TPW 86 John Piper's Distortion of the Gospel of the Reformation

As a Protestant witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Prudhoe Heights Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to post what was actually my original, very first response to John Piper to that whole issue when it first came to my attention.

And I found this in my archives back on Sermon Audio, and this original program, I think, has got some pretty useful stuff in it. And I reviewed some of the main sections of that sermon that Piper preached, that was Does God Really Save Us by Faith Alone, which is kind of the atomic bomb he dropped when everyone else was supposed to be celebrating the great Protestant Reformation.

So anyway, I thought I would go ahead and post this because I think there's some real useful parts to this, and this is kind of my initial take on it, and it's just as relevant now as it was when it was first preached.

And I just wanted to put this out there because more people need to speak to this issue. I was just looking at the Gospel Coalition website. I was actually trying to figure out who from the General Assembly of the PCA that spoke on the floor is actually part of some of these groups, and I saw that, what's the guy's name?

Oh, what's his name? What's his name, what's his name? Kevin DeYoung, Kevin DeYoung. And he spoke in favor of the Nashville Statement on the floor of the PCA General Assembly, and he is on the council or the board of the Gospel Coalition.

And lo and behold, there's John Piper on there too. So you have all these gospel, gospel, gospel, gospel, gospel groups, and you have an individual teaching who is very plainly denying the biblical gospel, and very few people on these groups that are supposed to be protecting the gospel and making sure the gospel is accurate and things like that have pointed that out.

So I wanted to go ahead and post this as I think there's some pretty valuable material in it, and I hope that you find this to be edifying. I saw a video put out by Paul Flynn. I actually hadn't heard of him.

At Megiddo Radio, a friend here from church has listened to Paul Flynn, and I've only listened to a couple of his programs, but I really like his program. He's definitely a brother, a good, solid, reformed Presbyterian, and very, very bright, very sharp.

And he was critiquing John Piper. And I agree with a lot of what Paul Flynn had to say about Piper. I've never been a huge John Piper guy, I just haven't. As far as, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it, the reformed celebrity cult.

There's a few of them I like to listen to that I think are pretty good. A friend of mine gave me the book, Future Grace, by John Piper. It's probably been, man, probably more than 10 years ago, I think, that he sent me that book in the mail.

Covenant of Works and Biblical Inerrancy

Right out of the gate in the book, Piper rejects entirely the idea of a covenant of works, and of course he's getting that from Daniel Fuller. And, you know, Fuller, Daniel Fuller did not believe in the inerrancy of scripture, which is a massive hole in the side of his ship.

I have another tape series by a good reformed scholar named Kim Rydelbarger. And Rydelbarger did a lecture series on a reformed approach to evangelism. And throughout that series, one of the things that he emphasized as being really important was the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Oh, no, I'm sorry, it was a series he did on the inspiration and authority of scripture. The one on evangelism was really good, but this tape series tells you how long ago I got it. Those tapes on the inspiration and authority of scripture were just outstanding.

I learned so much. And Rydelbarger's really good on that topic because he did his doctoral dissertation on B .B. Warfield. And of course, Warfield is the guy who invented the word inerrancy in his struggle against German higher critical scholarship way back in the 19th century.

But anyway, one of the things that Rydelbarger shares in those lectures on the inspiration and authority of scripture is a conversation that he had with Michael Horton and John Gerstner in Michael Horton's living room, talking about inerrancy.

And Gerstner tells the story of sitting in a Chicago hotel room with Daniel Fuller and talking to him about inerrancy. And Daniel Fuller was on his way to abandoning this idea of biblical inerrancy, that the Bible has no errors of any kind in it.

And the discussion that Gerstner described was just bizarre to me because Fuller was sitting there in that hotel room with Gerstner saying, Jesus said that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.

And scientists have found a seed in South America that's smaller than a mustard seed. Jesus is wrong and therefore the Bible has errors in it. And Gerstner apparently, from the way Dr. Rydelbarger relayed the conversation, was just in shock.

