“The very heart of worship, as the Bible makes clear, is the business of expressing, from the depths of our spirits, the highest possible honor we can offer before God.” – R.C. Sproul

“Just as a leopard CANNOT change its spots and a camel CANNOT go through the eye of a needle (both are impossible) MAN cannot change the human heart – BUT GOD CAN. That is our only hope as we pray for and reach out with the gospel to lost souls.” – John Samson

“Without regeneration, God would just be hosing off the pig and watching it head right back for the muck.” – Dan Phillips

“Let your souls delight in communion with God while you are on earth, since you look for your happiness in communion with him in heaven. ” – Thomas Boston

“The only rightful response to the display of God’s perfections must be to give Him glory.” – Steven Lawson

“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.” – Elisabeth Elliot

“It is entirely the work of grace and a benefit conferred by it that our heart is changed from a stony one to one of flesh, that our will is made new, and that we, created anew in heart and mind, at length will what we ought to will.” – John Calvin

What is a Christian? One who, by the grace of God, can declare that he justly deserves the wrath of God, save for the mercy of Jesus Christ alone. He casts aside all hope in his self-righteousness and puts away all pride in his own goodness. One who is glad to be regarded as spiritually bankrupt, a poor sinner, saved by the free grace and righteousness of Christ and, by the sheer mercy of God, yields in allegiance to Him alone as LORD and sovereign. In a word, one who “glories in Christ Jesus and has no confidence in the flesh.” (Phil. 3:3)

“Students, I would encourage you — the next time you encounter someone at school who declares you to be bigoted or immoral for your faith, respectfully ask them 1) how they know their morality is superior to others? 2) by what authority do they establish morality for the rest of us? … By calling you immoral they obviously think they know the standard of right and wrong for everyone. If more Christians took this line of reasoning it would demolish the arguments and pretensions (2 Cor. 10:5) of the modern thought police in one fell swoop.” – @Monergism

“The natural man dislikes the whole idea of revelation. Why? Because he is wise and prudent, so full of his own intellect and understanding. The Gospel … is not something that man has thought of or achieved, but something that comes out of the mind of God … it is altogether from His side, and man contributes nothing to it.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Grace is favor shown to the undeserving; and the more we grow in grace the more we perceive our undeservingness, the more we feel our need of grace, the more sensible we are of our indebtedness to the God of all grace.” – A. W. Pink

“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown ups.” – Dr. Greg Bahnsen Continue reading →

“Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another’s life, another’s death, I stake my whole eternity.” – Horatius Bonar

“When you fail to distinguish Law and Gospel, you lose both.” – Tullian Tchividjian

“Only when we see that the way of God’s law is absolutely inflexible will we see that God’s grace is absolutely indispensable. A high view of the law reminds us that God accepts us on the basis of Christ’s perfection, not our progress. Grace, properly understood, is the movement of a holy God toward an unholy people. He doesn’t cheapen the law or ease its requirements. He fulfills them in his Son, who then gives his righteousness to us. That’s the gospel. Pure and simple.” – Tullian Tchividjian

“Ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is the principal source of abuse which corrupted and still corrupts Christianity.” – Theodore Beza (John Calvin’s successor)

“That is the reason we have so many mushroom converts . . . why? Because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the Law.” – George Whitefield

“A low view of law always produces legalism; a high view of law makes a person a seeker after grace.” – J. Gresham Machen

“Prayer is the preview of God’s action.” – Mark Dever

“We persevere because we are preserved by our High Priest’s intercession.” – R.C. Sproul

“Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.” – J. I. Packer

“God is awesome; he doesn’t need you to be awesome. He wants you to be obedient.” – Matt Chandler

“Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is, no longer have the categories to understand it, no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories in their non-moral universe — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty.” – David Wells

“It is folly to think the Lord provides grace for every trouble but the one you are in today.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“In our day it’s worse to judge evil than to do evil.” – Os Guinness

“It seems unnecessary to remark that this does not, and cannot mean that the righteousness ofChrist is infused into the believer, or in any way so imparted to him as to change, or constitute his moral character.Imputation never changes the inward, subjective state of the person to whom the imputation is made. When sin is imputed to a man he is not made sinful; when the zeal of Phinehas was imputed to him, he was not made zealous. When you impute theft to a man, you do not make him a thief. When you impute goodness to a man, you do not make him good. So when righteousness is imputed to the believer, he does not thereby become subjectively righteous. If the righteousness be adequate, and if the imputation be made on adequate grounds and by competent authority, the person to whom the imputation is made has the right to be treated as righteous. And, therefore, in the forensic, although not in the moral or subjective sense, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ does make the sinner righteous. That is, it gives him a right to the full pardon of all his sins and a claim in justice to eternal life.” – Charles Hodge

