Quotes from John Piper

What must be seen is not mere news and not mere knowledge. What must be seen is light.

The root meaning of the Old Testament word for holiness is the idea of being separate—different and separated from the ordinary. And when applied to God, this separateness implies that he is in a class by himself. He is like a one-of-a-kind diamond, supremely valuable. We can use the word transcendent for this kind of divine separateness. He is so uniquely separate that he transcends all other reality. He is above it and more valuable than all of it.

Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure in Jesus is eternal.

Therefore every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now, a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement.

When you see carnage and "random" horror, hear the voice of God: "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5).

When you are the majority ethnicity, nothing you do is ethnic. It's just the way it's done. When you are a minority, everything you do has color.

What makes born-again people glad is not at bottom that they have God's gifts but that they have God.

For Jesus, the demand for joy is a way to live with suffering and to outlast suffering.

What is needed is a miracle. I mean that literally. A supernatural in-breaking of God through the gospel of Christ. It is not even possible to describe the hope-filled relational dynamics that may happen when the gospel explodes in two hearts that bring such radically different experiences of sin and suffering to the relationship.

What you love determines what you feel shame about. If you love for men to make much of you, you will feel shame when they don't. But if you love for men to make much of Christ, then you will feel shame if he is belittled on your account.

The road to heaven is a hard road, but it is not joyless.

God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.