“You should not believe everything you read on the internet.” – Abraham Lincoln
“To worship God we must know who God is, but we cannot know who God is unless God first chooses to reveal himself to us. God has done this in the Bible, which is why the Bible and the teaching of the Bible need to be central in our worship.” – James Montgomery Boice
“The Covenant of Redemption is the covenant entered into by the persons of the Trinity in the councils of eternity, with the Son mediating its benefits to the elect. This covenant is the basis for all of God’s purposes in nature and history, and it is the foundation and efficacy of the covenant of grace.” – Michael Horton
“The Church is in duty bound to guard its holiness by the exercise of proper discipline. The purpose of discipline in the Church is twofold. In the first place it seeks to carry into effect the law of Christ concerning the admission and exclusion of members; and in the second place it aims at promoting the spiritual edification of the members of the Church by securing their obedience to the laws of Christ. Both of these aims are subservient to a higher end, the maintenance of the holiness of the church of Jesus Christ. If there are diseased members, the Church will first of all seek to effect a cure, but if this proves impossible, it will put away the diseased member for the protection of the other members. While all the members of the Church are in duty bound to warn and admonish the wayward, only the officers of the Church can apply Church censures. The latter can deal with private sins only when these are brought to their attention according to the rule given in Matt. 18:15-17, but are in duty bound to deal with public sins even when no formal accusation is brought.” – Louis Berkhof
“A doctrine concerning Scripture’s attributes developed in the Reformation churches as a counter to Roman Catholicism on the one hand and Anabaptism on the other. The key issue was the nature and extent of scriptural authority. Rome honors church and tradition above Scripture, while Anabaptism respects the inner word at the expense of the external word of Scripture. In Roman Catholicism the precedence of the church over Scripture eventually led to the dogma of papal infallibility. Here, materially, Scripture is unnecessary. Over against this position, the Reformers posited their polemical doctrine of Scripture’s attributes: authority, necessity, sufficiency, and perspicuity.” – Herman Bavinck
“The best evidence of the Bible’s being the word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself.” – Charles Hodge
“Grace … eliminates boasting; it suffocates boasting: it silences any and all negotiations about our contribution before they can even begin. By definition we cannot ‘qualify’ for grace in any way, by any means, or through any action.” – Sinclair Ferguson
“What will it cost a man to be a true Christian? It will cost him his self-righteousness. He must cast away all pride and high thoughts, and conceit of his own goodness. He must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner, saved only by free grace, and owing all to the merit and righteousness of another.” – J. C. Ryle
“Don’t let your feelings inform your doctrine, let your doctrine inform your feelings.” – Burk Parsons
“God Himself supplies the necessary condition to come to Jesus, that’s why it is ‘sola gratia,’ by grace alone, that we are saved.” – RC Sproul
“The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD;
he turns it wherever he will.” – Prov. 21:1
“If Yahweh is sovereign over the greatest human will, He is sovereign over all human wills.” – Dan Phillips
“Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep.” – J. I. Packer
“The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action. The Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.” – J. I. Packer
“To lay hold of and receive the gospel by a true and saving faith is an act of the soul that has been made a new creature, which is the workmanship of God… Wherefore whoever receiveth the grace that is tendered in the gospel, they must be quickened by the power of God, their eyes must be opened, their understandings illuminated, their ears unstopped, their hearts circumcised, their wills also rectified, and the Son of God revealed in them.” ~John Bunyan
“This is true religion, to approve what God approves, to hate what he hates, and to delight in what delights him.” – Charles Hodge
Dr. Kathy Koch has a saying that reflects the biblical thought Paul express in 1 Cor.15:33. She notes, “Show me your friends, and I will show you your future.”
“Rome often claims that it represents two thousand years of unbroken apostolic succession and practice. The implication is that no fundamental changes have taken place in the church, but only a legitimate development of principles found at the beginning. I believe that this historical claim is profoundly false, and that in the interests of truth and biblical religion it must be challenged.” – W. Robert Godfrey
Sin…
is a blind,
anti-God,
egocentric energy
in the fallen human spiritual system,
ever fomenting
self-centered and self- deceiving desires,
ambitions,
purposes,
plans,
attitudes,
and behaviors…
Remember that sin desensitizes you
to itself.
