How Did John Piper Become a Calvinist?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:02.000 | Some people may assume that John Piper was born a Calvinist. In fact, no, he wasn't. His embrace of reformed
00:00:11.160 | soteriology came at the expense of some very painful life experiences,
00:00:16.720 | some of which he shared in a
00:00:19.100 | 2002 sermon. Here's Pastor John explaining one of those key moments from his life in seminary,
00:00:24.680 | when he came face to face with Philippians 2.12 and
00:00:28.320 | the ninth chapter of Romans.
00:00:30.760 | Here he is to explain.
00:00:33.380 | There are two experiences in my life
00:00:35.580 | that
00:00:38.800 | make Romans 9
00:00:40.800 | one of the most important,
00:00:44.040 | if not the most important chapter in
00:00:47.440 | the Bible in shaping the way I think about everything and
00:00:53.080 | in determining where I have been led by God to minister, namely at Bethlehem.
00:00:58.840 | And the reason I open in this
00:01:02.400 | autobiographical way is
00:01:06.840 | not because it really matters what happened to me. It really is neither here nor there
00:01:12.680 | what I think about anything or what I experienced about anything. I tell it autobiographically because
00:01:21.920 | the doctrines of Romans 9 are about life.
00:01:24.880 | They're about choices that you will make behind which you will never turn again.
00:01:30.560 | You come to certain points in your life in crisis, and you know that if you cross the line, you'll never go back again.
00:01:38.240 | And you need to know that that's what we're dealing with in Romans 9. This is not just about controversy. This is not just about
00:01:47.720 | intellectual thought. It's not just about doctrine. It's about what will happen to your life
00:01:53.880 | because of a vision of God and a vision of salvation that's in this chapter.
00:01:58.160 | When I entered seminary
00:02:01.120 | in 1968, I
00:02:04.080 | believed in the freedom of my will in the sense that I thought it was ultimately
00:02:10.600 | self-determining.
00:02:13.840 | I hadn't learned that from the Bible.
00:02:17.480 | I had absorbed that from the
00:02:20.240 | self-infatuated,
00:02:23.720 | self-exalting,
00:02:25.400 | self-esteeming,
00:02:26.840 | self-sufficient air you and I breathe in this country every day.
00:02:31.380 | That's where I had absorbed it.
00:02:34.240 | It isn't in the Bible. Not one verse teaches the self-determining will of man.
00:02:40.840 | But I believed it just like most people believe it.
00:02:45.640 | The sovereignty of God meant to me he can do anything with me. I give him permission to do.
00:02:52.260 | That's what the sovereignty of God meant.
00:02:55.840 | And with this frame of mind, I entered a class on Philippians taught by Daniel Fuller and I entered a class on
00:03:03.840 | the salvation of man taught by James Morgan who died of cancer while I was at Fuller.
00:03:10.840 | In Philippians,
00:03:14.480 | I hit head-on,
00:03:16.240 | verse 12, chapter 2,
00:03:18.760 | "Work out your salvation
00:03:22.000 | with fear and trembling." And then I hit like a brick wall the ground clause,
00:03:27.440 | "For
00:03:29.960 | God is that one who is at work in you to will and to work for his good pleasure.
00:03:36.640 | Beneath my willing is God's willing and beneath my working is
00:03:42.040 | God's
00:03:44.000 | working." The question wasn't, "Do I have a will?"
00:03:47.800 | The question was, "Why do I will what I will?"
00:03:53.040 | And the ultimate answer,
00:03:55.800 | not the only answer, was God.
00:03:59.340 | Then I entered this systematic theology class with
00:04:03.240 | James Morgan.
00:04:06.280 | We dealt, as all systematic theology classes do, with the doctrine of election and
00:04:12.840 | grace.
