Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry

by John Piper

The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1).

I think God has exhibited us preachers as last of all in the world.

Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord.

Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord.

God’s love for the glory of His own name is the spring of free grace and the rock of our security.

Christ died to glorify the Father and to repair all the defamation we had brought upon His honor.

Do they stake the answer to their prayers on God’s love for His own glory? Do they make their case before His throne on the grounds that God does everything for His own name’s sake?

So the goal of spiritual leadership is to muster people to join God in living for God’s glory.

So the goal of spiritual leadership is to muster people to join God in living for God’s glory.

For God to be righteous, He must devote Himself 100 percent, with all His heart, soul, and strength, to loving and honoring His own holiness in the display of His glory.

Everything in our salvation is designed by God to magnify the glory of God.

It is more glorious to give than to receive. Therefore, the righteousness of God demands that He be a giver.

The Son of Man has not come seeking employees. He has come to employ Himself for our good. We dare not try to work for Him lest we rob Him of His glory and impugn His righteousness.

We must beware lest we try to serve Him in a way that dishonors Him, for He aims to get the glory.

We get the Savior; He gets the glory. We get the “great joy”; God gets the praise.

God makes much of His Son’s bride, the church. God loves the church with a kind of love that will make more of her than she can ever imagine.

History bears witness: the preaching of this truth creates, reforms, and revives the church.

Concerning his debate with Roman Catholicism, he said that justification by faith alone was “the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.”

and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.

Then let us live and preach this great central truth of justification by faith alone.

If you work for your justification, what you are doing is trying to put God in your debt.

Notice that God’s righteousness comes to us through faith. Faith is what unites us to God’s righteousness. Faith is not God’s righteousness which is imputed (reckoned) to us in our union with Christ.

He means that our faith unites us to Christ so that God’s righteousness in Christ is reckoned to us.

He means that your faith connects you to Christ who becomes your righteousness in God’s sight—God’s righteousness.

Our job is to tilt the world, by the power of the Spirit and the Word, so that the tide rolls in again.

The wrath of God is our greatest threat. It hangs over all of us because we are all sinners. Without the death of Jesus, and without faith in Jesus, it “remains” on us. But because of Jesus’ death, applied to us by faith in Him, it does not remain. He bore our condemnation, our curse.

Brothers, this is what I think our people need to hear over and over. That forgiveness and justification and eternal life are good for one ultimate reason—they bring us to God Himself,

The ultimate end of the gospel is coming home to God. Knowing Him. Seeing him unsullied with our own sin. Being with Him. Being conformed to Him. Enjoying Him with the capacities for joy that heaven alone will give.

we must not be content that our people are doing good things. We must labor to see that they do good things from God-exalting motives—lest they find in the end that their sacrifices were for nothing.

But if we go on urging people to obey “out of gratitude,” we should at least show them the lurking dangers and describe how gratitude can motivate obedience without succumbing to a debtor’s mentality.

gratitude is not merely a response to a benefit received; it is a response to someone’s goodwill toward us.

Good deeds do not pay back grace; they borrow more grace.

There is a way to serve God that belittles and dishonors Him. Therefore, we must take heed lest we recruit servants whose labor diminishes the glory of the All-powerful Provider. If Jesus said that He came not to be served, service may be rebellion.

Paul warns against any view of God which makes Him the beneficiary of our beneficence.

The difference between Uncle Sam and Jesus Christ is that Uncle Sam won’t enlist you in his service unless you are healthy and Jesus won’t enlist you unless you are sick.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

We should do the good because it is good. Any motivation to seek joy or reward corrupts the act.

C. S. Lewis put it like this in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken: “It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.”

There are two possible attitudes in genuine worship: delight in God or repentance for the lack of it.

A pastor who feels competent in himself to produce eternal fruit—which is the only kind that matters—knows neither God nor himself. A pastor who does not know the rhythm of desperation and deliverance must have his sights only on what man can achieve.

Salvation is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8). Love is a gift of God (1 Thess. 3:12). Faith is a gift of God (1 Tim. 1:14). Wisdom is a gift of God (Eph. 1:17). Joy is a gift of God (Rom. 15:13). Yet as pastors we must labor to “save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). We must stir up the people to love (Heb. 10:24). We must advance their faith (Phil. 1:25). We must impart wisdom (1 Cor. 2:7). We must work for their joy (2 Cor. 1:24). We are called to labor for that which is God’s alone to give. The essence of the Christian ministry is that its success is not within our reach.

A cry for help from the heart of a childlike pastor is sweet praise in the ears of God. Nothing exalts Him more than the collapse of self-reliance that issues in passionate prayer for help.

Both our flesh and our culture scream against spending an hour on our knees beside a desk piled with papers. It is un-American to be so impractical as to devote oneself to prayer and meditation two hours a day. And sometimes I fear that our seminaries conform to this deadly pragmatism that stresses management and maneuvering as ways to get things done with a token mention of prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit.

I know that the reason so few conversions are happening through my church is not because we lack a program or staff. It is because we do not love the lost and yearn for their salvation the way we should.

Take one of your days off and go away by yourself and pray about how you should pray. Say to yourself right now, “God help me to do something radical in regard to prayer!” Refuse to believe that the daily hours Luther and Wesley and Brainerd and Judson spent in prayer are idealistic dreams of another era.

Are our packed calendars and handheld computers really fulfilling our own hunger for life in Christ, let alone the hunger of our people and the world? Are not our people really yearning to be around a man who has been around God? Is it not the lingering aroma of prayer that gives a sense of eternity to all our work?

Without extended, concentrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers. And when the ministry of the Word declines, faith (Rom. 10:17; Gal. 3:2, 5) and holiness (John 17:17) decline.

For your own soul and for the life of your church, fight for time to feed your soul with rich reading. Almost all the forces in our culture are trivializing. If you want to stay alive to what is great and glorious and beautiful and eternal, you will have to fight for time to look through the eyes of others who were in touch with God.

Instead devote yourself to boring in and going deep. There is so much soul-refreshing, heart-deepening, mind-enlarging truth to be had from great books! Your people will know if you are walking with the giants (as Warren Wiersbe says) or watching television.

Brothers, fight for your life. Fight for your mornings! Protect those life-giving hours!