“Faith is our walk, but intimate fellowship is our rest.” – Alistair Begg

“All of heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, while men are the only ones to ignore its meaning.” – Oswald Chambers

“When you lead off a discussion by labeling someone as ‘hateful’ or a ‘bigot’ you don’t want a discussion, you want to batter someone into submission.” – Michael Newnham

“I can think of no New Testament precedent for continuing to identify oneself by sins from which one repented on conversion. Nor do I see compassion in patting someone on the head who dons a title that self-identifies as embracing a sin. Practicing homosexuality is sin; a ‘gay’ is someone embraces perverse desires so as to practice homosexuality; a ‘Christian gay/lesbian/homosexual’ is a contradiction in terms. It is to say ‘I am an unrepentant pursuer of indulging perverse desires of whose indulgence I’ve repented.’ Further, as we’ve often discussed, it’s debatable whether there’s any value to ongoing public reminders of what particular temptations we are fighting. To say you’re a Christian is to say that you are in warfare against fleshly lusts (1 Pet. 2:11). It’s definitional. Sir Aaron said it perfectly: ‘if I had to identify myself by my sinful desires, it would take me a long time to introduce myself.’ Also, it’s doubtful as to whether it would serve any healthy purpose.” – Dan Phillips

“If any man could see his own heart as it is by nature, he would be driven mad: the sight of our disease is not to be borne unless we also see the remedy.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“…there is more to be learned at the foot of the cross than anywhere else in the world.” – J.C. Ryle

“The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.” – George Mueller

“…how it is that the call of the gospel becomes effectual in certain people. … the call becomes effectual in men and women as the result of the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration. It becomes effectual because in these people there is now a principle which was not there before which enables them to respond to this spiritual truth, this divine truth, that comes to them. And that is the difference between believers and unbelievers, those who are saved and those who are not. The latter have the ‘natural mind’, they are in the flesh, they are not spiritual, and that is why these things mean nothing to them. But they mean everything to the others and that is because they are now spiritual, and they are spiritual as the result of regeneration.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible

“It is only an infinite God, and an infinite good, that can fill and satisfy the precious and immortal soul of man.” – Thomas Brooks

“God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed to death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God’s heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; they outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.” – E.M. Bounds

“Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.” – J.I. Packer

“People often argue that this doctrine of divine election and choice leaves no place for evangelism, for preaching the gospel, for urging people to repent and to believe, and for the use of arguments and persuasions in doing so. But there is no contradiction here any more than there is in saying that since it is God that gives us the crops of corn in the autumn, therefore the farmer need not plough and harrow and sow; the answer to which is that God has ordained both. God has chosen to call out His people by means of evangelism and the preaching of the Word. He ordains the means as well as the end.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Ephesians – God’s Ultimate Purpose

“I confess that I would hardly give a penny for any salvation that I could lose; I would not go across the street to pick up a sort of quarterly or yearly salvation.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar

“This text is an important text: Matthew 7:1-2 – Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

So is this text: John 7:24 – Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

And so is this text: – 1 Corinthians 6:2 – Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

And most people who appeal to the first one are not even aware of the other two, or the proper harmony amongst them. A full explanation would exceed the scope of this post, but suffice to say that Matthew 7:1-2 does not mean that we cannot or should not pass moral judgments on people or behaviors. If it did, that would mean we cannot say that murder is wrong, or say that thieves are sinning in what they are doing. That’s an absurd result, and it should demonstrate the absurdity of applying the verse to say that we can’t say that criminal sexual acts are sinful.” – Turretinfan

“When the Bible speaks, God speaks.” – John Calvin

“No verse of Scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.” – A. W. Pink

“True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.” – Martin Luther

“Doctrine divides…but doctrine also unites. It binds together the hearts of God’s people who celebrate the truth of God together.” – R. C. Sproul

“Christ died not in order to make God love us, but because He did love His people. Calvary is the supreme demonstration of Divine love. Whenever you are tempted to doubt the love of God, Christian reader, go back to Calvary.” – A. W. Pink

“Those whom God has chosen to salvation by Christ, are those whom God specially loves in this world. They are the jewels among mankind. He cares more for them than for kings on their thrones, if kings are not converted. He hears their prayers. He orders all the events of nations and the issues of wars for their good, and their sanctification. He keeps them by His Spirit. He allows neither man nor devil to pluck them out of His hand. Whatever tribulation comes on the world, God’s elect are safe. May we never rest until we know that we are of this blessed number! There breathes not the man or woman who can prove that he is not one. The promises of the Gospel are open to all. May we give diligence to make our calling and election sure! God’s elect are a people who cry unto Him night and day. When Paul saw the faith, and hope, and love of the Thessalonians, then he knew “their election of God.” (1 Thess. 1:4; Luke 18:7.) – J. C. Ryle

