Ah, John Piper. The man who’s made a career out of turning theological somersaults to explain why God might hand you a lemon and call it lemonade. He says, “God does not give bad. And I mean, ultimately hurtful. This tests our faith to the limit, doesn’t it?… I asked for healing. I asked for a job…. This isn’t what I wanted. And my theology from every part of the bible. I know God only gives what is good for his children. Painful as it has been. This brings us stability in our lives. I am thankful for you having embraced that sovereign goodness and grace of God.”

This isn’t just nitpicking; it’s about the heart of the gospel. Piper’s teaching trains believers to settle for Satan’s leftovers and call them God’s feast. Imagine praying for healing, getting more pain, and then thanking God for “stability” in suffering. That’s not faith; that’s resignation dressed up as piety

He’s essentially patting folks on the back for accepting pain as a divine gift wrap. This isn’t biblical theology; it’s a clever dodge that hybridizes good and evil until they’re indistinguishable, like mixing chocolate milk with motor oil and calling it a smoothie. The Bible doesn’t play that game. God’s goodness isn’t some cosmic bait-and-switch where sickness or hardship gets relabeled as “ultimately good.” No, Scripture draws a sharp line: good is good now, just as it’ll be in heaven, and bad things like pain and disease? Those have the devil’s fingerprints all over them, not God’s.

In Acts 10:38, Peter delivers the first apostolic sermon to the Gentiles, painting a childlike yet profound picture of the gospel: “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him” (NIV). Here, goodness is tied directly to healing, while sickness is oppression from the devil. It’s not ambiguous—Jesus’ ministry was a relentless campaign against disease, not a distribution of it. If Piper’s view holds, we’d have to imagine Jesus handing out tumors as tokens of grace, but the text says the opposite: sickness victimizes people under Satan’s thumb, and Jesus smashes it as an act of divine goodness. This isn’t just narrative flair; it’s a partitioning line in theology, as fundamental as affirming that all things exist for God’s glory. To mix them up is to confuse the kingdom’s advance with the enemy’s attack. It is to look at a police lineup, when asked who hurt you, and you point to Jesus rather than Satan. This isn’t a minor theological mistake; it is seeing reality upside down. It is a worldview issue. It is a different view of reality than the Christian one.

Consider Isaiah 54:15, where God speaks to His covenant people: “If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you” (NIV). God assumes His ultimate sovereignty quietly in the background, as He often does, but on the human level—where He commands, relates, and expects us to live—He declares plainly that attacks aren’t from Him. This echoes through the New Testament. In Luke 13:16, Jesus heals a woman bent over for eighteen years, declaring, “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (NIV). Notice the emphasis: she’s an insider under Abraham’s covenant, which promises blessing and health, not curse and pain. Satan bound her, not God, and Jesus frames her healing as a necessity—a “must”—because God’s covenants don’t break. If sickness were God’s “painful but good” gift, Jesus would be contradicting His Father’s mission, but instead, He treats it as an affront to the Father’s promises, demolishing it wherever faith allows.

God is in a Contract with us, and therefore, relative to our interactions with God, and God’s interaction with us, He does not send sin to us—otherwise, Jesus would be a minister of sin. Jesus does not send poverty to us—otherwise, Jesus would be High Priest of poverty. Jesus does not minister sickness to us—otherwise, His ministry would be a ministry of sickness, pain, and death. There is a being who does minister such things, and that is Satan. He has a ministry of death, sickness, poverty, and pain. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But Jesus comes to give life and even abundant life.

The argument God gives in Isaiah 54 is simple. On the relative level, God did not send the trouble; therefore, when trouble comes to you, command it to leave. Jesus gives us a clear picture of this in His faith doctrine. What does it mean to refute every tongue that accuses you? Jesus commands us to “speak” to our mountains and tell them to get out of our way. Jesus also says that we can use His Name to ask for whatever we want and get it to increase our joy and give the Father glory. Peter therefore said, “What I have, I give, In Jesus Name, Walk.” Thus, because the trouble did not come from Jesus, when troubles—or that is, when mountains—come, condemn it, refute it, and tell it to cast itself in the sea.

