Miguel Núñez,Miguel Núñez, Senior Pastor, International Baptist Church of Santo Domingo; President and Founder, Wisdom and Integrity Ministries “John Piper writes with the expository

“Piper shows how true preaching and true worship go hand in hand in the most natural way. This takes place when the preacher works carefully to exegete the text through the anointing of the Spirit and comes to the pulpit under the same influence. The goal is to bring out the spiritual reality behind each text of the Scriptures to honor the intention of the human writer, but especially to exalt the glory of the divine author who inspired the text. This is what this book is all about. Read it slowly, digest its content carefully, and then bring its principles into practice piously.”

Miguel Núñez, Senior Pastor, International Baptist Church of Santo Domingo; President and Founder, Wisdom and Integrity Ministries

“John Piper writes with the expository conviction we expect, encouraging preachers not only to say what is true but also to show how the Bible estab-lishes that truth. He writes beyond our expectations, however, when putting his pastoral finger on the chief expository errors within our ranks: the moralistic error (‘Just do it!’) and the replacement error (‘You can’t do it, so merely enjoy justification by imputed righteousness’). Finally, he advocates for the preaching we need, urging that in all our expositions ‘we would make a beeline from the cross to the resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the giving of Scripture to the blood-bought miracle of new birth to the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory, to the beauties of Christ-permeating, Christ-exalting self-control and sober-mindedness and love.’ This is great writing to exult the glorious power of the gospel that pervades all of Scripture.”

Bryan Chapell, Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church, Peoria, Illinois

“John Piper’s new book on preaching is a dream come true. I have personally been waiting for this book for nearly twenty years. Piper’s first book on preach-ing was monumental. This book is even better. It was worth the wait.”

Jason C. Meyer, Pastor for Preaching and Vision, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis

“Piper has written more than fifty books, so there is something a bit outrageous in suggesting that Expository Exultation is his best. But such a case can be made. Perhaps that is because I, like John, am a preacher, and was profoundly instructed, rebuked, encouraged, and given even greater hope for my ministry through the insights he provides in this book. I trust John has many more vol-umes to come, but for my money, this is the culmination of his contribution to pastoral ministry. If you’re not a pastor or preacher, read it anyway. If you are in full-time ministry, dig deeply into this immense treasure trove of homiletical insight. I’m confident that if you do, it will radically transform your approach to God’s Word and the passion with which you preach it.”

Sam Storms, Lead Pastor for Preaching and Vision, Bridgeway Church, Oklahoma City

“John Piper’s Expository Exultation is fittingly dedicated to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, because it may well do for the present generation what Preaching and Preachers did uniquely for previous ones—instruct, humble, challenge, and inspire. Here are heat and light combined—what Lloyd-Jones called ‘logic on fire.’ All the emphases we have come to expect from Piper are here: God-centered, Christ-focused, Spirit-imbued, with rigorous attention to the text of Scripture and passionate theological conviction. Piper displays a take-you-by-the-throat honesty and a sense of the weight of glory that marks true worship. Here is a book about preaching in which God himself takes center stage. Ex-pository Exultation is a stunning utterance, a leave-you-wanting-more kind of book. It prostrates us in the dust, then sets us on our feet, and thus makes us want to be and do better for God. It is simply a must-read for every preacher of the gospel.”

Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary

“The first time I heard John Piper preach the Bible, I was in my early twenties and had never experienced anything like the passion and power that proceeded from a zeal rooted and tethered to the text. This became for me a blueprint to be emulated. I am grateful that he has written the great lessons of over thirty years of ‘expository exultation’ for the generations to come. There is gold in these pages, and I am eager for the next group of those who will herald the good news of the gospel to be shaped by it. We are in desperate need of serious preaching in these serious days.”

Matt Chandler, Lead Pastor, The Village Church, Dallas, Texas; President, Acts 29 Church Planting Network; author, The Mingling of Souls and The Explicit Gospel

“It is a refreshing change to read a book on preaching that contains almost nothing about technique but rather focuses on the Bible’s teaching about the nature and awesome privilege of the task—and, above all, on the majesty of God, whose servants we are and whose glories we are called to proclaim. Many preachers will be spurred on by these pages, as I have been, to keep giving themselves to the solemn and joyful tasks of explaining Scripture and exulting in God.”

Vaughan Roberts, Rector, St Ebbe’s, Oxford, En gland; Director, The Proclamation Trust; author, God’s Big Picture

Expository Exultation

Other Books by John Piper

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Desiring God

Don’t Waste Your Life

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

Finally Alive

Five Points

Future Grace

God Is the Gospel

God’s Passion for His Glory

A Hunger for God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

A Peculiar Glory

The Pleasures of God

Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Think

This Momentary Marriage

What Jesus Demands from the World

When I Don’t Desire God

W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S

®

Expository Exultation

Christian Preaching as Worship

John Piper

Expository Exultation: Christian Preaching as Worship

Copyright © 2018 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing 2018

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6113-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6116-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6114-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6115-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Piper, John, 1946- author.Title: Expository exultation : Christian preaching as worship / John Piper.Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2017035954 (print) | LCCN 2018005258 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433561146 (pdf) | ISBN

9781433561153 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433561160 (epub) | ISBN 9781433561139 (hc)Subjects: LCSH: Preaching. | Jesus Christ--Exaltation. | Worship.Classification: LCC BV4211.3 (ebook) | LCC BV4211.3 .P56 2018 (print) | DDC 251--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035954

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

RRD 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ToMartyn Lloyd-Jones,

who never trifled with the word of God

“We are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word,but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God,

in the sight of God we speak in Christ. . . . We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word.”

—The apostle Paul

Contents

Introduction: The Roots and Scope of Expository Exultation . . . . . . . . . . 13

PART 1

A Setting for Preaching

God’s People Gathered for Worship

1 The Essence of Corporate Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2 Corporate Worship: Biblical and Beautifully Fitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

PART 2

Why Is Expository Exultation Integral to Corporate Worship?

Heralding, History, and Trinity

3 How Paul Brought Heralding into the House of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4 Four Roots of the Beautiful Fitness of Expository Exultation in Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

5 The Trinitarian Roots of Expository Exultation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

PART 3

How Does Preaching Become a Means of the Miracle of Worship—Supernaturally?

Expository Exultation in the Power of the Holy Spirit

6 Expository Exultation: A Humanly Impossible Act with a Humanly Impossible Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

7 Expository Exultation by Faith: How I Pursued the Miracle in My Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

PART 4

How Does Preaching Become a Means of the Miracle of Worship—Naturally?

Expository Exultation and the Use of All Our Natural Powers

8 Expository Exultation: Loving People with Clear Thinking and Valid Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

9 “Lest the Cross Be Emptied of Its Power”: The Perils of Christian Eloquence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

PART 5

Rigorous Attention to the Text for the Sake of Radical Penetration into Reality

Making Connection Manifest between Text and Reality

10 Text, Reality, and Sermon: Making the Connections Clear . . . . . . 159

11 Showing How Reality Shines through the Words of the Passage: Three Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

PART 6

What Reality Shall We Preach?

Three Pervasive Emphases of All Expository Exultation

12 Preaching in the Light of an Author’s All-Encompassing Vision of Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

13 Expository Exultation and the Glory of God, Part 1: As the Ultimate Goal of All Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

14 Expository Exultation and the Glory of God, Part 2: How It Shapes Every Sermon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

15 Expository Exultation and Christ Crucified, Part 1: Boasting Only in the Cross in Every Sermon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

16 Expository Exultation and Christ Crucified, Part 2: “That We Might Live to Righteousness” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

17 Expository Exultation and the Obedience of Faith, Part 1: The Path of Love That Leads to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

18 Expository Exultation and the Obedience of Faith, Part 2: The Pursuit of Joy, Love, and Eternal Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

PART 7

Expository Exultation and the Old Testament

The Glory of God, the Cross of Christ, and the Obedience of Faith

19 Expository Exultation and the Old Testament, Part 1: Preaching the Glory of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

20 Expository Exultation and the Old Testament, Part 2: Preaching Christ Crucified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

21 Expository Exultation and the Old Testament, Part 3: Preaching the Obedience of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Concluding Thoughts: A Dangerous and Glorious Calling . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

Note on Desiring God Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Introduction

The Roots and Scope of Expository Exultation

I have dedicated this book to Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981), min-ister of Westminster Chapel in London for almost thirty years. No preacher has inspired in me a sense of the greatness of preaching the way Lloyd-Jones did. When he preached, I felt, as with no others, the weight of the glory of heralding the very word of God. When he gave his lectures on preaching at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1969, he gave two reasons why he was willing:

My reason for being very ready to give these lectures is that to me the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called. If you want something in addition to that, I would say without any hesitation that the most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the great and most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the great need of the world also.1

It was typical of Lloyd-Jones to state things in superlatives. His aim was not to minimize other callings. He knew as well as anyone that in the last day the Lord will reward a person’s faithfulness, not his office. He knew that the one who would be great must be the servant of all. And he knew that “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3:7).

But he also knew that to be an ambassador of the King of ages is a

1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1971), 9.

14 Introduction

staggering privilege and burden. He had tasted something of the glory that moved the apostle Paul to say that faithful servants of God’s word are “worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17). He had trembled at the warning, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). The supernatural nature of his calling amazed him: “As commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:17).

He knew that the great aim of preaching is the white-hot worship of God’s people. And he knew that this worship is nothing small or constricted or parochial. It finds expression in weekly worship services and daily sacrifices of love, and finally will be freely and fully released in the perfecting of the bride of Christ and her cosmic habitation. And so he knew that this worship is as personal as the heart’s deepest desire, as expansive as the universe, as enduring as eternity, and as visible as the radiance of love and the renewal of creation.

He knew that the Bible is true and exists for the glory of God. Therefore, reading it and preaching it share that goal. The unrelenting seriousness of Lloyd-Jones’s handling of the glories of God’s word has been a great inspiration to me in a world that seems incapable of seri-ous joy. I am deeply thankful that God raised him up in the middle of the twentieth century and gave me a taste of what J. I. Packer meant when he said that Lloyd-Jones’s preaching came to him with the force of electric shock and brought him “more of a sense of God than any other man.”2

The Origin of This Book

This book is an organic outgrowth of two previous books. Together they form a kind of trilogy. The first volume, A Peculiar Glory (2016), focuses on how we can know that the Bible is God’s word and is com-pletely true. The second volume, Reading the Bible Supernaturally (2017), focuses on how to read the Bible—specifically, how to read it in the pursuit of its own ultimate goal that God be worshiped with white-hot affection by all the peoples of the world. This third volume, Expository Exultation, now asks, If the Bible is completely true and is

2. Quoted in Christopher Catherwood, Five Evangelical Leaders (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1985), 170.

Introduction 15

to be read supernaturally in the pursuit of worship, what does it mean to preach this word, and how should we do it?

Foundations of Worship and Preaching

Most preachers assume that their congregations should gather weekly for corporate worship. Many of us have devoted little time and effort to justifying this practice from the New Testament. We take it for granted. Further, most pastors assume that preaching should be part of that corporate gathering. This too is taken for granted by most, though some fall prey to the predictable put-downs of preaching in every gen-eration. In fact, both of these assumptions—that we should gather for worship and that we should preach—do have explicit biblical foun-dations. And preachers need to know them. On what basis does the congregation gather for worship, and why is preaching part of it?

Focus on Preaching in Worship

As I set out to write a book on preaching, I assume that perhaps 95 percent of the preaching in the world happens in “worship services” of some kind—whether with a dozen believers in the shade of a tree or with five thousand people in a modern auditorium. Preaching in such worship contexts is what I will be defending and describing and celebrating.

The reason for this focus is not that I don’t think preaching be-longs on the streets, or in the stadiums, or on the campus quad, or in the jails, or before kings. It emphatically does belong there. I would certainly like to see more of it there. The reason is that I believe with all my heart that preaching in corporate worship is essential for the health and mission of the church. God has appointed preaching in worship, I will argue, as one great means of accomplishing his ulti-mate goal in the world.

Why Preach in Corporate Worship?

I am aware that my conception of worship and preaching is not shared by all Christians. Nor do all Christians believe that preaching is an essential part of corporate worship. So the first task I set for myself is to show from Scripture that Christian congregations should gather for

16 Introduction

corporate worship and that preaching should be part of that gathering. That’s what I do in parts 1 and 2.

Part 1 is a description and a defense of corporate worship. It may seem strange, in a book on preaching, to devote so much space to cor-porate worship. But if you believe, as I do, that corporate worship is divinely appointed for a unique and indispensable impact on God’s people, and that preaching is uniquely designed by God to assist and express that worship, then the strangeness might vanish. The most im-portant thing to establish about corporate worship is what the essence of it is. There will always be a thousand variations of the forms of wor-ship around the world in thousands of cultures. But what is the essence? That’s the task of chapter 1. What emerges, then, in chapter 2 is that the essence of worship leads Christians to discover how beautifully fitting it is for the people of Christ to gather for corporate worship.

Then, in part 2, I try to show what preaching is and why it belongs in corporate worship. It is precisely what preaching and worship are that justifies that they should be—and that they should be together. So in part 2 I try to show how this extraordinary form of communica-tion—and which I call “expository exultation”—became a biblically sanctioned, normative part of corporate worship. The reasons are both historical and theological (chapters 3 and 4), reaching into the Trinitar-ian nature of God (chapter 5).

Preaching as Worship and for Worship

One of the primary burdens of this book is to show that preaching not only assists worship, but also is worship. The title Expository Exulta-tion is intended to communicate that this unique form of communica-tion is both a rigorous intellectual clarification of the reality revealed through the words of Scripture and a worshipful embodiment of the value of that reality in the preacher’s exultation over the word he is clarifying. Preachers should think of worship services not as exultation in the glories of God accompanied by a sermon. They should think of musical and liturgical exultation (songs, prayers, readings, confession, ordinances, and more) accompanied and assisted by expository exulta-tion—preaching as worship. Music is one way of raising and carrying the heart’s exultation. Preaching is another. I will argue that preaching is worship. And preaching serves worship.

Introduction 17

Worship: All of Life, Forever

When I say “preaching serves worship,” I don’t mean that it serves only “worship services”—not even eternal worship services. When I say that the ultimate goal of Scripture and preaching is that God be worshiped with white-hot affection by all the peoples of the world, I am referring to the complete transformation of all God’s people and the final renovation and renewal of heaven and earth (Rom. 8:19–23). This transformation of God’s people and this renovation of the universe will be such that its greatest effect will be to magnify the supreme value and excellence of God.

What we will see, in more detail and with biblical argument, is that worship means consciously knowing and treasuring and showing the supreme worth and beauty of God. When I say that preaching serves this worship, I am thinking of it in at least three expressions:

1. This worship may be expressed in worship services (Ps. 34:3). We worship together as we know God truly in song lyrics, prayers, and other expressions of right doctrine; and as we treasure God with awakened affections for his excellence; and as we show this in heartfelt singing and praying and hearing—participating in all the forms suitable for the service of worship.

2. This worshipful knowing and treasuring and showing the su-preme worth and beauty of God also may happen by magnifying Christ in life and death (Phil. 1:20), as we rejoice in God’s sovereign care through the painful sacrifices of loving others (Matt. 5:11–12; Phil. 3:8–10). All of our physical existence becomes “a living sacri-fice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).

3. Such worship will happen completely and perfectly in the resur-rection, when we know even as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12), our joyful treasuring of God is perfected (Ps. 16:11), and the fullness of joy’s outward display is unimpeded by sin (Heb. 12:23; Phil. 3:12).

This God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Spirit-sustained worship—ex-pressed in worship services, daily sacrifices of love, and eternal perfec-tion—is the goal of Expository Exultation, the act and the book.

So, as I said at the beginning of this introduction, there is nothing

18 Introduction

small or constricted or parochial about the goal of preaching. It is as personal as the heart’s deepest desire, as expansive as the universe, as enduring as eternity, and as visible as the sacrifices of love and the renewal of creation. But the goal is radically God-focused. The Bible exists for the glory of God, now and forever. Reading it and preaching it share that goal.

Preaching in the Hands of God, with All Our Might

Worship is not a merely natural act. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. It is supernatural. Therefore, to say that preaching is worship and serves worship raises two questions. One relates to how the preacher is taken up into the supernatural. The other relates to how the preacher uses all his natural powers in the service of the miracle of worship. With regard to the first, we ask: How can preaching, as a human act, also be a work of God and serve a work of God? How does the preacher preach so that it is not he but God who is acting (1 Cor. 15:10)? How does he become an instrument of God so that his preaching becomes an act of worship and a means of awakening worship? That is the focus of part 3.