00:04:14.840 | Romans 9 proved to be the watershed text in that class. I
00:04:20.480 | ran into these verses in
00:04:23.400 | chapter 9, verse 11,
00:04:25.840 | "Though Jacob and Esau were not yet born and
00:04:29.640 | had not done anything good or bad,
00:04:32.680 | in order that the purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls,
00:04:42.600 | she was told, Rebecca was told, the older will serve the younger,
00:04:46.960 | before they done anything good or evil,
00:04:49.880 | in order that election might stand,
00:04:54.120 | Esau was made subservient
00:04:57.600 | to Jacob." And it raises the question of the justice of God. And therefore in verse 14,
00:05:03.160 | we read in that class, and you can read right now in your Bible, "Is there then injustice on God's part?"
00:05:09.560 | And he answers, "No," and he quotes Moses.
00:05:12.800 | Verse 15, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
00:05:20.920 | Which raises the question of his irresistible will, which Paul raises in verse 19, "Why then does he still find fault?
00:05:29.880 | Who can resist his will?"
00:05:32.720 | And he answers in verse 21,
00:05:36.960 | "Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for
00:05:44.320 | dishonorable use?"
00:05:47.120 | Now,
00:05:48.400 | emotions run very high
00:05:50.400 | in a
00:05:52.960 | 22 year old or 82 year old who finds his
00:05:58.040 | man-centered world collapsing around him.
00:06:02.000 | So,
00:06:04.800 | one day I met James Morgan in the hall
00:06:08.120 | who was confronting me with these texts that were making me very angry and
00:06:13.360 | making me cry in the afternoon as I read my Bible.
00:06:17.240 | And I pulled my pen out of my pocket, and I stood in front of him and after a few minutes of heated discussion, I
00:06:24.760 | held my pen in front of his face and
00:06:29.440 | I dropped it on the floor.
00:06:32.400 | And with far less respect than a 22 year old ought to have for a teacher, I said,
00:06:39.880 | "I dropped it!
00:06:42.440 | I dropped it!"
00:06:44.440 | As though that would settle the issue.
00:06:48.000 | That there were no
00:06:52.680 | divine
00:06:55.640 | authority or power that might have somehow governed my dropping it.
00:07:02.080 | Emotions run very high when your world is collapsing. By the end of the semester it was in
00:07:08.800 | ruins.
00:07:10.440 | And I wrote in my blue book, I can picture the place in the class where I was sitting,
00:07:17.920 | "Romans 9 is like a tiger
00:07:21.720 | going about devouring
00:07:24.960 | free-willers like me." And that was the end of my love affair
00:07:30.880 | with human autonomy and the ultimate self-determination of my will.
00:07:36.960 | And it was the beginning of
00:07:39.600 | a love affair with the supremacy of God.
00:07:44.080 | That was from Pastor John's sermon delivered on November 3rd,
00:07:47.960 | 2002, aptly titled, "The Absolute Sovereignty of God.
00:07:52.620 | What is Romans 9 about?" You can find the full sermon at ZyronGod.org.
00:07:57.880 | And of course, John Piper on Romans 9 is gold. A number of people are unaware
00:08:02.400 | that he published a whole academic book on this chapter in
00:08:06.520 | 1993. It's a book titled, "The Justification of God." If you have some Greek in you, you should check that out.
00:08:13.280 | And if you have a favorite sermon clip of Pastor John's in a recent message or an old message,
00:08:19.320 | conference message, something you heard him share locally in your hometown,
00:08:23.600 | whatever, give me the timestamps of the audio clip of when it begins and ends. Tell me why that clip impacted you and
00:08:30.160 | email me those details at askpastorjohn@zyrongod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@zyrongod.org.
00:08:37.680 | Give me your name, your hometown, or the city you live closest to, and put the word "clip" in the subject line as well.
00:08:44.200 | I'm always interested to hear which sermons have most impacted you, and specifically which clips from those sermons have been most impactful.
00:08:52.120 | And I would love to share those with the whole audience.
00:08:55.160 | Well, next time we ask, "Is angry prayer okay?" It's an important question that we need to address. Is angry prayer okay?
00:09:05.280 | Don't miss it. I'm Tony Renke. We'll see you back here on Friday.
00:09:09.640 | [END]
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