Those who are familiar with John Piper’s sermons and books know that sooner or later the discussion always circles around to the glory of God.  This little book is no exception.  Money, sex, and power, gifts God intended to show His supreme worth, are generally misunderstood and misused by fallen humanity.  How Christians can glorify God and enjoy these blessings without either denying or worshiping them is the subject of Living in the Light.

Piper begins by clarifying terms.  Money is currency representing specific quantities of value; sex is experiencing, seeking to have, or seeking to give “erotic stimulation”; and power is “the capacity to get what you want.” (17-19) He cautions that surface definitions, however, are likely to cover only the proverbial tip of such icebergs as “covetousness, greed, fear, envy, and cravings for safety, prestige, or control.” Piper describes these “foundational realities” necessary to a biblical understanding and explains (from Romans 1-3) why sinful man’s inclination is to exchange God’s glory for life patterns of lesser worth.

The middle section of the book outlines the dangers inherent to each gift—placing a higher value on the gift than the Giver will reveal itself in different ways.  Same-sex relationships are the clearest evidence of a disordered sexuality, but any illicit relationships are uniquely damaging to the body (I Cor. 6:18).  A consuming pursuit of money deceives us into thinking material things more satisfying than God.  Power has the potential not only for accomplishing evil but the personal exaltation even of those who use it for good.

Piper compares sex, money, and power to planets orbiting the sun.  Following the gravitational pull of any other star will draw them out of orbit, resulting in chaos.  We were created to center our lives around the all-satisfying glory of God; when anything else becomes the most important, the outcome is ruin and destruction.

The last two chapters are about “deliverance and deployment”: how the gospel delivers us from legal guilt, sin, and spiritual blindness into a progressively deeper treasuring of God’s glory. Returning these three gifts to their proper place actually offers them back to us in a fuller form than we could have imagined while clutching them tightly as ends in themselves.  Piper cautions against “false religions” that suggest all three were results of the Fall.

This book is short and easily read, with excellent material.  From a purely literary perspective, however, John Piper is first and foremost a preacher; and as preachers must do, he repeats his ideas in order for the “congregation” to remember them.  The resulting sermon in book form is somewhat wordy and repetitious—yet the advantage is that the central theme will percolate in the mind and not be quickly shaken off.  Living in the Light is a book worth reading and sharing.