I think of all the questions I get, the most common are related to books. what are some books i should read? Can you recommend a book on this topic or that topic? what should I read next? I’m happy to answer such questions, but I thought I could answer a bunch at once by suggesting 10 books every Christian should read.
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As you can probably imagine, I get a lot of feedback from people who watch these videos, people who read my website, and I think of all the questions I get, probably the most prominent being related to the books. what are some books i should read? Can you recommend a book on this topic? those kinds of questions. I am happy to answer them. I thought I could answer a bunch of them by suggesting ten books every Christian should read.
You are reading: 10 books every christian should read
Today we are talking about Christian books and I am going to suggest ten books that I think every Christian should read, or at least try to read, at some point in their life. these are not going to be in any particular order, also these are all contemporary books. some other time I can do some classics that everyone should read, some of the older books, but for now let’s focus on ten books, modern books, that every Christian should read.
we’ll start with ji packer and his classic, knowing god. it is a true classic book, everyone knows it, everyone should read it. what packer does so well there is that he simply presents god as he is. many of us have notions of god that are wrong, have come in useless ways, have believed wrong things. he simply wants to show us who god is, so that we can believe in the god he really is, believe in god as he really exists. so it’s a fantastic introduction to the person of god.
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then the holiness of god by rc sproul. what do we say about this book? what rc does so well here is that it presents god in all of his holiness. you know, all the things that god is, of all the attributes of god, there is only one that is repeated three times, right? God is not anger, anger, anger. he is not mercy, mercy, mercy. he is not love, love, love, but god is holy, holy, holy. that attribute that is repeated up to the third degree, that is an attribute of God that we must know, we must celebrate. the holiness of god by rc sproul.
next we are ashamed of the gospel of john macarthur and i guess some might say its weird to add to the list but there is a good reason. I don’t think we fully understand yet how deeply pragmatism has infiltrated the Christian church. So many of the principles of church growth, and of growing larger and larger churches, are based on pragmatism. This idea that the end justifies the means. that if something is working, it is proof that it is the will of god. we have to fight hard against that notion and that is exactly what macarthur does so well in ashamed of the gospel, a book that i highly recommend that fights against something that is so, so present in the church here in the 21st century.
then we have the disciplines of grace by jerry bridges. You’ve probably heard people talk about preaching the gospel to yourself, you’ve probably heard them talk about the centrality of the gospel in the Christian life and the Christian church. well a lot of those people are really downstream from jerry bridges and really from this book. he shows how god wants the gospel to be central and i mean it can be cliche there are all kinds of ways it can go wrong. bridges does it very, very well. read that book, absorb that book, live that book, you’ll be all the better for it.
I know I said these would be largely contemporary books, but I’m going to make an exception here, well, sort of. overcoming sin and temptation by john owen now john owen wrote a lot of work, in one of those volumes is this stuff, sin and temptation. I’m including this in the list because this is a version that justin taylor and kelly kapic have gone over, modernized it a bit. they haven’t changed it, they just adapted it. They’ve changed some of the words that don’t fit anymore, they’ve taken owen’s weird way of quoting scripture and updated it. so it makes it much easier to read. But this is a book that is about how we can fight hard against sin, how we can overcome temptation, how we can put on the righteousness of Christ. There is no book you will ever read, surely the Bible of course, which will probably have a greater effect on your understanding of your own sinfulness, your understanding of God’s grace to help you overcome that sin.
It’s only fair that it should have a bio on the list. I don’t even know if we know how much we benefit from reading about the lives of other believers. well how about spurgeon by arnold dallimore? a great biography of a great figure. It’s pretty short for a man who accomplished as much as Spurgeon did, it’s so readable and it’s so alive, just a light-hearted biography to read. so i recommend dallimore’s spurgeon.
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I guess we need to have a book on the disciplines of the Christian life, the spiritual disciplines. So what about the spiritual disciplines for the christian life by donald whitney? Of course, there are so many books on the spiritual disciplines today, and for good reason. this one is especially good, it’s already in its second edition. one that will help you understand, what does god call us to do as disciplines in the christian life? How can we appropriate the means of grace that God offers? whitney does a great job describing those things and calling us them for all the right reasons.
and how about total truth of nancy pearcey? nancy in some ways, in many ways, is following the thinking of francis schaeffer. And so he is bringing Schaeffer’s notion of truth into the 21st century. a book as important as it shows the madness of relativism that surrounds us. it shows this two-tiered version of the truth that so many people, maybe even us, have bought into, the divide between the sacred and the secular. You really should read this book, it will help you think better about your own life, it will help you think better about the world around you.
of course, we have to have some john piper on the list, right? now most people would think you should go with wishing on god. I will go with the pleasures of God. here’s why: because it’s secondary to desiring god. So somehow you get the best of Desiring God and yet you get the continuation of Piper’s thought in her next volume. So, you can’t go wrong reading some Piper, but God’s Pleasures is probably the best place you’ll find to start, so you can understand, what has John Piper so captivated? What is it about God that has so captivated his heart that so many people listen to him and enjoy him and are simply following his thoughts? such a good book, I am sure you will be blessed by it.
and let’s close with the cross of christ by john stott. Of course, we need to have a book on the sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice, the substitutionary and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. No one has written about this better than John Stott in his absolutely classic, and justifiably classic, The Cross of Christ. pick it up, read it. I am absolutely sure that it will prove to be a blessing for you.
so, of the thousands and tens of thousands of books we could have searched, here are only ten. I don’t think there is a person in the world, a Christian in the world, who would not benefit from reading these ten books that every Christian, at least at some point in his or her life, should consider reading. I hope you give some of them a chance.
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