John Piper’s 80th birthday was earlier this year. Piper’s life and ministry, books, and his insights and passion for God, have been a great gift to me and Nanci and our children and grandchildren, and countless others.
Tony Reinke posted this wonderful exchange below between Justin Taylor and John Piper during a Q&A. I just love what Piper says about living on the brink of eternity. (And I so relate, especially since Nanci is now with Jesus and I look forward more than ever to first of all being with Him, and second of all, being reunited with Nanci!)
Justin Taylor: “As you turn eighty this year, which feels like a milestone, none of us knows our day or our hour, but statistically you will be seeing Jesus sooner rather than later. What is that experience like now in your eighties, contemplating seeing him face to face?”
John Piper: “He sees to it that it stays real, because I had a heart attack last July and got three stents in here now. And I think this black eye right here is owing to blood thinners. I’m on two blood thinners and I woke up the other morning and said, ‘What’s that?’ And I went to ChatGPT. [Laughter] Doctor Chat! [Laughter] It said, number one, age. [Laughter] Thin skin. Number two, blood thinners.
Anyway, the point is, God keeps me on the brink of eternity. I look at that and think, what if it covered my face!? And that’s a great place to live. On the edge of eternity. … So the effect being old has is that it forces me to demand from the Lord that he be real. ‘I want you to be *starkly real* so that in the moment of death there’s no question, there’s no doubt, there’s no fear. And the meeting on the other side would not be totally surprising.’ …I didn’t used to plead like this when I was 40. But I plead for a kind of stark, present, precious, spiritual sense of the Lord’s reality, and that’s a wonderful thing to be driven to day after day, so that my devotions now are of a special order of urgency day by day.”
Justin Taylor penned a wonderful tribute to John in honor of his birthday. He writes:
In July of 1980, 34-year-old John Piper preached his first sermon as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church on the eastern edge of downtown Minneapolis. Surveying a sea of gray hair, he retained traces of South Carolina lilt in his tenor voice as he said, “I have nothing of abiding worth to say to you. But God does. And of that Word I hope and pray that I never tire of speaking. The life of the church depends on it.”
Piper’s final sermon at the church fell on Easter Sunday of 2013. The gray-haired, balding pastor, then 67, looked out at a sea of younger faces and explained why this wouldn’t be a typical farewell sermon with personal reflections: “It has been our commitment in all these years together to preach not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord (2 Corinthians 4:5). People ought not to go to church to hear the sentiments or the ideas of a man, but to hear the word of God.”
…At the age of 80, Piper works full-time from his home office, answering questions about the Bible and the Christian life through the Ask Pastor John podcast (400 million episode plays over the past 13 years) and through his verse-by-verse video series, Look at the Book (over 1,300 videos so far, with a life goal of working through all the Pauline letters). He and his wife remain faithful members at Bethlehem Baptist.
I encourage you to read the whole thing.
John’s son Barnabas wrote about his dad:
Happy 80th birthday to my dad. You may know him as a preacher or writer. While that is undeniably true, I get to know him as a competitor, a poet, a man of complex theology but simple tastes, a devoted husband, a delighted grandfather, and the best putt putt golfer in the family across all generations.
I loved these photos that Barnabas shared:
Thank you, John, for your commitment to exalting and glorifying Christ in the years He gives you. May we all finish well, to the glory of God!
