Top 450 John Piper Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “If you have pity for perishing people and a passion for the reputation of Christ, you must care about world missions.”

— John Piper

352. “Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so most fully when we treasure him, desire him, delight in him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display his love to the poor and the lost.”

— John Piper

353. “Not to enjoy God is to dishonor Him.”

— John Piper

354. “Brand-new truths are probably not Truths.”

— John Piper

355. “When a sinful person meets the holy God in Christ, what he hears is Yes. God, do you love me? Yes. Will you forgive me? Yes. Will you accept me? Yes. Will you help me change? Yes. Will you give me power to serve you? Yes. Will you keep me? Yes. Will you show me your glory? Yes.”

— John Piper

356. “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

357. “But we also need stories. Great stories.”

— John Piper

358. “We would do our theology better if more was at stake in what we said.”

— John Piper

359. “The world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we give our riches away for Christ’s sake and count it gain.”

— John Piper

360. “Living to magnify Christ is costly.”

— John Piper

361. “When faith is in fullest operation, it pictures a future with a God who is so powerful and so loving and so wise and so satisfying that this future-picturing faith experiences assurance. Now.”

— John Piper

362. “Resolved: To live with all my might while I do live.” And.”

— John Piper

363. “We desire the wrong things, and we desire right things in the wrong way. And both are deadly – like eating pleasant poison.”

— John Piper

364. “Did you wake up feeling fragile? Read the bible till you find a promise strong enough to carry you through the day.”

— John Piper

365. “The way we honor Christ in death is to treasure Jesus above the gift of life, and the way we honor Christ in life is to treasure Jesus above life’s gifts.”

— John Piper

366. “Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.”

— John Piper

367. “When something drops into your life that seems to threaten your future, remember this: the first shockwaves of the bomb are not sin. The real danger is yielding to them. Giving in. Putting up no spiritual fight. And the root of that surrender is unbelief – a failure to fight for faith in future grace. A failure to cherish all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.”

— John Piper

368. “Our obedience is God’s pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.”

— John Piper

369. “The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy.”

— John Piper

370. “The point is that an $80,000 or a $180,000 salary does not have to be accompanied by an $80,000 or a $180,000 lifestyle. God is calling us to be conduits of his grace, not cul-de-sacs. Our great danger today is thinking that the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn’t. Copper will do. No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is good; it will make people think that our god is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of his worth.”

— John Piper

371. “So the question we need to ask today is this: if the teaching in our church was limited to the songs that we sing, how well taught would we be? How well would we know God? We should make it our aim not only to preach the whole counsel of God but to sing it, as well.”

— John Piper

372. “So from the context of 1 Thessalonians 5 I say that the key to “rejoice always” is to “pray without ceasing.” Lean on God all the time for the miracle of joy in your life. Never give up looking to him for help. Come to him repeatedly during the day and often. Make your default mental state a Godward longing for all that you need, especially for spiritual desires.”

— John Piper

373. “When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions.8.”

— John Piper

374. “Authenticity begins when you start by admitting that you are inauthentic.”

— John Piper

375. “The pathway to maturity and to solid biblical food is not first becoming an intelligent person, but becoming an obedient person.”

— John Piper

376. “So I arrive at this definition of gratitude. Gratitude is a species of joy which arises in your heart in response to the goodwill of someone who does or tries to do you a favor.”

— John Piper

377. “Cancer does not win if we die. It wins if we fail to cherish Christ.”

— John Piper

378. “No man can comfort our souls in this pandemic the way God can. His comfort is unshakable. It is the comfort of a great, high Rock in the stormy sea. It comes from his word, the Bible.”

— John Piper

379. “If you hold a grudge, you doubt the Judge.”

— John Piper

380. “Don’t leave Christmas in the abstract. Your sin. Your conflict with the Devil. Your victory. He came for this.”

— John Piper

381. “Don’t make peace with the sin in your life.”

— John Piper

382. “That’s who Jesus Christ is. He became the final Priest and the final Sacrifice. Sinless, he did not offer sacrifices for himself. Immortal, he never has to be replaced. Human, he could bear human sins. Therefore he did not offer sacrifices for himself; he offered himself as the final sacrifice. There will never be the need for another. There is one mediator between us and God. One priest. We need no other. Oh, how happy are those who draw near to God through Christ alone.”

— John Piper

383. “He may be doing it for you in this Advent season – graciously and tenderly frustrating you with life that is not centered on Christ and filling you with longings and desires that can’t find their satisfaction in what this world offers, but only in the God-man. What a Christmas gift that might be! Let all your frustrations with this world throw you onto the Word of God. It will become sweet – like walking into paradise.”

— John Piper

384. “In John 3:16, Jesus teaches us that the God who exists loves. Let that sink in. The God who absolutely is. Loves. He loves. Of all the things you might say about God, be sure to say this: he loves.”

— John Piper

385. “The one thing God is doing in all of redemptive history is to show forth his mercy in such a way that the greatest number of people will throughout eternity delight in him with all their heart, strength, and mind.”

— John Piper

386. “Make the mule of your tongue serve the mercy of your heart.”

— John Piper

387. “The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse.”

— John Piper

388. “The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death.”

— John Piper

389. “Love is helping people toward the greatest beauty, the highest value, the deepest satisfaction, the most lasting joy, the biggest reward, the most wonderful friendship, and the most overwhelming worship – love is helping people toward God.”

— John Piper

390. “Tact is that quality of grace that wins the confidence of people who are sure you won’t do or say something stupid. You can’t inspire a following if people have to hang their heads in embarrassment at the inappropriate and insensitive things you say or do. Tact is especially needed in a leader to help cope with embarrassing or tragic situations.”

— John Piper

391. “The problem is not a battle between contemporary worship music and hymns; the problem is that there aren’t enough martyrs during the week. If no soldiers are perishing, what you want on Sunday is Bob Hope and some pretty girls, not the army chaplain and a surgeon.”

— John Piper

392. “Apart from new birth, I am my problem. You are not my main problem. My parents were not my main problem. My enemies are not my main problem. I am my main problem. Not my deeds, and not my circumstances, and not the people in my life, but my nature is my deepest personal problem.”

— John Piper

393. “God’s work in us does not eliminate our work; it enables it. We work because he is the one at work in us. Therefore, the fight for joy is possible because God is fighting for us and through us.”

— John Piper

394. “The dismembering of a human being routinely in 30 minutes on an outpatient bases – or any other way – is barbaric. Four blocks from our church all year long – like churches within smelling distance of Auschwitz or Dachau or Buchenwald.”

— John Piper

395. “The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can’t be changed – these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy.”

— John Piper

396. “A godly life is lived out of an astonished heart – a heart that is astonished at grace.”

— John Piper

397. “God is committed to rewarding those acts of the human heart that signify human helplessness and hope in God.”

— John Piper

398. “The final answer is that God rewards fasting because fasting expresses the cry of the heart that nothing on the earth can satisfy our souls besides God. God must reward this cry because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

— John Piper

399. “There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. C. S. LEWIS.”

— John Piper

400. “Once upon a time, there was a safe, private place to take your controversial stand for Jesus. No more. If you are going to stand, you will be shot at – either figuratively or literally.”

— John Piper