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The Biblical Roots of Endurance | John Piper · Reformed Thinking

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Why do we expect safety in a fallen world?
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I mean, really think about that for a second.
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The 20th century saw roughly 170 million people murdered, and
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that figure does not even account for the casualties of
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world wars or, you know, smaller global conflicts.
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That is 170 million individuals slaughtered by their own
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governments, the very institutions designed to provide
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safety and order, became the primary engines of death.
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It is staggering when you put the numbers out there like that.
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Yeah, it is. Yet somehow modern Christians
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walk around expecting a comfortable, pain free
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existence. Welcome to Reformed Thinking,
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where we're doing a deep dive into the historical and biblical
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roots of keeping the faith. Glad to be here for this one.
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Today we have a very specific agenda for you.
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We are looking directly at the introduction to John Piper's
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book, The Roots of Endurance. We are setting out to figure out
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how Christians finish well, how do they die well, and how do
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they do this in a world that, quite frankly, feels incredibly
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fragile, insecure, and, well, often completely overwhelming?
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That is the core issue we are looking at today, and we need to
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establish our theological lens right away.
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As Protestant believers adhering to the Reformed theology of the
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Westminster Confession, we view perseverance in a very specific
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light. OK.
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We do not view keeping the faith as a product of human grit or,
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you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or sheer
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willpower. We view it as a sovereign gift
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of grace. God initiate it, God sustains
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it, and God ensures it. So it is all on him.
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Precisely everything we discussed today about keeping
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the faith rests entirely on that rock solid reality of God's
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sovereign grace. We are not talking about white
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knuckling your way to heaven. We are talking about a
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theological bedrock that holds you when your own fingers fail.
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OK, let's unpack this because that terrifying statistic about
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the 20th century completely shatters the illusion we build
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for ourselves. Where did we get this idea that
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following Christ comes with a guarantee of a comfortable, pain
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free existence? It is definitely a modern
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Western invention. Right when you look at Piper's
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observations regarding the prosperous West, there is a
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glaring, almost absurd demand in our culture for a trouble free
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life. It is an absolute non negotiable
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demand. Yes.
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And when trouble inevitably hits, what is the reaction?
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People immediately look for a system to blame.
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They fall into a pit of feeling sorry for themselves.
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They spend every oz of their emotional, physical and
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spiritual energy just trying to cope with the disruption to
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their comfort. Which leaves nothing leftover.
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Exactly. I mean, absolutely.
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And the result is a completely paralyzed church.
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They have absolutely nothing leftover from ministering to
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others because they are entirely consumed by the fact that their
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personal Kingdom of comfort has been breached.
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What's fascinating here is the sheer historical blindness of
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that modern Western expectation. The historical data should
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immediately rid us of this illusion of safety.
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The 20th century was a bloody nightmare.
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Yeah, a total nightmare. When you digest that footnote
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about the 170 million people murdered by their own
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governments, it forces you to realize that the baseline human
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condition in a fallen world is not suburban tranquility.
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It is brutality. And the 21st century has already
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proven that there is no safe place on earth.
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You cannot buy enough security cameras.
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You cannot live in a gated community secure enough to lock
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out the reality of a groaning, fractured creation.
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That is heavy. The theological disconnect
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between what modern Christians expect and what history delivers
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is staggering. Many churches grew up with the
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mindset that moving away from stress and moving toward comfort
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is just the normal default state of existence.
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They treat comfort as a constitutional right of the
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believer. But the Bible doesn't say that
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at. All no.
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The Bible guarantees tribulation.
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Jesus says in John 16.33 that in the world you will have
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tribulation. He does not suggest it as a
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possibility for a few unlucky believers.
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He promises it as a universal reality.
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Golgotha, after all, was not a manicured suburb of Jerusalem.
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Definitely not. It was a place of execution
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outside the city gates, marked by flies, blood, public
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humiliation and extreme suffering.
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I look at that disconnect and I think about how strange our
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modern approach is. It is like trying to play a full
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contact sport like rugby or American football, but insisting
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on wearing a tailored business suit and demanding that no one
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gets your clothes dirty. That is a great way to put it.
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It makes no sense. Think about it.