The second question is this: What about the preacher’s use of his natural powers? Or, what natural means are legitimate in the pursuit of supernatural ends? If the aim of preaching is the Spirit-given wor-ship of the people, can human thinking, explaining, and eloquence be legitimate? If not, what’s left of preaching? If so, how does the use of such natural powers become a divine means of spiritual worship? Part 4 addresses these questions.

Text, Reality, and Preaching

Part 5 deals with the question, Do we preach the text or the reality revealed through it? Two of my greatest burdens in writing this book are related to each other paradoxically—as paradoxical as the relation between the divine and human in Jesus Christ. Jesus was human with flesh and bones. But he was so much more. But the more is known through knowing the incarnate man. That’s why Paul referred to the “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The Bible is like the incarnation in this regard. It is human—words, phrases, clauses, logic, narrative. But it is so much more. It carries and communicates

Introduction 19

realities that are vastly more than words. You might say, “the glory of God in the words of Scripture.”

Therefore, it is not enough to say, “What we preach is the text.” Nor is it enough to say, “What we preach is the reality behind the text.” These two inadequate views correspond to my two burdens.

Two Burdens: Text and Reality

One burden is to plead with preachers to give rigorous attention to the wording of their texts and help people see how the very words of the text reveal the points the preacher is making about reality. The other is to plead with preachers to penetrate deeply into the reality that the words are pointing to. These realities—whether aspects of human nature, God’s nature, the way of salvation, the horrors of evil, or the mysteries of providence—are profound. The aim of preaching is that our people see these realities for themselves in the text. The certainty of their sight should rest in seeing reality in the text, not in the opinion of the preacher. So part 5 deals with “the reality factor” and aims to illuminate the relationship between rigorous attention to the text and radical penetration into reality.

An Author’s All-Encompassing Vision of Reality

Part 6 asks more specifically: What is the reality that we preach? It be-comes clear that it is inadequate to answer: Preach the reality that the text aims to communicate. This answer is not wrong. But it provides no help in answering the question, What aspects of an author’s all-encompassing vision of reality should be included in the exposition of the text? I argue that we must keep in view the author’s larger vison of reality (chapter 12). Otherwise, we may draw inferences from the text that are not there. Sometimes this larger vision is communicated in the nearer context. Sometimes not.

Overarching Biblical Concerns in All Our Preaching

If keeping the author’s overall vision of reality in view is essential, how shall the preacher decide what aspects of this all-encompassing vision of reality to include in his preaching? My approach to answering this question (part 6) will be to ask three additional questions based on three assumptions. First, I assume that the more ultimate the overarching goal

20 Introduction

of an author’s meaning, the more important it is that it be woven into our preaching of particular texts. So I ask, What is the ultimate goal of the biblical authors?

Second, I assume that what the apostle Paul says is indispensable to his preaching should be indispensable to ours. So I ask, What does Paul say is indispensable to his preaching?

Third, I assume that there is a way to live the Christian life that leads to final salvation, and there is a way to try to live it that leads to de-struction, and that understanding this is relevant for the right handling of every text. So I ask, What way of life is necessary for final salvation?

The answer I give to the first question is: The ultimate goal of the biblical authors is the glorification of God (chapters 13 and 14). The answer to the second question is: Paul said that proclaiming Christ crucified was indispensable to his preaching (chapters 15 and 16). The answer to the third question is: The way of life that is necessary for final salvation begins with being justified by faith alone and proceeds by walking in love through the power of the Holy Spirit by faith. This way of life may be called the “obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5; 16:26)—the holiness—without which our people will not see the Lord (chapters 17 and 18).

You can see that this is a Trinitarian depiction of the reality we preach—living for the glory of God, magnifying the crucified Christ, walking by the Spirit. I try to make the case that these three realities will not be seen clearly if we think of them as separate from the specific wording of the texts of Scripture. Preaching that drifts (or leaps) away from the particularities of the text in order to preach the reality of the glory of God, or the cross of Christ, or the power of the Spirit, becomes untethered from divine authority and spiritual power. The inspired text of Scripture is where our authority lies. And it is in the very wording of the inspired text where the most vivid, reliable, and explosive revela-tions of these realities shine forth.

Faithful to the Old Testament’s Inspiration

Finally, the question presses to be answered whether we can be faithful to the intentions of the Old Testament authors—who were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21)—if we draw out of their texts a steady emphasis on the glory of God, the cross of Christ, and the obedi-

Introduction 21

ence of faith. To answer that question is the aim of part 7. My answer is yes, we can be faithful to their intentions. In fact, since these Old Testa-ment authors yearned to show more clearly the future implications of their teaching (1 Pet. 1:10–12), they would regard it as contrary to their intentions if twenty-first-century emissaries of the Messiah preached from their writings as though he had not come!

Ultimate GoalA single ultimate purpose has given rise to the existence, the reading, and the preaching of Christian Scripture. The purpose is that God’s in-finite worth and beauty be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation. In the pursuit of that greatest of all purposes, I have writ-ten A Peculiar Glory to show how we may know that the Bible is the infallible word of God. For that same purpose, I have written Reading the Bible Supernaturally to show how we may discover the meaning of that infallible word. Finally, the present volume, Expository Exultation, aims to show how preaching becomes and begets the blood-bought, Spirit-wrought worship of the worth and beauty of God.

God has ordained that until his ultimate purpose of white-hot wor-ship is achieved in the regular gatherings of his people, the everyday sacrifices of love, and the everlasting pleasures of the age to come, reading the Bible supernaturally and preaching its reality by the Spirit will not cease from the earth. God’s purpose on the earth will advance through Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting, God-centered churches, where the gravity and gladness of eternal worship is awakened and rehearsed each week in the presence and power of expository exultation.

PA R T 1

A Setting for Preaching

God’s People Gathered for Worship

1

The Essence of Corporate Worship

This is a book about preaching in worship. I am hoping to show that preaching is worship and serves worship. I conceded in the introduction that not all Christians think of the weekly gathering of God’s people as worship.1 If you are among those who think, “Since the New Testament never calls the regular gatherings of the church ‘worship’ or ‘worship services,’ therefore it is futile to make a case that we should think of our weekly gatherings that way,” may I put some provocative bait on my hook in the hopes of snagging a bit more of your attention?

It may be that we don’t mean the same thing by “worship.” Maybe if I clarify my view of worship, you might not draw the same lines be-tween services for “teaching” or “edification” or “exhortation,” on the one hand, and “worship,” on the other.

My provocative bait is to say that the plan to meet weekly, say, for teaching but not worship is like the plan to marry without sex. Or eat-ing without taste. Or discovery without delight. Or miracles without wonder. Or gifts without gratefulness. Or warnings without fear. Or repentance without regret. Or resolves without zeal. Or longings with-out satisfaction. Or seeing without savoring.

Essence of Worship: Savoring What We See of GodBut if you believe, as I do, that seeing the spiritual beauty of bibli-cal truth without savoring it is sin, then you probably will be slow to

1. David Peterson, former lecturer in New Testament at Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia, has lamented this development. He notes that in reaction against the distortion of the language of worship as referring only to a liturgical act, instead of a whole life, “many seem to have abandoned any application of the language to what we do in church. With this development has come an emphasis on meeting for fellowship and mutual encouragement, with little apparent expectation of encountering God together.” Accessed June 23, 2017, http:// sydney anglicans .net /blogs /ministry thinking /a _church _without _worship.

26 A Setting for Preaching

minimize worship as a reason for gathering as a church—indeed the ultimate reason. And, yes, I do believe that savoring the glory of God is the essence of true worship.

I wonder if you agree with that. Do you agree that the inner essence of worship is savoring the glory of God in Christ, or being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus? Or is that too subjective? Be sure to notice that I am using the word essence, not totality. I’m not saying that savoring what we see of God is the totality of worship—but the essence, without which worship is empty (Matt. 15:8–9).

So it seems to me that the first thing we must do, if we are to make a biblical case for preaching as part of God’s plan for the regular wor-ship gatherings of Christ’s people, is to make the biblical case that there should be such gatherings. The burden of that argument comes in chapter 2. But it hangs on the claim that the essence of worship is the heart’s experience of affections that magnify the beauty and worth of God. This is true whether worship is thought of as the obedience to Christ in daily life, or as the tasks of church ministry, or as the gather-ing for corporate praise.

I have argued elsewhere in some detail2 that worship in the New Testament, compared to worship in the Old Testament, moved toward a focus on something radically simple and inward, with manifold ex-ternal expressions in life and liturgy that could be adapted over the centuries in thousands of different cultures. Worship in the New Testa-ment took on the character suited for a go-tell religion for all nations (Matt. 28:18–20), as opposed to the detailed rituals prescribed in the Old Testament suited for a come-see religion (1 Kings 10:1–13). In other words, what we find in the New Testament is a stunning degree of nonspecificity for worship as an outward form and a radical intensifica-tion of worship as an inward experience of the heart.

Biblical Pointer to the Inner Essence of Worship

We can see pointers to this. For one example, in John 4:23 where Jesus said, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such

2. See John Piper, “The Inner Simplicity and Outer Freedom of Worldwide Worship,” in Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 239–54.

The Essence of Corporate Worship 27

people to worship him.” I take “in spirit” to mean that this true wor-ship is carried along by the Holy Spirit and is happening mainly as an inward, spiritual event, not mainly as an outward, bodily event (cf. John 3:6). And I take “in truth” to mean that this true worship is a response to true views of God and is shaped and guided by true views of God.

For this and other reasons, I argue that Jesus broke decisively any necessary connection between worship and its outward and localized associations. It is mainly something inward and free from locality. “The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (John 4:21). This inwardness of the essence of worship is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they wor-ship me” (Matt. 15:8–9). When the heart is far from God, worship is vain, empty, and nonexistent, no matter how proper the forms are. The experience of the heart is the defining, vital, indispensable essence of worship.

So it appears in the New Testament that worship is significantly de-institutionalized, delocalized, deexternalized. The entire thrust is taken off of ceremonies and seasons and places and forms and shifted to what is happening in the heart—not just on Sunday but every day and all the time in all of life.

Godward Essence of Worship

This inner Godwardness in all of life is what Paul intends when he says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). And, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do ev-erything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). This is worship: to act in a way that shows the heart’s valuing of the glory of God and the name of the Lord Jesus. Or, as we said in the introduction, worship means consciously know-ing and treasuring and showing the supreme worth and beauty of God.

But the New Testament uses those greatest of all worship sentences (1 Cor. 10:31 and Col. 3:17) without any reference to worship ser-vices. They describe life. Even when Paul calls us to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giv-ing thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name


of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:18–20), he makes no reference to a time or a place or a service. In fact, the key words are “always” and “for everything”—“giving thanks always and for everything” (cf. Col. 3:17). This may, in fact, be what we should do in a worship service, but it is not Paul’s burden to tell us that. His burden is to call for a radical, inward authenticity of worship and an all-encompassing pervasiveness of worship in all of life. Place and form are not of the essence. Spirit and truth are all-important.

Inner Experience Pervading All of Life

My conclusion, then, is that the New Testament shows a stunning indif-ference to the outward forms and places of worship. At the same time, there is a radical intensification of worship as an inward, spiritual experi-ence that has no bounds and pervades all of life. One of the reasons for this development in the New Testament is that the New Testament is not a detailed manual for worship services. It is, rather, a handbook for living out the Christian faith among thousands of cultures, which are free to put flesh on the spiritual and moral reality of worship found in the New Testament. This is why my most detailed argument for this view of wor-ship in the New Testament is found in my book on missions.3 The radical shift from the detailed, outward worship forms in the Old Testament to the flexible forms expressing the inner essence of worship in the New Testament is a missiological issue, not just a theological one.

What Is This Inward, Spiritual Experience of Worship?

In place of the longer argument in Let the Nations Be Glad!, let me give just one biblical example of how the Bible reveals the inner essence of worship as the savoring of the glory of God in Christ, or being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. I take it as a given that worship—whether an inner act of the heart, or an outward act of daily obedience, or an act of the congregation collectively—is a magnifying of God. That is, it is an act that consciously shows how magnificent God is. I say “consciously” because the moon and stars show how magnificent God is, but they are not worshiping, since they have no consciousness. But worship is a conscious act (inwardly or outwardly) that reveals

3. See note 2.

The Essence of Corporate Worship 29

or expresses how great and glorious God is. Worship is knowing and treasuring and showing the worth of God.

One of the texts that reveals the inner essence of worship most clearly is Philippians 1:20–23:

It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

Notice that Paul’s passion in life is that what he does with his body, whether in life or death, will always be worship—that “Christ will be honored” (v. 20). The question then becomes, Does Paul tell us what kind of inner experience exalts Christ in this way? Yes, he does. He shows what it is by the way verse 21 is connected to verse 20.

Notice that “life” and “death” in verse 20 correspond to “live” and “die” in verse 21. And the connection between the two verses is that verse 21 gives the basis for how living and dying can magnify Christ. “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For [because] to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Key Connection: Death Gain, Christ Magnificent

Verse 21 describes the inner experience that exalts Christ and is the es-sence of worship. To see this, let’s just take the pair “death” and “die.” “My hope is that Christ will be honored in my body . . . by death. . . . For to me . . . to die is gain.” That is, Christ will be magnified in my dying, if my dying is for my gain. There it is. The inner experience that magnifies Christ in dying is to experience death as gain.

But why is that? Why does my experiencing death as gain mag-nify the greatness of Christ? Verse 23 gives the answer: “My desire is to depart [that is, to die] and be with Christ, for that is far better.” This is what death does: it takes us to be “with Christ”—that is, it takes us into a fuller experience of Christ. We depart and we are with Christ, and that, Paul says, is gain. And when you experience death this way, Paul says, you magnify Christ—you make him look magnificent.


Experiencing Christ as gain in your dying magnifies Christ. It is the es-sence of worship in the hour of death—and in life (as Phil. 3:8 shows).

Gain Means All-Satisfying in LossWe can now say that the inner essence of worship is cherishing Christ as gain—indeed as more gain than all that life can offer—family, career, retirement, fame, food, friends. The essence of worship is experiencing Christ as more gain than all that life can give. And this is what I mean with the words savoring Christ, treasuring Christ, being satisfied with Christ. This is the inner essence of worship. Because, Paul says, experi-encing Christ as gain—greater satisfaction—in death is the way Christ is magnified in death.

I love to sum up what I call “Christian hedonism” with the phrase “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” If you wonder where I got that phrase, the answer is, right here in Philippians 1:20–21. Christ is magnified in my death, when in my death I am satis-fied with him—when I experience death as gain because I gain him. Or another way to say it is that the essence of praising Christ is prizing Christ. Christ will be praised in my death, if in my death he is prized above life. The inner essence of worship is prizing Christ—cherishing him, treasuring him, being satisfied with him.

Next Step: Are Worship Services Essential?We have not yet established that the regular gathering of God’s people for corporate worship is essential or normative. But if we can establish such importance from Scripture, this inner essence of worship would profoundly shape what we do and what preaching is designed to do. In preaching and in every other part of the service, we would “go hard after God,” meaning this: we would go hard after satisfaction in God, and go hard after God as our prize, and go hard after God as our treasure, our soul food, our heart delight, our spirit’s pleasure. Because we know from Philippians 1:20–21 and 3:8 that experiencing Christ as our supreme gain magnifies him, exalts him, worships him—whether on the street or in the sanctuary.

We turn now to this next step in the argument: Is there a biblical warrant for believing that regular gatherings of local Christian churches for corporate worship are essential for the achievement of God’s goal for his people in this world?

“Not many books should be recommended for both beginning Bible readers and mature Bible readers, but this is one of them. Utilizing brief and pointed expositions of often overlooked Bible verses, John Piper helpfully explains why we should be reading the Bible, the work of the Spirit in our Bible reading, and the fundamental skills and habits of faithful Bible reading. I cannot imagine a serious Christian who would not benefit from a thoughtful reading of this book.”

D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Cofounder, The Gospel Coalition

“I have been reading the Bible daily for thirty-five years. Reading the Bible Su-pernaturally challenged my motives, effort, and enjoyment. I doubt I will read the Scriptures the same way again. I look forward to deeper and more wonderful times alone in the Word in the days ahead. This book is a must-read for anyone wanting to take Bible study seriously.”

Francis Chan, New York Times best-selling author, Crazy Love and Forgotten God

“Stunning. Profound. Powerful. Reading the Bible Supernaturally will move you to captivated and awestruck worship at the Divine’s plan for his Word as an instru-ment to magnify his unrivaled glory. Seeing and savoring the God of the Scriptures is an extraordinarily high calling every believer must pursue, and no man can move us to that place quite like John Piper. This book, accessibly written and weighty in content, is so much more than a manual or study guide to the Scriptures. Rather, it’s an invitation to the experience God intended we have with his Word—an experience that is Spirit dependent, faith building, and worship inciting.”