“Let those be thy choicest companions who have made Christ their chief companion.” – Thomas Brooks

“God is not blind; neither is He capricious. For Him there are no accidents. With God there are no cases of chance events.” – R.C. Sproul

“Don’t seek a platform for the sake of the gospel if you’re not prepared to lose that platform for the sake of the gospel.” – Sam Allberry

“The atonement is a multifaceted event—Jesus is shown providing surety for our debt to God, mediating the enmity between us and God, and offering Himself as a substitute to suffer God’s judgment in our place.” – R.C. Sproul

“God promises the Christian heaven after death, not before it.” – John Blanchard

“Was He scourged? It was through His stripes that we might be healed. Was He condemned, though innocent? It was that we might be acquitted, though guilty. Did He wear a crown of thorns? It was that we might wear the crown of glory. Was He stripped of His raiment? It was that we might be clothed in everlasting righteousness. Was He mocked and reviled? It was that we might be honored and blessed. Was He reckoned a malefactor, and numbered among transgressors? It was that we might be reckoned innocent, and justified from all sin. Was He declared unable to save Himself? It was that He might be able to save others to the uttermost. Did He die at last, and that the most painful and disgraceful of deaths? It was that we might live forevermore, and be exalted to the highest glory.” – John Ryle

“He that serves God for money will serve the devil for better wages.” – Roger L’Estrange

“By His life, death, and resurrection, our Savior has conquered our enemies, and by His Spirit He has granted us to share in the victory.” – R.C. Sproul

“The very heart of worship, as the Bible makes clear, is the business of expressing, from the depths of our spirits, the highest possible honor we can offer before God.” – R.C. Sproul

“If the being of God ceased for one second, the universe would disappear.” – R.C. Sproul

“God in His providence hasn’t called us to watch history, but to shape history by praying in His Name.” – David Platt

“We may live in a culture that believes everyone will be saved, that we are ‘justified by death’ and all you need to do to go to heaven is die, but God’s Word certainly doesn’t give us the luxury of believing that.” – R.C. Sproul

Don’t follow your heart, lead it!

ICR Science Writer

“What a wonder is it, that two natures infinitely distant, should be more intimately united than anything in the world; and yet without any confusion! That the same person should have both a glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible sorrow in the humanity! That a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man, are such expressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love, that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.” – Thomas Goodwin

“In this union between the two natures there is the greatest distance involved. The creator is identified with a creature. In the union of the two natures one sees eternity and temporality, eternal blessedness and temporal sorrow, Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, unchangeableness and changeableness, infinity and finitude. All of these disparate attributes come together in the person of Jesus Christ.” – Mark Jones

“Unbelief is like gravity, it’s always pulling down on the authority of Scripture.” – Mark Dever

“We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God – which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but His descent to us. Without God’s descent there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in His grace.” – Os Guinness, Long Journey Home

“We are cosmic traitors. We must recognize this problem within ourselves if we are to grasp the necessity of the cross.” – R.C. Sproul

“The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here, where by his grace, in this part of his vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.” – Samuel Rutherford

“Reformed theology so far transcends the mere five points of Calvinism that it is an entire life and world view.” – R.C. Sproul

“Faith and repentance are as much benefits of the covenant of grace as justification . . . . faith and repentance themselves . . . . are components of the gospel, not the workings or fruits of the law.” – Herman Bavinck

“God gives the grace of forgiveness in order to receive the glory of worship.” – Rhett Dodson

“People fall in private, long before they fall in public.” – J.C. Ryle

“He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.” – Matthew Henry

“Did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt but He will also finish His work in us.” – John Flavel

“Truth is never determined by majority opinion, but by divine revelation.” – Steve Lawson

“If the cross is not foolishness to the lost world then we have misrepresented the cross.” – Steven Lawson

“Preaching on unity doesn’t unify a church. Preaching Jesus unifies a church.” – Steve Dighton

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely the little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at any point.” – Martin Luther

“They gave our Master a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?” – Martin Luther