This brings us to the heart of the issue: Piper’s hybridization of good and bad under the banner of sovereignty. On the ultimate metaphysical level, yes, God controls all things directly, as Vincent Cheung aptly notes in his work on divine sovereignty: “God is the metaphysical author of evil,” meaning nothing escapes His decree (vincentcheung.com). All things are things God directly and absolute controls, including all human thoughts, actions and evil. When you say God absolutely and directly controls all things as category truth claim, you can only say it as an  “all, some, or none.” The bible says it is all, regarding the ultimate or only real cause level. However, the Bible speaks mostly on the relational, human level, where God relates to us through Contracts sealed in blood and promise of good. In the New Contract, God promises to deal with us always in goodness—like a father giving a fish for a fish, not a stone (Matthew 7:9-11). Jesus, as our eternal High Priest, ministers healing, not torment; if He sent sickness, His priesthood would include pain and suffering as promised ministry, which it doesn’t. The curses of the law, including sickness and poverty, are bad—plain and simple—as Deuteronomy 28 outlines, while Abraham’s blessings, which Galatians 3:14 applies to us, are good: health, prosperity, victory. Jesus bore those curses in our place (Galatians 3:13; Isaiah 53:4-5), so attributing ongoing sickness to God’s goodness is like saying the atonement half-worked. It’s not faith-testing; it’s faith-denying.

Think about it this way: when Joseph told his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20, NIV), he didn’t say God intended harm and then God flipped the harm into good. The evil came from human (and likely demonic) intent, while God orchestrated the outcome for blessing. Piper’s approach risks congratulating believers for accepting Satan’s “bi@#h slap and graffiti” as God’s artistry, but as I argue in my Systematic Theology (2025), sickness is Satan’s glory, not God’s. It sidelines Christians, stalls the kingdom, and turns soldiers into casualties that drag others down—like wartime tactics where injuring is more disruptive than killing. If we label that “good,” we’re cheering for the wrong side in this cosmic showdown. Jesus saw sickness as a direct insult to His atonement, where He took 39 stripes for our healing (Isaiah 53:5; Matthew 8:17), bearing our diseases as the scapegoat did sins (Leviticus 16). To say God continues it for our benefit dishonors that finished work, making the cross a partial payment rather than a finished work.

Piper’s words aim for stability, and there’s a kernel of truth in trusting God’s sovereignty amid trials. The problem is conflating the trial’s source with its resolver. The Bible never frames sickness as paternal discipline for believers; it’s the devil’s opportunism under the curse, which Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8). James 5:15 promises healing and forgiveness together: “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven” (NIV). God wants prosperity, not pain—His goodness is consistent from Eden to eternity, where no sickness exists (Revelation 21:4).

Faith isn’t passive acceptance; it’s active resistance against bad, sickness, pain, evil and lack. Jesus commanded us to heal the sick (Matthew 10:8), not endure them as lessons. If you’re facing illness or lack, don’t redefine it as God’s “painful good”—confess the promises, and command the mountain to move (Mark 11:23), and watch reality bow to the King’s decree. Piper’s theology, encourages believers to give glory to Satan, letting the devil conqueror them in pain and suffering. However the scripture tells a different story. We are called co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), seated above every power (Ephesians 2:6), with all things possible (Mark 9:23).

In wrapping up, Piper admits the pain is real and unwanted—something you’d never pray for if you thought it was better—but then insists it’s still God’s good gift. This is a category error of epic proportions, folks. The Bible defines goodness consistently from Genesis to Revelation. In the Garden, goodness meant abundance, health, and harmony without a hint of pain or curse. Abraham’s blessing, which Galatians 3:14 says is ours through Christ, included prosperity and healing as unequivocal goods. Deuteronomy 28 spells it out: blessings are health, wealth, and victory; curses are sickness, poverty, and defeat. Jesus didn’t come to hybridize them; He came to redeem us from the curse entirely (Galatians 3:13). When Piper says “painful as it has been” and calls it God’s goodness, he’s essentially saying God gives curses wrapped in blessing paper. But Isaiah 54:15 shoots that down: “If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you” (NIV). God explicitly disowns the attackers—be they relational strife, financial woes, or cancerous tumors. If pain, loss or sickness is knocking on your door, it’s not a delivery from heaven; it’s fiery arrows from the enemy, and Piper’s theology is handing Satan the quiver while crediting God for the attacks.

