Ask Pastor John

Christ’s advocacy is the ongoing presentation of our union with him established at the cross through faith by the Spirit.

God wills a new humility and submission and faith through our sin and the pain of loss.

The prohibition of eating pork is a refusal to submit to God’s plan for the fulfillment of the Law in Jesus.

The fullness of our joy in God will climax when we delight in the Son with the very delight that the Father has in him.

Definite atonement triumphs over unbelief and hardness of heart and brings to pass salvation and all the purposes of God that depend on it.

We think of our Bibles as two testaments, but the notion of covenant shapes much of how God has shaped the Scriptures.

The greatest happiness God pursues is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the supremely happy praises of the saints.

The Reformation celebrates how embracing Christ as our supreme treasure in faith is how we enjoy God’s fellowship.

If the Bible is God’s word, by definition no human authority can serve alongside it with equal authority.

It is inconceivable that the pleasures Christ has in the church would be stimulated by his imaging a prostitute to get his juices flowing.

God is capable of bringing something about and both lamenting that act in one regard, while affirming it as best in another.

Our loving behavior must always include gladness in God that overflows in the hope of including other people in our joy.

Real obedience to God, even though imperfect, is made possible through the work of Christ for all who believe in him.

Given the way he chose to make the gospel clear in the world, God’s preparations for Christ were necessary and fitting.

Pastors should notify parents when they need to address difficult topics so they can decide if they want their children present.

There should be a never-ending stream of creativity in helping our people reach the lost, but theological faithfulness is essential.

Help your children prepare to suffer by teaching them a biblical worldview, disciplining them, and modeling joy through your own sorrow.

The fight, the striving, the narrow, the hard, the work, the warfare is not a striving to get Christ. It is a striving precisely to rest.

If a pastor looks at porn once, restore him with his wife and fellow elders. But if it is a pattern, he is unqualified for eldership.

God created the world to present himself as glorious, not boring. Therefore, we must move beyond knowing and believing to joy.

There are many dangers that teachers like John Piper must guard against, but also many practices which help guard them.

Students, you can be ready to tell someone why you have hope in Jesus.

While God requires faithfulness from everyone, some vocations are worth twice the honor as others.

The longer you wait to share Christ with your friends, the more perplexed they will be. Befriend and confront others in love, as Jesus did.

Egalitarians can also embrace Christian Hedonism, though not all the relational details will look the same.

A warm, practical, affectionate relationship with the living Christ really matters.

God intends for his children to take heart from his promises to preserve them to the end.

Jesus does not seek private glory apart from the Father’s glory, but he does seek his glory through the Father after his redemptive work is done.

Both God and his people love their human enemies, but not in the same way, since God is all-wise and all-governing, and we are finite.

God causes the miracle of unhardening our hearts, and we act the miracle of unhardening them.

Christ shared in our suffering as fallen mortals so that we could be included in the divine family, with Christ as our superior older brother.

The command to “pray without ceasing” should motivate rather than intimidate us. Armed with joy and thankfulness, we can overflow in prayer.

Nowhere in the New Testament is it commanded or forbidden that local churches meet in homes. Leaders must use other factors to make that decision.

Pastors must affirm the absolute power, goodness, and wisdom of God during the most tragic of circumstances to give their people comfort and hope.

Jesus’s miracle of fish and bread proves it. An appetite for miracles is no proof one is a Christian. As John Piper explains, “Seeing the mere event of an external physical miracle should never be the goal of the Christian.”

Yes, we can overdo Christian Hedonism, “because it is possible to overemphasize anything,” says John Piper. So what are the warning signs?

When you want God over everything else, you glorify the value of God.

“The division of humanity into languages and ethnicities was a judgment from God,” says John Piper. And yet it was also part of his unfolding plan to save the nations.

Evangelicalism’s global growth is mainly Pentecostal, says John Piper. This is cause for celebration, and for concern, because the growth is often entangled by prosperity theology.

In the digital age, needs surround us. So how do we avoiding inactivity paralysis? We return to God, says John Piper, whose shoulders alone can bear the crushing weight of global suffering.

If Christians are born again and have therefore died to sin, why do we need to fight so hard to put sin to death?

Personal suffering should not surprise us (1 Peter 4:12). The Bible not only promises it, it also teaches us how to “squeeze as much Christ-exalting meaning out of our suffering as we can.” John Piper explains.

What drives John Piper? “This is one of the greatest discoveries of my life,” he recent told an audience in Italy, “that God’s purpose to be glorified and my passion to be satisfied are not at odds.”

If you’re married, keep your promise. If you’re divorced and remarried, keep your promise. Don’t break your word a second time.

The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is parents who don’t cherish their own worship. We can’t impart what we don’t possess.

“Until we find our rest in Christ, we will be trying to invent ourselves in ways that will only end in tears.” Rob Smith on the hopes, tensions, and roadblocks of the transgender movement.

“Transgender surgery often contradicts the Hippocratic principle of ‘Do no harm,’” says theologian and ethicist Rob Smith in today’s episode. “You are now perhaps mutilating a perfectly healthy body to try and address a psychological problem.”

“Christians should get as good a grasp on questions about transgender, whether or not we have transgender friends,” says theologian and ethicist Rob Smith. “Because when a person hurts themselves, it hurts others.”

“God has given us distinct body and soul, but they exist in psychosomatic unity,” says theologian and ethicist Rob Smith. “The two are knit together (Psalm 139:13).” So what does this mean in the transgender debate?

“Gender dysphoria ought to evoke our compassion,” says Rob Smith, our guest this week on the podcast. “It is a horrific affliction to bear.” Smith is a theologian and ethicist at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia, and for him, gender dysphoria hits home.