“If Christ is not first with you, Christ is nothing to you.” – C. H. Spurgeon
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“When Satan tells me I am a sinner he comforts me immeasurably, since Christ died for sinners.” – Martin Luther

“Beware that you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” – John Wesley

“If you think you can never honor Christ till you enter a pulpit, it may be just possible that you will afterwards honor him best by getting out of it as quickly as you can.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“We may easily be too big for God to use, but never too small.” – D.L. Moody

“A humble and prayerful spirit will find a thousand things in the Bible, which the proud, self-conceited student will utterly fail to discern.” – J.C. Ryle

“I have been engaging the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church for a number of decades now. It would be easy to become ‘accustomed’ to the errors of the Roman system, but thankfully, I have not succumbed to that temptation. I remain as deeply moved by the blasphemy against the finished and perfect work of Jesus on Calvary that is the heart of the Roman Mass as I was when I first came to understand Rome’s teaching on the subject. My heart is still broken at the spiritual carnage Rome produces in the lives of millions, enslaving them to a system that has no finished sacrifice, no assurance, simply no gospel that brings peace. Despite the constant pressures to join in the ecumenical love-fest that is so popular in Western culture, I remain thoroughly convinced that as long as Galatians and Romans remain in the canon of Scripture, Rome will remain an opponent to biblical truth, and those who follow her teachings will need to hear the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ.” – Dr. James White (from a blog article at www.aomin.org, 8/9/2010)

“I do not believe in an atonement which is admirably wide, but fatally ineffectual.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Atheism is an exercise in intellectual contempt.” – Ravi Zacharias

“God’s own foolishness is stronger than men. Do we believe that?” – R. C. Sproul, Jr

“I only need a mirror to see a sinner.” – Alistair Begg

“The problem is not in the clarity of the revelation. The problem is in the darkness of the human mind.” – Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

The standard is not man’s best efforts, but God’s infinite holiness. Cal Thomas

“Look, I’ve read other books… this book reads me.” – Dr Steven Lawson, speaking on the Bible

“The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another — God alone.” – Martin Luther

“In the 1960s, Dr. Francis Schaeffer taught college students about Christianity at his L’Abri center in the mountains of Switzerland. Once during a discussion at a meal, someone asked Dr. Schaeffer, “What will happen to those who have never heard of Christ?” Everyone was eager to hear what this noted theologian would say in response to that important question. No answer came. In a moment everyone realized Schaeffer had bowed his head and was weeping silently.” – Michael Allen Rogers, What Happens After I Die? (Crossway, 2013), 103

“My faith rests not in what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin. And …that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.” – A. W. Pink

“It is as impossible to understand the Scriptures without the Spirit’s help as it is to read a sundial without the sun.” – Derek Prime & Alistair Begg

“God, in mercy, will never allow children of his to be comfortable in sin.” – Will Metzger

“The human will is so divinely helped in the pursuit of righteousness, that he [the believer] receives the Holy Spirit, by whom there is formed in his mind a delight in, and a love of, that supreme and unchangeable good, which is God. By this gift to him of the down payment, as it were, of the free gift, he [the believer] conceives a burning desire to cleave to his Maker. A mans free will, indeed, does not help at all except to sin, if he does not know the way of truth. And even after he begins to know his duty and proper aim, unless he also takes delight in and feels a love for it, he neither does his duty, nor sets about it, nor lives rightly. Now, in order that such a course may engage our affections, Gods love is shed abroad in our hearts, not through the free will which arises from ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit, who is given to us [Rom 5: 5].” – Augustine

“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 intended effect.” – John Owen

“The Spirit’s work is to drive home to the heart and conscience what the mind understands.” – Alwyn York

“My dear pope, I will kiss your feet and acknowledge you as supreme bishop if you will worship my Christ and grant that through His death and resurrection, not through keeping your traditions, we have forgiveness of sins and life eternal.” – Martin Luther

“For God to explain a trial would be to destroy its purpose, calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience.” – Alfred Edersheim

“Keep sharing the good news; we have not yet exhausted the number of God’s elect.” – Kevin DeYoung

“Remember that according to the Bible, the heart is not primarily the emotions but rather the seat of our fundamental commitments and trusts, and therefore it is the control center of the whole life. So to preach to the heart means to go right for the commanding commitments of people’s lives that drive their desires, thinking, feeling, and action.” – Tim Keller

