We are all responsible to Jesus first, and then, under him, to various other persons and offices. Discerning the path of love and obedience when two or more of these submissive relationships collide is a call to humble, Bible-saturated, spiritual wisdom.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing one’s responsibilities to Jesus and navigating complex relationships with humility and spiritual discernment.
In this quote, John Piper highlights the concept that one's primary accountability lies with Jesus, and subsequently with others in various roles and relationships in life. He points out that when these different responsibilities intersect, it requires a blend of love, obedience, and humility to make wise decisions, all grounded in biblical principles. The pursuit of spiritual wisdom is essential in discerning the right path amid conflicting obligations.
In practice
Using this quote in a sermon about service and accountability in the church.
God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.
You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
Inflict not on an enemy every injury in your power, for he may afterwards become your friend.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
I hope you will be yourself, human, even a little sentimental, possessed of a sense of humor and a sense of humility. . . . There are arrogant people in this world and, what is worse, arrogant judges.
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.
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