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The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God

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I have to admit, when I first read this book, I wanted to throw it across the room. But earnestly searching scriptures (with the intent to prove the book wrong), I was forced to unhappily conclude that Piper was completely on the ball. Then the most amazing thing happened: as I reread the book with a heart of faith, my disturbed state of mind gave way to a liberating joy in the good news of the sovereign God who is infinitely worthy and glorious beyond our wildest imaginations. I've always known that God is big, but Piper's expositions have been the lynchpin to my realization that God is BIG; truly one whose ways are above our ways and whose thoughts are above our thoughts. And in light of this, the deep love of Jesus has become even more amazing to me: how such a God could love and die for sinners such as us.

To God alone be the glory!

I have read practically all of Piper's books, including his classic Desiring God, and the Pleasures of God outranks all of them. Piper manages to accomplish something that very few theologians can: mesh theology and joyful devotion to God. Theology to Piper is by no means an end in itself; it is meant to direct God's people towards him with deeper understanding of his character. Piper is humble and yet strongly convicted in his apprehension of God and the ways in which he interacts with his son Jesus Christ and his people. He puts down all vying theologies with passion and scriptural weaponry. This book is not for the new Christian or someone trying to explore the character of God for the first time; it is for those who have meditated on scripture for some time but are looking to be impassioned by the Bible and apply its sublime truths in richer, more accurate ways. This book is like the Bible in that it prepares and motivates the reader for application, without w! hich it is meaningless.

I first saw this book reviewed in the early 1990's. It aroused a double response of curiosity and suspicion. Like many a cynic I asked myself, "Now who's this guy and what's he spinning?" Against my natural inclination to dismiss it, I ordered POG. On receiving it I began reading and found my suspicions confirmed: here was another triumphal and insensitive adherent to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

Strangely, however, I couldn't stop reading. Despite months of scrawling angry counter-arguments in the margins of its pages I was drawn inexplicably to the sensibility of its core premise about God's delight in being God. To make this story short, I found myself, in the end, exhausted but surrendered to the portrait of God that Piper paints with the full palette of scriptural truth. And finally happy too, with the beginnings of the joy Piper wished for his sons in the Foreword.

Salvation history testifies to the fact that a distinguishing evidence of the truth is that it is often hated - at first. The fact that POG eventually had such an unnatural (or supernatural) effect on someone like me - initially so inclined to resist and rebuff - speaks more to the validity of this book than if I had joined immediately in the chorus of deserved admiration.

This is not a critical analysis of POG; others have provided that sufficiently on this page. Instead it's a personal account of the Irresistible Grace that against all nature drew a small and scoffing soul into undeserved open spaces where God's glory was seen...and is now sung.

The Pleasures of God is by far one of the great books of our generation. John Piper is not only a clear and easy to follow theologian, he has a zeal and enthusiasm for the Person of God that is contagious.

The genre of this book is hard to peg. Its theology runs deep - very deep, yet it is at the same time devotional; it stretches the intellect but cuts straight to the heart. Piper's style is truly unique. His convictions are unashamedly Biblical.

The essence of the book may be condensed down to this: God does just as He pleases. Yet this thesis opens a universe of implications and questions, some of which Piper addresses in the book's ten chapters. They are titled, "The Pleasure of God in His Son, The Pleasure of God in All He Does, The Pleasure of God in His Creation, The Pleasure of God in His Fame, The Pleasure of God in Election, The Pleasure of God in Bruising the Son, The Pleasure of God in Doing Good to All Who Hope in Him, The Pleasure of God in the Prayers of the Upright, The Pleasure of God in Personal Obedience and Public Justice, and The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants."
The Appendix, "Are There Two Wills in God? Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved" is also worth reading and should be considered an eleventh chapter.

Piper's God is the Sovereign God of the Bible. Although we can only understand what He has revealed, He makes no apology for being God nor for His nature; instead, He glories in Who He is. Because the believer is in union with Him through Christ, we are included in the great love felt between the Persons of the Trinity.

Piper takes the reader through numerous theological and daily issues, like election, why a good God would allow evil, foreign missions, prayer, the holiness of God, the Sovereignty of God, the purpose of Christ's atonement - and a whole lot more.

