Category Archives: Piper

No thinking, no real love for God.

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It may be obvious to many of us, but here is a wonderful insight from Piper’s book THINK, The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Crossway, 2010, page 90; emphasis added) —

“The main reason that thinking and loving are connected is that we cannot love God without knowing God; and the way we know God is by the Spirit-enabled use of our minds. So to ‘love God with all your mind’ means engaging all your powers of thought to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure Him for all He is worth.

“God is not honored by groundless love. In fact, there is no such thing. If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point calling it love FOR God. There may be some vague attraction in our heart or some unfocused gratitude in our soul, but if they do not arise from knowing God, there are not love for God.”

Thinking, in order to love God more…

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I’ve recently been immersed in the book THINK, The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, by John Piper (Crossway, 2010). It is hard to set down! He answers so many of my questions about reading, thinking and their role in loving and serving God. He does at times use those trademark (long) descriptive propositions, but carefully (and usually exegetically) presents each part of the proposition revealing the whole thing to be truly profound and helpful.

In this book, Piper suggests that loving God with the mind meansthat our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things. (p. 19).

At the head of chapter one he quotes puritan Thomas Goodwin:

Indeed, thoughts and affections are sibi mutuo causae — the mutual causes of each other; “Whilst I mused, the fire burned” (Psalm 39:3); so that thoughts are the bellows that kindle and inflame affections; and then if they are inflamed, they cause thoughts to boil; therefore men newly converted to God, having new and strong affections, can with more pleasure think of God than any.

As he ends chapter two (on Jonathan Edwards’ contributions), Piper rightly observes, What an amazing example of ‘both-and’ — strong emotions for the glory of God based on clear biblical views of the truth of God. This is the very effect of Piper’s book on me so far.

It is a gourmet bit of writing, rich with biblical sweetness and much nutrition for the mind and soul. I’ll have to share more with you soon…

pdb