Receive him as the Savior and Lord and Treasure of your life. If you are a believer already, humble yourself under the gracious hand of God, and as an everlasting, invincible child of God, give yourself to relieving suffering, especially eternal suffering.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 108
The connection between our action in the new birth (I Peter 1:22) and God’s action in the new birth (I Peter 1:23) is a relationship of effect and cause. That’s implied in the words “since [or because] you have been born again.” God’s action is underneath our action.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 105
We are, therefore, integrally involved in the new birth. It is our new birth. It involves our believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s why I say that my new birth does not take place without me believing. In believing we are acting out the new birth, we are breathing in the new life.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 105
So when Peter says that you have “purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love” (I Peter 1:22), he means “you have purified your souls by faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and this faith leads to brotherly love.” Faith works through love (Galatians 5:6). Love comes from sincere faith (I Timothy 1:5)
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 104
Your involvement in the event of the new birth is to exercise faith – faith in the crucified and risen Son of God, Jesus Christ as the Savior and Lord and Treasure of your life. The way you are engaged in the event of your new birth is by believing in Christ.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 102
Nothing is more important than the glory of Christ personally seen and savored in the kingdom of God with all the countless number who have believed in his name. That glory will one day fill the earth with peace and justice and everything good. Christ himself will be the center and radiant through it all.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 101
My job as a pastor is to deal in what matters most, and to stay close to the revealed will of God in the Bible (so you can see it for yourselves) and to pray that, bu God’s grace, the young, idealistic angry Clarence Thomases in the crowd, and everyone else, will see and feel the magnitude of what God says is important.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 101
May God give you eyes to see that nothing could make you humbler and nothing could make you happier than the truth that you have been born again, not because of anything you did, but because of the mercy of God. Submit to that and be glad.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 96
This salvation – this new birth – is not owing to works done in righteousness. Not only your worst works and worst motives, but even your best works and best motives are excluded. They didn’t make you regenerate; they don’t cause you to stay regenerate. It’s the other way around.
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 95
If you are born again, you owe it to the mercy of God. God is merciful. We didn’t deserve to be born again. We were hard and resistant and spiritually dead. God would have been righteous to pass us by. (Ephesians 2:4-5)
– John Piper, Finally Alive, Christian Focus Publishers, copyright 2009, page 95
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