“…even acts of civic kindness done by an unbeliever fail to meet the requirement of God’s law—namely, that all our actions must be done with a view to glorifying God.” – Derek Thomas

“At the end of the day, the biggest obstacle to evangelism is Christians who don’t share the gospel.” – Albert Mohler

“Ho, Ho, Sir Surgeon. You are too delicate to tell the man that he is ill. You hope to heal the sick without their knowing it. You therefore flatter them. And what happens? They laugh at you. They dance upon their own graves and at last they die. Your delicacy is cruelty, your flatteries are poisons, you are a murderer… Shall we keep men in a fool’s paradise? Shall we lull them into soft slumber from which they will awake in hell? Are we to become helpers of their damnation by our smooth speeches? In the name of God we will not.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“I used to say ‘he needs a radical conversion.’ Now I say, ‘a true conversion is radical.'” – Linda Samson

“The Epistle to the Romans has sat around in the church since the first century like a bomb ticking away the death of religion; and every time it’s been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar. The only sad thing is that the church as an institution has spent most of its time playing bomb squad and trying to defuse it. For your comfort, though, it can’t be done. Your freedom remains as close to your life as Jesus and as available to your understanding as the nearest copy. Like Augustine, therefore, take and read–and then hold onto your hat. Compared to that explosion, the clap of doom sounds like a cap pistol.” – Robert Capon

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” – C. S. Lewis

“The world was created that from thence Christ might obtain his spouse.” – Jonathan Edwards

“The love of Jesus Christ constrains me to lift up my voice like a trumpet. My heart is now full; out of the abundance of the love which I have for your precious and immortal souls, my mouth now speaks; and I could now not only continue my discourse until midnight, but I could speak until I could speak no more.” – George Whitefield

“We never get past the gospel.” – Derek Thomas

“The true church is too different for the world to tolerate it.” – Sinclair Ferguson

“No man who is full of himself can ever truly preach the Christ who emptied himself.” – J. Sidlow Baxter

“God’s grace in saving miserable sinners has been replaced by heretical teaching, such as saying that it is because we are so valuable that Christ came to redeem us. Not all who hold self-esteem views go so far, but many do.” – Jay Adams

“As a husband, your love for your wife has a specific goal: her holiness.” – Winston Smith

“George Whitefield was convinced that any presentation of the gospel must begin by exposing the listener’s sin and his dire need for salvation.” – Steven Lawson

“The first thing the sinner needs is life. He cannot ask for life, for he is dead. God gives him life, and he proves that he has it by believing the gospel. Quickening is the first step. It is the first thing that happens. I do not ask to be quickened. If I asked to be quickened I would not need to be quickened. I would already have life.” – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Ephesians – God’s Way Of Reconciliation)

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you’re a beast in the pulpit but a coward in your neighborhood, something has gone wrong.” – Matt Chandler

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot

“The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.” – John Calvin

“God is dependable. His predestination cannot fail, and no one can withstand Him.” – Martin Luther

“There are no easy steps to witnessing! No painless, thinking about Him, boasting of Him, speaking about and for and to Him, thrilled and entranced with His perfections and beauty, finding ways to serve and exalt Him, tirelessly exploring ways to spend and be spent for Him, growing in character to be more and more like Him – and I will show you a person who IS filled with the Holy Spirit. We should learn what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. We should teach what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. We should seek to live lives full of the biblically defined ministry of the Holy Spirit. But we should never lose sight of this: To the degree that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we will be targeted on, focused on, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.” – Dan Phillips

“When a believer has fallen into a low, sad state of feeling, he often tries to lift himself out of it by chastening himself with dark and doleful fears. Such is not the way to rise from the dust, but to continue in it. As well chain the eagle’s wing to make it mount, as doubt in order to increase our grace. It is not the law, but the gospel which saves the seeking soul at first; and it is not a legal bondage, but gospel liberty which can restore the fainting believer afterwards. Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus’ bosom.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“The apostle says that Rock was Christ, 1 Cor. 10:4, it was a type of him. While the curse of God might justly have been executed upon our guilty souls, behold the Son of God is smitten for us. Let us ask and receive. There was a constant, abundant supply of this water. Numerous as believers are, the supply of the Spirit of Christ is enough for all. The water flowed from the rock in streams to refresh the wilderness, and attended them on their way towards Canaan; and this water flows from Christ, through the ordinances, in the barren wilderness of this world, to refresh our souls, until we come to glory.” – Matthew Henry

“Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“The doctrines of grace humble a man without degrading him and exalt a man without inflating him.” – Charles Hodge

“I will not believe that you have tasted of the honey of the gospel if you can eat it all by yourself.” – C. H. Spurgeon

Paraphrasing the Puritan, John Owen from his book, A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace, Sinclair Ferguson says,

There are actually only ever two pastoral problems you will ever encounter. The first is this: persuading those who are under the dominion of sin that they are under the dominion of sin. That’s the task of evangelism. And [second], persuading those who are no longer under the dominion of sin that they are no longer under the dominion of sin because they’re Christ’s.