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You step onto a field of play where violent contact, mud and
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bruising are the entire nature of the event.
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But you were out there in a silk tie, acting completely offended
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and filing a grievance every time someone bumps into you.
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Right, complain to the referee about the mud.
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Yeah, we step into a fallen world professing a faith
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centered on a crucified Savior and then act shocked, even
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betrayed by God when we face friction.
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But let me push back on this for a second.
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If the modern church is filled with people wearing tailored
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suits on a rugby pitch, what happens if people refuse to
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voluntarily take what Piper calls the Calvary Road?
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Do they just get to stay in their clean clothes on the
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sidelines? Can a Christian just
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successfully opt out of the suffering and live a quiet,
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unbothered life? Not at all.
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If we connect this to the bigger picture, God has ways of
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ensuring His people walk the path.
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He is ordained. We see this explicitly in Acts
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11.9. In that passage, the early
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believers were quite happy staying in Jerusalem.
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They had a great community. They were sharing meals.
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The preaching was excellent. They were home loving Saints,
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entirely comfortable staying right where they were.
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Which sounds pretty nice, honestly.
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It does, but God did not let them stay in that comfort zone.
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A massive violent persecution arose over Stephen and men were
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being dragged from their homes and God used that terrifying
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persecution to catapult believers onto the Calvary Rd.
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So he forced them out. Yes, they were scattered as far
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as Sunisha, Cyprus, and Antioch speaking the Word as they went.
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God might just catapult us onto that road today if we refuse to
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step onto it voluntarily. The true Christian life means
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moving toward need, not comfort. Moving toward need.
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Right. It means putting oneself at
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temporal risk for the sake of eternal security.
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The trajectory of a genuine believer is always toward the
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brokenness of the world, regardless of the danger,
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discomfort, or stress that comes with it.
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If you try to build a fortress of comfort to avoid the Calvary
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Rd., God is more than willing to dismantle that fortress to get
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you moving. If the normal Christian life is
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fraught with danger, disappointment and stress, if
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frustration and sickness are the norm, not the exception, then
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how do we keep from quitting? That is the big question, the
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sheer. Weight of that reality feels
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crushing to me. If I'm guaranteed to face
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headwinds for the rest of my life, the natural human reaction
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is to simply stop walking. This leads us into the
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theological mechanics of perseverance, and Piper points
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out a massive shift in his own thinking when he reached his
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50th year as a professing Christian.
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Which is pretty late in the game to have a massive shift.
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Yeah, it really is. In his 20s and 30s, he assumed
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sanctification had a cumulative effect.
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He operated under the logic that as you grow older in the faith,
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gaining more biblical knowledge, building better habits, and
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achieving more emotional stability, the likelihood of
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walking away from the faith of outright apostasy would become
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incredibly slim. He thought the years of steady
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growth would act as an impenetrable buffer by the time
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he hit 50. That is a very common
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assumption, especially among eager young believers.
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They assume they are building a fortress of habit, intellect,
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and discipline that will render them invincible to doubt later
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in life. They think, well, if I just read
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enough theology, if I memorize enough Scripture, my faith will
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run on autopilot. But the illusion of the iron
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will is a dangerous myth. The iron will.
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Yes, while growth in grace certainly brings stability so
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that we're not tossed around by every wind of doctrine, the
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human will itself remains inherently weak.
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It never graduates to a state of independent perfection in this
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life. In a severe crisis of faith, the
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will is the very thing that fails.
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Wow. The danger of drifting, of
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growing weary and doing good is a severe biblical reality.
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Piper admits to knowing horrifying moments of absolute
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blankness. He describes waking up and
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feeling completely empty toward the things of God, moments that
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made him realize his absolute desperate dependence on God's
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verses being new every single morning.
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He realized that a 50 year track record of obedience means
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absolutely nothing if God withdraws His sustaining hand
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for even a moment. He brings in a lyric from the
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Robert Robinson him that I think you, the listener, will
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recognize immediately. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
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it. Prone to leave the God I love.
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What classic think. About your own mornings.
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Consider those times you wake up and before your feet even hit
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the floor, you feel like you were standing on the precipice
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of coldness. You feel an absolute blankness
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toward the things of God. Yes, I think we all know that
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feeling. You feel no natural inclination
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to pray, no desire to read the Word, no affection for Christ.
