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The Gospel of Christ vs The Gospel of John Piper

by Larry Harriman

John Piper has been the Senior Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1980. His book "Future Grace" is what we will be primarily examining in this article. This is not meant to be an exhaustive review(I am saving that for a future date) but this will hit on some key statements which hit at the foundation of what saving faith is or is not according to Mr. Piper. If I wrote on every page of this book that I have underlined in red ink this article would be much longer. But my purpose is to hit on what I think are the most critical flaws in the book in regards to the Biblical teaching of salvation by faith alone in Christ Alone.

Recently I heard a sermon in which the Preacher mentioned some quotes by John Piper. I decided the next week to purchase one of Piper's books and to examine his theology first hand for myself.

I want to make it clear that I am Sovereign Grace advocate, in the sense that I do believe unconditional election to be a very Biblically based doctrine. So my premise in coming at this book is not from a disagreement with John Piper's belief in unconditional election. At the same time I am definitely NOT a five point Calvinist(and neither was John Calvin for that matter, since the 5 points where constructed by his followers and not him).

Piper is influencing thousands of conservative, Bible believing Christians across the country, and I have seen very little in response to his theology. A recent survey of young fundamentalists found that almost 50% of them believed John Piper's ministry had been a great blessing to their ministry. That means most likely 50% of the young fundamentalists who will build our next generation of churches believe that the Gospel that John Piper espouses is correct and Biblically based. After reading this book "Future Grace" - the figure saddens me and should sadden anyone who believes in the Biblical doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone in Christ Alone.

Another thing I want to make clear at the outset of this article is that I am not calling John Piper's salvation into question, neither am I calling anyone else's salvation into question who believe as John Piper writes in this book. The scriptures are clear on what one has to do to be saved and I believe that John Piper has trusted in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior:

"Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"
Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.""
John 6:28-29

"9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
Romans 10:9

However, we are also commanded to reprove false teaching:

"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction."
2 Timothy 4:2

I do believe though, that unfortunately John Piper has "fallen away from grace"(Galatians 5:4) as it is Biblically taught. No, I do not believe as the Pentecostals that "fallen from grace" means loosing one's salvation. In its context Paul is speaking to believers and warning them that those who are thinking they must also keep the law, in addition to believing on Christ to receive the free salvation of God have fallen away from the principles and teachings of Biblical Grace.

In this article - I will quote from Piper's work "Future Grace" to demonstrate without a doubt that while Piper believes that justification is by faith alone in Christ alone, he does not believe we are saved by justification alone. He believes we are saved by justification and what he refers to as "habitual obedience" and that are deeds after our profession of salvation will be used in God's courtroom to determine whether we enter heaven or hell. Please read this article with an open mind and open heart. I know a lot of people look up to Piper,and this is an attack on their hero. I have friends of mine who are Pastors who greatly admire Piper,and I know they will not take to this kindly. But we must speak the truth in love, and we are called upon by the Scriptures to rebuke false doctrine. If it is given publicly, it must be rebuked publicly.

I also hope you will be able to overlook any flaws in my style or grammar and please just look at the content. Even if you ignore every comment I have, please at least look at the comments by Piper and judge them by the Scriptures for yourselves.

In his section entitled "For Theologians" ,John Piper states a good summary of the reformed Protestant view of justification:"

""It is faith alone which justifies, but the faith which justifies is not alone", That is justifying faith is always accompanied by good works."
pg.21 & 22

Unfortunately a straw man argument has been built by Lordship Salvation advocates as well as Pastors like John Piper. The argument basically goes that all of us who do not hold to their views on the relationship of sanctification to justification believe a person could have no good works, no change of heart, no change of thinking, and still be saved. While there may be some that believe that, most of us who disagree with John MacArthur or John Piper do not believe there can be no change, and yet the person is saved.