“Effective executives know that they have to get many things done — and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate — their own time and energy as well as that of their organization — on doing one thing at a time, and on doing first things first.” – Peter Drucker

“If God does not meddle with your free will, you will free will your way to hell.” – John Samson

“God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives.” – J.I. Packer

“Humility is not simply feeling small and useless – like an inferiority complex. It is sensing how great and glorious God is, and seeing myself in that light.” – Sinclair Ferguson

“We are plainly taught in the Word of God that as many as have believed are one with Christ: they are married to him, there is a conjugal union based upon mutual affection. The union is closer still, for there is a vital union between Christ and his saints. They are in him as the branches are in the vine; they are members of the body of which he is the head. They are one with Jesus in such a true and real sense that with him they died, with him they have been buried, with him they are raised; with him they are raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places. There is an indissoluble union between Christ and all his people: I in them and they in me.

Thus the union may be described: “Christ is in his people the hope of glory, and they are dead and their life is hid with Christ in God. This is a union of the most wonderful kind, which figures may faintly set forth, but which it is impossible for language completely to explain.

Oneness to Jesus is one of the fat things full of marrow. For if it be so, indeed, that we are one with Christ, then because he lives we must live also; because he was justified by his resurrection, we also are justified in him; because he is rewarded and forever sits down at his Father’s right hand, we also have obtained the inheritance in him and by faith grasp it now and enjoy its earnest.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Not all that seem to be branches are branches of the true Vine. Many branches fall off the trees when the high winds begin to blow—all that are rotten branches. So, in times of temptation, or trial, or persecution, many false professors drop away. Many that seemed to be believers went back, and walked no more with Jesus. They followed Jesus, they prayed with Him, they praised Him; but they went back, and walked no more with Him. So it is still. Many among us doubtless seem to be converted; they begin well and promise fair, who will fall off when winter comes. Some have fallen off, I fear, already; some more may be expected to follow. These will not be blessed in dying. Oh, of all deathbeds may I be kept from beholding the deathbed of the false professor! I have seen it before now, and I trust I may never see it again. They are not blessed after death. The rotten branches will burn more fiercely in the flames.Oh, think what torment it will be, to think that you spent your life in pretending to be a Christian, and lost your opportunity of becoming one indeed! Your hell will be all the deeper, blacker, hotter, that you knew so much of Christ, and were so near Him, and found Him not.” – Robert Murray McCheyne

“The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.” – Cyprian, Treatise on the Unity of the Church, 6.

“After our preaching of the law rightly pushes people under water, we all too often lead them to think that they must “save” themselves by giving them swimming lessons: ‘Paddle harder, kick faster.’ I want the last word I speak over Christians when I preach to be the last word God speaks over Christians – ‘Paid in full.’ The Gospel always has the last word over a believer. Always. When it’s all said and done there are two types of sermons: Jesus + Nothing = Everything or Jesus + Something = Everything. May God raise up a generation of bold preachers who storm the gates of works-righteousness in all its forms with nothing more and nothing less than, “In my place condemned he stood, and sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah, what a Savior.'” – Tullian Tchividjian

“The trouble with all false evangelism is that it does not start with doctrine, it does not start by realising man’s condition… If you and I realised that every man who is yet a sinner is absolutely dominated by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, if we only understood that he is really a child of wrath and dead in trespasses and sins, we would realise that only one power can deal with such an individual, and that is the power of God, the power of the Holy Spirit. And so we would put our confidence, not in man-made organisations, but in the power of God, in the prayer that holds on to God and asks for revival and a descent of the Spirit. We would realise that nothing else can do it. We can change men superficially, we can win men to our side and to our party, we can persuade them to join a church, but we can never raise the spiritually dead; God alone can do that.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Ephesians – God’s Way Of Reconciliation)

