John Piper’s tiny new book  — 64 pages — on John Calvin, “John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God” is now available from Desiring God.

From Desiring God:

John Piper focuses on the supremacy of God by unfolding Calvin’s zeal for the glory of God.

God rests lightly on the church’s mind in our time. We are obsessed with ourselves and God takes second place, if that. The experience of his majesty sometimes seems to have disappeared from the modern evangelical world.

John Calvin saw a similar thing in his day. His aim was to “set before [man], as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God”—a fitting banner over all of his life and work.

“The essential meaning of Calvin’s life and preaching,” writes John Piper, “is that he recovered and embodied a passion for the absolute reality and majesty of God. Such is the aim and burden of this book as well.”

This book comes as we enter 2009, the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. Look for more titles concerning Calvin to come out in the coming year. For another resource into this influential Christian thinker, see also Piper’s biographical message at the 1997 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors: The Divine Majesty of the Word: John Calvin: The Man and His Preaching. You can read it, listen to it streamed or download it.