When we place our faith and trust in Christ, and receive the indwelling and transforming of the Holy Spirit of God we are changed. We are as the Scriptures say, "a new creation":

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
2 Corinthians 5:17

"15Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation."
Galatians 6:15

So yes, I do whole heartedly believe that if someone is in Christ is he is a new creature, and that change in him will produce good works. The real debate in this which is all but buried is - how much good works? how much change? After reading this book I can see that like John MacArthur, John Piper does not believe in the concept of a "carnal(worldly) Christian" as seen in passages such as 1 Corinthians chapter 3:

"1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in Christ.
2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?
Are you not acting like mere men?"
1 Corinthians 3:1-3

In fact passages like the one above are never mentioned in the book Future Grace, as passages like this shatter the notion held that all Christians will become fully committed and their lives will be patterns of righteousness.

Another passage which is noticeably absent from "Future Grace" is found in the same chapter of I Corinthians:

"11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light.
It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss;
he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."
1 Corinthians 3:11-15

The scriptures are clear here, that a truly saved believer could get to heaven and have lost his rewards, but not his salvation. Does this sound like a successfully committed Christian who was pleasing to the Lord? No it is not. He did not make his life count for Christ as he should have, but yet he still "will be saved". Why? Because our salvation is not based upon our performance in this life before or after we are saved. Our entrance into heaven is based upon our faith in Christ alone, not on some report card for how we lived our lives as Christians.

But then we can begin to see where Mr. Piper begins to expand on the reformed idea that justifying faith produces works:

"The faith that justifies gives rise to lives of obedience-not perfection, but growing holiness"
pg.25

In fact this theme of the "The faith that justifies" will do such and such is found all over the book. In other words anyone found to be lacking in any qualities he suggests that a true believer must have in their lives does not have a justifying faith. But often in his book he tries to distance himself from teaching sinless perfection by statements like "not perfection". What he really means is as he says later in the book "habitual obedience" - almost perfection.

So if your life after being saved is one of habitual obedience, with only imperfections here and there you are truly saved, otherwise you are not. Or to put it in simpler terms, if your good works after you are saved outweigh your "imperfections"(bad deeds) after you make a profession of faith then and only then can you know are you truly saved. According to the scriptures our justification has no relationship to the quality or quantity of our works, either before we are saved or after we are saved:

"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law."
Romans 3:28

"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men,
so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men."
Romans 5:18

"know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.
So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ
and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified...
21I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law,
Christ died for nothing!"
Galatians 2:16 & 21

"10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written:
"Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law."
11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."
12The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them.""
Galatians 3:10-12

I want to address one other strawman argument that is brought against believers who disagree with position's like those taken by Piper. We do NOT believe that obedience to God's commands are optional. God's commands in the New Testament carry the same force they did in the Old Testament. We are required to obey God's commands. But the difference is that if we when we fail to obey God's commands as his children our transgressions are covered by the blood of Christ.

We obey God's commands because of love for Christ, not out of fear of condemnation if we do not. We obey God's commands because we do not want to grieve the Holy Spirit that has indwelled us as believers and is the guarantee of our inheritance to come. We obey God's commands because we do not want to incur his discipline on us as his children. So if I ever say throughout this article that habitual obedience is not required for our salvation, please refer to this section for clarification on that.

5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away...

8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.
Isaiah 64:5-9

Most evangelical Christians who have been saved for any length of time know the famous phrase by Isaiah - "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags". Most of us believe this is a reference to the comparison of our imperfect human righteousness in comparison to God's righteousness. In fact Isaiah asks the questions and rightly so - "How then can we be saved?". God demands a perfect righteousness, anything less requires condemnation and eternal punishment. Yet Mr. Piper, has attempted to put his own spin on what "filthy rags" is in a section he entitled "IS ALL OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS FILTHY RAGS?". Earlier in this chapter he is trying to establish what he believes the only difference between the Old and New Covenant is:

"Sometimes, to exalt our precious privilege as beneficiaries of the new covenant, we will over criticize the old covenant. But what we are seeing in this chapter is the old is not deficient because it was a commanding covenant, or because it commanded wrong things. It was deficient because it was not accompanied, by and large, with inner, transforming, enabling divine power(see Romans 8:3). But what that means practically is that we can go back and profit immensely from the instructions of the Old Testament, since we have the transforming, new-covenant power at work within us. In this sense, the new covenant makes the Old Testament the book of the Christian Church in practical ways the we may not have thought of." pg. 148

