God is the Gospel

Just finished Piper's God is the Gospel. (couldn't quite finish it on vacation) In one word: butt-kickin'! (Okay, two words) Here are some thought-provoking quotables for ya:

• "The good (of the 'good news') is God himself seen and savored in all his glory." p. 37
• "God is the gospel. That is, he is what makes it the good news ... Until people use the gospel to get to God, they use it wrongly." p. 42
• "The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God." p. 47
• "The happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in his Son." p. 101
• "There is no sure evidence that we have a new heart just because we want to escape hell." p. 121
• "Faith is not saving faith if it tries to trust Christ for the wrong things. So this makes that trust per se, without reference to what we trust him for, is not the essence of a saving relationship to Christ." p. 129
• Here's a doozy: "Why does he (James in James 4:2-5) call us 'adulteresses' when we pray? It's because we ask God for things to indulge our desires that are not desires for him. This is startling--that in the moment of one of the most pious acts of religion, prayer, we can be making a cuckold out of God. Cuckold is an old English word for a man whose wife is unfaithful. The picture in this text is that God is our faithful, generous husband. So we go to him and ask for, say, fifty dollars, and he gives it to us. Then we take it and walk away from him and go to the end of the hall where our illicit lover has a room. That's the way God looks at praying that does not make 'Hallowed be thy name' the heart-cry of every petition." p. 135
• "The highest act of love is the giving of the best gift, and, if necessary, at the greatest cost, to the least deserving." p. 139
• "All the enticements to God that are not God are precious and precarious. They can lead us to God or lure us to themselves." p. 143

In sum: Read this book.