.

The author of Desiring God reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Includes a study guide for individual and small-group use. Isn’t it true—we really don’t know someone until we understand what makes that person happy? And so it is with God! What does bring delight to the happiest Being in the universe? John Piper writes, that it’s only when we know what makes God glad that we’ll know the greatness of His glory. Therefore, we must comprehend “the pleasures of God.” Unlike so much of what is written today, this is not a book about us. It is about the One we were made for—God Himself. In this theological masterpiece—chosen by World Magazine as one of the 20th Century’s top 100 books, John Piper reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Then we will be able to drink deeply—and satisfyingly—from the only well that offers living water. What followers of Jesus need now, more than anything else, is to know and love—behold and embrace—the great, glorious, sovereign, happy God of the Bible. “This is a unique and precious book that everybody should read more than once.” —J.I. PACKER, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia

An in-depth look at a God who not only loves, but is love. Love has come to mean many things. It’s used to describe emotions. It’s the glue for relationships. It frames countless stories. And the greatest of these stories opens before time began and echoes throughout eternity. It’s the story of God’s unrelenting, overwhelming love for His people. Yet the truth of love is even more majestic, more staggering, and more extraordinary than we can understand: God doesn’t just love us. He is love. Renowned theologian and teacher Dr. R.C. Sproul takes a remarkable look at this most profound truth. God’s Love delves deep into Scripture to explore this dynamic attribute of God, which finds its ultimate expression in His Son. Dr. Sproul also examines seeming paradoxes of God, such as a loving God and divine hate, and how love coexists with His sovereignty. Practical, insightful, and revolutionary, God’s Love compels and calls us to reflect His nature of unconditional love.

When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible. Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible. Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.

"God is love." It's the most basic definition of God in Scriptures, but so profound that it's often misunderstood. In this probing book, a brilliant Bible expositor brings us into the very heart of God by answering such questions as: If God is love, how could He send anyone to hell? What's the difference between the loving God of the New Testament and the angry God of the Old Testament? If God is love, why did He require His Son to die such a cruel death on the Cross? How can God be both loving and jealous? The author argues against the two polar views of God as a sentimental grandfather whose doting love could not bring him to punishment of the disobedient and God as an angry tyrant who would rule by threats. "Both extremes paint a distorted picture of God and further confuse the issue of understanding God's love," Dr. MacArthur writes. He insists that what God loves is actually defined by what He hates, and that neither His love nor His wrath can be understood in isolation from the other. Although the author is clearly aware of the way great men have grappled with these issues in the history of the Church, his doctrinal presentations arise more from the biblical text than from dogmatic theology. He examines in detail the way John?"the apostle of love"?treats love in his First Epistle, then fleshes out the doctrine of God's love in vivid representations of real people interacting with divine love.