"IS ALL OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS FILTHY RAGS?
Do not make the mistake of thinking that the only righteousness the law required was perfection... the requirement of the law was perfection in one sense, but not in the sense that without it a person was lost. What brought a person to ruin in the Old Testament was not failure to have the righteousness of sinless perfection. Rather the ruin was caused by failure to be righteous, first in the sense that Abraham was "reckoned righteous" by faith in future grace; and second the sense of habitual(though not perfect) obedience to God which was rooted in an abiding(though not perfect) faith in his future grace. Imperfection would be forgiven;but impenitent, habitual, distrusting disobedience would not." pg. 151

First let me say in his defense he does state elsewhere that we are not under the ceremonial law or sacrificial law of the Old Testament. But in many other places he does blur the line quite a bit between the Old Testament and the New. So now that I have given you the complete context of what Piper said(so you can judge if I am taking him out of context), lets look at this statement from a different angle. Often times theologians like MacArthur and Piper bury their theology in lofty statements and code words and we need to extract what they are saying out of it. Listen to the statement above with what Piper is really saying underneath it(with my translation in brackets):

"Do not make the mistake of thinking that the only righteousness the law required was perfection... "What brought a person to ruin[not be saved,caused them to go to hell] in the Old Testament was ... failure to be righteous...in the sense that Abraham was "reckoned righteous" by faith ... AND ... habitual(though not perfect) obedience to God.

So are we to understand that it was not Abraham's faith alone that saved him, but also his habitual obedience? And this is how not only the Old Testament saints were saved but us as well(by faith and habitual obedience)?

But Piper goes on in this section to what is one of his boldest statements in the book regarding in his reference to "human righteousness":

"It is terribly confusing when people say that the only righteousness that has any value is the imputed righteousness of Christ. I agree that justification is not grounded on any of our righteousness, but only the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. But sometimes people are careless and speak disparagingly of all human righteousness as if there was no such thing pleasing that pleased God. They often cite Isaiah 64:6 which says our righteousness is as filthy rags. It is true - gloriously true-that none of God's people, before or after the cross, would be accepted by an immaculately holy God if the perfect righteousness of Christ were not imputed to us(Romans 5:19; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21). But that does not mean that God does not produce in those "justified" people (before and after the cross) an experiential righteousness that is not "filthy rags". In fact, he does, and this righteousness is precious to God and is required, not as the ground of our justification(which is the righteousness of Christ only), but as an evidence of our being truly justified children of God."
pg. 151

This paragraph starts off with another strawman argument, that preachers actually teach that human righteousness has no value to God. I have never heard of a conservative Bible preacher preaching that. I have heard preachers teach, that in regards to our eternal salvation, us being saved, Christ's imputed righteousness is the only thing that has value to God(and this is a Biblical statement). Our imperfect righteous acts after salvation(that are empowered by the Spirit) cannot be added to the imputed righteousness of Christ making salvation a two part deal as Piper suggest it is in this paragraph.

This is why as you notice in the paragraph, Piper starts getting into a lot of grandiose words like "gloriously true" and "immaculately holy" because he is trying to get everyone ready for the punch that he about to give the Gospel as we know it from the Scriptures - that human righteousness(of course produced by the power of God) is required by God for our salvation in addition to the imputed righteousness of Christ.

What Piper(and MacArthur for that matter) do not understand is that whether you use the words "earned", "merited", or "required" as "evidence" it still means the same thing. They are saying Human righteousness(habitual obedience) after a profession of faith is required in addition to the imputed righteousness of Christ for our salvation.