– J. I. Packer
“In the great expanse of eternity, which stretches behind Genesis 1:1, the universe was unborn and creation existed only in the mind of the great Creator. In His sovereign majesty God dwelt all alone. We refer to that far distant period before the heavens and the earth were created. There were then no angels to hymn God’s praises, no creatures to occupy His notice, no rebels to be brought into subjection. The great God was all alone amid the awful silence of His own vast universe. But even at that time, if time it could be called, God was sovereign. He might create or not create according to His own good pleasure. He might create this way or that way; He might create one world or one million worlds, and who was there to resist His will? He might call into existence a million different creatures and place them on absolute equality, endowing them with the same faculties and placing them in the same environment; or, He might create a million creatures each differing from the others, and possessing nothing in common save their creature-hood, and who was there to challenge His right? If He so pleased, He might call into existence a world so immense that its dimensions were utterly beyond finite computation; and were He so disposed, He might create an organism so small that nothing but the most powerful microscope could reveal its existence to human eyes. It was His sovereign right to create, on the one hand, the exalted seraphim to burn around His throne, and on the other hand, the tiny insect which dies the same hour that it is born. If the mighty God chose to have one vast graduation in His universe, from loftiest seraph to creeping reptile, from revolving worlds to floating atoms, from macrocosm to microcosm, instead of making everything uniform, who was there to question His sovereign pleasure?” – A. W. Pink
“Satan, the god of all dissension stirs up daily new sects. And last of all which of all others I should never have foreseen or once suspected, he has raised up a sect such as teach that men should not be terrified by the law, but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ.” – Martin Luther
“None are more exposed to slanders and insults than godly teachers. This comes not only from the difficulty of their duties, which are so great that sometimes they sink under them, or stagger or halt or take a false step, so that wicked men find many occasions of finding fault with them; but … even when they do all their duties correctly and commit not even the smallest error, they never avoid a thousand criticisms. It is indeed a trick of Satan to estrange men from their ministers so as gradually to bring their teaching into contempt. In this way not only is wrong done to innocent people whose reputation is undeservedly injured, but the authority of God’s holy teaching is diminished.” — John Calvin
“They will never accept grace until they tremble before a just and holy law.” – Charles Spurgeon
George Whitfield said “That is why we have so many mushroom converts.” (People springing up overnight as professing Christ and then disappearing)
“It is because God’s wrath is real, that His mercy is relevant. Unless you have a real wrath, a real anger, the Biblical concepts of long-suffering, of mercy, and of grace are robbed of their meaning.” – Alistair Begg
Galatians 3:24 declares: “Therefore the Law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
“The natural man has no desire for communion with God, for he places his happiness in the creature. He prefers everything before Him and glorifies everything above Him. He loves his own pleasures more than God. His wisdom being “earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15), the celestial and divine are outside of his consideration. This appears in man’s works, for actions speak louder than words. Our hearts are to be gauged by what we do, and not by what we say. Our tongues may be great liars, but our deeds tell the truth, showing what we really are.” – Arthur Pink, “The Doctrine of Human Depravity”
“…Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.” – John Calvin
“In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scriptures without assistance from the works of divine and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves should think so little of what he has revealed to others” (“Lecture One: A Chat about Commentaries,” Commenting and Commentaries [London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1876], 1.).
“Blessed Lord, which hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant us that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience, and comfort of Thy holy word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.” – Thomas Cranmer
“…it is important to remember that culture does not give the church its agenda. All it gives the church is its context. The church’s belief and mission come from the Word of God. They do not come from the culture either through attraction to it or in alienation from it. It is not the culture that determines the church’s priorities. It is not the (post)modern culture that should be telling it what to think. The principle here is sola Scriptura, not sola cultura.” – Dr. David Wells, Distinguished Senior Research Professor at GCTS, explaining the revised edition of “The Courage to Be Protestant”
“Proverbs 8: Lady Wisdom is not Christ pre-incarnate; but Christ is wisdom incarnate.”
“[good works] cannot be regarded as necessary to merit salvation, nor as a means to retain a hold on salvation, nor even as the only way along which to proceed to eternal glory, for children enter salvation without having done any good works. The Bible does not teach that no one can be saved apart from good works. At the same time good works necessarily follow from the union of believers with Christ” – Louis Berkhof (1873–1957)
The Heidelberg Catechism
Question 62: But why cannot our good works be the whole, or part of our righteousness before God?
Answer: Because, that the righteousness, which can be approved of before the tribunal of God, must be absolutely perfect, (a) and in all respects conformable to the divine law; and also, that our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin. (b)
“Doxology is the offering of worship to God in “wonder, love, and praise”, exalting him, glorifying him and proclaiming his greatness in “humble adoration”… Theology can make no real progress without the spirit of worship. Doctrine and doxology belong together. Worship divorced from sound doctrine degenerates into superficial emotionalism. Doctrine divorced from true worship lapses into barren intellectualism.” (The New Dictionary of Theology, s.v. “Doxology”)