And Gerstner tried his best to point out, look, Daniel, Jesus is not giving a lecture on botany. What's he doing? He's quoting from a local proverb so the people would know what he's talking about. What's the point that the mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds.

If you have just a little bit of faith, you can say to this mountain, go and be planted in the sea or this mulberry tree, go be planted over there and it will obey you. What's the point? It's not a lecture on botany or the size of seeds.

The point is it just takes a little bit of faith. That's all. Jesus is not giving a botanical lecture. Now, if Jesus had said that there's this seed in South America that didn't even have a name, would his point have come across very well?

It just amazed me.

And Gerstner said, and after that conversation, I mean, Fuller, he just wouldn't let go of that point. Jesus was wrong when he said that it was the smallest, using the superlative, the smallest of all seeds because we know there's a seed in South America that's smaller than a mustard seed.

So he abandons biblical inerrancy over that. I just thought, wow, that's really bad. That's really weird. And Daniel Fuller, Piper sings the man's praises up one side and down the other in the introduction to his book, Future Grace.

I never finished it. I read about the first third of it and I thought, you know, the wheels have really fallen off here and I could see how important the covenant of works is to your overarching understanding of the Bible.

And Piper made a number of statements in that book, Future Grace, just in the section that I read before I put the book down that were very troubling to me. And I started wondering where is this guy really coming from on this?

In the meantime, though, you know, Piper has dialogue with N .T. Wright and Piper wrote a book called Counted Righteous in Christ where he argues, I think pretty well for the imputation of Christ's righteousness.

However, the problematic kind of things that Piper has said have really come to full fruition now in this sermon. There's a link here. I'm not gonna listen to the whole thing because it's, or I'm not gonna play the whole thing.

It's 40 minutes and 17 seconds long, but it's called Faith Alone, How Not to Use a Reformed Slogan. It's on Desiring God's YouTube channel. But I wanted to, I've listened to it all the way up through, actually listened to the whole thing and then listened to it all the way up to about 25 minutes in.

This is where he says a whole bunch of things that are exactly right and very forcefully. So, you know, Piper is a little bit, has a little bit, his pathos is a little bit distracting to me at times, but he really nails the point.

But then makes a distinction. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you about it before he goes into it. He makes a radical distinction between being justified before God and quote, getting into heaven, end quote.

Evidently, in his thinking, those are completely different things. And biblically, they are not. Biblically, they are not. And we're gonna see that. But I wanted to go ahead and just kind of start this video 25 minutes and five seconds into this.

So that gives us 15 minutes left. And I'm gonna try to keep this video relatively short, but I wanna let y 'all listen to Piper in his own words and offer some responses to the things that he is saying here.

Justification by Faith Alone in Galatians 5

The most radical statement on this is Galatians 5, verses one to three. If you would push me to go to a text for faith alone, this is where I'd go.

I agree. In fact, when I was in seminary, I did my Greek exegesis paper on Galatians 5, one through three. For this very reason, I think it is one of the most powerful statements that justification is by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

And if you add anything at all to that whatsoever, as the text itself says, Christ will be of no benefit to you. You become a debtor to keep the whole law to be justified before God. And you are severed from Christ, it says.

So our confidence for getting into heaven, which is the same thing. I mean, if you're a justified person, you have been transferred from being an Adam to being in Christ, and you will always be in Christ for the rest of eternity.

Where God is 100 for you. He uses that phrase a lot, God is 100 for you. But evidently, from what it sounds like, and he makes it pretty clear, people for whom God is for 100 can still go to hell.

So very, very troubling, but Galatians 5, one through three.

Maybe Andy will go there and really unpack it. I don't know where he's going on this. Galatians 5, one to three. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to yoke of slavery, to yoke of slavery.

Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, just one little effort at law keeping, if you accept circumcision, if you add that one little effort in addition to faith in Christ, Christ is no advantage to you.

This is painful for me to listen to because he is about to do exactly what he just said. He's about to do the very thing he is now condemning in his sermon. It's just, it's painful to listen to because what he's saying is true.