Louie Giglio, Pastor, Passion City Church, Atlanta; Founder, Passion Conferences; author, The Comeback

“The seemingly mundane topic of reading the Bible ushers us into a world of su-pernatural grace for sinners. With constant reference to the Holy Scriptures, John Piper shows us how to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and to read by the light of Christ. Yet Piper commends no passive mysticism, but studious labor over the best of books; he is thorough, practical, and engaging throughout. Take up and read!”

Joel R. Beeke, President, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

“Reading the Bible Supernaturally reminds us why we cannot rest until every per-son on earth has access to the Bible in their own tongue. Tribes, languages, peoples, and nations are perishing without access to, or opportunity to know, this glorious God through this glorious book. John Piper stokes the urgency of our calling as the church of Jesus Christ to deepen our appreciation for the Word that God uses toward a missional end—his global and eternal glory.”

Michael Oh, Global Executive Director, the Lausanne Movement

“Reading the Bible Supernaturally is a thorough and compelling wake-up call to lethargic, passive, resistant, mechanical Bible readers (which is all of us at one point or another) to become hungry, eager, inquisitive, aggressively observant miners for the treasure in the text—fully expectant that God will bring us from death to life, from foolishness to wisdom, from damning despair to glorious hope through his Word.”

Nancy Guthrie, Bible teacher; author, Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament Bible study series

“If you disconnect the Bible from God’s glory, you lose your grip on both. What terrible things we hear people say about each of them, taken in isolation. John Piper puts them together, and finds himself preaching an astonishingly high doctrine of Scripture, right alongside an intimately experiential doctrine of God’s glory. Read-ing the Bible Supernaturally is not just one of the helpful activities that make up the Christian life. Kept in proper context, seen in full perspective, and received in wide-awake recognition of the living voice of the triune God, reading the Bible is the central act of Christian existence. This book, a kind of extended Christian hedonist gloss on Psalm 119, is an invitation to the miracle of Bible reading.”

Fred Sanders, Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University; author, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything

“No book has inspired me to approach Scripture with as much anticipation as Reading the Bible Supernaturally. Read this book at your own risk, for it will ignite your devotional life. You will find yourself actively hunting for treasure in the Bible, looking carefully at each passage, praying and trusting that God himself will open your eyes to see and savor his glory. Don’t let the length of this book fool you; it is clear, accessible, and inspiring. In fact, it is the most practical, passionate, and motivating book on reading the Bible I have ever read. Read it. Apply it. Test it. It will transform your approach to God’s Word.”

Vaneetha Rendall Risner, author, The Scars That Have Shaped Me

“Having read Reading the Bible Supernaturally, readers will not return to Scrip-ture carelessly or indifferently but with renewed and stimulated appetite to meet with the God of glory who inspired it and can be found and freshly encountered through its pages. John Piper’s own insatiable appetite for fellowship with God communicates inspiringly.”

Terry Virgo, Founder, Newfrontiers

Reading the Bible Supernaturally


®

Reading the Bible

Supernaturally

Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture

John Piper

Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture





First printing 2017



Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked TEV are taken from the Good News Bible in Today’s English Version – Second Edition, Copyright ©1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Piper, John, 1946– author.Title: Reading the Bible supernaturally : seeing and savoring the glory of God in Scripture / John Piper.Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and indexes.Identifiers: LCCN 2016029650 (print) | LCCN 2016031894 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433553493 (hc) | ISBN

9781433553509 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433553516 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433553523 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Bible— Reading. | Bible— Devotional use. | Glory of God— Biblical teaching.Classification: LCC BS617 .P56 2017 (print) | LCC BS617 (ebook) | DDC 220.6— dc23LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2016 0 2 9 6 50


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Toall who have helped me see

the light of the glory of God in Scripture,a legacy of shared illumination

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

PART 1

The Ultimate Goal of Reading the Bible

Introduction to Part 1: The Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

1 Reading the Bible toward God’s Ultimate Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41“Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

2 Reading the Bible toward White-Hot Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55“Because you are lukewarm, . . . I will spit you out of my

mouth.”

3 Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65“When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the

mystery of Christ.”

4 Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75“When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”

5 Reading to See Supreme Worth and Beauty, Part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87“My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Reading to Savor His Excellence, Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99“You have tasted that the Lord is good.”

7 Reading to Savor His Excellence, Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117“These things I speak . . . that they may have my joy.”

8 Reading to Be Transformed, Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135“We all . . . , beholding the glory of the Lord, are being

transformed from one degree of glory to another.”

9 Reading to Be Transformed, Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151“Their abundance of joy . . . overflowed in . . . generosity.”

10 Reading toward the Consummation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163“Ransomed . . . for God from every tribe.”

PART 2

The Supernatural Act of Reading the Bible

Introduction to Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

11 The Necessity and Possibility of Reading the Bible Supernaturally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

“He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

12 Why the Pharisees Couldn’t Read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197“Have you never read . . . the Scriptures?”

13 New Testament Pictures of Bible Reading as a Supernatural Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

“Receive with meekness the implanted word.”

PART 3

The Natural Act of Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Introduction to Part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

14 God Forbid That We Despise His Natural Gifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you

understanding in everything.”

15 Humility Throws Open a Thousand Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the

humble his way.”

16 The Indispensable Place of Prayer in Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Wakening Our Desire for the Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

“Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain.”

17 The Indispensable Place of Prayer in Reading the Bible Supernaturally: To See, Savor, and Love with a United Heart . . . . . 263

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

18 Reading the Bible by Faith in the Promises of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277“I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave

himself for me.”

19 Reading the Bible by Faith in His Promise to Instruct Us . . . . . . . . 285“Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs

sinners in the way.”

20 The Ordinary Aim of Reading: The Meaning of Meaning . . . . . . . 295“We are not writing to you anything other than what you

read and understand.”

21 The Ordinary Aim of Reading: Five Reasons to Define Meaning as What the Author Intended to Communicate . . . . . . . . . 303

“I wrote to you in my letter . . . not at all meaning . . .”

22 The Ordinary Aim of Reading: God’s Intention through Man’s Intention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

“The things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.”

23 The Power of Patience and Aggressive Attentiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325“If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden

treasures . . .”

24 Active Reading Means Asking Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you

understanding.”

25 Asking Questions about Words and Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351“The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts

understanding to the simple.”

26 Propositions: Collections of Nuggets or Links in a Chain? . . . . . . . 365“He spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading . . .”

27 Querying the Text about Paradoxes, Pleasures, and a Transformed Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

“The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Appendix: Arcing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

A Word of Thanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423

Desiring God Note on Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Spiritually to understand the Scripture, is to have the eyes of the mind opened, to behold the wonderful spiritual excellency of the glorious things contained in the true meaning of it, and that always were contained in it, ever since it was written; to behold the ami-able and bright manifestations of the divine perfections, and of the excellency and sufficiency of Christ, and the excellency and suitable-ness of the way of salvation by Christ, and the spiritual glory of the precepts and promises of the Scripture, etc. Which things are, and always were in the Bible, and would have been seen before, if it had not been for blindness, without having any new sense added by the words being sent by God to a particular person, and spoken anew to him, with a new meaning.1

JONATHAN EDWARDS

1. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith and Harry S. Stout, rev. ed., vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 281.

Preface

To write a book that you hope will help others see more of God in the Christian Scriptures is to acknowledge that God intends that a reader of his word understand it and enjoy it with the help of others. Writing books, teaching lessons, preaching sermons, raising children “in the instruction of the Lord”— all of these imply that God has planned for us to understand the Bible with the help of human teachers. Another way to say it is that God reveals more of himself through his word when it is read in community than he does when it is read in isolation.

The New Testament shows repeatedly that Jesus Christ gives teach-ers to his church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12). Those teachers do not replace the Bible as God’s inspired word. They help us understand it. In fact, the aim of human teachers is to help all believers grow to the point of being teachers themselves— not necessarily in an official capacity, but at least having the ability to use the word of God for both oneself and others.

Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. (Heb. 5:12–13)

Therefore, I see myself, and this book, as one small part of God’s un-fathomably complex matrix of influences that make up the Christian community of discovery and illumination. Therefore, nothing in this book should be construed to imply that its aim is to produce isolated Bible readers. It is a stone tossed into a pool of people. Its ripple effect, if any, will flow through relationships. Its aim is to be part of God’s global

16 Preface

purpose to create a beautiful bride for his Son— “the church . . . in splendor, without spot or wrinkle . . . holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). The beauty of that bride consists largely in the humble, holy, happy, loving way Christians treat each other. If the end is corporate glory, we should not be surprised that the means is corporate growth. We read the word together; we reach the end together.

God has used hundreds of people to help me understand and love the Bible. I would like to help you— so you can help others. This is as it should be: a legacy of shared illumination until God’s purposes for the church and the world are complete. May God turn your own ripple into a wave of blessing for the few that you know, and the thousands you don’t. I am praying to this end.

The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a-begging for its evidence, so much as some think: it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself. . . . The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory.

JONATHAN EDWARDS

Those who are under the power of their natural darkness and blind-ness . . . cannot see or discern that divine excellency in the Scripture, without an apprehension whereof no man can believe it aright to be the word of God.

JOHN OWEN

Introduction

This is a book about what it means to read the Bible supernaturally. I know that sounds strange. If there is anything obvious about you and me, it is that we are natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. We are not angels or demons; and we are certainly not God. But if the Bible is what it claims to be— namely, inspired by God— then it has a supernatural ori-gin. And what I will try to show is that such a book calls for more than your natural kind of reading. Not less. But more. In fact, it calls for the very best of natural reading. But also for more— something beyond what is merely human.

As with all strange-sounding claims, there is a backstory. I tried to write this book a year ago, but within a matter of days, another book pushed its way into my mind and demanded to be written first. So I postponed this one and wrote A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness.1 The question “Is the Bible true?” begged to be answered first.

In a sense, this is backward. Surely you must read a book before you can decide whether it’s true. So shouldn’t a book about how to read the Bible precede a book about its truthfulness? Maybe. But in my case, the discoveries I made writing A Peculiar Glory proved essential for the way this book is written. The way the Bible shows itself to be true and completely trustworthy carries indispensable implications for how to read it. This has become much clearer to me through writing A Peculiar Glory first.

You don’t have to read A Peculiar Glory in order to understand this book. But it will clarify what I am doing in this book if you know

1. A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Whea-ton, IL: Crossway, 2016).

20 Introduction

how that book argues for the truth of the Bible. So I’ll give a summary. The point of that first book, which shapes this one throughout, is that the Bible reveals its complete truthfulness by the shining forth of a self-authenticating, peculiar, divine glory. That too may sound strange. But it may not seem as strange if you compare that kind of argument with several others in the Bible of the same kind.

The Glory of God Authenticates the CreatorFor example, how does the Bible expect all humans to know that God exists, and that he is all-powerful and generous, and should be thanked and glorified? Not many questions, if any, are more important than this. The answer is that the Bible expects all humans to see the self-authenticating glory of God in the universe he created. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

Just this morning, I was walking home from a prayer meeting at church. As I crossed the bridge over the interstate, I saw, to my left, on the horizon, that the sun was just rising. It was white with brightness. I could only let my eyes glance briefly to the side of the sun. The ball itself was too brilliant to allow a direct sight. Everything from horizon to horizon was luminous with its own color and shape in the crystal-clear air. It is wonderful how natural light— the brightest and most beautiful of all lights— can cheer the soul. But none of that beauty and none of this natural cheerfulness is the glory of God. It is “declaring the glory of God.” We are not pantheists. To see the glory of God, we must experi-ence something supernatural. But it is there to see.

So there is a divine glory shining through the natural world— not just a natural glory. It’s not just the glory of beautiful sunrises, and the stunning complexity of the human eye, and the solar system. It is some-thing ineffable, but real and discernible. We are expected to see not just natural glory, but the glory of God.

The apostle Paul realizes that people do not see this divine glory by themselves. He explains why this is true and yet why none of us has an excuse for this spiritual blindness. It’s because

what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the

Introduction 21

creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (Rom. 1:19–21)

This means that God has shown everyone the glory of his power and deity and generosity. If we do not see God’s glory, we are still respon-sible to see it, and to treasure it as supremely glorious, and to give God thanks. If we don’t, we are, Paul says, “without excuse.”

The Glory of God Authenticates Jesus

There is another, similar argument for how people should have rec-ognized the divinity of Jesus. How did Jesus expect his first followers to know that he was the divine Son of God? The answer is that his whole way of life, the kind of person he was, and the works that he did revealed a self-authenticating, divine glory. His closest disciple wrote, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

But many people did not see this glory. Judas certainly didn’t, in spite of three years of nearness. The Pharisees didn’t. Even his disciples were slow to see. To such people Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me . . . ?” (John 14:9). He had shown them enough. They were responsible to see the glory— and to know that he was the divine Son of God. To be sure, Jesus was really human. He was natural, ordinary, finite, mortal. But he was also the virgin-born, supernatural Son of God (Luke 1:35). There was a glory shining through. Those who heard his teaching and saw his ministry were re-sponsible to see it. This is how they were to know the truth.

The Glory of God Authenticates the Gospel

Consider one more example of how glory authenticates truth. This one relates to the gospel itself— the heart of the good news about Jesus’s death and resurrection for sinners. How are people who hear the good news of the Christian gospel supposed to know that it’s from God? The apostle Paul answered: they can know that it’s from God because they see in it “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Or, putting it slightly differently, they can know

22 Introduction

because they see in it “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

But many people hear the gospel and do not see divine glory. Why? It is not because the glory of God is unreal. It is not because the glory of God is not there in the gospel. It is because human beings, by na-ture, “are darkened in their understanding . . . due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). It is not owing mainly to ignorance, but to hardness. This hardness is a deep antipathy to the truth. They are “perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). Satan, the “god of this world,” exploits this hardness. Paul says he “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). But the glory is really there in the gospel. To hear the gospel faithfully and fully presented is to be responsible to see divine glory.

The Glory of God Authenticates Scripture

The point of A Peculiar Glory is that the glory of God authenticates Scripture in a way similar to these three examples. In and through the Scriptures we see the glory of God. What the apostles saw face-to-face in Jesus Christ they impart to us through the words of Scripture. “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). The glory that they saw in Christ, we can see through their words. The human words of Scripture are seen to be divine the way the human man Jesus was seen to be divine. Not all saw it. But the glory was there. And it is here, in the Scriptures.

All People Know God

One more illustration might help clarify how this actually works in the human soul. How is the glory of God seen? To be sure, the natural eyes and ears and brains are part of the process. Without them we cannot even see or hear or construe the natural things that reveal God’s glory— creation, incarnation, gospel, Scripture. But this natural seeing is not decisive in seeing the glory of God. “Seeing they do not see,” Jesus said (Matt. 13:13). Something more than the use of the natural eyes and ears and brains must happen.

Introduction 23

The way the apostle Paul puts it is that you must “have the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know” (Eph. 1:18). This too is strange— the heart has eyes! But perhaps not beyond comprehension. Most people are at home speaking of “the heart” as something more than the blood-pumping organ in our chest. Such language is not for-eign to us. This “heart” is the real us. Intuitively we know that there is more to us than flesh and bones. We know we are not mere chemicals in a sack of skin. We would not talk the way we do about things like justice and love if we didn’t believe that.

Is it so strange, then, to add to this immaterial personhood the idea of immaterial eyes— “the eyes of the heart”? This inner person, who is the real us, sees and knows things that are not identical with what the eyes of the body can see. Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things.”2 There is a spiritual seeing through and beyond natural seeing. There is a spiritual hearing through and beyond natural hearing. There is spiritual discern-ing through and beyond natural reasoning.

How may we conceive of what happens when the heart sees the glory of God? I found a clue in the way Paul speaks of our knowledge of the glory of God in nature. On the one hand, Paul says that we all “know God.” “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). That is astonishing. Everyone knows God! But in other places, Paul emphatically says that by nature people do not know God. For example, “In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21). The “Gentiles . . . do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:5). Formerly “you did not know God” (Gal. 4:8; see 2 Thess. 1:8; 1 John 4:8).

So, what does Paul mean in Romans 1:21 when he says that all human beings “know God”? To answer this, we might simply quote Romans 1:19–20, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” In other words, we might say that “knowing God” in Romans 1:21 simply means having the witness of creation available and clearly seeing it by the natural eye.

2. Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensées., no. 227, Kindle ed., loc. 1,531.

24 Introduction

But is that all Paul means when he says, “They knew God”? I think there is more. In Romans 2:14–15, Paul says that people who have never heard of the law of God sometimes do what the law requires. Their consciences witness to God’s will. He puts it like this: “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.”

