Top 450 John Piper Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “We desire the wrong things, and we desire right things in the wrong way. And both are deadly – like eating pleasant poison.”

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

354. “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

355. “Therefore, at the heart of the meaning of work is creativity. If you are God, your work is to create out of nothing. If you are not God, but like God – that is, if you are human – your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great.”

— John Piper

356. “Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.”

— John Piper

357. “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

358. “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

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

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

364. “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

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

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

— John Piper

370. “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

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

378. “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

379. “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

380. “But not only does the pursuit of joy in God give strength to endure; it is the key to breaking the power of sin on our way to heaven.”

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

382. “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

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

— John Piper

384. “By nature, we get more pleasure from God’s gifts then from Himself.”

— John Piper

385. “Rather we say that in the cross, God had in view the actual, effective redemption of his children from all that would destroy them, including their own unbelief. And we affirm that when Christ died particularly for his bride, he did not simply create a possibility or an opportunity for salvation, but really purchased and infallibly secured for them all that is necessary to get them saved, including the grace of regeneration and the gift of faith.”

— John Piper

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

— John Piper

387. “Christmas cut history in two ages, the Age of Promise, and the Age of Fulfillment.”

— John Piper

388. “Say to the next generation again and again: God is truthful; God keeps his word; God does not lie; God can be trusted! That’s one blessing of Advent. Receive it as a wonderful Christmas gift, and give it to as many people as you can.”

— John Piper

389. “DOING is often God’s remedy for despair.”

— John Piper

390. “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

391. “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

392. “Word corresponds to hearing, and glory corresponds to seeing. Ultimately God has spoken in order to reveal his glory for the enjoyment of his people. Therefore we must hear what he says in order to see what he reveals. The Bible does not speak of hearing the glory of God, but seeing it. Hearing is the means. Seeing is the goal. The aim of all our hearing of God’s truth is the seeing of God’s glory.”

— John Piper

393. “Think and mull and ponder and chew until you see God the way they see God – namely, as precious and valuable and beautiful and desirable. This is how the Word serves joy. Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings – not God’s.”

— John Piper

394. “May the pulpits of the land ring with exposition of the Word of God and exultation in the God of the Word.”

— John Piper

395. “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

396. “The aim of the climb is not intellectual satisfaction. The aim is worship. God gets more honor when we worship on the basis of what we know about him than he gets if we worship on the basis of what we don’t know.”

— John Piper

397. “God made us alive and secured us in Christ so that he could make us the beneficiaries of everlasting kindness from infinite riches of grace. This is not because we are worthy. Quite the contrary, it is to show the infinite measure of his worth.”

— John Piper

398. “God owns and controls all things. And there is nothing that he could give you for Christmas this year that would suit your needs and your longings better than the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem, restoration for past losses and liberation from future enemies, forgiveness and freedom, pardon and power, healing the past and sealing the future.”

— John Piper

399. “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

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

— John Piper