If you add anything to what it is that gets you into heaven, Christ will be of no benefit to you. He's exactly right. And the irony is he's about to do the very thing Paul condemns.

Listen.

That's wild.

That's true. It is wildly radical. It's wildly radical because what that is saying is if a person is relying upon, if their confidence for entering heaven is based on anything other than Jesus Christ or anything alongside of Jesus Christ, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

And you have to keep the whole law by yourself. It's one or the other. It's Christ or you save yourself. You can't mix the two at all. And sadly, ironically, amazingly, that's exactly what Piper's about to do.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision. He is obligated to keep the whole law.

Yep.

That's why the Roman Catholic Church's gospel can't save anyone and has never saved anyone. That's why, at least, I know Eastern Orthodox theology, at least from what I'm seeing, is quite a bit more fluid.

But the vast majority of the individuals I've talked to, they're relying upon their own works, too, made possible by grace, but still relying upon their own works. Christ will be of no benefit to you.

Christ will be of no benefit to you.

So, if you choose to rely just a little bit on law-keeping as a way of getting justified, as a way of getting into a position where God is 100 for you,.

I think that to get into heaven, God's gotta be 100 for you. See, everything he's gonna go on to say here requires you to make the hard distinction between getting justified, getting into a position, he's doing all these hand-waves, getting into a position where God is 100 for you.

Apparently, that's not enough to get you into heaven. Just listen.

Christ is of no advantage to you.

Again, I just, I have to say it. And what he's gonna go on to say and preach and teach here, if you believe it, Christ will be of no advantage to you either.

If you go the route of justification by faith plus a little bit of law-keeping, you go the route of justification by total law-keeping.

That's quite true. And if you believe what Piper's gonna go on to say here, you are going the direction of total law-keeping, by yourself, without Christ, for getting into heaven.

Nothing. Verse three again. Mark that, big asterisk. Maybe in the iPhone 10, you can put an asterisk by it. One of the reasons why they're good reasons to read paper books.

Hey, I like Kindles, man. I use my Kindle for everything. And it keeps track of where I am in all the books and all my different gadgets. I love that thing. It even reads to me. But, you know, I usually read a paper Bible though.

I will say that.

Verse three.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision. He is obligated to keep the whole law.

Law.

It's Christ alone, or you save yourself alone. One or the other. Paul is so clear, you can't mix works with grace. And any attempt to do so, and Christ is out of the equation, you get to keep it all by yourself, which means you're going to hell.

There are two ways of justification. The way of law-keeping, which requires your perfection.

Yep.

And the way of faith, which depends on Christ's perfection. These two paths into the place where God is 100 for you are

I don't like his constant use of that phrase. These two paths into the place where God is 100 for you. What does that mean? What does that mean? You know what that sounds like? That sounds like the Council of Trent.

We are therefore said to be justified gratuitously because nothing that precedes justification proceeds from us, either faith or works. And they say that faith is the foundation and the root of all justification.

Faith is how, in Roman Catholicism, you get into a place where God is 100 for you. And then from that position where God is already 100 for you, then you can do the works of transformation. You're justified entirely by faith alone and by the grace of God alone.

But your final justification, your final salvation, getting into heaven is from a position where God is 100 for you already, but there's these other things that you need to do. I don't see the difference between what he's saying here, what he's gonna go on to say, and session six of the Council of Trent.

Read it.

So distinct, they cannot be mixed at all.

Even though I'm about to mix them. This is just so painful to watch because everything he's saying here.

Is just spot on.

The guy is knocking it out of the park and he's about to do the very things that he is here denouncing by making this hard distinction between justification and getting to heaven as if they're completely different things.

If you are trusting Christ for a righteous standing where God is 100 for you.

Which is not getting into heaven. Just bear that in mind.

You cannot mix one quiver of effort to establish your own righteousness.

But you can for getting into heaven.

Bizarre.