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Your mind immediately runs toward your anxieties, your
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ambitions, or just a desire to go back to sleep.
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So what does this all mean? It means we absolutely cannot
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trust our own resolve. Our willpower is a fragile
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thread, not a heavy iron anchor. This raises a critical question
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about human nature, and we have to tie this explicitly to the
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Reformed doctrine of total depravity.
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For a lay audience, we need to clarify what total depravity
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actually means, because it is frequently misunderstood.
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Oh, heavily misunderstood. It does not mean humans are as
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wicked as they could possibly be in every single action.
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It means every part of our nature, every faculty, our mind,
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our emotions, and crucially, our will is broken and tainted by
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the fall. There is no pristine, unaffected
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zone inside of us that can independently choose God and
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sustain that choice. Florida State, because our will
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is broken at the root. If keeping the faith dependent
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decisively on us, we would all fall.
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We would all wander off the precipice on a random Tuesday
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morning. The fact that any believer wakes
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up still believing, still possessing a mustard seed of
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faith, is sheer, unadulterated mercy.
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That is wild to think about. The human will cannot be
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depended on to save itself or keep itself saved.
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Therefore, perseverance is an absolute gift.
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God must actively seize the weak and failing will and bring it
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back to Himself in faith, day after day.
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But hold on, I need to play the skeptic here.
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If our will is completely insufficient, and if we are
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prone to wander the second we rely on our own strength, how
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does this actually play out in real time?
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Who seizes our will and brings it back to God?
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And if God is doing all the seizing, what are we supposed to
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do? Just wait around.
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Good questions. This introduces the absolute
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necessity of desperate prayer. We are not talking about gentle,
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polite requests before a meal. We're talking about warfare.
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The way we should pray involves desperate pleading.
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We should be crying out. Defeat every rising rebellion in
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my heart. Expose every demonic deception
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trying to cloud my mind. Master me.
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Do whatever you must do to keep me trusting you.
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That level of intensity and prayer is thoroughly biblical.
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It is rooted directly in the Psalms and in the Lord's Prayer
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itself. Think about the very first
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petition in the Lord's Prayer, hallowed be your name.
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OK, Many people read that as a simple acclamation of praise,
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like saying your name is holy. But in the original Greek it
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uses a third person imperative. It is a desperate plea for God
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to act upon the world and upon our own hearts.
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I didn't know that. Yeah, we are asking for divine
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influence to move human hearts from irreverence to joyful
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submission. We are begging God to cause His
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name to be reverenced, starting with the person praying the
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prayer, because we know we cannot produce that reverence on
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our own. And we see the psalmist praying
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the exact same way. Right, the Psalms are full of
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that. The psalmist does not say, I
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will now incline my own heart. He prays for God to incline his
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heart toward the testimonies. He asks God to open his eyes to
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see beauty in the Word. He asked God to unite his
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divided allegiances and to satisfy Him with divine love.
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I love the acronym Piper uses for those requests.
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IOUS, Incline, open, unite, satisfy.
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It is a brilliant way to remember how dependent we are.
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We have to ask God to incline our hearts because gravity
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naturally pulls our affections down toward money,
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entertainment, and ego. We ask Him to open our eyes
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because we can read the Bible and see facts, but we are
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completely blind to the glory unless He opens our eyes.
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We ask Him to unite our hearts because we constantly live with
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divided allegiances. We want God, but we also
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desperately want the approval of our peers.
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That divided allegiance is so common.
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And we ask Him to satisfy us because duty is not enough.
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We need the satisfaction of God to break the allure of sin.
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Without this specific daily divine intervention, nobody will
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endure to the end. But the theological engine
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driving all this desperate prayer is actually found in the
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Old Testament. We look at Jeremiah 32.4 which
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outlines the New Covenant promise.
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God says I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may
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not turn from me. It is an amazing verse.
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This is staggering. God commands that we stand firm,
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but He actually creates the obedience He demands.
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He puts the fear in our hearts so that we do not turn away.