John Piper goes on to continue building his strawman, that some actually think there was no such thing as righteous man in the Old or New Testament(except Christ):

"Consider that Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth are described by Luke in a way that many Christians stumble over: "They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord(Luke 1:6). Their righteousness was not filthy rages. Nor was it only the imputed righteousness of Christ. This was a life of habitual obedience and faith that receives cleansing from its imperfections through the wonderful provisions of forgiveness and restoration in the law(which all pointed to Christ as the one who would decisively carry the sins of all God's people before and after the cross, cf. Romans 3:25"
pg 151.

"If we do not grasp that the Old Testament commands a righteousness that is really possible by faith in future grace we will simply not be able to make sense out of hundreds of texts." pg. 152

Of course God calls people like Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth righteous and I would agree that this was primarily in reference to their habitual obedience. Habitual obedience is possible, but not required for salvation. This is where the problem lies with Piper's theology. No one is debating that it is not possible for a Christian(only through yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit) to habitually righteous. The problem is when we start making habitual righteousness a co-condition of for "final salvation" along with justification by faith alone in Christ.

So yes we know Zacharias and Elizabeth were habitually obedient to God and had the faith of Abraham that the Lord would save them from their sins by sending the Messiah - agreed. But the real question is, was their salvation dependent on BOTH their faith in the Christ to come AND their habitual obedience, or was it based on their faith alone in the Christ to come? We would answer faith in Christ alone saves, and habitual obedience CAN be an evidence of salvation, but it is NOT required as a co-condition of salvation.

John Piper plays word games like using "required" instead of "based on" for salvation. Like in the above statements that our salvation is "based on" justification by faith alone, but works are "required" as evidence. If something is required, that is makes it part of the basis(conditions) on which we receiving that thing. If you ask Piper if someone can get to heaven without a life of habitual obedience after they make a profession of faith he would have to answer NO based on the statements I have shown from his book.

Let this "sink in" as Piper says other places in his book, that according to John Piper only those who live lives of habitual obedience after a profession of faith will have their "imperfections" cleansed.

While we are on the subject of the Bible calling people righteous - what would Piper do with Lot? In Genesis 13 & 19 we see a man who clearly failed God on many occasions. He chose to live in the sinful area of Sodom and Gomorra, offered his daughters for sex to appease men outside his home and got drunk and had children with his daughters.

Yet in the New Testament he is called a "righteous man" in 2 Peter 2:7. Yes 2 Peter 2 tells us that Lot was "was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men"(vs 7) but he himself chose to live there - it was his mistake to be there in the first place. Once again we must ask the question to John Piper, was Lot's life a on of "habitual obedience" based on the evidence we see here?

What about Solomon? He started off devoted to God but then for most of his life let his wives lead him astray after false gods. Yet the Lord used him to pen some of his Holy Scriptures. No God does not only save those whose lives are a pattern of habitual obedience. He saves all who recognize their sin, and turn to God in faith alone in Christ alone for their redemption.

In his chapter entitled, "Faith in Future Grace vs. Lust", Mr. Piper goes on to elaborate on his previous statements about habitual obedience being required for salvation. In the section entitled "LUST AND ETERNAL SECURITY" Piper takes the sin of lust(specificly sexual lust) head on in regards to eternal security. Piper was speaking on lust at a high school meeting, and one of the students asked him if someone could loose his salvation because he gave into lust or did not take it seriously enough? The follow are excerpts from his response to the student and to us:

"If Jesus used the threat of hell to warn about the seriousness of lust, does that mean that a Christian can perish?... I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction(Matthew 7:13). Jesus said, if you don't fight lust, you won't go to heaven. Not that saints always succeed. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly."
pg. 331

"What then is the answer to this student and this man living in adultery? The answer has been given before in this book: we are justified by grace alone through faith alone(Romans 3:28;4:5;5:1;Ephesians 2:8f); and all those who are thus justified will be glorified(Romans 8:30) --that is no justified person will ever be lost. Nevertheless those who give themselves up to impurity wil be lost(Galatians 5:21), and those who forsake the fight will not see the Lord(Hebrews 12:14), and those who surrender their lives to evil desires will succumb to the wrath of God(Colossians3:6).

