Not Distinctives

Excerpt from John Piper sermon:  God in Christ:  The Price and the Prize of the Gospel

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What "Trademark" Means

When you hear me say that we are in a series of messages on the thirty-year theological trademarks of Bethlehem, don’t think niche branding. Don’t think “thirty-year exclusives.” I don’t even like the word distinctives. It seems to connote a desire to be doctrinally different from others. Our mindset is exactly the opposite. We’re suspicious of being different from the historic teachings of the church. The last thing we want to preach is new doctrines exclusive to us. When we say “trademarks” we mean truths that are defining and shaping and precious. We don’t mean views that we’ve come up with and that set us off from the rest of the church of Christ. We don’t want to be set off. We want to be arm in arm with millions of faithful followers of God’s word. Truth does divide. But it also unites. And it is the uniting power of truth that we delight in most.

So we are always testing our interpretations of the Bible by looking back into church history. If we can’t find our interpretations there, we would be very slow to preach them in this pulpit. Cults and sects are born in the minds of leaders who crave to be different. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Christian Science—these were born in the minds of teachers who wanted new revelations and interpretations, and found them. They were restless with the limitation of the Bible and its historic understandings.

There is a lot of healthy and warranted warning these days about historical hero worship. Warnings about inordinate and uncritical admiration and imitation of historical teachers like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, the Puritans, Edwards, Wesley, Spurgeon, Barth, Chesterton, Lewis, etc. But we should be careful not to overdo this criticism. People with great historical heroes tend not to think of themselves as heroes. They're too busy learning from them. Which means that, for all its dangers, admiring a great line of historical heroes will at least keep you from starting a sect.

Wise Foundations and Deep Roots

Our instincts are much more in that direction. Our thirty-year theological trademarks are not new, they’re not distinctive to us, they are not a niche, they are not exclusives, they are not eccentric. They all have wide foundations in the Bible and deep roots in the history of God’s people. And if any of them ever deserved to be guarded from the distortion of novelty it is today’s trademark, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My title is “God in Christ: The Price and the Prize of the Gospel.” Meaning: God in Christ isthe Price and the Prize of the Gospel. The prize of the gospel is the Person who paid the price, God in Christ. In other words, the gospel is the good news that God in Christ paid the price of suffering, so that we could have the prize of enjoying him forever. God paid the price of his Son to give us the prize of himself.

To unfold the meaning of this and to show how biblical it is I think it will be helpful to take three snapshots of the sermon title from three different places. One from Romans 5. One from church history. And one from 1 Corinthians 15.

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