The Template of Divine Glory

So here is my suggestion. “Knowing God” in Romans 1:21 includes this deeper heart experience of Romans 2:15. The analogy that I find helpful is to conceive of the innate knowledge of God and his will as a kind of template or mold in the human heart. This template is designed by God in every human heart with a shape, or a form, that corresponds to the glory of God. In other words, if the glory of God were seen with the eyes of the heart, it would fit the template so perfectly that we would know the glory is real. We would know we were made for this.

So when Paul says that all humans “know God,” or that all humans have the work of the law “written on their hearts,” he means that there is a glory-shaped template in every heart waiting to receive the glory of God. We all “know God” in the sense that we have this witness in our hearts that we were made for this glory. There is a latent expectancy and longing, and the shape of it is buried deep in our souls.

Hearts Packed Hard with Alien Loves

The reason we do not see the glory of God is not that the template is faulty or that God’s glory is not shining. The reason is “hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). This hardness is a deep aversion to God, and a cor-responding love for self-exaltation. Paul said that the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God (Rom. 8:7). And Jesus said that “light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). Our problem is not that we lack the light, but that we love the dark. This is the hardness of our hearts.

So, in my analogy of the template, this means that the hollowed-out shapes of the mold, which are perfectly shaped for the all-satisfying glory of God, are instead packed hard with the love of other things. So when the glory of God shines into the heart— from creation or incarna-tion or Jesus or the gospel— it finds no place. It is not felt or perceived as fitting. To the natural mind— the mind whose glory-shaped mold is

Introduction 25

packed hard with idols— the glory of God is “foolishness” (1 Cor. 2:14 KJV). It doesn’t fit. As Jesus said to those whose hardness pushed them to the point of murder, “You seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you” (John 8:37). Of course, they could construe his words, and remember his words. But they could not see them as glorious or compellingly beautiful. They heard the words, but they did not love them. They loved the darkness that filled the template that was designed for the brightness of the glory of God.

The Supernatural Excavation of the Template

Perhaps you can see now why I said that the present book is about what it means to read the Bible supernaturally. If we are on the right track, the only hope for seeing the glory of God in Scripture is that God might cut away the diamond-hard, idolatrous substitutes for the glory of God that are packed into the template of our heart. The Bible speaks of this supernatural act in many ways. For example, it describes this supernatural in-breaking as a shining into our hearts of divine glory (2 Cor. 4:6), and as a granting of truth and repentance (2 Tim. 2:25), and as the giving of faith (Phil. 1:29), and as raising us from the dead (Eph. 2:5), and as new birth by the word (1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18), and as the special revelation of the Father (Matt. 16:17) and the Son (Matt. 11:27), and as the enlightening of the eyes of the heart (Eph. 1:18), and as being given the secret of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:10).

When this miracle happens to us, the glory of God cuts and burns and melts and removes from the template the suicidal cement of alien loves and takes its rightful place. We were made for this. And the wit-ness of this glory to the authenticity of the Scriptures is overwhelming. Where we saw only foolishness before, we now see the all-satisfying beauty of God. God has done this— supernaturally.

No one merely decides to experience the Christian Scriptures as the all-compelling, all-satisfying truth of one’s life. Seeing is a gift. And so the free embrace of God’s word is a gift. God’s Spirit opens the eyes of our heart, and what was once boring, or absurd, or foolish, or mythical, is now self-evidently real.

So my argument in A Peculiar Glory was that the glory of God, in and through the Scriptures, is a real, objective, self-authenticating real-ity. It is a solid foundation for a well-grounded faith in the truth of the

26 Introduction

Bible. This faith is not a leap in the dark. It is not a guess, or a wager. If it were, our faith would be no honor to God. God is not honored if he is picked by the flip of a coin. A leap into the unknown is no tribute to one who has made himself unmistakably known by a peculiar glory.

It Is a Peculiar Glory

Up to this point in my recap of A Peculiar Glory, I have not emphasized the word peculiar. What does that word imply? It implies that the way the Scripture reveals its complete truthfulness is by means of a peculiar glory. In other words, the power of Scripture to warrant well-grounded trust is not by generic glory. Not by mere dazzling. Not by simply bog-gling the mind with supernatural otherness. Rather, what we see as inescapably divine is a peculiar glory. And at the center of this peculiar glory is the utterly unique glory of Jesus Christ.

There is an essence, or a center, or a dominant peculiarity in the way God glorifies himself in Scripture. That dominant peculiarity is the revelation of God’s majesty in meekness, his strength in suffering, and the wealth of his glory in the depth of his giving. This peculiar glory is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Along with countless mani-festations in Scripture, this is the central brightness of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). This is what bursts upon the heart and mind of the person in whom God shines with the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

Encountering the Glory in Jesus

This peculiar brightness shines through the whole Bible but finds its most beautiful radiance in the person and work of Jesus Christ. My guess is that the vast majority of people who come to believe in the di-vine inspiration and complete truthfulness of the Bible come to this con-viction through an irresistible encounter with Jesus Christ. The peculiar glory that authenticates the Bible shines first and most clearly in Jesus.

How does that happen? Sometimes it is one particular word or deed of Jesus that penetrates the heart and begins to shatter the hardness that hinders the light of Christ’s beauty. But sooner or later, it is the whole biblical portrait— climaxing in the crucifixion and resurrection— that conquers us and overcomes all resistance.

Introduction 27

When the churches of Galatia were starting to drift away from the gospel of Jesus, Paul wrote to them and said, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1). This “portrayal” came with words, not pictures. But it was so real, and so vivid, that Paul said it was an appeal to their eyes— “before your eyes Jesus Christ was pub-licly portrayed.” They saw the peculiar glory of Christ in the preaching of the gospel.

Paul was so taken back by their apparent departure that he called it a kind of witchcraft. “Who has bewitched you?” They had been con-verted by seeing the peculiar glory of Jesus, most vividly in his crucifix-ion. His hope was that his letter would blow the demonic vapors away and restore the vivid sight of Christ’s glory. This is how most people come to a well-grounded faith in Christ and his word.

A Sketch of the Biblical Portrait of Jesus

It may be that you do not have a clear sense of what I mean by the “whole biblical portrait” of Christ. Perhaps you do not resonate with the idea that your mind and heart can be brought to a well-grounded confidence in Christ through the peculiar glory of his biblical portrayal. If so, let me try to sketch a small version of that portrayal. The aim here is to illustrate the luminous constellation of Jesus’s words and deeds, in the hope that you will see how his divine glory shines through their cumulative, multifaceted uniqueness.

No One Loved God and Man More

Jesus was a person of unwavering and incomparable love for God and man. He became angry when God was dishonored by irreligion (Mark 11:15–17), and when man was destroyed by religion (Mark 3:4–5). He taught us— and showed us how— to be poor in spirit, meek, hungry for righteousness, pure in heart, merciful, and peaceable (Matt. 5:3–9). He urged us to honor God from the heart (Matt. 15:8) and to put away all hypocrisy (Luke 12:1). And he practiced what he preached. He was meek and lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29). His life was summed up as “doing good and healing” (Acts 10:38).

He took time for little children and blessed them (Mark 10:13–16). He crossed social barriers to help women (John 4), foreigners (Mark

28 Introduction

7:24–30), lepers (Luke 17:11–19), harlots (Luke 7:36–50), tax collec-tors (Matt. 9:9–13), and beggars (Mark 10:46–52). He washed his dis-ciples’ feet, like a slave, and taught them to serve rather than be served (John 13:1–20).

Even when he was exhausted, his heart went out in compassion to the pressing crowds (Mark 6:31–34). Even when his own disciples were fickle and ready to deny him and forsake him, he wanted to be with them (Luke 22:15), and he prayed for them (Luke 22:32). He said his life was a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), and as he was being executed, he prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers (Luke 23:34).

No One Was More Truthful and Authentic

Not only is Jesus portrayed as full of love for God and man; he is also presented as utterly truthful and authentic. He did not act on his own authority to gain worldly praise. He directed men to his Father in heaven. “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7:18). He does not have the spirit of an egomaniac or a charlatan. He seems utterly at peace with himself and God. He is authentic.

This is evident in the way he saw through sham (Matt. 22:18). He was so pure, and so perceptive, that he could not be tripped up or cornered in debate (Matt. 22:15–22). He was amazingly unsentimental in his demands, even toward those for whom he had a special affec-tion (Mark 10:21). He never softened the message of righteousness to increase his following or curry favor. Even his opponents were stunned by his indifference to human praise: “Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God” (Mark 12:14 author’s translation). He never had to back down from a claim, and could be convicted of no wrong (John 8:46).

No One Spoke with Such Unassuming Authority

But what made all this peculiarly amazing was the unobtrusive yet unmistakable authority that rang through all he did and said. The of-ficers of the Pharisees speak for all of us when they say, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). There was something unquestionably

Introduction 29

different about him. “He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:29). Yet he felt no need to flaunt it. It was natural to him.

His claims were not the open declaration of worldly power that the Jews expected from the Messiah. But they were unmistakable nonethe-less. Though no one understood it at the time, there was no doubt that he had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19; cf. Matt. 26:61). They thought it was an absurd claim that he would single-handedly rebuild an edifice that took forty-six years to build. But he was claiming, in his typically veiled way, that he would rise from the dead. And he would rise by his own power. “I will build it.”

In his last debate with the Pharisees, Jesus silenced them with this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They answered, “David’s son.” In response, Jesus quoted King David from Psalm 110:1, “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Then, with only slightly veiled au-thority, Jesus asked, “David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?” (Luke 20:44). In other words, for those who have eyes to see, the son of David— and far more than the son— is here.

That’s the way he put it more than once. “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” (Matt. 12:6). “Something greater than Jonah is here. . . . Something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt. 12:41–42). This kind of veiled claim runs through all that Jesus said and did. For those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, something unimaginably great— and glorious— is here.

The Veil Is Lifted

Then there were words that were not at all veiled, and indeed were blas-phemously self-exalting— unless they were true. He commanded evil spirits (Mark 1:27) and all the forces of nature (Mark 4:40), and they obeyed him. He issued forgiveness for sins (Mark 2:5), which only God can do (Mark 2:7). He summoned people to leave all and follow him in order to have eternal life (Mark 10:17–22; Luke 14:26–33). He said he would stand at the judgment day and declare who will enter heaven and who will not (Matt. 7:23). And he made the astonishing claim that “everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men,

30 Introduction

I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32–33). He said he was the final arbiter of the universe.

Love and Sacrifice to the Uttermost

Then, with all this power— all this potential to make a life of exquisite pleasure and fame on earth— he sacrifices it all for the eternal happi-ness of sinners. He says uncompromisingly, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Over and over he told his disciples what was going to happen— it was the plan: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

In all of his self-giving, he was intentionally fulfilling Scripture. “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him” (Mark 14:21). So he not only submitted himself to death; he also entirely submitted himself to his Fa-ther in heaven (John 5:19)— and to God’s word in Scripture. He was not caught in a web of tragic circumstances. He was willingly laying down his life. “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18).

The aim of his sacrifice, he said, was the forgiveness of sins. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the for-giveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). This was the greatest love that had ever been shown in all of history, because the greatest person made the great-est sacrifice for the greatest gift to the least deserving. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

Risen, Reigning, Coming

When he rose from the dead on the third day, as he said he would (Luke 24:6–7), he appeared to his disciples for forty days, giving them many proofs that he was not a ghost but the very person— body and spirit— whom they had known for three years (Luke 24:39–42; Acts 1:3). He gave them a global command to make disciples from every nation (Matt. 28:19) and promised to send his Spirit and be with them to the end of the age (John 14:26; Matt. 28:20). He ascended into heaven where he reigns over the world (Rev. 17:14; 1 Pet. 3:22) at the right hand of God the Father (Matt. 22:44; 26:64). And he promised he

Introduction 31

would come again to the earth in power and great glory (Matt. 16:27; 24:30) and bring all his people into everlasting joy (Matt. 25:21).

This is one sketch of the biblical portrait of Jesus. My argument in A Peculiar Glory is that the peculiar glory of God in Scripture comes to its clearest expression in this Jesus. His glory shines through the biblical account of his life and work. This glory is a real, objective, self-authenticating reality. It is a solid foundation for a well-grounded faith in the truth of the Bible.

Answering the Charge of Circularity

Someone may raise the objection that I am arguing in a circle. They may say that I am assuming the reliability of the biblical portrait of Jesus (by citing all these texts), even as I argue for it. There are two kinds of answer to this objection. One is the scholarly answer that says, no, even if you assume the most critical stance toward the New Testament records, there is no Gospel writer, and (to use the language of critical scholars) no layer of the tradition, where this kind of portrait is not present. This is the Jesus we know from history. There is no comfortable, natural Jesus that fits into preconceptions. There is no reconstruction of another Jesus more historically reliable than this one.3

The other answer to the objection of circularity is that the por-trait of Jesus in the New Testament is self-authenticating. Most people have no access to the scholarly historical arguments for the reliability of the Gospels. My argument is that this need not be a hindrance to well-grounded faith. The reality of Jesus himself, as the New Testa-ment portrays him, carries in it sufficient marks of authenticity that we can have full confidence that this portrait is true. I am calling the self-authenticating beauty, which shines through the New Testament portrait of Jesus, the peculiar glory of God.

Well-Grounded Faith for Nonhistorians

In fact, one of the key impulses behind the argument of A Peculiar Glory is the concern that there must be a way for the simplest person to have well-grounded confidence that the gospel is true. For example, what about a preliterate tribesman in the mountains of Papua New Guinea

3. I have argued for this more fully in John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World (Whea-ton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 29–39.

32 Introduction

who has just heard the gospel story unfolded for the first time by a mis-sionary? Or what about a child who is nine or ten years old and has heard the gospel from his parents for years? These people have no access to historical arguments about the authenticity of the New Testament documents. Can they come to a well-grounded confidence (not a leap in the dark) that the gospel is true and that the Scriptures are reliable?

Jonathan Edwards shared this concern more than 250 years ago. He had taken a position as missionary to the Native Americans of New England. He knew that if they were to have a well-grounded confidence in the truth of the gospel, it would not be by scholarly, historical rea-soning. My approach to this problem builds on Edwards’s answer. He said, “The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a-begging for its evidence, so much as some think: it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself. . . . The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory.”4 Extending that argument to all of Scripture— that is what I tried to explain and defend in A Peculiar Glory.

The Scope of the Whole Is to Give Glory to God

Another way to put it is to say that A Peculiar Glory was an extended investigation and explanation of the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism. Question 4 reads, “How doth it appear that the Scriptures are of the Word of God?” Answer: “The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by . . . the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.” In other words, the whole Bible, properly understood, has this divine purpose to communicate and display the glory of God. This pervasive aim of the Scriptures is carried through in such a way that God himself stands forth unmistakably as the unerring author guiding the human authors of the Bible.

The Bible, God’s Book

Therefore, my conclusion (with about three hundred pages of argumenta-tion and explanation) is that “the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.”5 This

4. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 2., The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 299, 307.

5. Paragraph 1.1 of the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith.

Introduction 33

also implies that the Scriptures are the supreme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and right and beautiful. It implies, in matters not explicitly addressed by the Bible, that what is true and right and beautiful is to be assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture. All of this implies that the Bible has final authority over every area of our lives, and that we should, therefore, try to bring all our thinking and feeling and acting into line with what the Bible teaches.

I do not write those words lightly. They make a staggering claim. Breathtaking. If they are not true, they are outrageous. The Bible is not the private charter of a faith community among other faith communi-ties. It is a total claim on the whole world. God, the creator, owner, and governor of the world, has spoken. His words are valid and binding on all people everywhere. That is what it means to be God.

To our astonishment, God’s way of speaking with infallible author-ity in the twenty-first century is through a book! One book. Not many. Not this one! But the Bible. That is the breathtaking declaration of the Christian Scriptures. The implications of this are huge— including implications about how to read the Bible.

Two Facts Full of Implications

But now we’ve seen that there is another spectacular fact that is full of implications about how we should read the Bible. First, there was the fact that the Creator of the universe has spoken through a book. And, second, there is the fact that he has shown this book to be completely true by the divine glory revealed through it. Both of these facts are laden with implications for how to read the book. On the one hand, it is a book composed with ordinary human language that needs to be understood— it is, after all, a real human book. And on the other hand, it is luminous with the supernatural light of divine glory. Which means, as we said at the beginning, the Bible calls for more than your natural kind of reading. Not less. But more. Natural and supernatural. If either is missing, we will misread God’s word.

The Structure of the Book

This book has three parts. Part 1 poses the all-important question, What does the Bible tell us is the ultimate goal of reading the Bible? I propose an answer with six implications and then devote ten chapters

34 Introduction

to unfolding and testing those implications. Part 2 works out the infer-ence from part 1 that reading the Bible really must be a supernatural act, if God’s goals for our reading the Bible are to be reached. Finally, part 3 treats the practical outworking of such a claim in the seemingly ordinary human act of reading— the natural act of reading the Bible supernaturally.