This is exactly what Romans chapter 16, verses 17 and following is talking about. Subtlety of speech. Smooth words of flattery.

And if you are seeking to establish your own righteousness, your own record of virtue as an entrance into the position where God is 100 for you, you cannot.

Which isn't gonna get you into heaven. That's the thing to bear in mind here. Where God is 100 to get you in a position where God is 100 for you. Again, that sounds an awful lot like Roman Catholic theology.

You're, it is entirely gracious that you get into a state of grace. You know what the state of grace means? God is 100 for you. Same thing. Different words. You see, and that's what heresy and false doctrine and false gospels always are.

They're never new. What Piper's gonna go on to say here is not new. Everything he's saying we've heard before. And what you get with every generation are nuanced and interesting repackagings of the same old thing.

Mix the slightest faith in Christ as your all sufficient righteousness. They are mutually.

All sufficient for what, Dr. Piper? In Christ as your all sufficient righteousness that cannot get you into heaven. It can get you in a position where God is 100 for you, but it can't get you into heaven.

Listen closely.

Exclusive. It's one or the other,.

Law keeping to establish my righteousness or faith alone to writ.

And what Paul the apostle is talking about when he speaks of faith apart from works. Faith not by works. Faith apart from obedience. Faith apart from deeds of law that we have done. He is talking about the righteousness that gets us into heaven, Dr. Piper.

The fact that you have now separated these two things from one another, getting justified and getting into heaven is bizarre to me. And this is gonna resonate with a lot of reform folks are gonna hear this and say, yeah, that's exactly what we believe.

And that's what the Bible teaches. But listen carefully, the wheels are about to come off. Listen.

Rest in peace.

One last question.

What is this faith?

And this is where things become very murky. And I've preached on this topic a lot. I did a four part series on the Lordship controversy. And I did an entire sermon on what is faith in Jesus Christ? It's a very important question.

It's one of our catechism questions. What is faith in Jesus Christ? Okay? And it's a saving grace. It's a saving grace. It's something God creates in the heart of the sinner through the proclamation of the gospel, whereby we receive and rest upon Christ alone for our salvation as he has offered to us in the gospel.

Listen to how he defines faith here.

What's it like?

What is faith?

What kind of thing is it?

What kind of thing is faith? Critical question.

It is a receiving of Christ for who he really is. The beautiful, supreme, all satisfying treasure that he is.

That sounds pious. It's also very ambiguous. It is receiving Christ for the sufficient, satisfying, beautiful treasure that he is. That in one sense is true, but that doesn't really help us here. What is faith in Jesus Christ?

It is receiving Christ, but it's also relying on, resting on his righteousness to get you into heaven.

As our divine substitute and solver. It is the receiving of Christ for who he is.

See, it would be better to say it is the receiving of Christ as the one who has fully discharged the debt that we owe to God for our sins. He has paid for all of them, past, present, future, original, and actual sin.

And his righteousness is legally imputed to our legal account before God so that we stand justified before him. That's what faith in Jesus Christ is. It is a renouncing of reliance and confidence upon anything other than Jesus Christ or anything alongside of Jesus Christ.

Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace. We receive and rest upon him alone as he has offered to us in the gospel for our salvation, for getting into heaven, for forgiveness, for righteousness.

Not as health insurance.

Now, this is an interesting part. He says, not as health insurance. I think that what he's probably criticizing there is the health and wealth gospel, the prosperity gospel, the idea that you come to Jesus and you should be healed of all your afflictions.

I think that's why he says not as health insurance. Piper has ripped to shreds the prosperity preachers, and rightly so. The Benny Hinns and Kenneth Copelands and Higgins and Creflo Dollars and all those other weird charismatic types that believe in that if you're a Christian, you should never be sick and you should have mountains of money and private jets and everything else.

Or fire insurance. How many hundreds of thousands of people are in our churches who have not received Christ as the beautiful, glorious, infinitely godly, all-satisfying, sovereign, and substitute.

And treasure that he is and are not saved.

