This is a stunning truth: namely, that God's passion for His glory is the measure of His commitment to our joy.

In his essay, "The End for Which God Created the World," the great theologian Jonathan Edwards proclaimed that God's ultimate end is the manifestation of His glory in the highest happiness of His creatures.

Pastor John Piper has devoted the past thirty years of his ministry to exploring the implications of this stunning truth for life and ministry. Understanding that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him has made all the difference for John Piper--and can transform your life as well.

Edwards saw the truth more clearly than anyone in his day. His relentless God-centeredness and devotion to the biblical contours of doctrine are desperately needed in our time to counteract postmodern pragmatism and relativism. His radically God-centered view of virtue has great relevance now for cultural transformation and world evangelization. And his moral vision can do much to reform contemporary evangelicalism.

Here Piper passionately demonstrates the relevance of Edwards' ideals for the personal and public life of modern evangelicals through his own book-length introduction to Edwards' incomparable essay, and the inclusion of that original, unabridged work (for which Piper supplied almost a hundred notes). The result is a powerful and persuasive presentation of the things that matter most in the Christian life.

"One studies the time and backgrounds of some men in order to understand them. Others have such rare greatness that one studies them in order to understand their times.... Jonathan Edwards was such an original." --Paul Ramsey, editor of Edwards' ethical writings in the Yale critical edition

"No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity

than Jonathan Edwards." --D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"The western church... much of it drifting, enculturated, and infected with

cheap grace... desperately needs to hear Edwards' challenge." --Charles Colson

"He speaks with an insight into science and psychology so much ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him." --Perry Miller, former Harvard historian

"One of the most holy, humble and heavenly minded men that the world has seen since the apostolic age." --Ashbel Green, 1829, former president of the College of New Jersey

"... the profoundest reasoner, and the greatest divine... that America ever produced."--Samuel Davies, 1759

"He was a man who put faithfulness to the Word of God before every other consideration." --Iain Murray, Edwards biographer

"The disappearance of Edwards's [theocentric] perspective in American Christian history has been a tragedy." --Mark Noll, Wheaton College historian

"'The End for Which God Created the World' [is]... unsurpassed in terms of its theological grandeur." --David Brand