PA R T 1

The Ultimate Goal of

Reading the Bible

. . . that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation.

Introduction to Part 1

The Proposal

Some authors leave marks of their authorship that have nothing to do with the point of their book. That seems to be the case, for example, with the letters of the apostle Paul. He wrote, “I, Paul, write this greet-ing with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thess. 3:17). Again in Galatians 6:11, he wrote, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” In other words, these marks of his authorship are not the great burden of his letters. They are not the vision of God and Christ and the Christian life that moved him to write in the first place. These are sig-natures. And even though signatures are important for authentication, they are not essential to the message.

Other authors develop a style of writing that is so unique that it func-tions as a mark of their own authorship. One thinks of G. K. Chesterton’s use of paradox, or Ernest Hemingway’s staccato sentences. Or Charles Dickens’s florid descriptions. Or Emily Dickinson’s deceptively simple brevity of verse. Of course, these styles are not artificially disconnected from the message or the purpose of the writings. But neither are they the main point. Probably each author would say they are essential to what they are trying to do overall. But I doubt that any of them would say, “The main thing I want people to take away from my work is my style.”

The Meaning of Glory Is the Marker of DivinityBut things are different when we think of God’s relationship to the Bible. He did not sign it with a distinctive signature. And when he inspired it (2 Tim. 3:16), he did not overrule the individual styles of the human

38 Introduction to Part 1

authors so as to create a style of his own— such as a divine diction, or heavenly vocabulary, or Godlike cadence. When the officers of the Pharisees said of Jesus, “No one ever spoke like this man!” they were not referring to his accent or his vocabulary or his oratorical skill. They were referring to the overall nature and impact of the man as he spoke. The Pharisees saw where this was going and said, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?” (John 7:47–48). In other words, they saw that the officers were starting to see something that awakens faith. But it was not a signature or a style.

What is different about the way God authenticates the Bible is that the ground he gives for the Bible’s truth is the same as the center and aim of the Bible’s message. The peculiar glory of God is both the substance and the seal of the story that the Bible tells. It is not as though God speaks in his word, revealing his nature and his purposes, and then must add a separate marker for his divinity— like a signature or a style. His glory, through his word, is the message and his marker.

To be sure, God often “bore witness to the word of his grace, grant-ing signs and wonders” (Acts 14:3). But the signs and wonders were not decisive. They could be denied, distorted, and rejected as completely as his word was— which we know from the life of Judas, and from certain people who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead and then helped his murderers (John 11:45–53). Rather, those miracles were woven to-gether with God’s word into a tapestry of the revelation of the peculiar glory of God. That glory is the ultimate meaning of the tapestry and the decisive mark of its divine reality.

Implications for the Big PictureIf that is true, then we would not be surprised that the Bible calls for a supernatural reading, since seeing divine glory in human words is not your ordinary way of reading a book. But we are getting ahead of our-selves. Is it, in fact, true that the peculiar glory of God is the ultimate meaning of the tapestry of Scripture? Is this what we should aim to see when we read the Bible? That is our first key question in this book. That is what part 1 is about.

The way I would like to put the question is this: What does the Bible itself say is the ultimate goal of reading the Bible? If the Bible makes clear that the goal of reading the Bible is to see what can only be supernatu-rally seen, then the implications for how we read the Bible will be pro-

Introduction to Part 1 39

found. So we ask in part 1 what the Bible tells us is the ultimate goal of reading the Bible. Then, in part 2, we examine the implication that this calls for a supernatural reading of the Bible. And finally, in part 3, we present the implications of this for the ordinary human act of reading.

The ProposalSo, first, what does the Bible tell us is the ultimate goal of reading the Bible? What follows is my proposed answer to this question, with six implications. The aim of part 1 of this book is to see whether this pro-posal and its implications are true.

The Bible itself shows that our ultimate goal in reading the Bible is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation. In other words, each time we pick up the Bible to read, we should intend that reading would lead to this end. The way that we as individuals are caught up into this ultimate aim as we read the Bible becomes clear as we spell out six implications that flow from this proposed answer to our question. When we say that the ultimate goal of reading the Bible is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation, we imply that:

1. the infinite worth and beauty of God are the ultimate value and excellence of the universe;

2. that the supremely authentic and intense worship of God’s worth and beauty is the ultimate aim of all his work and word;

3. that we should always read his word in order to see this supreme worth and beauty;

4. that we should aim in all our seeing to savor his excellence above all things;

5. that we should aim to be transformed by this seeing and savoring into the likeness of his beauty,

6. so that more and more people would be drawn into the worship-ing family of God until the bride of Christ— across all centuries and cultures— is complete in number and beauty.

The following chapters in part 1 focus on the parts of this proposal and put them all to the test: What does the Bible itself say about this proposed goal of reading and its implications?

The great end of God’s works, which is so variously expressed in Scripture, is indeed but one; and this one end is most properly and comprehensively called the glory of God.

JONATHAN EDWARDS

[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will . . . to the praise of his glory.

EPHESIANS 1:11–12

1

Reading the Bible toward

God’s Ultimate Goal

“Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

The Proposal

Our ultimate goal in reading the Bible is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation. This implies:

1. that the infinite worth and beauty of God are the ultimate value and excellence of the universe;

2. that the supremely authentic and intense worship of God’s worth and beauty is the ultimate aim of all his work and word;

3. that we should always read his word in order to see this supreme worth and beauty;

4. that we should aim in all our seeing to savor his excellence above all things;

5. that we should aim to be transformed by this seeing and savoring into the likeness of his beauty,

6. so that more and more people would be drawn into the wor-shiping family of God until the bride of Christ— across all centuries and cultures— is complete in number and beauty.

42 The Ultimate Goal of Reading the Bible

Our proposal elevates the worth and beauty of God to the highest place possible. The ultimate aim of all Bible reading, I argue, is that God’s in-finite worth and beauty would be exalted in everlasting, white-hot wor-ship. There is nothing higher than the worth and beauty of God. That is what the first implication expresses: the infinite worth and beauty of God are the ultimate value and excellence of the universe.

So the first thing we need to do is clarify from Scripture the meaning and then the supremacy of the glory of God. That may seem strange since I didn’t even use the word glory in my proposal or its implications. Nevertheless, the reality is there, and it is the most important one. I used other words for it, namely, the pairs “worth and beauty” and “value and excellence.”

Finding Words for the Glory of God

I recall one day when I was in college, Clyde Kilby, my favorite English teacher, said something to this effect: “One of the greatest tragedies of the fall is that we get tired of familiar glories.” That simple statement sank deep into my consciousness. It made me very sad, because I saw how superficial and unresponsive I was to so many wonders around me. It filled me with a longing not to be like that. I did not want to arrive in the Alps, be filled with wonder for a couple days, but by the end of the week be watching television in the chalet. I lamented my ability to actually yawn during Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Which means I loathe the thought of speaking of the glory of God in a way that is so familiar or stale or clichéd that it wakens no sense of wonder. Of course, I realize that only God can waken true wonder at the glory of God. Kilby was right. The fall has left us deeply dysfunc-tional emotionally. We are excited by trivia and bored by grandeur. We strain out a gnat to admire and swallow a camel of glory unnoticed. Nevertheless, I want to try to use language that helps us see what the glory of God is, if I can. Hence the effort to find other words besides glory— like worth and beauty and value and excellence.

What Is the Glory of God?

My understanding of the glory of God has been deeply shaped by its relationship to the holiness of God. I have in mind the way this relation-ship comes to expression in Isaiah 6:1–3:

Reading the Bible toward God’s Ultimate Goal 43

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Why did the prophet not say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his holiness!”? My suggestion is that the glory of God is the holiness of God put on display. When God’s holiness shines into creation, it is called “God’s glory.”

The Holiness of God

This pushes the question about the meaning of glory back into the ho-liness of God. What is that?1 The root meaning of the Old Testament word for holy (Hebrew chadōsh) is the idea of being separate— different from and separated from something. When applied to God, that means God’s holiness is his separateness from all that is not God. This, then, means he is in a class by himself. And like all good things that are rare, the more rare it is, the more valuable it is. Therefore, God is supremely valuable.

We can see this meaning of God’s holiness in the following two illus-trations. First, when Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it the way God had instructed him, God said, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them” (Num. 20:12; see 27:14). In other words, when Moses distrusted God, he did not treat him as being in a magnificent class of power and trust-worthiness by himself. He treated him as just another common person to be distrusted as unwilling or unable to do what he said. But God is not common. He is not like others. He is holy.

Second, in Isaiah 8:12–13, God says to Isaiah, “Do not call con-spiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” In other words,

1. In what follows I am adapting some things I wrote about holiness in Acting the Miracle: God’s Work and Ours in the Mystery of Sanctification, ed. John Piper and David Mathis (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 29–41, 127–38.


don’t lump God into the same group as all your other fears and dreads. Treat him as an utterly unique fear and dread. Set him apart from all the ordinary fears and dreads.

So here is how I conceive of the holiness of God. God is so sepa-rate, so above, so distinct from all else— all that is not God— that he is self-existent and self-sustaining and self-sufficient. Thus he is infi-nitely complete and full and perfect in himself. He is separate from, and transcendent above, all that is not God. So he was not brought into existence by anything outside himself. He is, therefore, self-existent. He depends on nothing for his ongoing existence and so is self-sustaining. And, therefore, he is utterly self-sufficient. Complete, full, perfect.

The Bible makes plain that this self-existing, self-sustaining, self-sufficient God exists as three divine persons in one divine essence. Thus the Father knows and loves the Son perfectly, completely, infinitely; and the Son knows and loves the Father perfectly, completely, infinitely. And the Holy Spirit is the perfect, complete, infinite expression of the Father’s and the Son’s love of each other. This perfect Trinitarian fel-lowship is essential to the fullness and perfection of God. There is no lack, no deficiency, no need— only perfect fullness and completeness and self-sufficiency.

The Moral Dimension of God’s Holiness

This is the holiness of God: his transcendent completeness and self-suf-ficiency. But there is a missing dimension in that description of holiness. This is the dimension I mentioned above that flows from his absolute rareness— being one of a kind in his perfection. This implies that he is of infinite value. One of the reasons it is crucial to focus on this aspect of God’s holiness is that it helps us understand why the Bible treats God’s holiness not just as transcendent being, but also as transcendent purity or goodness.

In other words, introducing God’s infinite worth helps us conceive of God’s holiness in moral categories. We take this so for granted that we don’t ponder how this can be. How can God be thought of as infinitely good or right or pure, when there are no standards outside of God by which to measure him? Before creation, all there was was God. So, when there is only God, how do we define good? How can holiness mean more than transcendence? How can there be holiness with a moral dimension?


My answer is this: the moral dimension of God’s holiness is that every affection, every thought, and every act of God is consistent with the infinite worth of his transcendent fullness. In other words, holiness is not only the infinite worth of God’s transcendent fullness but also the harmony that exists between the worth of that transcendent fullness and all God’s affections, thoughts, and acts. This harmony of God’s acts with his infinite worth we may call “the beauty of God’s holiness.” Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) uses a quaint phrase to express what I am trying to say. God’s holiness, he says, is that he “works with a becomingness to his own excellency.”2 The old word becomingness means “suitableness, agreeableness, fittingness, harmony.” That’s how an act of God is good or pure or perfect. It is agreeable to— perfectly expressive of, in harmony with— the worth of God.

The Glory of God as the Beauty of God’s Holiness

This brings us back to the relationship between God’s holiness and his glory. We experience the beauty of God’s holiness as the glory of God. As God’s holiness becomes expressive— creating and penetrating the world— we call it the “glory of God.”3 His glory is the streaming out of his holiness for the world to see and admire. Gerhard Kittel’s lengthy article on glory in The Theological Dictionary of the New Tes-tament concludes that God’s glory “denotes divine and heavenly radi-ance . . . that which makes God impressive to man, the force of His self-manifestation.”4

We must constantly remind ourselves that we are speaking of a glory that is ultimately beyond created comparison. “The glory of God” is the way you designate the infinite beauty and the infinite greatness of the person who was there before anything else was there. In other words, it is the worth and beauty and greatness that exists without origin, with-out comparison, without analogy, without being judged or assessed by any external criterion. It is the all-defining, absolute original of worth

2. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), 115.

3. I don’t mean to imply an ironclad limitation of the word glory for the manifestation of the radiance of God’s holiness in the world. For example, Jesus prays, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). But, in general, it holds that the glory of God is the radiance of God— that which shines out from his essence.

4. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd mans, 1964–), 237–38.


and greatness and beauty. All created worth and greatness and beauty come from it, and point to it, but do not comprehensively or adequately reproduce it.

“The glory of God” is a way of saying that there is objective, abso-lute reality to which all human admiration, wonder, awe, veneration, praise, honor, acclaim, and worship are pointing. We were made to find our deepest pleasure in admiring what is infinitely admirable, that is, the glory of God. The glory of God is not the psychological projection of human longing onto reality. On the contrary, inconsolable human longing is the evidence that we were made for God’s glory.

The Supreme Importance of God’s Glory

So when the Bible puts the glory of God on display as the goal of all that God does, this is another way of saying that God’s infinite worth and beauty— or his ultimate value and excellence— is the supreme real-ity in the universe. And that is, in fact, what we find in the Bible. From beginning to end, God tells us and shows us that his ultimate goal in all he does is to communicate his glory for the world to see and for his people to admire and enjoy and praise.

We can show this by pointing to six stages of redemption, beginning in eternity past and moving through creation and history to eternity future. At each of these stages, God says explicitly that his purpose is that his glory be known and praised— that is, gladly admired, expres-sively enjoyed, heartily treasured.

Predestination

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. (Eph. 1:3–6 author’s translation)

Redemption begins in eternity past in the heart of God. He predestines a people “for adoption . . . through Jesus Christ.” Paul tells us the deep-est root and the highest goal of this predestination. He says it is rooted


in “the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:5). And he says its ultimate goal is “the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:6).

How quickly do we pass over that last statement! Whose purpose is being expressed in the words “he predestined us for adoption . . . to the praise of his glorious grace”? It is God’s purpose. And what is that purpose? That we praise. That we praise what? His glory. The peculiar glory of his grace. So from all eternity, God’s plan was to have a fam-ily adopted “through Jesus Christ” who would praise his glory to all eternity. There are few things more important to know than that. Few things will shape more of your life than that— if it penetrates to the center of your soul.

The plan from eternity past was praise for eternity future. The one who planned and the one to be praised are the same: God. And the focus of the praise is his own peculiar glory— which shines most brightly as the glory of grace in the person and work of Jesus.

Creation

I will say to the north, Give up,and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afarand my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,whom I created for my glory,whom I formed and made. (Isa. 43:6–7)

What does “for my glory” mean? It doesn’t mean that the creation will bring God’s glory into being. He has glory already. Creation is overflow. It means that creation will show, or display, or communicate God’s glory. That is why Israel was created. And that is why all of us were created. This is the point of Genesis 1:27–28:

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

If you are very great and you fill the earth with seven billion images of yourself, what is your aim? Your aim is to be known and admired for your greatness. But, of course, since sin entered the world, human beings prefer to live for their own glory, not God’s. That is why God


planned a history of redemption— so that those who put their hope in Christ “might be to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:12). We were cre-ated for God’s glory in our first birth. And through Christ we are born again— made new as new creations— for his glory. Human existence is for the glory of God. That is why he created the world (Ps. 19:1) and the human race (Gen. 1:27–28), and the new race in Christ (Eph. 1:12).

Incarnation

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The incarnation of the eternal Son of God— the Word who “was with God, and . . . was God” (John 1:1)— put God’s glory on display as never before. “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” This was why God sent him, and why he came.

Paul makes this point in Philippians 2:6–11. He describes the incar-nation like this:

Though he was in the form of God . . . he was born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he . . . was obedient to the point of death. . . . Therefore God has highly exalted him . . . so that at the name of Jesus . . . every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (author’s translation)

If you follow the line of thought carefully, what you see is that God exalted Christ because he took on human form and was obedient to death. He was an obedient human; therefore God exalted him. And the aim of that incarnation and consequent exaltation was God’s glorifica-tion. “Therefore God has highly exalted him . . . to the glory of God the Father.” Thus God’s aim in the incarnation of the Son was the display of the peculiar glory of the Father in the incarnation and work of Christ.