I found that this book stretched not only my mind but my soul. World Magazine rightly included this volume on its list of the top 100 books of the Twentieth Century. It will take you a while to journey through these 340 thoughtful pages, but it will be a journey you will long remember.

Amazing, the type of people wearing "WWJD" bracelets. Piper's premise is that you can't figure out WhatJesusWouldDo until you know WhatGodLoves. This is a PHENOMENAL book to be read with pen in hand. I've read every book that Dr. Piper has written (true confessions, I put down "God'sPassion..." for now - am I the only one? Thank you - I see that hand) and found this to be the PINNACLE.

Not easy reading, but "raking is easy but all you get is leaves. Digging is harder, but diamonds are out there."

Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a biblically-saturated journey into the heart of God Almighty!

Piper's hope and prayer in writing this book is that "more and more people would meditate with me on the pleasures of God; and that in doing so we would focus our attention on his excellency and glory. In this way our souls would be increasingly satisfied with God and changed gradually into his likeness" (21). Further, Piper's desire is that this book will "cut the calluses off the mind and heart that keep them [the churches] from feeling the force of God's passion for his fame among all the unreached peoples of the world" (p.115). Allow this book to show you that "God's delight in being God is not sung the way it should be, with wonder and passion, in the worship places of the world. And we are the poorer and weaker for it" (p. 21).

The first six chapters focus entirely on God's pleasure in His own nature and work, beginning with the foundational truth that God has from all eternity been supremely happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. Piper says that "from this inexhaustible fountain of self-replenishing joy flows the freedom of God in all his sovereign work - creating the universe, spreading his fame, choosing a people, and bruising his Son" (p.22). At chapter seven, the focus turns to God's pleasure in the responses of his people - those who hope in Him, the prayers of the upright, personal obedience, public justice, and his pleasure in concealing himself from the wise and revealing himself to infants.

One of the things that I love about Piper's writings is that he raises Scriptures that seem to contradict each other, yet he refuses to choose between them, or to cancel one out by the other. For example, in dealing with God's delight in all he does, Piper not only presents passages such as Psalm 135:6 which says, "Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps". He also gathers texts such as Ezekiel 18:32, which says, "And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you". When affirming the pleasure of God in all He does it would be much easier to select those texts which support our more comfortable view of God, and to overlook those which stir our wills to reevaluate the text instead of our doctrine.

Instead of letting such apparently contradictory verses lie, Piper seeks to gaze as deeply as possible into the mysterious mind of God to see how the paradox is true and to see in what sense it is true (p.72). Some of the other paradoxes that he raises and sheds light on are how God can delight in his own beauty and perfection without being vain, how he can delight in his creation and not be an idolater and how he can derive pleasure out of bruising his Son (cf. Is. 53:10, Acts 2:23, Eph. 5:2). By the way, Piper has an excellent appendix at the end of the book which walks us through the "two wills" of God, which the above examples are evidences of. But rarely is this type of thinking seen in much of the opinionated writings that are currently sought out these days because theological tension and meditation isn't welcomed by the average believer. It is extremely satisfying to read a brother who deals with difficult passages of Scripture head on, and who offers the reader a jewel that many others have found too difficult or controversial to mine.

In The Pleasures of God, Piper pulls the shade back for us to get a glimpse of the greatness of God's glory so we can have gladness as his people. To see the pleasures of God is to know what drives him and motivates him. Once when we grasp this, we are changed by him. I'm in agreement with the statement by Joni Eareckson Tada on the back cover of The Pleasures of God - "Run, don't walk, to buy this remarkable work".

"The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of it's love." This quote by a young Puritan named Henry Scougal stuck to the forefront of my mind for weeks. It's the opening quote to the first chapter of Pipers book. It's a good summation of the substance of this wonderfully powerful book.

Piper writes the way I feel on my best days. I once thought the guy was a veritable Superman of the faith till I heard an interview of him talking to Mark Dever of 9 Marks Ministries. Piper commented that his most popular work, Desiring God, was so entitled because it was so often how he felt, he desired God because he didn't feel he had enough of Him. His writings are his deepest longings. They are ours as well, weather we know it or not.

Piper oozes passion, but it's a focused passion. He's got only one thing in mind that has overtaken all his writing and preaching, it's the essence of his life and its summed up in his paraphrase of something Jonathan Edwards once said, that being `God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him'. The glory of God for God is his passion; his deepest desire is for us to have the same.

