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PipLega
00-9-93 LEGACY OF SOVEREIGN JOY God’s Triumphant Grace in the Lives of Augustine, Luther,
and Calvin John Piper Crossway Books, 2000, 156 pp. |
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This book for pastors is the first in a proposed series of books on the lives of great saints called “The Swans are Not Silent.” These books arise from the author’s preparation for his pastors’ conferences. In a few pages, Piper is able to draw out some of the best from the lives and works of these men. “This book, which is about Augustine, Luther, and Calvin,
is a book about the glory of God’s omnipotent grace, not only because it was
the unifying theme of their work, but also because this grace triumphed over
the flaws in these men’s lives.” (26) Aurelius Augustine (354-430), Martin Luther (1483-1546),
and John Calvin (1509-1564) had this in common: they experienced, and then
built their lives and ministries on, the reality of God’s omnipotent
grace. In this way their common
passion for the supremacy of God was preserved from the taint of human
competition. Each of them confessed
openly that the essence of experiential Christianity is the glorious triumph
of grace over the guilty impotence of man.”
(18) “…at the heart of Luther’s theology was a total dependence
on the freedom of God’s omnipotent grace to rescue powerless man from the
bondage of the will.” (22) “…the key for Calvin: the witness of God to scripture is
the immediate, unassailable, life-giving revelation to our minds of the
majesty of God that is manifest in the Scriptures themselves.” “The Word mediated the majesty, and the
majesty vindicated the Word. (He was)
utterly devoted to displaying the supremacy of God’s glory by the exposition
of God’s Word.” (23) “Augustine towers over the thousand years between himself
and the Reformation, heralding the Sovereign Joy of God’s triumphant grace
for all generations.” (24) “The conviction behind this book is that the glory of God,
however dimly, is mirrored in the flawed lives of his faithful servants.” (37)
“The aim is that the glorious Gospel of God’s all-satisfying,
omnipotent grace will be savored, studied, and spread for the joy of all
peoples….” (38) For Augustine.
Start with the Confessions. His other four great books are On Christian Doctrine: the Enchirodion:
On Faith, Hope and Love; On the Trinity, and City of God. (45) “Far too much Christian thinking and preaching in our
day…has not penetrated to the root of how grace actually triumphs, namely,
through joy, and therefore is only half-Augustinian and half-biblical and
half-beautiful.” (36) Augustine’s understanding of grace: “Grace is God’s giving us sovereign joy in
God that triumphs over joy in sin. In
other words, God works deep in the human heart to transform the springs of
joy so that we love God more than sex or anything else.” (57) “Loving God is being so satisfied in God and so delighted
in all that he is for us that his commandments cease to be burdensome.” (58) “So saving grace, converting grace, in Augustine’s view,
is God’s giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys
and therefore sways the will.” (59) “For Augustine freedom is to be so much in love with God
and his ways that the very experience of choice is transcended.” “Rather, one transcends the experience of
choice and walks under the continual sway of sovereign joy in God.” “…the entire Christian life is seen as a
relentless quest for the fullest joy in God.” (62) “In other words,
the key to Christian living is a thirst and a hunger for God.” (63) “…many do not long for anything very much. They are just coasting. They are not passionate about
anything. They are ‘cold’…toward everything.” (63) All 350 pages of the Confessions was written as
prayer. Every sentence is addressed
to God. (64) “Prayer is the path to fullness of sovereign joy.” (65) Augustine’s way of study:
“he sought for soul-food that he might feed himself on God’s ‘holy
Delight’ and then feed his people.”
(68) “God is our soul’s joyful resting place. To make this known and experienced through
Jesus Christ is the goal of evangelism and world missions.” (70) Luther said…, “Let the man who would hear God speak, read
Holy Scripture.” (78) “…at the heart
of every pastor’s work is book-work.
…a large and central part of our work is to wrestle God’s meaning from
a book, and then to proclaim it in the power of the Holy Spirit.” (79) “The Word of God is the greatest, most necessary, and most
important thing in Christendom.”