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He secures our perseverance. That is the defining mark of the
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New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, the law
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was written on stone and the people were not unable to keep
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it. The Law told them what to do,
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but it gave them no internal strength to do it.
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But in the New Covenant, purchased by the blood of
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Christ, God takes the initiative.
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He promises to do for us what He commands from us.
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So he provides the actual means. Yes, this is the bedrock of our
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asking for help. We ask God to keep us precisely
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because he is explicitly promised to keep us.
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Our prayer is not a shot in the dark.
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It is rooted in His guaranteed grace.
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When we pray those desperate IOUS prayers, we are simply
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asking God to fulfill the terms of the New Covenant that He
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already signed in the blood of His Son.
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Here's where it gets really interesting, because the logical
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pushback is obvious. If God does all the keeping, if
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He is the one putting the fear in our hearts and securing our
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faith, are we just passive? Many people jump to that
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conclusion. Right.
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Are we just passengers asleep on a train, trusting the conductor
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to get us to the station while we do absolutely nothing?
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No, the biblical witness rules that out completely.
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I look at it more like a sailor in a massive storm at sea.
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Imagine you are that sailor. You are desperately working the
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riggings. OK, I can picture that.
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You are pulling the heavy, wet ropes until your hands literally
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bleed. You are hoisting the sails with
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fear and trembling, fighting the crashing waves, trying to keep
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the ship from capsizing. You are exerting massive,
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agonizing effort. But here's the reality.
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You're pulling on the ropes does not move the massive ship
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forward. The physics of the ship moving
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forward relies 0% on your bleeding hands.
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It is exclusively the wind of God's grace filling those sails
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that provides the momentum. You position the sails, but the
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wind does the work. We see this in Philippians
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2.1213. Work out your own salvation with
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fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to
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will and to work for his good pleasure.
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Such a crucial passage. We strive, we pull the ropes,
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but we do it with a restful confidence because we know it is
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God's mighty wind, not our frantic pulling moving the ship.
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That analogy captures the peculiar nature of Christians
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striving brilliantly, the sailors terrified of the storm,
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yes, but he is not terrified that the wind does not exist.
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We put out immense effort to run the race and fight the fight,
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but we do it in a very specific posture, in the strength that
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God supplies. Right, Restful.
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Confidence. We do not tremble with the
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frantic anxiety of an orphan who has been abandoned to figure it
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out alone. We strive with deep restfulness
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because we are relying entirely on grace.
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The tension is real. We are commanding our bodies,
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denying our flesh and fighting sin.
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But the engine of that fight is divine grace.
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The engine is grace. And the entire point of this
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dynamic, where we exert the effort but God provides the
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grace that makes the effort possible, is so that God gets
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all the glory. If we supplied the raw strength
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from our own iron will, we would naturally get the glory.
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Oh, I definitely. Would we would stand before God
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and say, look at the ship I rode across the ocean?
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But because God makes all grace abound to us, so we can abound
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in good works, the glory belongs entirely to Him.
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We merely positioned the sails. He sent the Gale.
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This specific type of striving, relying entirely on grace so
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that God gets all the glory, was not just some abstract
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theological concept debated in seminary classrooms.
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It was the exact engine that drove some of history's greatest
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social reformers and that moves us to examine the lives of three
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historical heavyweights, John Newton, Charles Simeon and
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William Wilberforce. Three incredible men.
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These men faced massive, relentless, vicious opposition,
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yet they kept going for decades. They did not burn out.
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They did not quit. They did not retreat to a
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comfortable suburb. Their secret, their theological
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root for keeping the faith amid such hostility, was placing
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justification strictly before sanctification.
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The historical source frames this as pardon before action or
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pardon before strength. To understand this, we have to
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grasp the concept of imputed righteousness.
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Let's break that down. Imputed righteousness is an
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accounting term. It means God legally credits his
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own perfect righteousness to our account on the basis of Christ's
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perfect life and sacrificial death, entirely through faith.
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We do not earn it. It is placed onto our Ledger.
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So it's a legal transaction? Yes, these men understood that
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the cross of Christ is first the ground of our acceptance with
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God before it ever becomes the inspiration for our labor.
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That perfect pardon, that legal declaration of not guilty, must
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precede any attempt at righteous living, or the entire system
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collapses into crushing legalism.
