph 5:2 walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it;
Php 1:9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
Col 3:14 and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness.
1Jn 2:5 but whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected. Hereby we know that we are in him:
1Jn 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
1Jn 3:11 For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another:
1Jn 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death.
1Jn 3:16 Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
1Jn 3:23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he gave us commandment.
1Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God.
1Jn 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
VERY IMPORTANT VERSE HERE : 1Jn 4:9 Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.
1Jn 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1Jn 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1Jn 4:12 No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us:
1Jn 4:16 And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.
1Jn 4:17 Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world.
1Jn 4:19 We love, because he first loved us.
1Jn 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.
1Jn 4:21 And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.
1Jn 5:2 Hereby we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and do his commandments.
The word love and its synonyms are used more than 200 times in the New Testament. While the word holy and its synonyms have been used 176 times only.
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Sidharth,
‘this is how we know His true disciples: by Love’
Really? What kind of love? The love shown by Islamicists in bombing their enemies into submission? Or maybe the love shown by some of the Jewish community sects (ie the ancient Essenes) where everyone submits to the leader, they had “all things in common”, no one owns anything but hold everything in common? Or how about the Roman Inquisitors, who love God to the extent that they would kill and tortue thousands and hundred of thousands of “heretics” in His name?
Sidharth, as it can be seen, you mention a lot about love, yet you have lost it epistemologically. The fact is, ‘love’ means nothing without a framework of reference. That has been my point of contention with you, and yet you still have not seen it. I have said it before, but will say it again, how can you love someone whom you don’t know? Yes, love is important, but it is an attitude, an action, a process. Without an object, love is nothing. Your statement that “The word love and its synonyms are used more than 200 times in the New Testament. While the word holy and its synonyms have been used 176 times only.” is irrelevant.
You may wish to concentrate on love all you want, my only desire is to act on it (instead of just looking on love) in my relationship with the thrice-holy, all-glorious and wonderful Lord, my Creator and Redeemer. And therefore I focus on Him instead, and in magnifying His holy and glorious name, and of His unconditioonal and initiative love for me.
I think this is settled then. To each their own. I think I have make myself clear already.
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Sicarri,
You quoted from one of your favourite bible teacher, Paul Washer, that ““The Bible never says that God is love, love love. And it never says that God is merciful, merciful, merciful.” . I wonder, has he forgotten about Eph 2:4, or even the most classic verse of God’s love, John 3:16?
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Danielle,
Thank you for the visit.
Now, I might be wrong as its been some time since I listened to that sermon, but I think Paul Washer was lamenting the fact that the message of love was too often preached from the pulpit and not enough is said about the holiness of God.
I’ll have a listen to the sermon again one day to ascertain this.
Shalom.
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