(79) “The incarnate Word is
revealed to us in a book.” (80) “Ministers are essentially brokers of the Word of God
transmitted in a book. We are
fundamentally readers and teachers and proclaimers of the message of the
book.” (82) “He was driven by a passion for the exaltation of God in
the Word.” (86) “…in the church in Wittenberg there were no church
programs, but only worship and preaching.
On Sundays there were the 5:00 A.M. worship with a sermon on the
epistle, the 10:00 A.M. service with a sermon on the gospel, and an afternoon
message on the Old Testament or catechism.
Monday and Tuesday sermons were on the Catechism; Wednesdays on
Matthew; Thursdays and Fridays on the Apostolic letters; and Saturday on
John.” (86) “(Luther) could never treat study as anything other than
utterly crucial and life-giving and history-shaping.” (90) Characteristic s of Luther’s study: (93-106) 1.
He elevated the biblical text far above
commentators or church fathers. 2.
Intense and serious grappling with the words of
Paul and other biblical writers 3.
Reading Greek and Hebrew was a great privilege and
responsibility 4.
Extraordinary diligence in spite of tremendous
obstacles 5.
Suffering – for Luther, trials make a
theologian. Temptation and affliction
are hermeneutical touchstones 6.
Prayer and reverent dependence on the
all-sufficiency of God “That is how we live, that is how we die, and that is how
we study, so that God gets the glory and we get the grace.” (111) Calvin “Let that speechless wonder rise. God never had a beginning! … And one who never had a beginning, but
always was and is and will be, defines all things. Whether we want him to be there or not, he is there. We do not negotiate what we want for
reality. God defines reality. When we come into existence, we stand
before a God who made us and owns us.
We have absolutely no choice in this matter. We do not choose to be.
And when we are, we do not choose that God be. No ranting and raving, no sophisticated
doubt or skepticism, has any effect on the existence of God. He simply and absolutely is.” (117) “If we don’t like it, we can change, for our joy, or we
can resist, to our destruction. But
one thing remains absolutely unassailed.
God is. He was there before we came. He will be there when we are gone. And therefore what matters in ministry above
all things is this God. We cannot
escape the simple and obvious truth that God must be the main thing in
ministry. Ministry has to do with God
because life has to do with God, and life has to do with God because all the
universe has to do with God, and the universe has to do with God because
every atom and every emotion and every soul of every angelic, demonic, and
human being belongs to God, who absolutely is. He created all that
is, he sustains everything in being, he directs the course of all events,
because ‘from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be the
glory forever.’ (Romans 11:36)” (117) “…may God inflame in you’re a passion for his centrality
and supremacy in your ministry, so that the people you love and serve will
say, when you are dead and gone, ‘This man knew God. This man loved God. This man lived for the glory of God. This man showed us God week after
week. This man, as the apostle said,
was ‘filled with all the fullness of God’ (Eph. 3:19)” (117) “I suddenly saw that someone could use all the language of
evangelical Christianity, and yet the center was fundamentally the self,
…. I also saw that quite a lot of
evangelical Christianity can easily slip, can become centered in me and my
need of salvation, and not in the glory of God.” (Newbigin) (118) A fitting banner over all of John Calvin’s life and work,
the unifying root of all his labors is his passion to display the glory of
God in Christ. (121) “Calvin assumed that his whole theological labor was the
exposition of Scripture.” (quoting Dillenberger) (138) Three reasons for Calvin’s commitment to the centrality of
expository preaching: 1.
He felt the Word was a lamp that had been taken
away from the churches. 2.
He had a horror of those who preached their own ideas
in the pulpit. 3.
He saw the majesty of God in his Word. (140) “God’s Word is mainly about the majesty of God and the
glory of God. That is the main issue
in ministry.” (141) Four lessons from these saints: 1.
“Do not be paralyzed by your weaknesses and flaws.” 2.
“In the battle against sin and surrender, learn the
secret of sovereign joy.” 3.
“Supernatural change comes from seeing Christ in
his sacred Word. “Therefore let us exult over the exposition of the truth
of the Gospel and herald the glory of Christ for the joy of al peoples.” (143-148) |