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Well, let's focus on Wilberforce for a minute, because his
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insight here is incredible. He was a politician, a member of
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Parliament. He had no formal theological
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training at all. He wasn't a reverend or a
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Bishop. That's a wayman, really.
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Yet in his 1797 book, A Practical View of the Prevailing
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Religious System of Professed Christians, Wilberforce
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diagnosed the massive moral decay of Britain with surgical
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precision. He looked at polite high society
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British culture, and realized that nominal Christians had made
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a fatal error. They thought morals were
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distinct from doctrine. Which is a huge mistake.
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They thought you could have a good British behavior, good
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manners, and ethical laws without the bedrock theology of
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justification by faith alone. They wanted the fruit of
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Christianity without the root. If we connect this to the bigger
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picture, Wilberforce diagnosed a complete reversal of the gospel
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order. The culture had flipped
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justification and sanctification.
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The Polite Society of 1797 believe that producing the
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fruits of holiness, being a good neighbor, acting decently, going
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to church was the cause of being justified rather than the
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effect. They got it backwards.
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They thought if they acted morally enough, God would
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eventually accept them. By trying to make morality the
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root, they cut themselves off from the actual grace needed to
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fight sin and to fight massive, entrenched injustices like the
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transatlantic slave trade. Wilberforce argued fiercely that
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true holiness must follow reconciliation to God.
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It can never precede it. OK, that makes sense.
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Think about the psychology of this.
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If you are fighting the slave trade to earn God's love, the
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moment you face a brutal political defeat in Parliament,
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your immediate thought is that God is angry with you that
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you're not good enough and you burn out entirely.
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Oh wow, yeah, you just collapse. But if you already possess God's
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love through a prior pardon, the political defeat is just a
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logistical issue on the battlefield.
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It is not an existential threat to your soul.
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If you try to make your good work the cause of your
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acceptance with God, you lose both the acceptance and the
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ability to do genuine good works over the long haul.
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That is such a vital distinction to understand.
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They were trying to manufacture the fruit without planting the
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root, and Wilberforce saw that this theological error was
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literally destroying the nation's morality.
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Because moralism has no stamina, it breaks under pressure.
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It really does. This rigorous focus on
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justification by faith alone didn't turn these men into
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rigid, joyless academics, either.
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You might think that focusing so heavily on dense theological
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doctrine would make them cold analytical debaters, but it
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produced the exact opposite resting on their part, and
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fueled a very specific kind of delight that sustained their
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incredibly long battles. That delight is a central theme
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when we look at their lives. Charles Simeon had a very
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specific, demanding view on joy. Simeon believed A nominal
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Christian is content with simply proving the way of salvation.
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The nominal Christian is happy to just win the theological
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argument, write a good paper, and rest on their intellectual
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correctness. Right, just checking the
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intellectual boxes. But Simeon argued that a true
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Christian actually loves the way of salvation.
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The lights in it glories in it and shudders at the very thought
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of glorying and anything else. Delight in the cross of Christ
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and emotional heart level satisfaction in the pardon of
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God was not optional. It was required.
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It was not just a sense of dutiful, begrudging obedience
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that kept them going. Dutiful obedience will last a
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few years. Delight will last a lifetime.
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It was the high octane fuel for their endurance.
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And they did not try to endure alone.
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We've seen an incredible historical network that
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sustained these men. Their lives were interwoven
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intricately. They fought as a cohesive unit.
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Newton was the older father figure of the group, the former
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slave ship captain turned pastor.
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An amazing redemption story there.
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We have this record of a private meeting on December 7th, 1785.
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Newton sat down and counseled a young, wealthy, newly converted
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Wilberforce. Wilberforce was having an
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existential crisis, trying to decide if he needed to leave The
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Dirty world of politics now that he was a Christian.
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Many people told him to become a pastor, but Newton told him to
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stay. That was a pivotal moment in
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history. He looked at this young
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politician and believed God had raised Wilberforce up
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specifically for the good of the nation to fight the slave trade
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from within the halls of power. The longevity of their
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respective fights is staggering when you consider the opposition
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Charles Simeon faced 54 years of ministry at Trinity Church in
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Cambridge. And the opposition he faced
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wasn't just polite disagreement. It was fierce, personal and
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humiliating. Humiliating is the right word.
