What would happen if John MacArthur’s critique of easy-believism in The Gospel According to Jesus collided with John Piper’s passionate, reformed, glory-of-God-centered missiology in Let the Nations Be Glad? Answer: David Platt’s Radical.

The sub-title says it all. Platt is confronting American culture Christianity with the Scripture! In our American context and mentality, many have succumbed to a Christian-like faith that allows profession with no accompanying discipleship and mission-mindset that involves no real mission involvement. This is not the portrait of true, biblical Christianity, and Platt presents scripture after scripture to demonstrate it.

The Bible is radical. Salvation in Christ is a radical life-change and lifestyle. People who take the Bible seriously and literally become radical people. Churches who take the Bible for what it says become radical churches. The truth is that “radical” is the biblical normal!

If Platt’s book could be summed up in a few words, maybe it would be something like this: “When the glory of God becomes the center of your life, existing to spread the Gospel defines your life!” Everything from finances to vocation to retirement revolves around glorifying God by magnifying His Son. In other words, you let go of the American dream of clinging to comfort and security and building your own little world around yourself. You surrender everything to the Lordship of Christ in order to spread His Gospel because you truly believe down deep in your heart that living forever in the presence of God is better than the temporary, fleeting promise of pleasure that is the American Dream. The radical life is one that uses the material and physical blessings of God to store treasure in heaven instead of wasting it on earthly trinkets!

One of the joys of reading Radical is that it becomes clear through the illustrations that Platt is not merely suggesting a radical lifestyle. He actually lives it, examples it, and teaches it. He commends it through personal experience. He has taken Jesus’ words to heart, and he has found it to be the greatest joy on earth. Therefore, he challenges and encourages the reader to join him.

The book concludes with five suggestions for how one can begin the Radical life. The challenge is to commit to the following items over the next year; praying for the entire world (Platt uses operationworld.org to accomplish this), read through the entire Word, sacrifice money for a specific purpose, spend time in another context, and commit to a multiplying community.

The following are some gripping quotes from Radical:

(7) We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

(10-11) Give up everything you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than “Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.”

(29) You might ask, “What happened to ‘God hates the sin and loves the sinner’?” Well, the Bible happened to it.

(29) We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in His Word, we might discover that He evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give Him.

(32) We already have a fairly high view of our morality, so when we add a superstitious prayer, a subsequent dose of church attendance, and obedience to some of the Bible, we feel pretty sure that we will be all right in the end.

(37)We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced Him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept Him.