Future Grace - A Right Motivation for Christian Living?

In the introduction to his book, Future Grace, John Piper claims that he will give us good, Biblical thinking on proper motivations for Christian living:

“…the aim of this book is to emancipate human hearts from servitude to the fleeting pleasures of sin.” (p.9)

Definitions are important, so I put them next.  He talks about “living by faith in future grace.”  What does he mean?

“At the heart of the book is the conviction that the promises of future grace are the keys to Christ-like Christian living.  The hand that turns the key is faith, and the life that results is call living by faith in future grace. By future I do not merely mean the grace of heaven and the age to come.  I mean the grace that beings now, this very second, and sustains your life to the end of this paragraph.  By grace do not merely mean the pardon of God in passing over your sins, but also the power and beauty of God to keep your sinning.  By faith I do not merely mean the confidence that Jesus died for your sins, but also the confidence that God will “also with him freely give us all things” (Romans 8:32)  Faith is primarily a future-oriented “assurance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1).  Its essence is the deep satisfaction with all that God promises to be for us in Jesus – beginning now! (p.13)

Wrong thinking brings wrong living

“The book has grown out of the conviction that behind most wrong living is wrong thinking.  Jesus calls us, for example, to a radical purity.  But I find that many Christians have no categories for thinking clearly about the commands and warnings and promises of Jesus.  When he says that we should pluck our lusting eye, he backs it up with a warning: “It is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Mt 5:29).  Threats of going to hell because of lust are simply not the way contemporary Christians usually talk or think.  This is not because such warnings are not in the Bible, but because we don’t know how to fit them together with other thoughts about grace and faith and eternal security.  We nullify the force of Jesus’ words because or conceptual framework is disfigured.  Our Christian living is lamed by sub-Christian thinking about living.”  (p.11)

Gratitude is an inadequate motivator for Christian living

“…one of the main claims of this book is that the Bible rarely, if ever, motivates Christian living with gratitude…Could it be that gratitude for bygone grace has been pressed to serve as the power for holiness, which only faith in future grace was designed to perform?” (p.11, author’s emphasis)

Dealing with conditional grace in the Bible

“I have also found that some popular notions of grace are so skewed and so pervasive that certain biblical teachings are almost impossible to communicate.  For example, the biblical concept of unmerited, conditional grace is nearly unintelligible to Christians who assume that unconditionality is the essence of all grace. To be sure, there is unconditional grace…And yet the conditional promises of grace are woven all through the New Testament teaching about how to live the Christian life.  “If you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14).  “Pursue…sanctification without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14)…I find that Biblical thinking behind these kinds of conditional promises is uncommon in the minds of Christians today.  Some popular conceptions of grace cannot comprehend any role for conditionality other than legalism.” (p.11-12, author’s italics, my underline)

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