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For a 12 year stretch, his opponents literally locked the
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pews. The pea holders own their seats
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and they refuse to let anyone sit in them.
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While Simeon preached, they locked the wooden benches.
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That is just insane. Imagine the psychological toll
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of walking into your workplace for 624 consecutive Sundays and
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the people you are trying to minister to have locked the
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doors to the seats, forcing you to preach to an audience
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standing uncomfortably in the aisles while the benches sit
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empty. I can't even imagine most
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pastors would quit after two weeks of that. 12 years of that
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kind of blatant weekly rejection would break almost anyone, and
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Wilberforce fought relentlessly against the slave trade and for
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the spread of the gospel. Facing massive financial and
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political backlash, he eventually saw the British
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colonies in India open to the Gospel in 1813.
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That victory happened six years after John Newton died.
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Wow. They fought grueling battles
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that spanned entire decades, and sometimes they didn't even live
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to see the final victories of their closest friends.
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There's also this fascinating historical detail about an
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unknown emissary of grace. When we talk about history, we
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focus on the big names. But look at the role of Isaac
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Milner. Yes Mil, he was a tutor, an
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academic who actually LED Wilberforce to Christ during a
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carriage ride through Europe. Milner was also a strong vocal
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supporter of Simeon when Simeon was facing a massive backlash in
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Cambridge. Isaac Milner is not a household
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name. Most people listening right now
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have never heard of him. Probably not, no.
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Yet God used the seemingly small, unknown figure to uphold
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the men who were standing on the front lines of history.
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It shows how God uses a vast interconnected network of
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believers, many of whom will never be famous, to sustain His
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people. It perfectly illustrates the
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dynamic we see in the Old Testament.
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Newton acted like Moses on the mountain, holding up his hands
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in prayer, intercession and encouragement.
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Meanwhile, Wilberforce was Joshua down in the muddy,
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violent battlefield fighting Amalek in the political arena.
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That's a great visual. Neither could succeed without
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the other. They survived the grueling
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decades of opposition because they utilized A2 pronged
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strategy for survival. First, they rested entirely on
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the imputed righteousness of Christ, ensuring their souls
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were safe regardless of the political outcome.
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Second, they leaned heavily on the fellowship of the Saints.
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They needed the vertical pardon of the cross, and they needed
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the horizontal support of each other.
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Which brings us to the crucial question.
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How do you, the listener, apply this?
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Today? We are commanded to be imitators
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of those who inherit the promises through faith and
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patience. Referencing Hebrews 6.12, we are
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not just studying history to win trivia contests, we are studying
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it to survive our own trials. Absolutely.
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So let's briefly recap the progression we have traced.
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We started by violently rejecting the illusion of a
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safe, pain free life in the prosperous West.
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We recognize the absolute failure of the human will to
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secure its own faith. Acknowledging our total
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depravity, we saw that we must rest entirely on the new
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covenant promise of God's keeping grace, crying out in
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desperate daily prayer for God to master us.
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We learned from Wilberforce that justification must strictly
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precede any moral action or we will collapse under the weight
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of legalism. And finally, we saw the absolute
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necessity of leaning on a community of believers fighting
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alongside each other, fueled by a cross focused delight rather
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than grim duty. As we conclude our time, I want
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to leave you with a final consideration, drawing directly
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from the theology we have discussed.
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If the Bible guarantees that the normal Christian life involves
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frustration, sickness, and conflict, what if your current
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hardship is not a random accident?
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What if it is not a sign that God has abandoned you?
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Consider the possibility that the exact trial you are facing
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today, the health scare, the financial ruin, the broken
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relationship, is the specific instrument a sovereign God is
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using to detach you from the idol of comfort.
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That reframes everything. What if He is using this pain to
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expose the myth of your iron will, forcing you to rely
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entirely on His grace, thereby sealing your will irrevocably to
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His? How might viewing your stress as
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a severe mercy from a sovereign God completely alter your
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reaction to it when you wake up tomorrow morning?
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Thank you for joining us on this deep dive on reformed thinking.