Very true. Very true. That's why I did that series, the whole lordship issue. The reason there are so many people who think that they're, excuse me, that they're Christians and they're not is because of a false gospel that's been preached.

There has been no call to repent, no call to turn from sin and to embrace Christ. And we're gonna get more into that here in a moment.

After a year in church, I grew up with so many.

John Piper is the master of the long pregnant pause. I'm just kind of like.

This is why faith inevitably transforms the heart.

That is not a helpful way of saying that. That is not a helpful way of saying that. That's why our confession, the Westminster Confession, speaks of faith. We are justified by faith alone, but that faith is never alone in the person justified, but is always and ever accompanied by all other saving graces.

So say faith transforms our life. No, God transforms our life. God transforms our life through the means of grace and through the process of sanctification. This is a different category here. Our persons are accepted in the sight of God solely, completely, and only by the blood and righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us and received by faith alone.

That's why the Westminster Confession, chapter 11 on justification says that we are justified not for anything wrought in us or done by us, but only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

You gotta love the way our confession anticipates all these errors. It is not for anything wrought in us or done by us, but only for the righteousness of Christ. So to say faith inevitably transforms our lives, it makes it sound like faith is actually works in some way.

Now, it's okay to speak of faith working, yes, but the way he's describing this is not overly helpful.

James.

James 2, here we go.

You saw it.

He saw what people were doing. They were doing it with faith alone. They were turning it into a doctrine that claimed you could be justified by a faith that had no good works whatsoever, didn't produce any transformation in your life.

What would he say today?

What would James say today? The same thing he said in James 2. And I did a sermon on James 2, 14 and 26. I preached on that passage a couple of times. I really think it's one of the most important passages for our day and age, because there is so much of this easy believism.

There is so much of this antinomian false gospel where basically people are told that if they pray a magic prayer, they're going to heaven, whether they have any desire for holiness or want to pursue Christ, have any desire for the word of God or to grow in grace or love for the church at all.

He said no to such faith. He said it's dead. Faith without works is dead, 2, 17. He said it's like a body without breath, 2, 26.

Okay, yeah, the body without the spirit. He made a number of comments here.

That I thought were a little bit off.

As I'm recalling listening to this. Let's listen to what else he says here.

He said it's like energy with no effect, 2, 20.

He said it's like energy with no effect, 2, 20, he says. Okay, here's what verse 20 says. But do you want to know, oh foolish man that faith without works is dead. He says, it's like energy with no effect, 2, 20.

I don't know how that phrase could remotely be connected to 2, 20. Energy without effect.

Energy with no completion, 2, 22.

Energy with no completion. I don't understand why he's using that word.

He said if there's justifying faith, there will be, it has works.

True.

So he says, I will show you my faith by my works. I will show you. They will be confirmed by my works. I will show you my faith by my works.

Yeah, and the thing is, faith, the assenting to the truth of the gospel, receiving and resting on Christ, that's invisible. I mean, if a person has faith in Christ, you can't see their active faith. So there is a sense in which, yes, I show people my faith by my works.

That doesn't mean faith is works. It just means that it's always accompanied by a transformed life. God makes us alive in Christ. And God dethrones sin's tyrannical power in us. That's what Romans chapter six is all about.

We who were once the slaves of sin become slaves of righteousness. We have been set free from the dominion and the tyranny and the power of sin. And we will begin the process of sanctification and begin to become holy.

Yes.

All of which Paul would agree with because of Galatians five, six. In Christ Jesus

Faith working through love.

Circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. The kind of faith that works through love is the only kind of faith that justifies.

Yes.

No love, faith is dead.

Correct. Dead faith doesn't justify.

Right, dead faith, right. Really, what that is really getting at, what that's saying in scripture is it has to be a divinely given faith. Because if it's divinely given by the effectual call of God's grace, then it's gonna be accompanied by everything else God does in the life of every redeemed sinner, namely the process of sanctification begins, the power of sin is dethroned, Romans chapter six explains that in great detail, and the struggle with sin will then commence.

