Piper's Biography on Andrew Fuller

I was listening to John Pipers biography of Andrew Fuller, which you can download here (as well as read a shorter transcript of the sermon), and I highly recommend it as I think Fuller is another of those men from the past most of us know little about.

When I was listening to the biography I was struck by a section where Piper spoke of Fuller’s view of justification and faith and that justification by faith with a correct understanding of faith causes us to look away from ourselves towards Christ because faith is received from God. Piper then refers to Spurgeon speaking on people teaching children too much about loving Jesus rather than trusting Jesus. The idea of love can cause children, and us, to try and do something about it out of response but when one is properly focused on trust first they are forced to look away from themselves and look to Christ and so Piper ties this back to Fuller’s biblical view on faith. This whole issue with faith was, as the biography tells, formed around Fuller’s fights against Hyper-Calvinism (as correctly defined) and Sandemanianism both of which greatly misunderstand Biblical faith. Do we do today often propagate many of the same errors with faulty views of faith? We should learn from men such as Fuller about faith and the importance of understanding it.

You can get an understanding of Sandemanianism, which I knew little about, from the biography.

I encourage you to listen to this biography and the many other that can be found on the Desiring God site, you can find the biographies here.