“You are always on duty in the Christian life, you can never relax. There is no such thing as a holiday in the spiritual realm.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.” – G.K. Chesterton

his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. — Isaiah 40:10

“Being infinite, God is inexhaustibly interesting. It is therefore impossible that God be boring.” – John Piper

“Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.” – John Piper

“In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.” – Martin Luther

“There are two types of pain in this world: The temporary pain of discipline, or the permanent pain of regret.” – Unknown

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn

“To accept Christ’s righteousness alone, his blood alone for salvation, is the sum of the gospel.” – Thomas Wilcox

“True repentance has a distinct and constant reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you repent of sin without looking to Christ, away with your repentance. If you are so lamenting your sin as to forget the Savior, you have a need to begin all this work over again. Whenever we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross; or, better still, let us have both eyes upon Christ, seeing our sin punished in him, and by no means let us look at sin except as we look at Jesus. A man may hate sin just as a murderer hates the gallows but this does not prove repentance. If I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of sin; I merely regret that God is just.

But if I can see sin as an offense against Jesus Christ, and loathe myself because I have wounded him, then I have a true brokenness of heart. If I see the Savior and believe that those thorns upon his head were put there by my sinful words; if I believe that those wounds in his heart were made by my heart-sins; if I believe that those wounds in his feet were made by my wandering steps, and that the wounds in his hands were made by my sinful deeds, then I repent after a right fashion. Only under the cross can you repent. Repentance elsewhere is remorse, which clings to the sin and only dreads the punishment. Let us then seek, under God, to have a hatred of sin caused by a sight of Christ’s love.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Go as you are to Christ, and ask him to give that tenderness of heart which shall be to you the indication that pardon has come; for pardon cannot and will not come unattended by a melting of soul and a hatred of sin. Wrestle with the Lord! Say, I will not let you go except you bless me. Get a fast hold upon the savior by a vigorous faith in his great atonement. Oh! May his spirit enable you to do this! Say in your soul, here I will abide, at the horns of the altar; if I perish I will perish at the foot of the cross. From my hope in Jesus I will not depart; but I will look up and still say, savior, your heart was broken for me, break my heart! You were wounded; wound me! Your blood was freely poured forth, for me; Lord, let me pour forth my tears that I should have nailed you to the tree. Oh Lord, dissolve my soul; melt it in tenderness, and you will be forever praised for making your enemy your friend. May God bless you, and make you repent, if you have not repented; and if you have, may he enable you to continue in it all your days, for Jesus Christ sake. Amen.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Psalm 51 is the photograph of a contrite spirit. Oh, let us seek after the like brokenness of heart, for however excellent our words may be, yet if the heart is not conscious of the blackness and hell-deservingness of sin, we cannot expect to find mercy with the Judge of all the earth. If the Lord will break your heart, consent to have it broken; asking that he may sanctify that brokenness of spirit to bring you in earnest to a savior, that you may yet be numbered with the righteous ones.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“It was to be eaten with bitter herbs in remembrance of the bitterness of their bondage in Egypt. We must feed upon Christ with sorrow and brokenness of heart, in remembrance of sin; this will give an admirable relish to the lamb. Christ will be sweet to us if sin be bitter.” – Matthew Henry

“A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in the little things is a great thing.” – Hudson Taylor

“The Gospel teaches that to know God is life eternal. But the concept of ‘knowledge’ here is not to be understood in its Hellenic sense, but in the Shemitic sense. According to the former, ‘to know’ means to mirror the reality of a thing in one’s consciousness. The Shemitic and Biblical idea is to have the reality of something practically interwoven with the inner experience of life. Hence ‘to know’ can stand in the Biblical idiom for ‘to love’, ‘to single out in love.’ Because God desires to be known after this fashion, He has caused His revelation to take place in the milieu of the historical life of a people. The circle of revelation is not a school, but a ‘covenant’.” – Geerhardus Vos

“How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none.” – A.W. Tozer

“If Christ is not all to you He is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Saviour of men. If He be something He must be everything, and if He be not everything He is nothing to you.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Christ is not only ‘mighty to save’ those who repent, but he is able to make men repent. He will carry those to heaven who believe; but he is, moreover, mighty to give men new hearts and to work faith in them. He is mighty to make the man who hates holiness love it, and to constrain the despiser of his name to bend the knee before him. Nay, this is not all the meaning, for the divine power is equally seen in the after-work. The life of a believer is a series of miracles wrought by ‘the Mighty God.’ The bush burns, but is not consumed. He is mighty to keep his people holy after he has made them so, and to preserve them in his fear and love until he consummates their spiritual existence in heaven. Christ’s might doth not lie in making a believer and then leaving him to shift for himself; but he who begins the good work carries it on; he who imparts the first germ of life in the dead soul, prolongs the divine existence, and strengthens it until it bursts asunder every bond of sin, and the soul leaps from earth, perfected in glory.” – Charles Spurgeon