Propitiation

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Fa-ther, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27–28)


Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. (John 17:1)

The hour Jesus is speaking of is the hour of his death. He had come to die. “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15). And the reason that needs to be done is that all humans are under the wrath of God. There is no hope for any of us without a propitiation— that is, a sacri-fice that removes the wrath of God. Jesus gives himself as that sacrifice. The result is that “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). There are only two options. Believe and escape God’s wrath. Or disobey the command to believe and remain under the wrath. Jesus said that he came to provide this escape for the glory of the Father. “For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28).

The apostle Paul explained more fully how this aspect of Christ’s death actually works. He wrote in Romans 3:25–26:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be re-ceived by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be righ-teous and the one who declares the one righteous who has faith in Jesus. (author’s translation)

Twice Paul says that God sent Christ as a propitiation “to show God’s righteousness.” Also he says that the purpose is “that he might be righ-teous.” So three times Paul describes the death of Jesus as the vindica-tion of the righteousness of God.

Did Christ die for us or for God? I once preached a sermon at the student gathering called Passion under the title “Did Christ Die for Us or for God?” This passage, Romans 3:25–26, was my text. The answer to the question was that Christ died for God’s glory so that his death might count for our salvation. Why did Christ need to die to show that God is righteous? Indeed, why did he need to die so that God, in declaring sin-ners righteous, might himself be righteous? The answer is given plainly: “because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” God had not punished the sins of the Old Testament saints. He had passed over them. Just like he is still passing over the sins of all who trust Jesus.


But he had just said in Romans 3:23 that these sins belittle the glory of God. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” When a person sins, he is expressing a preference for something other than God. He is saying that God and his way are less satisfying than the way of sin. This is an outrageous insult to God. We are exchanging the glory of God for another glory (Rom. 1:23).

Therefore sinning is a discounting of the value of the glory of God. If God passes over this attitude and this behavior, as though his glory were not of infinite value, he is acting unrighteously. He is agreeing that other things are more to be desired than he is. That is unrighteous. It is a lie.

Nevertheless, that is what God has done. He has passed over former sins. He looks unrighteous. And this, Paul says, is why God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood. In Christ’s death for the glory of God (John 12:27), Jesus showed the world that God does not ignore the belittling of his glory. He does not sweep God-demeaning sins under the rug of the universe. He shows, in the death of Christ, that his glory is of in-finite value. He is not unrighteous; he did not treat his glory as worthless. When he passes over sin for Christ’s sake, all creation can see that this is not because the glory of God is negligible, but because in Christ there has been an infinite display of the worth of the glory of God. “For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28).

Therefore, we know that Christ died for the glory of God. Christ gave himself as a propitiation of the wrath of God to vindicate the righteousness of God in passing over God-belittling sins. And in doing this, Christ himself, in his death and resurrection, became part of the magnificent divine display of the peculiar glory of God.

Sanctification

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Phil. 1:9–11)

We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you. (2 Thess. 1:11–12)


God makes his people holy— sanctifies them— in order to put his own glory on display. He works in us to “fill us with the fruit of righteous-ness.” Why? “To the glory and praise of God.” We can easily overlook in Philippians 1:9–11 that Paul is praying to God. That is, he is asking God to glorify God in the righteousness of his people. This is God’s purpose and God’s doing, not just Paul’s.

Similarly, in 2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, Paul prays that the believers be able to carry through every good work “so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.” Good deeds are for the glory of Christ. And through him for the glory of God. This is what we should expect if God predestined us for his glory, and created us for his glory, and died to save us for his glory. Step by step in the history of redemption, God is working all things for the communication of his glory for the enjoyment of his people.

Consummation

They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. (2 Thess. 1:9–10)

At the last day— the end of history as we know it— Jesus is coming back to this earth. Why? The reason given here is so that he might “be glori-fied in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.” The word glorify does not mean “make glorious.” It means to show as glorious— or to acclaim or praise or exalt or magnify as glorious.

Magnify. Yes, that is a good word for glorify. But it is ambiguous. We do not magnify him the way a microscope magnifies. We magnify him the way a telescope magnifies. A microscope makes tiny things look bigger than they are. Telescopes make huge things, which already look tiny, appear more like what they really are. That is why he is coming back: finally to be shown and seen and enjoyed for who he really is.

For Our White-Hot WorshipSo from eternity to eternity— in predestination, creation, incarnation, propitiation, sanctification, and consummation— the Bible makes ex-plicit that God’s ultimate aim in all things is the revelation and exal-


tation of his glory. It is evident from this that the glory of God is the supreme treasure over all else that exists. That is (as the first implication of the proposal states) the infinite worth and beauty of God are the ultimate value and excellence of the universe.

The proposal I am making about the ultimate goal of reading the Bible, however, is not only that the glory of God— the worth and beauty of God— be revealed and shown to be an exalted glory. The proposal is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in everlasting, white-hot worship. And this implies that the ultimate aim of all God’s work and word is the supremely authentic and intense worship of his worth and beauty. In other words, as I will try to show in the next chapter, the ultimate goal of reading the Bible is not only the world-wide exaltation of God’s worth, but also the white-hot exultation of his people in worship. That joyful exultation in worship is the way God planned the highest exaltation of his glory.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

1 PETER 1:8

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

PSALM 63:1

www.desiringGod.org

Everyone wants to be happy. Our website was born and built for happiness. We want people everywhere to under-stand and embrace the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. We’ve collected more than thirty years of John Piper’s speaking and writ-ing, including translations into more than forty languages. We also provide a daily stream of new written, audio, and video resources to help you find truth, purpose, and satisfaction that never end. And it’s all available free of charge, thanks to the generosity of people who’ve been blessed by the ministry.

If you want more resources for true happiness, or if you want to learn more about our work at Desiring God, we invite you to visit us at www.desiringGod.org.

“A Peculiar Glory is not just another book defending the reliability of the Scrip-tures, although it does do that. It is a reminder that without the internal witness of the Spirit, no amount of evidences will ever lead to faith. And that witness works most directly as we read and understand Scripture itself—as it attests itself to us—particularly as we focus on Jesus and the gospel message. Part apologetics, part church history, part almost lyrical poetry, Piper’s book should inspire every reader back to the Bible, to its core and to the Jesus whom it reveals, who loves us beyond measure despite all that we are and do—more than enough reason for being his disciples.”

Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary

“Never has the church been in greater need of recognizing that Scripture is self-attesting. In this important and timely book, Piper shows what it means not only to conform our thinking but also to submit our worship and our lives as a whole to the self-establishing, self-validating truth and authority of the Bible and, in doing that, to the Christ of the Bible.”

Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology Emeritus, Westminster Theological Seminary

“A Peculiar Glory is a solid theological and exegetical treatment of biblical author-ity, but much more. Besides the standard arguments, Piper has developed (with the help of Jonathan Edwards) a profoundly original yet biblical approach to the ques-tion. It raises the traditional arguments to an exponential level of cogency. Piper says that our most definitive persuasion comes from actually seeing the glory of God in his Word. Theologians have traditionally called this the ‘internal testimony of the Holy Spirit,’ but that theological label does little justice to the experience, the awareness of the glory of God as we meet Jesus in Scripture. That really happens. It is astonishing and powerful. And it explains the difference between an observer’s merely theoretical faith and a true disciple’s delighted embrace of Christ. This doc-trine of Scripture is worthy of the overall emphasis of Piper’s writings, the ‘desire’ for God, ‘Christian hedonism,’ and the ‘dangerous duty of delight.’ Perhaps only Piper could have written this book, and I’m delighted that he has done so.”

John Frame, J. D. Trimble Chair of Systematic Theology and Philosophy, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando

“Piper points us to Scripture—its authority, its historical accuracy, its total truthful-ness, and especially its beauty and power. The Scriptures are beautiful and powerful because they disclose to us, as the Spirit opens our hearts, the loveliness and glory of Jesus Christ. Here we find compelling arguments for the truthfulness of the Scrip-tures and profound meditations on the stunning glory of God. The book captures and expresses the truth of Peter’s words in John 6:68, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’”

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The classic doctrine of Scripture’s self-attestation suffers when it is used as a short-cut method of scoring evidential points or winning an argument without doing any work. But it unfolds its wings and soars to the heavens when handled by somebody who shows that when we read the Bible, we are dealing with God himself in his own holy words. In this book, John Piper throws everything he’s got at the message of how God illuminates the mind and gives firm conviction to the heart through the Bible.”

Fred Sanders, Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University

“It’s easy to take the Bible for granted. We know that it’s the Word of God, but do we really? We know which books belong to it and what distinguishes these texts from ordinary religious literature, right? Of course, we know why we trust Scripture and how to communicate that confidence to others, or do we? Rather than take for granted a high view of Scripture, A Peculiar Glory exposes another generation to the source, authority, reliability, and truthfulness of God’s written word. Dr. Piper has written another important, accessible, and wise account of the things that matter most.”

Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California; author, Calvin on the Christian Life

“There are few questions more important than ‘How do I know the Bible is God’s Word?’ And there are few people who could address it as well as John Piper. Draw-ing from the deep theological well of Jonathan Edwards and with a practical eye for the average believer in the pew, Piper helps us recover the foundational importance of a self-authenticating Bible. This book will revolutionize the way you think about God’s Word.”

Michael J. Kruger, President and Professor of New Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte; author, Canon Revisited

“In this spirited and tightly argued book, pastor-theologian John Piper seeks to ground our confidence in the Bible’s status as the Word of God by directing our attention to the ‘peculiar glory’ that is manifest through its message and across its pages: the glory of the ‘Lion-like majesty’ and the ‘Lamb-like meekness’ that radi-ates in the face of Jesus Christ. Here is a book on the authority and trustworthiness of Scripture that promises to strengthen our faith in the word of God and to expand our capacity for wonder before the glory of God.”

Scott R. Swain, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Academic Dean, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando

“With passion, clarity, a believing respect for Scripture, and a burning desire for God’s glory, John Piper has written a robust defense of the complete trustworthi-ness of Scripture, with debts to Jonathan Edwards and the Westminster Larger Catechism. The language of the book is simple and accessible, but the ideas are deep and its coverage extensive. Scholarship is worn lightly, and the pastoral con-cern informing the work is pervasively evident. Whether the reader is educationally sophisticated or unsophisticated, the argument is that the peculiar glory of God is on view for all to see, if God gives the grace to do so. I hope this work finds a wide readership.”

Graham A. Cole, Dean and Vice President of Education and Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“John Piper has written a robust and pastoral defense of an orthodox doctrine of Scripture. Resisting any who would render well-grounded assurance of Scripture’s truthfulness the preserve of experts and academics, his emphasis upon the self-authenticating and life-transforming glory of God they bear is salutary and faith-affirming. We cannot properly regard Scripture without beholding its author. The greatest strength of Piper’s treatment lies precisely in the fact that his account of Scripture is so absorbed in the beauty of the one who inspired it.”

Alastair Roberts, blogger; participant, Mere Fidelity podcast

“A Peculiar Glory should be quickly established as a modern classic on the Bible. Clearly and methodically laying out the case for why we can have absolute confi-dence in the Bible as God’s own word, it gives to faith both muscle and joy. The day John Owen persuaded me that the Christian Scriptures are self-authenticating was a glorious moment of liberation. I hope and expect that John Piper will bring that same liberation to many with this book.”

Michael Reeves, President, Union School of Theology; author, Delighting in the Trinity; The Unquenchable Flame; and Rejoicing in Christ

A Peculiar Glory

How the Christian Scriptures

Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness

John Piper


®

A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness





Cover image: Josh Dennis

First printing 2016



Scripture references marked NKJV are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Piper, John, 1946–Title: A peculiar glory : how the Christian scriptures reveal their complete truthfulness / John Piper.Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on

print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.Identifiers: LCCN 2015039630 (print) | LCCN 2015038465(ebook) | ISBN 9781433552649 (pdf) | ISBN

9781433552656 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433552663 (epub) | ISBN 9781433552632 (hc)Subjects: LCSH: Bible—Evidences, authority, etc.Classification: LCC BS480 (print) | LCC BS480 .P635 2016 (ebook) | DDC 220.1—dc23LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039630


RRD 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1615 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Bethlehem College and SeminarySacred Book. Sovereign God. Serious Joy.

In God, whose word I praise,in the Lord, whose word I praise,

in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.What can man do to me?

PSALM 56:10–11

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

PART 1

A Place to Stand

“. . . the Lord revealed himself by the word of the Lord”

1 My Story: Held by the Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

PART 2

What Books and Words Make Up the Christian Scriptures?

“. . . from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah”

2 Which Books Make Up the Old Testament? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3 Which Books Make Up the New Testament? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4 Do We Have the Very Words of the Biblical Authors? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

PART 3

What Do the Christian Scriptures Claim for Themselves?

“. . . words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit”

5 The Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

6 Jesus’s Estimate of the Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

7 The Authority of the Apostles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

PART 4

How Can We Know the Christian Scriptures Are True?

“. . . by a sight of its glory”

8 A Shared Concern with Jonathan Edwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

9 What It Is Like to See the Glory of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

10 Pondering Pascal’s Wager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

11 John Calvin and the Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . 181

PART 5

How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?

“. . . the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ”

12 The Glory of God as the Scope of the World and the Word . . . . . . 195

13 Majesty in Meekness: The Peculiar Glory in Jesus Christ . . . . . . . . . 211

14 In the Fulfillment of Prophecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

15 In the Miracles of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

16 In the People the Word Creates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

17 The Place of Historical Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Desiring God Note on Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Introduction

Is the Bible true? I am not asking if there is truth in it, say, the way there is truth in Moby Dick, or Plato’s Republic, or The Lord of the Rings. Aspects of truth can be found virtually everywhere. What I am asking is this: Is the Bible completely true? All of it. Is it so trustworthy in all that it teaches that it can function as the test of all other claims to truth? This book is about how the Bible gives good grounds for the answer yes. The Bible is completely true.

There is a story behind every book. That is certainly true here. This introduction is not that story; my story comes in chapter 1. But I think it will be helpful to signal immediately why glory figures so largely in this book. My seven decades of experience with the Bible have not been mainly a battle to hold on. They have been a blessing of being held on to, namely, by beauty—that is, by glory.

I have stood in front of this window all these years, not to protect it from being broken, or because the owner of the chalet told me to, but because of the glory of the Alps on the other side. I am a captive of the glory of God revealed in Scripture. There are reasons deeper than my experience for focusing on the glory of God. But I cannot deny what I have seen and the power it has had.

Vastly more important than one man’s experience is the reality itself. The glory of God is the ground of faith. It is a solid ground. It is objective, outside ourselves. It is the ground of faith in Christ and in the Christian Scriptures. Faith is not a heroic step through the door of the unknown; it is a humble, happy sight of God’s self-authenticating glory. Consider the following biblical examples of how the glory of God becomes the ground of knowledge. The fourth example is the focus of this book.

12 Introduction

The Heavens

First, how are all human beings supposed to know that God exists and that he is powerful and beneficent and should be glorified and thanked? David, the king of Israel, answered in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (v. 1).

But there are many people who do not see the glory of God when they look at the heavens. Nevertheless, the apostle Paul says that we should see it and that we are without excuse if we don’t, because

what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (Rom. 1:19–21)

God has shown everyone the glory of his power and deity and benefi-cence. If we do not see God’s glory, we are still responsible to see it, treasure it as glorious, and give God thanks. If we don’t, we are “with-out excuse.”

The Son

Second, how did Jesus’s first followers know that he was the Messiah, the Son of the living God? One of those followers answered, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

But there were others who looked at Jesus, saw his miracles, and heard his words but did not see divine glory. To such people Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me?” (John 14:9). He had shown them enough. They were responsible to see the glory—and to know him.

The Gospel

Third, how are people who hear the good news of the Christian gospel supposed to know that it is from God? The apostle Paul answered: by “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image

Introduction 13

of God,” that is, by seeing “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4, 6).

But many people hear “the gospel of the glory of Christ” and do not see divine glory. Not seeing the divine glory of Christ in the gospel is blameworthy. It is not an innocent blindness, but a culpable love of darkness. “They are darkened in their understanding . . . due to their hardness of heart” (Eph. 4:18). They are “perishing, because they re-fused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). The gospel of the glory of Christ is enough. To hear it faithfully and fully presented is to be responsible to see divine glory.

The Scriptures

Fourth, how are we to know that the Christian Scriptures are the word of God? The argument of this book is that the answer to this question is the same as the answer to the three preceding questions. In and through the Scriptures we see the glory of God. What the apostles of Jesus saw face-to-face they impart to us through their words. “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

The glory that they saw in Christ, we can see through their words. The human words of Scripture are seen to be divine the way the human man Jesus was seen to be divine. Not all saw it. But the glory was there. And it is here, in the Scriptures.

Three Sentences behind This Book

This is not a new approach to the question of the truth of Scripture. In fact, one could understand this book as an extended meditation on three sentences.

