Simon Vibert Online

John Piper Book Reviews

Let the Nations be Glad

John Piper
I.V.P., 1993

This book has many similarities with Desiring God. In the first section Piper recounts, for readers who haven’t read his earlier book, the concept of Christian Hedonism. He takes up three of the themes in Desiring God (the supremacy of God in worship, missions and suffering)

The second section of the book develops his thesis that Mission Exists because Worship doesn’t. In other words, the end of missions is ultimately to bring the nations to worship God. The centrality of this focus is demonstrated in some challenging accounts of God-focussed missionary pioneers.

The strength of this book is two-fold. First it offers a useful introduction to Piper’s theology of ‘Christian Hedonism’. In the beginning he summarises Desiring God. It is the book I usually give new readers to read first. Secondly Let the Nations be Glad leads the reader to take daring risks in trusting God to honour the preaching of the Gospel. Whilst the article by Jonathan Edwards The End to which God created the world is never directly quoted, the thesis of the book Missions Exists because worship doesn’t, is clearly an overflow from Piper’s reading of Edwards.

The weaknesses of the book are similar to Desiring God in so far as it builds upon the strengths (and therefore weaknesses) of the concept of ‘Christian Hedonism’.

This book has motivated me to encourage people to think more strategically in their attitudes towards mission. It has also challenged me to see with fresh clarity that ‘sacrifice language’ can be misleading if we do not appreciate that to give up for God is only ever to gain!

The whole concept of ‘war-time’ lifestyle as evidenced in the staff at Bethlehem is summed up in this paragraph:

"$70,000 salary does not have to be accompanied by a $70,000 lifestyle. God is calling us to be conduits of his grace, not cul-de-sacs. Our greatest danger today is thinking that the conduit should be lined with gold..... Not matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is gold. That is no honour to the supremacy of his worth." (p.105)