“When the preferences of the church members are greater than their passion for the Gospel, the church is dying.” – Thom Rainer

“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues ‘no air exists’ but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe – they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] – but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such ‘breathing’ impossible. They are breathing God’s air all the time they are arguing against him.” – Greg Bahnsen

Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon ‘Hideous Discovery’, preached on July 25, 1886, made the following comment on evolution:

“In its bearing upon religion this vain notion is, however, no theme for mirth, for it is not only deceptive, but it threatens to be mischievous in a high degree. There is not a hair of truth upon this dog from its head to its tail, but it rends and tears the simple ones. In all its bearing upon scriptural truth, the evolution theory is in direct opposition to it. If God’s Word be true, evolution is a lie. I will not mince the matter: this is not the time for soft speaking.”

“With the Roman Catholic Church, our common convictions are many, including moral convictions about marriage, human life, and the family. Beyond that, we together affirm the truths of the divine Trinity, orthodox Christology, and other doctrines as well. But we disagree over what is supremely important, the gospel of Jesus Christ.” – Al Mohler

“Light might well be good since it sprang from that fiat of goodness, ‘Let there be light.’ We who enjoy it should be more grateful for it than we are, and see more of God in it and by it. Light physical is said by Solomon to be sweet, but gospel light is infinitely more precious, for it reveals eternal things, and ministers to our immortal natures. When the Holy Spirit gives us spiritual light, and opens our eyes to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we behold sin in its true colours, and ourselves in our real position; we see the Most Holy God as he reveals himself, the plan of mercy as he propounds it, and the world to come as the Word describes it. Spiritual light has many beams and prismatic colours, but whether they be knowledge, joy, holiness, or life, all are divinely good. If the light received be thus good, what must the essential light be, and how glorious must be the place where he reveals himself. O Lord, since light is so good, give us more of it, and more of thyself, the true light.” – Charles Spurgeon

“One strategy of Kingdom expansion is to get married, have lots of kids, adopt the kids the world doesn’t want, preach the Gospel to all of them, and train them in the Scriptures. In a couple of generations… massive expansion. Let the world keep denigrating the family system. Let the world keep talking about overpopulation. Let the world keep treating large families like a ‘bad-thing’. Isn’t it obvious?” – Jeff Durbin

“Indulgences for sin may come from Rome, but they never come from Zion.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“I have many in this city who are my people. – Acts 18:10 … They are Christ’s property, and yet perhaps they are lovers of selfish pleasures and haters of holiness; but if Jesus Christ purchased them, He will have them. God is not unfaithful to forget the price that His Son has paid. He will not suffer His substitution to be in any case an ineffectual, dead thing. Tens of thousands of redeemed ones are not regenerated yet, but regenerated they must be; and this is our comfort when we go to them with the quickening Word of God.” – Charles Spurgeon

“Sin is not a splash of mud upon man’s exterior, it is a filth generated within himself.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“I took books to high school athletic events when I played in the band. (Heap coals of scorn and nerdliness here). I remember the books; do you remember the games?” – Al Mohler

“Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.” – Blaise Pascal

John Newton, July 1764 letter:

It is common to overcharge ourselves. Indeed, we cannot think ourselves worse than we really are; yet some things which abate the comfort and alacrity of our Christian profession are rather impediments than properly sinful, and will not be imputed to us by him who knows our frame, and remembers that we are but dust.

Thus, to have an inform memory, to be subject to disordered, irregular, or low spirits, are faults of the constitution, in which the will has no share, though they are all burdensome and oppressive, and sometimes needlessly so by our charging ourselves with guilt on their account. The same may be observed of the unspeakable and fierce suggestions of Satan, with which some persons are pestered, but which shall be laid to him from whom they proceed, and not to them that are troubled and terrified, because they are forced to feel them.