One of those sentences is from the Westminster Larger Catechism. Question 4 asks, “How doth it appear that the scriptures are the word of God?” One of the answers is: “The scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God, by . . . the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.” This book is an effort to press into that answer as deeply as I can.

A second sentence that gave rise to this book is from Jonathan

14 Introduction

Edwards. Edwards cared deeply about the Native Americans of New England in the 1740s. He wrestled with how they could have a well-grounded faith in the truth of Christianity if they were unable to follow complex historical arguments.

Miserable is the condition of the Houssatunnuck Indians and others, who have lately manifested a desire to be instructed in Christianity, if they can come at no evidence of the truth of Christianity, sufficient to induce them to sell all for Christ, in any other way but this [path of historical reasoning].1

His answer was found in 2 Corinthians 4:4–6, which we cited above. He put it like this:

The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory. . . . Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel, by the internal evidences of it, in the way that has been spoken, viz. by a sight of its glory; ’tis impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all.2

This book is an effort to apply Edwards’s concern and his reasoning to the whole of the Scriptures. Can we say, “The mind ascends to the truth of the [Scriptures] but by one step, and that is its divine glory”?

The third sentence at the root of this book is Paul’s word from Ro-mans 4: Abraham “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:20–21). Trusting God’s word glorifies God. Why is that true? It is true because trusting a person calls attention to the person’s trustworthiness. But that is true only if the trust is warranted. Groundless trust does not honor the person trusted. If you trust me with your money when you don’t know me or have any good reason, based on my character, to believe I won’t steal it, you are not showing me to be trustworthy; you are showing yourself to be a fool. Only warranted trust glorifies the one trusted.

1 Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 304.2 Ibid., 299, 303.

Introduction 15

Which means that the task I have set myself in this book is to answer the question: What warrant—what good foundation—in the Christian Scriptures provides a well-grounded trust? What basis of belief in the Scriptures as the word of God will, in fact, honor God?

The Glory of the God Who Speaks

Another way to describe what I am aiming at is to distinguish the ar-gument for our confidence in Scripture from the argument that simply says, “We believe the Scriptures because God says they are his word, and God should be believed.” My problem with this sentence is not that it is false but that it is ambiguous.

There are false prophets who say, “Thus says the Lord.” Yet, “I have not sent them, declares the Lord, but they are prophesying falsely in my name” (Jer. 27:15). What this implies is that when God says, “Thus says the Lord,” we are obliged to believe it not merely because that’s what the word says, but because the glory of the speaker and what he says is manifestly divine. My argument is that the glory of God in and through the Scriptures is a real, objective, self-authenticating reality. Christian faith is not a leap in the dark. It is not a guess or a wager. God is not honored if he is chosen by the flip of a coin. A leap into the unknown is no honor to one who has made himself known.

In the End We Know by Sight, Not Inference

The argument of this book is that the final step of certainty concern-ing the Scriptures is the step of sight, not inference. The pathway that leads to sight may involve much empirical observation, and historical awareness, and rational thought (see chapter 17). But the end we are seeking is not a probable inference from historical reasoning but a full assurance that we have seen the glory of God. Thus, at the end of all human means, the simplest preliterate person and the most educated scholar come to a saving knowledge of the truth of Scripture in the same way: by a sight of its glory.

Liberating and Devastating

Of course, this is both liberating and devastating. It is liberating because it means the sweetness of well-grounded, God-honoring confidence in

16 Introduction

Scripture is not reserved for scholars but is available for all who have eyes to see.

And it is devastating because no human being can see this glory with-out God’s help. This is not because we are helpless victims of blindness but because we are lovers of blindness. “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). We are not chained in a dark cell, longing to see the sunshine of God’s glory. We love the cell, because sin and Satan have deceived us into seeing the drawings on the wall as the true glory and the source of greatest pleasure. Our prison cell of darkness is not the bondage of external constraint but of internal preference. We have exchanged the glory of God for images (Rom. 1:23). We love them. That is our blindness.

What must happen is described by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:6. The God who created light in the beginning must shine into our dark cell to reveal himself. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The answer to our dark-ness is the shining of divine glory into our hearts by means of the light of knowledge—the knowledge mediated by God’s inspired Scripture. That is what this book is about.

This does not mean that there is nothing we can do in our quest to see the self-authenticating glory of God in Scripture. Jesus gave the apostle Paul an impossible mission. He sent Paul “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). If it is hopeful for the apostle to move toward the blind, then it is hopeful for the blind to move toward the apostle. Blind or seeing, that is what I hope you will do with me in this book.

The Peculiar Glory

Thus the main burden of this book is parts 4 and 5 (chapters 8–17). In part 4, I probe into what really happens in our experience when we see the glory of God in Scripture; and I try to show how this authen-ticates the Scripture as God’s life-giving, infallible word. In part 5, I argue that the way the Scriptures convince us is by the revelation of a peculiar glory. In other words, the power of Scripture to warrant

Introduction 17

well-grounded trust is not by generic glory. Not, as it were, by mere dazzling. Not by simply boggling the mind with supernatural other-ness. Rather, what we see as inescapably divine is a peculiar glory. And at the center of this peculiar glory is the utterly unique glory of Jesus Christ. This is the heart of the book.

The peculiar glory of God, as he reveals it in the Scriptures, is the way his majesty is expressed through his meekness. I call this a paradox-ical juxtaposition of seemingly opposite traits. Jonathan Edwards called it “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” This pattern of God’s self-revelation is his lion-like majesty together with his lamb-like meekness. God magnifies his greatness by making himself the supreme treasure of our hearts, even at great cost to himself (Rom. 8:32), and so serving us in the very act of exalting his glory. This peculiar brightness shines through the whole Bible and comes to its most beautiful radiance in the person and work of Jesus Christ, dying and rising for sinners.

I will argue that there is in every human being a “knowledge” of this God—this glory. There is a built-in template that is shaped for this peculiar communication of God’s glory. When God opens our eyes (2 Cor. 4:6) and grants us the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 2:25), through the Scriptures (1 Sam. 3:21), we know that we have met ul-timate reality.

By the instrument of the Scriptures, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, God cuts away the corrosion from the template of his glory. Miracu-lously we are thus conformed to the peculiar shape of God’s glory. Where we saw only foolishness before, now we see the glory of majesty in meekness, and strength in suffering, and the wealth of God’s glory in the depth of his giving—that is, in the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

Preliminary Questions

Before we direct our full attention to the question of how we know that the Christian Scriptures are the word of God, we must ask: What specific Scriptures are we talking about? Are we talking about the Apoc-rypha that is contained in the Roman Catholic Bible? Which books ac-tually are parts of the Christian Bible? And what about the handwritten transmission of the Bible during three thousand years until the printing

18 Introduction

press was invented in 1450? Do we actually have the original words that the authors wrote? Those are the questions we deal with in part 1.

Closer to the heart of the matter, but still preliminary, is the ques-tion, What do the Scriptures claim for themselves? This question is preliminary because my argument is not that we believe the Scriptures because they claim to be God’s word. But it is closer to the heart of the matter, because these claims are, in fact, essential threads in the fabric of the glory-revealing meaning of Scripture. Therefore, they are part of the panorama of glory that gives a well-grounded foundation to our confidence that the Scriptures are the totally true and infallible word of God. This is the focus of part 3.

Not a Masterpiece, but a Window

Part 1 is the story of my life with the Bible, from my childhood to the present. It has at least two purposes. One is to put all my cards on the table so that you know exactly where I stand as I try to deal honestly with the Bible. The other purpose is to draw attention to the way the Bible does its work in a person’s life. I point out that I did not simply hold a view of the Bible for seven decades. I was held by a view through the Bible.

As I said at the beginning, the Bible has not been for me like a masterpiece hanging on the wall of an Alpine chalet but rather like a window in the wall of the chalet, with the Alps on the other side. In other words, I have been a Christian all these years not because I had the courage to hold on to an embattled view of Scripture, but because I have been held happily captive by the beauty of God and his ways that I see through the Scriptures.

If your heart says, How can this be? my answer is, Come and see.

PA R T 1

A Place to Stand

“. . . the Lord revealed himself by

the word of the Lord”

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

JUDE 24–25

1

My Story: Held by the Bible

Everyone stands somewhere, even if we sometimes don’t know where we stand. This is true geographically and theologically. You might be blindfolded, and driven around town in a car for an hour, and then let out. You would be standing somewhere but may not know where.

I did this with my wife on her fortieth birthday so she would not know where I was taking her. In her case, she is simply too savvy in the city and could tell by sounds and turns where we were. It didn’t work. But for the sake of the illustration, you can see what I mean: you can be standing somewhere and not know where you are standing.

That is true theologically also. Everyone is standing somewhere. I don’t mean everyone is dug in somewhere. You might be ready to leave your geographic spot as soon as the blindfold comes off. And the same is true of your theological position. The blindfold I have in mind may be as simple as never having seriously thought about where you’re stand-ing. In other words, we may not know where we stand because we’ve never given it any attention.

But there we are, nonetheless, standing somewhere.

Standing in the Sway of What We Don’t Know?

This is true about the Bible. We all stand somewhere in relation to the Bible. A few of us grew up in a Bible-believing home, and we came to believe and love the Bible for ourselves. We stand on it. We believe what

22 A Place to Stand

it says is true, and we try to bring our lives into harmony with it. But that is not the rule.

My university professors in Germany stood somewhere in relation to the Bible—and it was not where I stood. You may once have stood where I stand and walked away. You may have been badly hurt by people who say they believe the Bible. Or you may have asked too many questions and become disillusioned with the anti-intellectual responses of “Bible-believing” Christians. Or you may be standing just around the corner from where I stand, and all you can see are shadows, but they are very attractive. Or you have just walked through a crisis that made everything feel unstable, and you are grasping for something firm and durable.

Some of you grew up in a home where the Bible was totally absent. You saw it only in the news when people were sworn into office with their hand on it. To this day it may be as absent to your mind as a math-ematical equation you have never heard of. But that equation might be true. It might describe the forces of gravity that keep us on the ground. Or it might represent the interaction of oxygen and carbon dioxide that keeps you alive. Or it might signify the thrust needed from a jet engine to keep your plane in the air. In other words, you may be standing in the sway of a life-giving equation and not even know it exists.

It may be that way with the Bible too. It may describe a reality that totally encompasses you without your knowing it. It may describe a power that holds you in being. It may present a path of truth and whole-ness and joy, some of which you have intuited and some of which you haven’t. Without knowing it, you may enjoy some of that path, and other parts you may hate. But one thing is sure: all of us stand some-where in relation to the Bible.

The Bible Is More Like a Letter Than an Equation

Likening the Bible to a mathematical equation is not strikingly pro-found. You can live your whole life with relative happiness, and then die, without regretting that you never knew a single one of those equa-tions. Even though they describe how you walk and breathe and fly, knowing the particular formula doesn’t matter.

The Bible isn’t like that. And the main reason is that the Bible is more like a letter from the Creator of the universe than it is a record of

My Story: Held by the Bible 23

the laws of nature. The record of natural laws is impersonal. But a letter from the Creator is personal. The main difference between a personal letter and a textbook on physics is that the letter is designed to connect you to the heart and mind of the writer, and the textbook is not. This is the great divide on how we approach the Bible. Does it express the heart and mind of a divine person, or is it merely a record of human religious experience?

This is one of the biggest questions about where we stand: Do we stand consciously in a personal universe or an impersonal one? Do I stand in the awareness that the main thing about the universe is that I am a person created by a Person? Do I live in a universe created by a Person who has purposes and plans for me and for the universe? Or do I stand in an impersonal universe? Does the world have no personal creator or governor? Do I stand as the product only of impersonal material forces?

Cover to cover, the Bible describes the world as personal. A personal God created the world. He created human beings in his own image to manage the world as his stewards.

God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.” (Gen. 1:27–28)

The least this means is that we are personal the way God is. We are personal in a way that the animals are not. In our personhood, the Bible says, we are meant to image forth the kind of person God is. That is what images are for. Only these images are living persons, not statues. Fill the earth with God-imaging persons—according to the Bible, that is human destiny. “Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!” (Ps. 72:19).

How Will the Creator Communicate?

This raises the question of whether and how the Creator aims to com-municate with the persons he created in his image. Everyone stands

24 A Place to Stand

somewhere in relation to that question. Not to think about it is a standing place. To say, “No, he doesn’t,” is a standing place. To say, “He does, through all religions,” is a standing place. And to say, “Yes, uniquely and infallibly through the Christian Scriptures, the Bible,” that too is a standing place.

And there are reasons why all of us are standing where we are. Some of those reasons are conscious, and some are not. You may have thought about it and concluded: I just can’t know for sure. Or you may have thought and concluded: I simply don’t approve of the God of the Bible and the way he tells people to live. Or you may have read it and seen so much moral and spiritual beauty in Jesus that you concluded: I can’t deny what I have seen—this is real.

I’m in that last category.So let me clarify where I stand, so we can all be clear from the outset,

and you can know what you are dealing with in this book. Then we can raise this question: Why should we believe this?

My Standing Place: Home

I grew up in a home where the Bible was assumed to be the infallible word of God. Whether they succeeded or failed, my parents tried to submit to the authority of the Bible. I think they succeeded pretty well. That’s probably one reason I never rebelled against them. They tried to form their ideas about God and man and sin and salvation from the Bible. They tried to bring their attitudes and emotions in line with the Bible. And they tried to form their behaviors by the Bible.

That’s what you do, if you believe it is a reliable communication from your Creator. In spite of blind spots, and in spite of what the Bible calls “indwelling sin” (Rom. 7:17, 20), I think my parents funda-mentally succeeded. The God they worshiped, the Savior they trusted, the joy they experienced, and the love they showed were, I believe, truly the God, the Savior, the joy, and the love of the Bible. It was all real.

There was no claim to perfection, either in knowledge of God or responses to that knowledge. They knew what the Bible itself taught about our knowledge: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been


fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). We can know truly, but we cannot know comprehensively or flawlessly while we remain sinners. The day will come when Jesus will return to earth, and the followers of Jesus will be changed. We will sin no more. And even though we will not become omniscient, we will cease to believe wrong things (1 Cor. 13:12).

But for now, we are fallible people, trying to submit as fully as we can to an infallible Book inspired by God. That is what my parents believed and what I grew up believing. As I moved through twenty-two years of formal education, the challenges to this view of the Bible were many and constant. They are many and constant today. And I assume there will be many of them until Jesus comes, because one of the most prominent writers of the Bible predicted it:

The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Tim. 4:3–4)

Those times were already happening when the Bible was written. And there is good reason to believe that as the end of the world approaches (a time of which no one can predict), the Bible will be more embattled than ever.

So, as I moved through college in Illinois, and seminary in Cali-fornia, and graduate school in Germany, I was not surprised that the objections to this view of the Bible intensified at every stage. Can you really continue to hold onto the view of your youth even though you are in graduate school in Germany, where virtually no one shares your view—neither students nor professors?

Not So Much Holding a View as Being Held

It may sound strange, but “holding onto my view” was never the way I experienced it—at least not as I can remember. It felt more like my view of the Bible was holding onto me. Or, as I believe today, God was hold-ing onto me by clarifying and brightening and deepening my view of him in the Bible. I believe that’s why the view I received from my parents remained more compelling than any competing view all along the way.

I looked at many competing views of the Bible. I had to. That’s

26 A Place to Stand

what liberal arts education does. It exposes you to great alternative worldviews—as we like to call them. And in seminary, the challenges became more focused on the historicity and formation and preservation of the Bible itself. Then in graduate school, I didn’t just read about those views; I had seminars and hallway discussions with the people who held those views and taught them and wrote books about them. In other words, the challenges to my view of the Bible moved from worldview challenges, to historical-critical challenges, to personal challenges.

But simultaneously my view itself was being clarified, brightened, and deepened. It never felt as if the bad guys ganged up to pommel my poor, adolescent, Sunday-school view of the Bible. At every point, it felt like the view grew to be a match for all comers.

The View: Clarified, Brightened, Deepened

Now I need to be careful here, or I am going to create the wrong im-pression. What I just wrote could sound very intellectual and could give the impression that what was really happening is that I was becoming smarter. I suppose I was learning more and more about presupposi-tions, and about the logical flaws of certain arguments, and about the misuse of historical data. But that was not decisive. I’m not talking about becoming smarter when I say that my view was being clarified, and brightened, and deepened.

What I mean can be best understood if you take the word view not just in an intellectual sense (as in viewpoint), but in the aesthetic sense—as in vista, or sight, or landscape. I never recall merely having a view of the Bible, as if it was a book on the table, and I viewed it this way and not that way, nor did I see it as a set of ideas that I could view this way or that way.

