Piper on Romans

While cleaning, cooking, and puttering, I've been listening to John Piper's sermon series on Romans. It's been amazing, because the gospel of God's grace is amazing! After listening to seven sermons, he's only covered 15 verses, so it's going to take me a while to get through them all. But I love going slow through the Bible, being able to savor and ponder and study powerful little words and phrases, and thus better understanding the whole chapter, book, and unified Scripture.

Piper revels and delights in God's glory and grace with a passion that shakes my soul. He's also one of the most wise and thoughtful men I've heard preach. And what he says is sometimes uncomfortably convicting. Oh that I can better come to know and love my Lord with that sort of rock-firm fervor, and that I will have a greater desire to share His grace with others!

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When you hear good news about how to escape from a common misery, you become a debtor to tell the good news to others so they can escape the misery too. You owe it to them. Why? Because if you withhold the good news of grace from others, as if you were qualified for it, and they were not, then you show that you have never known grace. The grace of God which calls us (verse 6) out of our darkness and bestows eternal covenant-love on us (verse 7) creates what it commands. We don't qualify for it beforehand.

Grace is precious beyond words. It is our only hope as sinners. We don't deserve it from God. And no one can deserve it from us. When it comes to us freely, we are debtors to give freely.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org