The reason these two groups of texts are not contradictory is that the faith that justifies is a faith that sanctifies. And the test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies.... Faith delivers from hell, and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust."
pg. 332

According to these above statements, in connection with others, we are guaranteed by John Piper that King Solomon(who penned some of the Scriptures) is now burning in hell. His life was not one of habitual obedience with only "imperfections", and we certainly know he did not fight lust very well at all.

So Christians need to worry about possibly going to hell for sinning too much?

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"
Romans 8:1

Oh, but Piper would say the person was never a Christian because a Christian could never have a life that was not one of habitual obedience. But the end result is, Christians really do need to fear going to hell, because this fear of the warnings will prompt us to "faith in future grace" and to live a life of habitual obedience so God won't have to declare in the end that we did not have enough good works to have a "justifying faith". This is actually the whole theme of another book called "The Race set before us" by Thomas Schreiner and Ardel Caneday. Piper's theology in many ways resembles this in which we must use the warnings of Scripture to prompt(scare) Christians into living habitually holy lives or else they will face damnation.

Again Piper plays word games here - we as Bible believing Christians would all agree that the faith that justifies also sanctifies. No disagreement here. But when Piper says "sanctifies" he means "makes habitually holy with only momentary imperfections". So what he is actually saying is the faith that justifies will make its recipient habitually holy.

What we believers who disagree would say is that the faith that justifies gives us the power(through the Holy Spirit) to be habitually holy, but we as believers may not always yield to that Holy Spirit and use the power God has given us. In fact some of us may yield very little to the Holy Spirit's call in our lives to be holy, yet we are saved because of Christ's perfect holiness imparted on the basis of faith alone in him and not our imperfect attempt after trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior.

"It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption."
Corinthians 1:30

If Christ is my "righteousness" and "holiness" what can my "habitual" though "not perfect" righteousness add to Christ's righteousness?

"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men."
Romans 5:18

One of the biggest problems with Piper's theology is that he leaves Christ's work on the cross unfinished and that our habitual holiness must be added to Christ's perfect holiness in order for us to finally be saved. Piper really is saying that God has set two conditions for our salvation.

The first condition for our salvation is that Christ had to die for our sins so he could pay the penalty for the sins of those who would believe on his name. In the first condition when one believes the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed to him because of his faith in Christ's shed blood. But the second condition for God to save us, is a that we live a "radical" life of habitual obedience with only imperfections here and there after we make a profession of faith.

You may notice that although I am a sovereign grace advocate, I did not mention unconditional election as a first condition of our being saved. That is because election is completely outside our interaction, it is solely on the basis of God's pleasure and will. Yes I believe as the scriptures say that God chose us(his elect) before the foundation of the world, and as Christ said all that the father had given him will come to him. How God works that is mystery in the Scriptures. Personally I believe that in his perfection he knows the exact circumstances that will cause us to believe and if we are his elect he brings us to that point of belief - yet it is still our choice. Most Calvinists use the term irresistible grace, but I much prefer the term, inevitable grace. It is the same as that since we are all born with a sin nature(passed down by Adam) it is inevitable that we will all sin, yet we must choose to sin. It just a matter of degrees, but not a matter of if, for we will. But that is enough on this rabbit trail...

Piper would argue that since God causes us to do all the deeds necessary through the Holy Spirit, that God fulfills his own second condition. But regardless, God has two conditions for our salvation(really many more as he goes into multiple conditions), not one as the Scriptures clearly teach. According to Piper, human righteousness(habitual obedience empowered by the Holy Spirit) must be added to Christ's perfect righteousness in order for us to be saved.

This is continuing his theme that justifying faith will produce habitual holiness in all believers. Piper now comes to the judgment and says that Christians our deeds as professing Christians will not only be about differing degrees of rewards, but also about whether we enter heaven or are sent to hell.

"When we stand before Christ we will be judged according to our deeds in this life. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad"(2 Corinthians 5:10)... Is the aim of this judgment to declare who is lost and who is saved, according to works done in the body? Or is the aim of this judgment to declare the measure of your reward in the age to come according to the works done in the body?

