Justin Taylor and I are excited that we are now free to talk openly about For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (Crossway, 2010).We’ve been diligent to protect the secrecy of this project ever since we first sat down three years ago in a Wheaton, Illinois, restaurant to talk and pray about a project that has become very dear to our hearts.

The first obstacle we had to overcome was our sense that John might not be as excited about this book as we were! But we quickly overcame any lingering concerns by reminding ourselves and our contributors that this book is about the fame of God’s name, not that of John Piper. Still, we are unapologetic about wanting to honor John and to express our love and appreciation for his many productive years of ministry.

Our lives have been greatly affected by his and we felt the time had come to say Thank You in the best we knew how: by inviting several of John’s close friends and coworkers to interact rigorously and biblically with his theology in such a way that the God who has made himself known to us in Jesus Christ would be gloriously magnified.

In his endorsement of the book, Mark Noll, longtime friend and former Wheaton College classmate of John’s, says that the authors “offer the best sort of tribute by seriously engaging the Scriptures to which Piper is committed, earnestly expounding the classic Calvinistic doctrines into which Piper has breathed such life, and zealously promoting the glory of God to which Piper has devoted his ministry.”

Choosing the contributors was an incredibly difficult task, as there are many who easily could have and assuredly would have written chapters for the book. In addition to letting those closest to John speak about him personally, our aim was to focus on those themes for which he is most well known and which have served the church so effectively in the past few decades: Christian Hedonism, the sovereignty of God, the Gospel, the supremacy of God in all things, Jonathan Edwards, and the calling to preach God’s Word and to pastor God’s people. We only wish the book could have been longer than its 542 pages so that we might have invited even more to contribute on an even wider spectrum of issues.

The list of those who’ve written for this book is truly impressive: D. A. Carson, Bruce Ware, Sinclair Ferguson, Greg Beale, Tom Schreiner, Wayne Grudem, Randy Alcorn, Al Mohler, C. J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, and John MacArthur are only a few among the twenty-seven men who labored greatly over these past few years to make this project succeed. We believe you will thoroughly enjoy and be greatly edified by what they’ve written and the way they have taken those themes so precious to John and brought them to bear on the life of the individual believer and the corporate life of the church.

Justin and I are especially grateful to Crossway for their commitment to this book. The excellence in which they have edited and produced this beautiful, hardbound volume testifies to their love for John and above all to their devotion to the gospel that he and all the contributors seek to faithfully proclaim. If the fame of God’s name spreads more widely and passionately because of this volume, we will know that it was a task well worth pursuing.

Friends and colleagues of John Piper seek to honor him by presenting essays covering topics central to his ministry: prayer, the sovereignty of God, justification, Jonathan Edwards, Christian Hedonism, and more.

Pastors, scholars, and lay leaders will benefit from this tribute to a man who has labored so faithfully for the fame of God’s name.