Lastly, it is by the experience of these weaknesses within ourselves, and by feeling our utter insufficiency, either to perform duty, or to withstand our enemies, that the Lord takes occasion to show us the sufficiency, the freeness, the unchangeableness of his power and grace.
–Letters of John Newton (ed. Josiah Bull; Banner of Truth, 2007), 71

“Paul ran from Christ; Christ pursued and overtook him. Paul resisted Christ; Christ disarmed him. Paul persecuted Christ; Christ converted him. Paul was an alien; Christ made him a member of the family. Paul was an enemy; Christ made him a friend. Paul was ‘in the flesh’; Christ set him ‘in the Spirit.’ Paul was under the law; Christ set him in grace. Paul was dead; Christ made him alive to God. How does one give reasons for this? He does not give reasons; he sings, ‘Blessed be God who blessed us . . . even as he chose us in him.’” – Lewis B. Smedes, Union With Christ (Grand Rapids, 1983), pages 86-87.

“It is the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside. Even if I sinned I would say, ‘Should I deny the gospel on this account?’ . . . Once I debate about what I have done and left undone, I am finished. But if I reply on the basis of the gospel, ‘The forgiveness of sins covers it all,’ I have won.” – Martin Luther, quoted in Reinhard Slenczka, “Luther’s Care of Souls for Our Times,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67 (2003): 42.

“Now suppose both death and hell were utterly defeated. Suppose the fight was fixed. Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything — your sin, your smallness, your stupidity — you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart’s deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny — less, a scratch on a penny.” – Peter Kreeft, Heaven (San Francisco, 1989), page 183.

“They tell you there is steady progress in history; they tell you modern man is better and happier than any man in the past; they tell you we are more advanced, spiritually, morally, intellectually than all the ages of the past. This is all false. In the most important things of life, history does not disclose steady progress. There are a few shining peaks of the spirit with many intervening sloughs and valleys. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoyevsky — we have nobody comparable to these men in our age. You can live ten lives on them, and the remarkable thing is that they are more relevant to the present than any man in the present. Progress! Fiddlesticks! Who has progressed from the Psalms, or from Isaiah or Jeremiah, or from the New Testament? . . . Ages are to be compared not by numbers but by the best in them. And the best souls in our age pale before the best souls in the past. The decay of respect for the past, the decay of respect for authority, the decay of the notion of the classics — these are the banes of the age.” – Charles Malik, Wheaton College, June 1981.

“Gospel humility frees you from the need to posture and pose and calculate what others think, so that you are free to laugh at what is really funny with the biggest belly laugh. Proud people don’t really let themselves go in laughter. They don’t get red in the face and fall off chairs and twist their faces into the contortions of real free laughter. Proud people need to keep their dignity. The humble are free to howl with laughter.” – Dr. John Piper, quoted by Justin Taylor.

Concerning George Whitefield:

“The ‘Grand Itinerant’, as his contemporaries called him, was, more than anyone else, the trail-blazing pioneer and personal embodiment of the eighteenth-century revival of vital Christianity in the West, the revival that shaped English-speaking society on both sides of the Atlantic for over a hundred years and that fathered the evangelical missionary movement which for the past two centuries has been taking the gospel literally round the world. . . .

First to preach the transforming message of the new birth, first to take it into the open air and declare the world his parish, first to publish journals celebrating God’s work in and through him, and first to set up societies for the nurturing of those who came to faith under his ministry, Whitefield proclaimed Christ tirelessly throughout Britain and colonial America, drawing huge crowds, winning thousands of souls, impacting myriads more, and gaining celebrity status. . .

Wesley’s influence as a renewer of popular religion is sometimes credited with saving England from an upheaval like the French revolution; if there is substance in such reasoning, Whitefield should receive greater credit, for his ministry ranged wider and his pulpit power was greater.” (This quote is from Packer’s introduction to Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man.)

“‘Immanuel, God with us.’ It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it. . . . Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. . . . ‘God with us’ is the laborer’s strength. How could he preach the gospel, how could he bend his knees in prayer, how could the missionary go into foreign lands, how could the martyr stand at the stake, how could the confessor own his Master, how could men labor if that one word were taken away? . . . ‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky. . . .

Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast. . . . But in your feasting, think of the Man in Bethlehem. Let him have a place in your hearts, give him the glory, think of the virgin who conceived him, but think most of all of the Man born, the Child given.

