Is John Piper Preaching Pietism? | Theocast Clips

if they're not in Christ, then why are we not preaching law and gospel? Crush them with the law and give them

Christ. Why are we telling them to try harder? Because you can't tell a dead person to try harder.

And I know that John Piper agrees with that. That's right. I think it's good and fair to say that, to believe that everything that John Piper has ever said is heresy and wrong and should be rejected.

And that's just not true. I'm very thankful for a lot of what he has said, but there tends to be a thread through certain sections of his sermons or certain areas of his preaching that are very pietistic in nature.

And if that word news, if that's a new word to you, I would encourage you to go get our book on rest. We talk about what is pietism.

But pietism is this hyper introspection where you're always examining self to determine whether you are acceptable in the eyes of God, whether God accepts you based upon performance, whether it be attitude, action, heartfelt, emotions.

And the problem with this is that you will never be accepted or acceptable in the eyes of God based upon your performance, because God makes it very clear that what is only acceptable to him is perfection.

That's the only thing that's acceptable. Now, to be clear, for instance, I just preached in James chapter five where,

I mean, if you've ever had to preach James, there's tons of imperatives in James, right? So I'm not afraid to preach the imperatives in James.

But James doesn't disconnect our grounding and union with Christ with our obligations for obedience.

And the obligations of our obedience is this, is that they are the outflow of our faith. It's always, as Justin, you just said, they're always the fruit of our faith.

It's never the confirmation of our faith. It's never the establishment of our faith. And even this,

James says, let your yes be yes and your no be no, lest you fall under condemnation. Well, he doesn't mean condemnation as if you will be condemned and guilty and sent to hell.

He means that your works will not be acceptable there for the glory of God and for the benefit of others.

And the reason we know that is that earlier on, he clearly talks about where our justification stands and what our purposes of our good works are.

So it is, you know, someone asked me the other day, does God, is God ever displeased with us?

And I would say, yeah, there are actions that we commit that God would not accept as acceptable, right?

They are contrary to his nature. But I don't know if I've ever done an act with the full purity of heart and without sin that didn't need the covering of Christ's righteousness to make it acceptable before God by faith, right?

Without faith, it's impossible to please the Father. So there's a confusion here that if you are trying to offer your good works as means of assuring yourself of your salvation,

I can promise you, you've never obeyed perfectly, not at one moment in your life that God would accept it because there is no relativation of the law.

It's either complete or incomplete, right? And so if you're going to be accepted by, on the basis of your own righteousness, you are going to be doomed.

So this also goes back to, which we're going to look at some of these clips, two more clips here in a minute, and I'll reference more of this.

But the purpose is behind good works. I mean, as of right now, Justin, Pietism says the purpose of your good works is the confirmation of your salvation.

And that's exactly what it sounds like. Justin Perdue It's to prove you're saved. Yeah, it's to prove you're saved. Jon Moffitt And that is not what the primary purpose of the

New Testament is not given the good works for that. Justin Perdue No. And even when it comes to our own assurance, the confessions are clear that our good works can bolster our assurance.

But the emphasis of the confessions, though, and the emphasis of the scriptures regarding good works is the benefit of our brothers and sisters.

And then thereby the honor of God. So, all right, I'm going to make this observation on this clip, and then we'll move to the next one.

I have a sincere question here that I would ask Jon Piper or others.

If the conclusion you're drawing is that many of the people listening to your sermons are not regenerate, they're not in Christ, because I'm understanding there needs to be this urgency about holiness, and a lot of people in the church aren't holy, and if they're not holy, they're not in Jesus.

We'll talk more about that in a minute. But if you really have concluded that a lot of the people hearing you preach are thereby probably not

Christians, then why is your message, the emphasis of your message, you need to try harder to be holy?

Why are you not crushing these people with the law, its holy requirements, and then giving them

Christ? Here is God's standard. You have fallen so far short of this standard, we can't even describe that distance between you and it, and this law is your death sentence.

Yet, here is the one who came to fulfill it for you, who was born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who are under the law.

Here is the one by whom his obedience and his righteousness, many will be accounted righteous. Here is the one who came to give himself as a satisfaction for sin, and he did it once and for all.

Why are we not doing that? If we think that people, by the virtue of the fact that they're not holy enough, they're not in Christ, then why are we not preaching law and gospel?

Crush them with the law and give them Christ. Why are we telling them to try harder? Because you can't tell a dead person to try harder, and I know that John Piper agrees with that.