Chapter 3: Boasting Only in the Cross, the Blazing Center of the Glory of God

Start with a question Piper presses in this chapter: what do you call a tragedy? Most of us answer fast. A life cut short. A career that never took off. Piper argues that the deepest tragedy looks different. It is a life driven by comfort with God left out, aimed at the retirement dream. He sets that beside two elderly missionary women in Cameroon who spent their last years serving the poor, and he says their deaths were no tragedy.

Jesus tells a story that fits this tension. Read Luke 12:15-21 slowly. He opens with a warning: "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Notice the target. It isn't wealth by itself. It's covetousness, the habit of wanting more and expecting more to give you life.

Then comes the parable. The rich man's land "produced plentifully." Nothing is wrong yet. The harvest is a gift. His trouble shows up in how he thinks. He "thought to himself," and the next lines are packed with "I" and "my": "I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones." He has a good problem, and he consults only himself. God isn't in the planning. Neither is any neighbor. His plan ends with a speech to his own soul: "relax, eat, drink, be merry."

Then God speaks, the only time in the story: "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" The man isn't called a fool for saving grain. He's a fool because his whole plan assumed he held the clock and that comfort was the point. Jesus sums it up: "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

This is where Piper's contrast helps. The farmer and the Cameroon missionaries aren't separated by how much sits in the barn. The question is where the treasure is and who the soul is for. Piper isn't saying rest is sinful or that planning ahead is wrong. He's warning about a life whose finish line is ease without God.

Be honest about your own picture of "someday." Most of us carry one: a stretch of life when the work is done, the money is fine, and the pressure is off. Don't throw that picture out. Look inside it. Is God in it? Are other people in it? If someone watched your plans, would they guess you believe the parable?

What do you boast in? Boasting isn't only bragging out loud. It's whatever you lean on to feel you matter, whatever you point to when you want to say, "This is who I am." Paul answers for himself in Galatians 6:14: "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

Piper builds this chapter on that kind of resolve. He argues that the opposite of wasting a life is living by a single passion, one that exalts God and satisfies the soul. He points to Paul's determination to know nothing but Christ crucified, and he says this one focus can unify every part of life, from work to marriage to taxes. That's a bold claim. The cross isn't one topic on a long list of Christian topics. It's the center the rest hangs on.

Look at what Paul sets against the cross in this passage. Right before verse 14, he says his opponents wanted to boast about a mark on the body. Paul says it flatly in verse 15: "neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation." The old scoreboards, such as who belongs, who's impressive, and who's done enough, have lost their power. The world's way of ranking people has been crucified to him, and he to it. Paul's life is no longer organized around being impressive. It's organized around what Christ did.

Piper also stresses the paradox that dying with Christ is how a person truly lives. Paul says something close in Galatians 2:20, where he describes being crucified with Christ and Christ living in him. Letting the old self-promoting life die isn't loss. It's how real life begins, the "new creation" of verse 15.

Then Paul adds a rule: "as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them." Walking by a rule is practical language. It means a way of stepping through ordinary days. If the cross is your boast, it should show up in how you work, how you treat the people closest to you, how you rest, and even how you handle dull obligations like paying bills.

Here's the test. If you described your week, could someone tell what you boast in? Many of us run on several competing passions, like proving ourselves at work, protecting our free time, and keeping the family happy. A single passion doesn't make those parts of life disappear. It gives them one purpose, so they stop pulling in different directions.