This book, possibly his best yet, deals with those things that God has most pleasure in. Be forewarned, this book is not for lightweights. I felt myself humbled and broken reading Piper's insights on the heart of God. The book didn't rock my concept of God, but each time I picked it up I couldn't put it down, I was captivated. Piper has a way of clearing some of the clouds of mystery that often surround our understanding of God, and in this book he does it in grand style.

The first six chapters have little to do with us, and much to do with Him and Him alone. Piper deals with weighty issues, such as election and God's sovereignty, in grand style. If you aren't a Calvinist beware, this book could totally shake your foundations (i.e. make you biblical (tongue in cheek). In these chapters Gods glory is on display as the great "I AM", everything there is.

The last four chapters deal with Gods pleasure in us. After reading the first chapters, these last ones break your heart and build you up knowing your utter depravity and the greatness of God overcoming it.

Get this book, read it and then read it again. It includes a great question section at the back for small group study or personal reflection.

Favorite quotes: "The original, the primal, the deepest, the foundational joy of God is the joy he has in his own perfections as he sees them reflected in the glory of his Son."

"Gods first love is rooted in the value of his holy name, not the value of sinful people. And because it is, there is hope for the sinful people-since they are not the ground of their salvation, God's name is."

"God does not take pleasure merely in being known and loved in an abstract way disconnected from his work in creation and redemptive history, God created the world and has worked in history not so that creation and history would be ignored. Christ did not become man so that the story of his life and work recorded in a book would be disregarded in favor of a mystical bypass to God. This would not honor the Christ of history."

As the Westminster Catechism says, "The chief end/ purpose of man is to glorify God... and enjoy Him forever." In this book, Piper (who has done much in recent days to draw our attention back to the supremacy of God and the glory of the sovereign Creator)reminds us that the chief purpose of God is the exact same-- in fact, our purpose, as being made in His image, is derive from His purpose: God's purpose/ mission is to glorify Himself...

Piper works the reader through this seemingly simple yet overtly complex issue by answering questions like: Why this is not in conflict with His love for us... Why this is not selfish or vain... How God is our highest good... How this drives the mission of the Church...

The book (and others Piper has written) do much to recover our "buddy Jesus" ideaology that has pervaded the Church. And, in doing so, he rearticulates the idea that, although God is intimate with us (so much so that the Word became flesh, and that the Spirit now indwells us), He is still God. He is still sovereign. He is still high above, transcendant...

In this revised and expanded version of Piper's classic book on the character of God, there is a new chapter entitled, "The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants." It is, he writes, "a biblical foundation and justification for the kind of prayer-soaked, God-centered intellectual labor it takes to write and read a book like this. It carries implications for all levels of Christian education from the cradle to the university. Does God really call us to this kind of thinking, or is it too dangerous to be worth it?" (p. 12).

Piper also updated the missions information from the original edition, as well as added an appendix containing his article, "Are There Two Wills in God? Divine Election and God's Desire for All to Be Saved." The appendix alone is worth the price of the book, as I consider it to be the most helpful article Piper has ever written.

James Montgomery Boice writes, "No contemporary author of whom I'm aware understands and articulates the glorious depths of God's character like John Piper does. This excellent book will not only stir up your passion for God, it will also help you obey the psalmist's command: 'O taste and see that the LORD is good!' (Psalm 34:8). John has tasted and here shares his delight in the supremacy of God in all things.

It is theology of the best and deepest sort, welling up from the heart of a man who has learned to love God by enjoying him deeply."

The feast Piper set before us in 1991 is now even more better.

I don't know what to make of the previous review. What is amazingly clear throughout the book is Piper's commitment to careful biblical exposition and the glory of the God of the bible. That God seeks his own pleasure is not "pleasure-mongering" but the foundation for the good news that God is glorified and indeed overflowing with joy in his pursuit of redeeming and blessing fallen sinners who turn to him for forgiveness. It is of great comfort to know that God is in no way half-hearted in pursuing my good, because he is committed to his good. Judge for yourself if this book is "lightweight". I believe the previous reader has only betrayed that he didn't understand the book, because it was over his head. This is one of the deepest books written in this half of the century.