I finish by again saying, A happy Christmas to you all!” – C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:430. Continue reading →

“Never does a person see any beauty in Christ as a Savior, until they discover that they are a lost and ruined sinner.” – J.C. Ryle

“The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.” – A.W. Tozer

“The atheist has two tenants to his unbelief. 1) There is no god. 2) I hate him.” – Doug Wilson

“First of all, let me make a comment, to me a very important and vital comment. The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel… …That is my comment and it is a very important comment for preachers. I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you are really preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.” – D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

“God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness.” – J.I. Packer

When we declare that all people are born dead in sin (Eph 2:1), it simply means that, as a result of the Fall, people are born stripped of God’s favor and without the Holy Spirit and so they are dead to God’s word …. “Dead in sin” does not mean they can do (or think about) nothing in their fallen state, but it means they can do nothing spiritual or redemptive … in this state they will always be unable to apprehend spiritual truth and as such they think God’s word is foolish (1 Cor 2:14; Rom 8:7) … that is, until the Holy Spirit renews their hearts (Ezek 11:19-20) and opens their eyes to the gospel. The natural man may be very alive to carnal things, but he is dead to spiritual things.

One of the primary reasons for the division in the church over free grace vs. free will is the failure of one side to distinguish between law and gospel. Synergists erroneously reason (outside of Scripture) that if something is commanded in Scripture then man must have the moral ability to do it. Instead, after the fall, the Bible uses the holy commands as an instrument of God to strip man of all hope in himself and behold his own moral bankruptcy (Rom 3:19, 20).

“There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) … Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men’s heart’s are full of self-righteousness and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).” – John Flavel

“Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician. It is not even our medicine; it only administers the medicine, divinely prepared by Him who healeth all our diseases. In all our believing, let us remember God’s word to Israel: I am Jehovah, that healeth thee (Exod. 14:26). Our faith is but our touching Jesus; and what is even this, in reality, but His touching us?” – Horatius Bonar

“Where any work of grace is not effectual, God never intended it should be so, nor did put forth that power of grace which was necessary to make it so. Wherefore, in or towards whomsoever the Holy Spirit puts forth his power, or acts his grace for their regeneration, he removes all obstacles, overcomes all oppositions … and infallibly produces the effect intended.”- John Owen

Martin Luther speaking colorfully about the distinction between Law and gospel, or the indicatives and imperatives found in the Bible:

“Even grammarians and schoolboys on street corners know that nothing more is signified by verbs in the imperative mood than what ought to be done, and that what is done or can be done should be expressed by words in the indicative. How is it that you theologians are twice as stupid as schoolboys, in that as soon as you get hold of a single imperative verb you infer an indicative meaning, as though the moment a thing is commanded it is done, or can be done?” pg 159

“The Word is, in regard to those to whom it is preached, like the sun which shines upon all, but is of no use to the blind. In this matter we are all naturally blind; and hence the Word cannot penetrate our mind unless the Spirit, that internal teacher, by his enlightening power make an entrance for it.” – John Calvin

“Let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends.” – John Calvin

“We should not be entertained by the sins for which Christ died.” – John MacArthur

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none. Such a God is an idol of your own.” – J.C. Ryle

“Another part of God’s fulness which he communicates, is his happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself; and so does also the creature’s happiness. It is a participation of what is in God; and God and his glory are the objective ground of it. The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God; by which also God is magnified and exalted. Joy, or the exulting of the heart in God’s glory, is one thing that belongs to praise. So that God is all in all, with respect to each part of that communication of the divine fulness which is made to the creature. What is communicated is divine, or something of God; and each communication is of that nature, that the creature to whom it is made, is thereby conformed to God, and united to him: and that in proportion as the communication is greater or less. And the communication itself is no other, in the very nature of it, than that wherein the very honour, exaltation, and praise of God consists.” – Jonathan Edwards

“This is the sum; my brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our one great all-comprehending theme.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Over the last dozen or so years, managing Monergism.com has meant that I have been in no small number of discussions with classic Arminians regarding grace, free will and salvation. The importance of this discussion cannot be understated as it deals with whether salvation is all of Christ or not. Here is a typical exchange to which the Arminian, frankly has no real final answer:

The classic Arminian, therefore, ascribes his repenting and believing (at least partly) to his own humility, wisdom, sound judgement or good sense and not to Christ alone. For something in him makes him to differ from his neighbor. But, in contrast, the Bible teaches that it is “because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ – 1 Cor 1: 30-31” – John Hendryx

“No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.” – Blaise Pascal