Author charges ‘slander’ as researchers misidentify nominal Christians

Reformed theologian and author John Piper defends biblical salvation from modern interpretations and affirms the sacredness of the term “born again” in Finally Alive.

Piper told Christian Retailing that, although there wasn’t a precise moment of inspiration, he felt “a prompting” as he preached through the book of Romans in his church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

“I had spent eight years preaching through Romans,” he said. “The glorious truth of justification had been prominent in the life of our church. Now what? It seemed crucial that the truth of justification be complemented by regeneration. Salvation is not only a legal transaction, but also a miraculous new birth.”

Piper’s goal is to “awaken” Christians to the “magnitude of the reality of what has happened to them” when they become born again—a transformation that’s more about God than about them.

“Too many American believers think of their salvation as decisively something that they did—they believed. They decided. They received. They repented. They prayed. That is true; they did,” Piper said. “But that was not decisive. What was decisive was the supernatural act of God in raising them from the dead.”

Taking aim at what he feels is the “slander” of the term “born again,” particularly by research groups using it to define individuals associated with the Christian faith, Piper presents the transformational nature of what it means to become a Christian.
Piper believes that it is a “profound mistake” to use the term to describe American churchgoers whose lives are “indistinguishable from the world, and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world.”

The book’s publication marks the first time English rights to a Piper work have been granted to a non-U.S. publisher. The book will be available through STL Distribution North America.

To order, visit www.stl-distribution.com, or call 800-289-2772.

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