Piper’s congratulating his audience for embracing this is like high-fiving someone for eating spoiled food and calling it gourmet. It gives Satan glory by attributing his works to God. But the Bible’s worldview is clear: Jesus heals because it’s good; the devil afflicts because it’s bad. No hybridization. In my “Systematic Theology,” I build this out: epistemology from revelation, metaphysics of sovereignty without compromise, logic deductive, ethics obedient faith. The thesis? All things possible to believers. Piper’s view limits God by redefining His gifts by the devils works.

As Vincent Cheung says so well, “Don’t waste your Redemption,” in response to Piper’s book, Don’t Waste Your Cancer. The benefits of the atonement are already purchased by Jesus and freely given to you. I have sympathy with hurting Christians, but sickness and lack does not negate the commands of God. The command is to pray and make the sickness, purchased by the strips of Jesus, to go away and be healed. My sympathy and God’s compassion, does not give an excuse for disobedience. You fully obey God when you are healed. The same is for conversion. It is a command to be forgiven of your sins. A hard life, depression and peer pressures might draw sympathy, but it is not an excuse to not repent of your sins and receive salvation. Until you are fully healed, you are wasting the gospel, or that part of the gospel, in your life. The call to maturity, is to correct this and get better. God wants this more than you and will help you improve.

So, what’s the takeaway? Ditch the muddled mess. Embrace God’s unmixed goodness. If pain shows up, declare, “Not from my Father!” Pray in faith, resist the devil, and watch him flee (James 4:7). Stability comes not from enduring bad but from receiving good. Let me say that again, Stability comes not from enduring bad but from receiving good. Don’t let theologians turn your theology into therapy for defeat—let Scripture turn it into triumph. God’s not sending the pain; He’s sending the power to overcome it. Believe that, and you’ll see mountains move, not just molehills managed.

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Vincent Cheung has some fantastic passages about John Piper’s, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer,” and I will post here them.

“Don’t waste your cancer? Are you kidding me? Don’t waste your redemption! Don’t waste the blood of Christ! Jesus took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses (Matthew 8:16-17). Every point in this small book is either misleading or the opposite of what the Bible teaches. If you do not want to “waste” your sickness, then get healed from it and testify about the miracle. Don’t crucify Christ afresh so you can make yourself look like a religious hero. Don’t urinate on the face of Christ just so you can make yourself feel better in your unbelief and defeat. Don’t waste your life romanticizing unnecessary suffering. Don’t waste the sacrifice of Christ with your stupid fake piety.”
(Backstage, 2016, pg 7).

“One Christian author wrote, “Don’t waste your cancer.” What a demonic message. This is counter-gospel. This is fake religion. The Bible never calls sickness a gift from God, but it says that sickness is satanic bondage and oppression. Sickness is a demonic attack, not a divine gift. Jesus devoted an inordinate amount of effort to obliterate it everywhere he went. Would that author accuse Jesus of wasting everyone’s sickness? Behold the demeaning effect of unbelief. This fake teacher calls upon thousands of people to waste the blood of Christ, who took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses to obtain healing for us. Unless you “waste” your sickness, you waste your redemption. Behold the perverse theology of tradition. This fake teacher romanticizes sickness and suffering, and urges thousands of God’s people to embrace bondage and oppression, surrendering to Satan to do all his will. Because he weakens people’s faith and urgency in receiving healing from God, the author has become directly responsible for their suffering and even deaths. He is a sadist and a murderer. But spiritual poison like this is usually presented as profound piety and scholarship.

Jesus never said, “Don’t waste your sickness,” but he said, “Do you want to be healed?” And then he said to the invalid, “Pick up your mat and walk.” He never said, “Let the will of God be done,” but he said, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then he said to the blind man, “Your faith has healed you.”
(Platitudes as Orthodoxy, web 2018).