Not a Painting on the Wall, but a Window

The Bible was never like a masterpiece hanging in a museum that I viewed this way and that. Rather, it was like a window. Or like binocu-lars. My view of the Bible was always a view through the Bible. So when I say that, all along the way, my view was getting clearer and brighter and deeper, I mean the reality seen through it was getting clearer and brighter and deeper. Clearer as the edges of things became less fuzzy,


and I could see how things fit together rather than just smudging into each other. Brighter as the beauty and impact of the whole message was more and more attractive. And deeper in the sense of depth per-spective—I suppose photographers would say “depth of field.” Things stretched off into eternity with breathtaking implications—in both di-rections past and future. You could sum this up with the phrase the glory of God. That’s what I was seeing.

That is what was changing to meet the challenges. This was not an intellectual effort. Seeing is not an effort the way thinking is. It happens. You may need to exert yourself to walk up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, but when you get there, seeing is not work. You may need to travel to the Alps or the Himalayas, but when you get there, seeing is not an effort. It is given to you.

I did my walking and my traveling. That’s what education is. But I did not make myself see. And that is why I say it is not as though I was holding onto my view of the Bible, but rather that the view was holding onto me. Or God was holding onto me by making the view supremely compelling. If you are standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, or rafting down the Colorado River inside the canyon (as I did in the summer of 2012), it is proper to say you are held by the view, the sight, the vista. That is what the Bible was doing for me. It was holding me; I was not holding it.

When the Clouds Part

Here’s an analogy—a living parable—for how it worked.One of those seven days rafting 190 miles down the Colorado River

through the Grand Canyon, it began to rain. That didn’t matter much, since we were already wet from the rapids. We were dressed for it. The frustrating part was that it was lunchtime, and there are only so many small beaches where you can tie up and eat.

So we tied up and set up the tables and put up a large umbrella to keep the rain off our peanut butter sandwiches. But the rain was so hard and the wind so strong that the umbrella was useless, and we had to eat soggy sandwiches. We laughed about it, but it was unpleasant and frustrating. For a moment, my “view” was not so clear, and bright, and deep. Maybe being in the Grand Canyon is not so compelling after

28 A Place to Stand

all. Maybe a dry seat in the hotel back in Las Vegas would be more compelling.

Little did we know what was about to happen. We boarded our two large, blue, motor-driven rafts and set out down river. The rain stopped and the sky started to clear, when suddenly, almost simultaneously, doz-ens of waterfalls burst out into the river in front of and behind us from the walls of the canyon. Some of these were gigantic, falling a thousand feet. The water coming out of the gorges was red. The guide explained what had happened.

He said that during a hard rain the water in the gorges comes down from the steep sides and builds and builds until it is a rushing river—a rain-made temporary river in a place where it almost never rains—doz-ens of temporary rivers looking for an outlet. When the water reaches a certain force, it breaks out over the precipice into the canyon as a waterfall. And the red color is owing to the soil it picked up on the way. It was stunning.

Then he said, we might not see the likes of this in the canyon for another hundred years.

That is a parable of how God held onto me by my view of the Bible—that is, my view through the Bible. Just when the view started to seem foggy and rainy and frustrating, and other views of life started to seem more attractive, God would clear the skies and cause even the rain to serve the irresistibly beautiful vista of his glory. He never let any other view of reality outshine the view of the Bible.

So, yes, I still hold the basic view that my parents did and that the Christian church has held through its whole history until the street-lights of the Enlightenment began blinding people to the stars and luring people away from the brightness of God’s glory. That is where I still stand—on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and at the foot of the Himalayas, and sometimes rafting right down through the depths of the glory.

More specifically, then, what kind of binoculars is the Bible? What kind of window onto the glory of God is this? Let me move toward a precise description of the kind of book the Bible is by taking you from my days of formal education to where I am today in relation to the church and school and web ministry that I have served.


Teaching College Students as the Vista Expands

When I was twenty-eight, I found my first real job. With my wife and son, I came home from Germany in 1974 and moved straight to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I began to teach biblical studies at Bethel Col-lege (now Bethel University). I couldn’t believe they were paying me to study and teach the Bible. I would have done it for free, except that I had a wife and a child to support. So the $10,500 annual salary was a needed bonus to the privilege.

I taught New Testament introduction, Greek, and individual New Testament book studies. I loved it. To this day, few things are more gratifying to me than looking at the Bible—and through the Bible—long enough to see what is really there and then helping others see it for themselves. I had done it for Sunday school classes all through seminary and graduate school. Now I was doing it for college students. It was deeply satisfying.

Some of my energy was devoted to defining how the view of my parents—my view—related to tough questions such as why there are different accounts of the same event in the four Gospels, especially Matthew, Mark, and Luke (called the Synoptic Gospels). So I wrote a short paper early in my time at Bethel called “How are the Synoptics without Error?”1 It became a position paper for the Bible faculty for the years I was there.

But, mostly, my energies were devoted to looking through the in-errant window, not at the Bible’s “inerrancy” itself. I loved pushing students’ noses against the window pane of the first epistle of John, and the first epistle of Peter, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and the Gospel of Luke, and doing all I could, with prayer and modeling and asking good questions, to help them see the glory of this Christ-dominated landscape.

The effect of this Bible-saturated life was that a vision of God’s greatness and glory and centrality was becoming more clear and bright and deep. I found that one aspect of this glory, namely, God’s sover-eignty over all things, was relentlessly controversial in all my classes. No matter the text or the subject of the class, that issue would come

1 Available at http:// www .desiringgod .org /articles /how -are -the -synoptics -without -error.

30 A Place to Stand

up. Students would see it shining in the distance (some might have said lurking or prowling). And not a few of them did not like what they saw.

This did not surprise me, but it did trouble me. I had been in their shoes all through my own college days. And I had gone to seminary as a person who was happy to put limits on God’s sovereignty by my self-determining will (which I liked to call “free will”). This is the air we breathe in America, and it is the default assumption of the human heart. By nature and culture, we resonate with William Earnest Henley’s “Invictus”:

It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,I am the captain of my soul.

One of the reasons this feels so obvious is that moral accountability seems impossible without ultimate human self-determination. And if anything is clear in the Bible, it is that human beings are morally ac-countable to God. I had never really considered whether this assump-tion—that moral responsibility requires human autonomy—was in the Bible. I just assumed it was. But I did have to admit that defending my own volitional supremacy did not produce a robust experience of worship.

Only in seminary was I able to see that one of the highest, reddest, most magnificent of all the waterfalls in the canyon of God’s glory was the absolute sovereignty of God. I wrote on my final exam in a course on systematic theology, “Romans 9 is like a tiger going around devour-ing free-willers like me.” The battle had been painful, and there were tears along the way. But now the fight was over. What had seemed like an assault on my freedom became the ground of my hope.2

Romans 9 and the Call to the Pastorate

So I knew what these students were feeling. What was troubling is that when I tried to show them what I had found in Romans 9, for example,

2 If any reader would like to see how I worked all this out, one place to look would be John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2012), chaps. 2, 4, 5.


many of them were not persuaded. They argued that it simply does not mean what Piper says it means. And they had books and teachers to back them up.

Eventually, when my time for a sabbatical came, I took it from the spring of 1979 till January 1980 to write the most thorough treatment of Romans 9:1–23 that I was capable of. I put my eye to those twenty-three verses and looked as hard as I could, day and night, for those months. The book was published as The Justification of God in 1983.3 I was writing it first for my own conscience’s sake and then for my students. Was I really seeing what is there? I inherited from my parents not only a high view of the Bible but also a sober view of my sinfulness and fallibility. I was not without error. The Bible was. So I was writing the book to test what I saw in Romans 9.

But something utterly unexpected happened. As I worked on Ro-mans 9 day after day for months, the vision of God’s magisterial sover-eignty not only became more and more clear, but it took hold of me in a way I had never planned.

When I was a child and a teenager, folks would ask me, “Are you going to be a preacher like your dad?” My father was a traveling evan-gelist—a great preacher in my estimation, and I respected and loved him deeply. I still do. But I would always answer no. The simple reason was that I couldn’t speak in front of a group without freezing up. It was a horrible condition for an adolescent. And to this day, I do not make light of it. God lifted that burden in part when I was in college and seminary. I was able to teach. But teaching seemed very different from preaching.

But during that sabbatical, the God of Romans 9 seemed to be say-ing through the window of his word: “I will be proclaimed, not just analyzed. I will be heralded, not just studied and explained.” And little by little there grew in me a desire—totally unexpected—to leave aca-demia and preach this great and glorious God of Romans 9.

I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to put to the test whether preaching the whole counsel of God—with a vision of God that many students found offensive—could grow and sustain and nurture and delight and guide and empower a church with people from all age

3 John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1983).

32 A Place to Stand

ranges and different educational and ethnic backgrounds. On the one hand, this felt like a challenge to exalt the greatness of God, but on the other hand, it felt like a challenge to the authority and truthfulness of the Bible.

Could I preach the God of the Bible as he really was in the text? Could all the things the Bible says about God and about man and sal-vation and holiness and suffering really be heralded with unvarnished clarity so that a people would be built up, and souls would be saved, and missions would be advanced, and justice would roll down like riv-ers, and joy would abound even in sorrow?

Looking through the Book from behind the Pulpit

I could not resist this call. It became overwhelming on the night of October 14, 1979. That next morning my wife said she had seen it coming and would happily support the move. I resigned my teaching post and accepted the call to be the preaching pastor at Bethlehem Bap-tist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I served for thirty-three years until the spring of 2013.

My answer to the question Can the God of Romans 9, with his ab-solute sovereignty over all things, including salvation and suffering, be preached without compromise for the growth and strength and mission of the church? is yes. For thirty-three years, week in and week out, I gazed at the words of Scripture until I saw through them to the Reality and then preached what I saw. I do not recall a single weekend when I was not excited to preach what God had shown me. Sometimes this was controversial. But I tried to be so faithful to the text of the Bible, and so transparent about how I saw what I saw, that the people would trust me. I did not want them to depend on my authority but on God’s authority in the Bible. I resonated with the apostle Paul when he said,

My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:4–5)

In one sense, I viewed my whole ministry as a demonstration of the truth and authority of God’s word, preached with as much clarity and


brightness and depth as I was able, with God’s help. Would my “view” of the Bible that I inherited from my parents prove as compelling to oth-ers as it was to me? The question was not mainly, Would they come to “hold” my view? The question was, Would the view of God’s glory in the Scriptures hold them as it has held me? That was the test. History, and finally eternity, will answer.

An Eldership of One Mind on the Whole Counsel of God

When I came to Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1980, there was a very broad affirmation of faith, doctrinally speaking. I am very much in favor of a broad affirmation of faith as a qualification for membership in the local church. I think that’s right. The door into the local body of believers, it seems to me, should be roughly the same size as the door into the universal body of believers.

But the door into the eldership—that is, the door into the council that will give an account to God for the souls of the flock as teachers and leaders (Heb. 13:17; 1 Tim. 3:2; 5:17)—should be much narrower. When Paul addresses the elders of the church, his stress is that they not shrink back from teaching anything in God’s counsel, but give the flock the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:20, 27–28). That implies that elders must make an effort to find and clarify and preserve this whole counsel of God.

Little by little through the years at Bethlehem, I was preaching and teaching and leading in such a way that I hoped would lead the elders to have one mind about what this whole counsel looked like. After about fifteen years, I thought we were ready to work toward putting our uni-fied grasp of God’s word into a document we could all agree on. This affirmation of faith then would become the criteria, under Scripture, of what the elders would be expected to believe and teach.

The aim, of course, was that the people would joyfully see this as truth from the Bible and gladly embrace it. But since people were join-ing the church all the time at different levels of biblical understanding, and since people did not always agree with everything in the document, we did not make this affirmation of faith a criterion for membership. It represented where the elders would try to lead the people, not where people had to be in order to join the church.

34 A Place to Stand

In other words, the aim was that the elders would define a place to stand—including a place to stand regarding the nature of the Bible. That is section 1 in the document. This process of refining what has become the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith (now embraced also by Bethlehem College and Seminary, and the Treasuring Christ Together network of churches, and the ministry of desiringGod.org) took several years.

I did the first draft and then sent the document to a dozen respected leaders outside Bethlehem for feedback, to be sure it avoided eccentrici-ties. I wanted it to be a fresh statement of biblical truth, exalting the glory of God, and interwoven with the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are satisfied in him. But I did not want it to be idiosyncratic or quirky or novel. We do not think God has shown us truth that no one else has seen. We believe it is wise and humble to aim at reclaiming the glory of long-held biblical truth rather than claiming new discoveries.

The elders worked on it for a long time, and we were in no rush. We were working for the generations to come, not just for ourselves. We hoped to put in place an affirmation of faith that God might be pleased to use for decades to protect and ignite the truth in the institutions and personal lives that had grown up at the church. So twenty years after my arrival, the elders unanimously settled on the wording of the affirma-tion, and the church voted that from that time on all the elders would embrace this truth as the core of what we would preach and teach.

Section 1 concerns the Scriptures—the subject matter of this book. This is where we stand. This is the standing place that defines this book. This is the view we “hold.” But more importantly, it is the nature of the window onto the vista of God’s glory that has held us—held me for over sixty years.

1. Scripture, the Word of God Written

1.1 We believe that the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.

1.2 We believe that God’s intentions, revealed in the Bible, are the su-preme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and


what is right. In matters not addressed by the Bible, what is true and right is assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture.

1.3 We believe God’s intentions are revealed through the intentions of inspired human authors, even when the authors’ intention was to express divine meaning of which they were not fully aware, as, for example, in the case of some Old Testament prophecies. Thus the meaning of Biblical texts is a fixed historical reality, rooted in the historical, unchangeable intentions of its divine and human au-thors. However, while meaning does not change, the application of that meaning may change in various situations. Nevertheless it is not legitimate to infer a meaning from a Biblical text that is not demonstrably carried by the words which God inspired.

1.4 Therefore, the process of discovering the intention of God in the Bible (which is its fullest meaning) is a humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture what the human authors intended to communicate. Limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure Biblical texts. Therefore the work of the Holy Spirit is essential for right understanding of the Bible, and prayer for His assistance belongs to a proper effort to understand and apply God’s word.

Here I Stand

This is where I stand with hope and joy and love. This is the window of the Word through which the vision of God has exerted its compelling power. I do not merely hold a view of Scripture. I am held. The glory of God shining through his Word has been an irresistible treasure. Noth-ing in this world comes close to the beauty and the value of God and his ways and his grace.

After almost seven decades of seeing and savoring the glory of God in Scripture, the doxology of Jude 24–25 is very personal:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to pres-ent you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

36 A Place to Stand

In my case—and I think it is what Jude intends—the “glory, majesty, dominion, and authority” of God are ascribed to him here because this is what, in fact, did the keeping. He has kept me—held me—by his glory by revealing his glory to my heart year after year so that other glories would not lure me away. This he has done through his word. For me, the glory of God and the word of God are inseparable. I have no sure sight of God’s glory except through his word. The word mediates the glory, and the glory confirms the word.

We turn now to a more important story than my own—the story of how the Bible came to be and how it has confirmed its truth and author-ity for two thousand years. How do we know what the Bible is—which books are in it? How do we know it’s true? How has the Bible provided a well-grounded faith that the Bible itself is the word of God?

This wonderful story of God’s work in the world—to create his written word and to build his church by his word—is woven together with my story. It is also woven together with yours. Everyone will be drawn into this story one way or the other. It could not be otherwise, since we are not dealing with a tribal deity and a provincial book. We are dealing with the Creator of the universe and a book that he inspired as a gift for all the peoples of the world. I invite you to come with me. I know of no greater quest than this: Is the Bible God’s word? Are the Christian Scriptures true? How do we know?

www.desiringGod.org

Everyone wants to be happy. Our website was born and built for happiness. We want people everywhere to under-stand and embrace the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. We’ve collected more than thirty years of John Piper’s speaking and writ-ing, including translations into more than forty languages. We also provide a daily stream of new written, audio, and video resources to help you find truth, purpose, and satisfaction that never end. And it’s all available free of charge, thanks to the generosity of people who’ve been blessed by the ministry.

If you want more resources for true happiness, or if you want to learn more about our work at Desiring God, we invite you to visit us at www.desiringGod.org.

www.desiringGod.org/labs

Want to go deeper in your own Bible reading after reading this book? Look at the Book is John Piper’s online method for teaching the Bible. It’s an ongoing series of short videos in which the camera is on the text, not the teacher. You will hear John’s voice and watch his pen underline, circle, make connections, and scribble notes — all to help you learn to read God’s word for yourself.

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Miguel Núñez,Miguel Núñez, Senior Pastor, International Baptist Church of Santo Domingo; President and Founder, Wisdom and Integrity Ministries “John Piper writes with the expository