Robin’s lifestyle began to change when he was sixteen. The older cousin who introduced him to party life began talking about Jesus. His cousin had been touched by the gospel. Sitting together at his cousin’s house, they opened the Bible and read Romans 8 together. Robin was so impressed by the dramatic and unexpected conversion that he patiently heard his cousin out. But the Bible did not make sense to him. Frustrated, Robin left his cousin’s house confused. Yet as he sat in his car and prepared to drive away, everything suddenly changed. The words of Scripture began to strike him as true. He understood at once that Jesus Christ had paid the penalty on the cross for his sins and three days later rose from the dead, achieving salvation for those who would believe. In a moment Robin lost his heart for partying but gained a new heart filled with passion for God.

“That’s why I have hope for a generation like ours,” Robin told me. “The gospel is powerful enough to change hearts.”

Robin did not return to his parents’ church. But he did not leave Adventism. Shortly after Robin’s conversion, a pastor from a nearby Adventist church gave him CDs with conference talks from C. J. Mahaney, a charismatic teacher from suburban Maryland. Mahaney delivered the messages over the span of six years at the New Attitude conference, launched by pastor/author Joshua Harris for young adults. Robin also listened to some of Harris’s talks. During one message, Harris quoted Piper’s manifesto, Desiring God. This stirring call to “Christian hedonism” argues that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”¹ Piper’s teaching about Calvinism squared with Robin’s growing knowledge of Scripture.

You will find no explanation and no index entry for Calvinism in Desiring God. But it’s all there, if you know what to look for. Calvinists— like their namesake, Reformation theologian John Calvin—stress that the initiative, sovereignty, and power of God is the only sure hope for sinful, fickle, and morally weak human beings. Furthermore, they teach that the glory of God is the ultimate theme of preaching and the focus of worship.

Many recognize Calvinism, described by some as Reformed theology, by the acronym TULIP.² You won’t find these terms in Desiring God either. But you will find the concepts as early as the second chapter. Piper quotes Romans 3:10—”None is righteous, no, not one” (Total depravity). A little later Piper writes, “Regeneration is totally unconditional. It is owing solely to the free grace of God. ‘It does not depend on the one who wills or runs, but on God who has mercy’ (Romans 9:16). We get no credit. He gets all the glory.”3 Here you can see Unconditional election and a hint of Irresistible grace. Piper explains Limited atonement in a footnote. “All contempt for [God’s] glory is duly punished, either on the Cross, where the wrath of God is propitiated for those who believe, or in hell, where the wrath of God is poured out on those who don’t.”4 In a later footnote Piper defends eternal security, or Perseverance of the saints, from Romans 8:30—”And those whom [God] predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”⁵