God's Words to Us

Jonathan Parnell post: When God Himself Speaks to You

John Piper says that good news is so dense and so constant in Romans 8 — and so vastly superior to all earthly good news — that we scarcely feel the force of it until we take every verse of Romans 8 and restate it as the miracle it means for our lives.

So that is what he did.

As the apostle Paul described gospel ministry to be “God making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20), Pastor John speaks the truth of Romans 8 to us as if God himself were speaking them. They are God’s words to us, and in his final message of the 2014 National Conference, Piper encourages us to just listen. He encourages us to bring our minds and hearts into a “hungry readiness to hear the Lord himself speak kindly and deeply and powerfully to our souls.” In this excerpt, he mentions sixteen, which takes about four minutes.

• In Christ, you are free from eternal condemnation. (Romans 8:1)
• My Spirit in you will one day give life to your mortal bodies in the resurrection. (Romans 8:10–11)
• I executed the penalty for your sin in the crucified flesh of my Son. (Romans 8:3)
• My Holy Spirit is fulfilling in you the demands of my law summed up in love. (Romans 8:4)
• My Spirit’s power is the only means by which you can kill your sin. (Romans 8:13)
• My indwelling Spirit is the spirit of adoption, wakening the cry from your heart, “Abba Father.” (Romans 8:15)
• As my children, you are my heirs and will share my glory after a life of groaning with me in this fallen world. But children, that groaning is not worth comparing to the glory that you will one day see and share. (Romans 8:17–18)
• One day, this entire creation will attain its own freedom and glory after and from and for my glorious children. (Romans 8:21)
• When you don’t know how to pray in your sufferings, my Spirit prays for you through your very groanings. (Romans 8:26)
• But one thing you do know: I work everything for the good of those who love me and are called according to my purpose. (Romans 8:28)
• From eternity I took note of you, acknowledged you, chose you, and destined you infallibly to magnify my Son by becoming like him as the great firstborn. (Romans 8:29)
• I forged in eternity the unbreakable links of the chain: predestined, called, justified, glorified so that at no point is any of my elect ever lost. (Romans 8:30)
• Do you see, then? I, the Almighty, am for you! No one can successfully be against you. (Romans 8:31)
• I gave my own Son to save you. And so, with the hardest act behind me, nothing can stop me from giving you everything you need to enjoy me forever. (Romans 8:32)
• No charge can stick against you. I, the judge of the universe, count you righteous in my Son, Christ Jesus, who died, and rose, and reigns, and intercedes for you before me. (Romans 8:33–34)
• Therefore, everyone and everything that attempts to block my love for you will not only be removed but it will be swept into the river of my omnipotent love, and it will serve you for your good and my glory forever. (Romans 8:38–39)

See John Piper’s full message, “Greatest Book, Greatest Chapter, Greatest Joy.”