The answer of the New Testament, if you interpret carefully, is:both. Our deeds will reveal who enters who enters the age to come, and our deeds will reveal the measure of our reward in the age to come. I will try to show you why I think this is so, but let me mention the biggest problem for many Christians in saying this. Its sounds to many like a contradiction of salvation by grace through faith...Salvation is not of "works". That is works do not earn salvation. Works do not put God in our debt so that he must pay wages...our deeds will be the public evidence brought forth in Christ's courtroom to demonstrate that our faith is real...
pg. 363 & 364

The term for justification in the greek is a legal term that would be used in court room to declare someone "not guilty". It does not mean the person did not really do anything wrong, it just means they have been declared not guilty by the court. In Scriptural terms this means at the judgment God will declare us not guilty on account of our faith in finished work of Christ on the cross on our behalf. We will be declared "not guilty" because of Christ's one act of redemption on the cross of Calvary more than 2000 years ago.

According to Piper though, our deeds as Christians will be not only be for differing levels of reward, but will also be used as evidence in God's court to determine if we are really saved. This is probably one of the most unbiblical concepts in this entire book. It completely defeats the entire purpose of justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law."
Romans 3:28

"I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
Galatians 2:21

"Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes."
Romans 10:4

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
Romans 5:9

You see John Piper(and others like John MacArthur) are feeding on the frustrations of Pastors all across America. Pastors who are legitimately frustrated with the lack of commitment they have from their church membership.

But instead of just preaching on the need to serve the Lord(which is Biblical), whether it be in missions or in the local church, these Pastors are now being encouraged to use scare tactics with their congregations teaching that justification is by faith alone, but salvation is by justification AND works(human righteousness after salvation).

Obedience to God's commands, including commitment to the local church and the work and ministries of Christ are no longer required only to please the Lord and have sweet fellowship with him, but to prove that you have "saving faith". The only real kind of faith, the people are told, is the one that is fully committed to the work of Christ.

If we believe the theology of John Piper - then if one's life is not a pattern of obedience, or a life of habitual holiness with only moments of failure, then one cannot have any real assurance of salvation.

I usually don't quote from mentors of people, but since Piper quotes one his mentors in this book I believe a quote from that mentor is appropriate in this circumstance to see where Piper's theology has come from and where it will lead. One of his mentors, to whom he has attested that he owes a great deal for his thinking in this book, is David Fuller. First consider this quote by Piper in Future Grace about the influence of David Fuller on his theology:

"Daniel Fuller's vision of the Christian life as an "obedience of faith" is the garden in which the plants of my ponderings have grown. Almost three decades of dialogue on the issues in this book have a left a deep imprint. If I tried to show it with footnotes, they would be on almost every page. His major work, The Unity of the Bible(Zondervan Publishing House,1992), is explanatory background to most of what I write." pg. 7

There are other quotes from Daniel Fuller in the book Future Grace, but this one in the introduction is a troubling thought when we consider Daniel Fuller's comments below:

"I then had to accept the very drastic conclusion that the antithesis between law and gospel established by Luther, Calvin, and the covenant theologians could no longer stand up under the scrutiny of biblical theology."
Fuller, Gospel and Law, xi.

"I would say that Moses was justified by the work, or obedience, of faith. [There are] many passages in Scripture in which good works are made the instrumental cause of justification."
Fuller, A Response on the Subjects of Works and Grace, 79.

While I am definitely not a Convenant Theologian, I can see the danger of where Daniel Fuller, and by extention John Piper are taking evangelical Christianity. A whole new form of legalism is forming with John Piper's name written all over it.

I hope after reading this, you will see that John Piper's theology in this book and others like it is a clear attack on the founding principles of the reformation, and even more importantly on the truth of justification by faith ALONE in Christ ALONE. I pray that every Pastor who reads this and has been a follower of Piper's theology will realize the heresy of what he is teaching and preaching and will repent and follow the true Gospel of Salvation by Faith ALONE, in CHRIST ALONE.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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