The only kind of faith that counts for justification is the kind that produces love, that bears the fruit of love.

True.

The faith which alone justifies is never alone. Westminster Catechism. But always yielding a transforming fruit. So, when James says those controversial words in verse 24 of chapter two, a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone.

Now, his interpretation of this, I found to be a little odd. Listen closely to what he says here, I don't think I agree with the way he understands this.

I take him to mean not by faith which is alone.

So, he does think that he's talking about justification in the same way Paul is. That's really troubling to me. Because the fact is, James 2, 24, you see it end up by works, a man is justified, and not by faith alone.

The question you need to ask yourself is justified with regard to what? James 2, 14 to 26 is its own pericope, its own passage. The beginning sentence is, what good is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but has no works?

Can that faith save him? The hey, pistis there, I would take the definite article there to be functioning on aphorically as a demonstrative. Can that faith save him? Can a faith that has no works save him?

But what is the justification being spoken of in James 2, 24? The justification of a person saying they have faith. Not their justification before God, but just their justification in saying it. I am not justified in saying I'm a Christian if my life is completely unchanged, is totally unaffected by it, and I'm still a slave of sin.

I have no right, I am not justified in saying I'm a Christian unless my life is different. That's really all James is saying. That's what James 2, 24 is all about. That you see then that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone.

Piper sounds to me like he's saying that's talking about the forensic justification before God. And I think clearly in the context that is not what he's talking about. He's talking about the justification of a person saying they have faith.

Why do I think that? Because that's what the whole passage is about. Was not Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? Well, if he's talking about forensic legal justification, he is contradicting Paul.

Because Paul says in Romans 4, verses one through three, what then shall we say that Abraham our forefather according to the flesh has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, then he has something to boast about, but not before God.

Paul's point is Abraham was not justified by works in that sense. But Abraham was justified in saying he has faith by his works. So my profession in saying I have faith, saying I'm a Christian, that profession is justified only by my works.

Because anyone can say they have faith and faith in and of itself is invisible. The only thing that you can actually observe with your own eyes is all the other saving graces that accompany faith. That's the point of James 2, 14 to 26.

I totally disagree with the way Piper's interpreting this. He's saying that just means we're justified by a faith that's not alone. No, Dr. Piper, if he's talking about forensic legal justification in the same way Paul is, then we are just justified by works.

And that's, of course, not what James 2, 24 is saying.

But shows itself by works. Paul calls this effect or fruit or evidence of faith a work of faith. 1 Thessalonians 1 .3, 2 Thessalonians 1 .11. He calls it the obedience of faith.

Now, this is troubling. This is troubling. One thing you see in Paul's writings is you'll see him make use of the very common triadic formula is what I would call it, faith, hope, and love. 1 Thessalonians 1 .3, he just cited, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope.

You'll see those three words together, faith, hope, love, faith, hope, love in Paul's writings. And Piper's saying, well, faith, the faith that justifies, he calls the work of faith. No, he doesn't. Not here.

In 1 Thessalonians 1, the context here has nothing to do with a discourse on justification. And then Romans 1 .5, a text that is misused constantly by Rome and by the federal visionaries, the obedience of faith, as if faith in and of itself is obedience.

And yet I would look at that as obedience that arises from faith, or you could take it as really trusting in Christ is itself an act of obedience, but it's not obedience to the law or anything like that.

It is obedience to the gospel imperative, repent and believe. But I think he's really missing the point of those two passages he just quoted.

Romans 1 .5, 16, 26. These works of faith and these fruit of faith or fruit of the spirit that come by faith are necessary for final salvation.

Yikes.

Okay, now immediately all Piper's defenders are gonna start chiming in and getting all upset. Oh, you're just interpreting him in the worst possible light. And even John Gerstner and others have said that works are necessary for salvation.

Of course, you would need to explain yourself. They are a necessary fruit. They necessarily accompany true faith in Christ, but they are not and do not form any part of the grounds of getting into heaven.

Which is our justification.