A Thought From John Piper

I've been going back through some of my favorite passages in books lately, and I have really been enjoying it. My favorite non-fiction book of all time is Future Grace by John Piper. Here is a section from a chapter that I used to have a big problem with, but now I am embracing more and more. I'd love to hear what you think:


But I want to say a bit more than Hodge does. I don’t want to say merely that faith in promises produces, “confidence, joy and hope,” but that an essential element in the faith itself is confidence and joy and hope. It is not false to say that faith produces these things. But that does not contradict the other truth: the confidence and joy and hope are part of the warp and woof of faith. One kind of joy and hope can beget other kinds; and joy can follow upon joy. But I want to preserve what we have seen, namely, that the essence of saving faith is a spiritual apprehension or tasting of spiritual beauty, which is delight. Yes, it is true, that faith yields delight. But if we do not taste the beauty of Christ in his promises as delightful, or as satisfying, we do not yet believe in a saving, transforming way.
Is this not one of the reasons why so many professions of faith miscarry? Sometimes we call for decisions for Christ, and bring people to crisis without contemplation. The only conversion that endures is based on a “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Unless we see the Lord as glorious, we will not be “transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” When affliction comes, we will fall away. What holds us is prizing the surpassing value of Jesus (Philippians 3:8).

There it is. Hope it stimulated you to think, if not to do something else (like delight and embrace).

P.S. I just put up a new moview review of Stranger than Fiction, in case you are interested.