The Greatest Sermon of All Time

Reflections on a Message That Has Life Changing Power

In 2020, I was a junior in college who planned to attend medical school after completing my undergraduate degree. I had taken a job as a medical transcriptionist at a company called Skywriter. Because of the pandemic, everything was remote, so I listened to audio recordings of doctors' appointments and took notes on everything I heard.

At the beginning of that same year, I was introduced to John Piper at Passion Conference 2020. Piper's preaching was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and I became obsessed. I was devouring sermon after sermon from Piper and other popular "young, restless, and reformed" preachers like R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Matt Chandler, Paul Washer, and Voddie Baucham. It was not uncommon that while my coworkers were taking notes on a doctor's appointment… I was secretly taking notes on a sermon that I had pulled up behind my Skywriter Dashboard.

I must have listened to 100 sermons that year, many of them multiple times. I simply could not get enough of what I was consuming. The things I was hearing from these preachers were just so different… so powerful… so motivating, and so thoroughly biblical. I wanted to understand, embrace, and articulate the theology that was the heartbeat behind these sermons.

But of all the sermons I listened to that year, there is one that stands above the rest. After watching (and rewatching, and rewatching again) this sermon, I have been deeply changed. This sermon caused in me a paradigm shift so profound that my entire conception of the Christian life was transformed.

The sermon is John Piper's Make War: The Pastor and His People in the Battle Against Sin which he preached at the 2015 Bethlehem College and Seminary Pastors Conference.

Here, I would like to offer a few reflections on four key truths that are communicated in this sermon and that are part of the reason why it is so great, so necessary for Christians today. I hope that you will find some time this week to listen to it for yourself! (Disclaimer: I recognize the title “Greatest sermon of all time” is an overstatement… but this is my favorite sermon of all time!)

1. The Christian Life Is a Fight Against Sin

Piper begins the sermon by considering the reality that the Christian life is a fight. The Bible uses many different images to illustrate life as a Christian, and all of them are important to building a full-orbed and robust understanding of what life is like. Sometimes, the Bible uses warfare imagery to describe the Christian life, and Piper argues that this is because warfare is a critical part of the Christian experience.

"The Christian life is a fight. A fight of faith. A fight for joy."

It is true that Christ's yoke is easy, and His burden is light, but it is simultaneously true that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, when Christ calls a man, He bids him "come and die."

This Gospel truth is critical for Christians to grasp, especially for those of us living in comfortable Western contexts. If we're not careful, we can fall captive to the false notion that the Christian life is not a life of striving, straining, warring, and wrestling. In fact, to many contemporary Christians, the very word "striving" may cause their legalism Geiger counter to start clicking. Here, the apostle Paul is instructive.

"For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way". - Php 3:8–15.

2. Sin and Suffering Are Profoundly Connected

To illustrate this reality, Piper then explores how sin and suffering are intrinsically related. He claims that all human suffering, especially the suffering of the Son of God, is meant to portray the unimaginable moral ugliness of sin and its unimaginable offensiveness to God. In fact, God saw fit to subject creation to this kind of suffering to cause it to groan in anticipation of the day when He would make all things right (Romans 8:20).

"All human beings hate suffering, and very few human beings hate sin… they are not getting the connection"

Piper emphasizes this point because, in his view, sin rests lightly on the church today, having little practical or even spiritual consequence in the life of redeemed people.

3. Sin Presents a Mortal Danger, Even to Believers

In light of the ugliness of sin, Piper then turns to ask two simple questions.

1. How dangerous is sin in the life of the believer?

2. How shall we put it to death?

In his consideration of the first question, I found Piper's argument breathtakingly convicting. He begins by drawing our attention to Romans 8:13

"If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." - Ro 8:13.

He tells a story about the first time he encountered, or rather, was confronted by this verse and how it caused him to rethink his entire conception of the Christian life. Many evangelical Christians do not have the necessary theological categories to understand a verse like this. How can Paul talk like that to Christians? Especially in light of the fact that just 12 verses earlier, he told them that there is no condemnation for them? How can Christians, who enjoy the assurance of their salvation, receive a warning like the warning found in verse 13?

The answer is that God uses these kinds of warnings to chase His redeemed people away from their sin and cause them to cling to Christ in light of the mortal danger that sin presents to them, even in their redeemed state. "If you live according to the flesh, you will die" (which is a reference to eternal death) is a sentence that can be spoken to everyone—Christian and non-Christian alike. I found this idea radical, utterly compelling, and desperately needed for the church today.

4. Sin Is Killed When Christ Is Treasured

Lastly, in light of the moral danger that sin presents to believers, Piper asks how we can put our sin to death. He wants to help people see the true source and is not interested in engaging in mere behavior modification. If we are going to kill our sin, we must kill it at the root.

What is the root of sin, then? Piper explains…

"The root of sin is preferring anything to God"

This is where all sin comes from. We sin when we find anything to be more valuable, more satisfying, more beautiful, more compelling, or more worthy of praise than the God who created us. The basic problem of the human condition is that in Adam, we have inherited disordered loves. In our flesh, we are prone to love the sin we ought to hate and hate the God we ought to love. Therefore, what is the key to killing our sin? Put simply, sin is killed when Christ is treasured. If it is true that sin is basically preferring anything to God, then the way to kill sin in ourselves and in the hearts of our people is to show our hearts the surpassing value of Christ. We must show Him to be who He really is—altogether satisfying, altogether beautiful, altogether worthy of praise.

To the degree that the reality of Christ's supremacy is grasped and believed, sin is mortified.

"There is more joy to be found in Christ than could be found in 10,000 sexual experiences. The question is, do you believe that? Because if you believe that, sin will have lost its dominion in your life."

I am thoroughly convinced that the truths communicated in this sermon have the power to transform your life. I speak from personal experience. I am convinced that if these truths were known and embraced, they would transform many of our churches. So I hope that you will find some time this week to listen and that it will be a means of grace to you!