“So God never begins a work of salvation that he doesn’t finish. Now, people will take that and say, “Yes, of course. I mean, you know, he saves you and no matter what you do, he is going to take you on into glory.” No, that is not true because salvation is not just you being redeemed from hell and then one day you being placed into heaven. Salvation is, past tense, the moment you believed you were saved from condemnation and wrath and it is present tense. In the life of the believer you are being saved from the power of sin. And it is future tense, one day you will be totally delivered from a fallen world and flesh. And so when I say that he who began a good work in you will finish it doesn’t mean that Bubba is going to get saved, live like hell and one day go to heaven. But it means this. If Bubba truly gets saved, God is going to work in his life all the days of his life, transforming him, changing him, loving him, teaching him, directly him and disciplining him and then one day bringing him into glory. And God is going to do it and make sure it happens because his name is riding upon it.” – Paul Washer

“You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God’s fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“If I please God it doesn’t matter who I displease; and if I displease God it doesn’t matter who I please.” – Dr. Steven Lawson

“We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ (Acts 4:12). We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’ (1 Cor 1.13). If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects (Heb 2:17) that he might learn to feel our pain (Heb 5:2). If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross (Gal 3:13); if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgement, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain and from no other.” – John Calvin – Institutes 2.16.19

“A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation.” – A. A. Hodge

“If the glory, gospel, and greatness of Christ aren’t clear in the songs you’ve planned for Sunday, start over.” – Bob Kauflin

“The subject of his moral impotence is far from being a pleasing one to the natural man. He wants to be told that all he needs to do is exert himself, that salvation lies within the power of his will, that he is the determiner of his own destiny. Pride, with its strong dislike of being a debtor to the sovereign grace of God, rises up against it. Self-esteem, with its rabid repugnance of anything which lays the creature in the dust, hotly resents what is so humiliating. Consequently, this truth is either openly rejected or, if seemingly received, is turned to a wrong use.” – A. W. Pink

“In the New Testament love is more a verb than it is a noun. Love is defined in terms of action not feeling.” – Dr. R. C. Sproul

“It is no legalism to obey God’s law. Though the moral law be not a Christ to justify us, yet it is a rule to instruct us.” – Thomas Watson

“The gospel sweetens the law, it makes us serve God with delight.” – Thomas Watson

“The true penitent repents of sin against God, and he would do so even if there were no punishment. When he is forgiven, he repents of sin more than ever; for he sees more clearly than ever the wickedness of offending so gracious a God.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“Regeneration is a sovereign work of God (Jn. 1:12-13; 3:3-8; Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:3) a radical work or total transformation (Ezek. 36:26-27; 1 Jn. 3:9) not just an addition… The SOURCE of regeneration is Christ (1 Pet 1:3; Eph 1:3, 2:4, 4:24; 2 Cor 5:17). The AGENT of regeneration is the Holy Spirit (Jn. 3:3-8; Titus 3:5). The INSTRUMENT of regeneration is the Word of God (Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23, 25) which precedes and causes faith (Jn 6:63-65, 1 Jn 5:1, Eph. 2:5; Col. 2:13).” – John Hendryx

“Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.” – John Piper.

“You can’t kill a Christian. You can only change his address.” – Pastor Duke Downs

“I like to be with God’s people of the poorer class and of the more struggling and afflicted sort. I like to be with God’s people who wrestle hard with sins and doubts and fears. If I get spoken to by my superior brethren, I find I have very little pleasant fellowship with them; for I know nothing about their wonderful experience of freedom from conflict and complete deliverance from every evil tendency. I have never lived a day but I have had to sorrow over my imperfections.” ~Charles H. Spurgeon

“A good teacher like John the Baptist, clears the way, declares the way, and then gets out of the way.” – Derek Prime & Alistair Begg

“Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.” – Søren Kierkegaard

“If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord’s will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel , insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“It is easier to cry against one-thousand sins of others than to kill one of your own.” – John Flavel

“Our Lord’s thirty-three years of loving his Father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and his neighbor as himself, is the basis for our acceptance before God.” – Michael Horton

“You can always give without loving, but you can never love without giving.” – Amy Carmichael

“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way… But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not at all congenial to me…whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross…This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God — the grace of God which depends not one whit upon anything that is in man, but is absolutely undeserved, resistless and sovereign. The theologians of the Church can be placed in an ascending scale according as they have grasped that one great central doctrine, that doctrine that gives consistency to all the rest; and Christian experience also depends for its depth and for its power upon the way in which that blessed doctrine is cherished in the depths of the heart. The center of the Bible, and the center of Christianity, is found in the grace of God; and the necessary corollary of the grace of God is salvation through faith alone.” – J. Gresham Machen, quoted in Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids, 1955), page 396.

“The church is not perfect, but woe to the man who finds pleasure in pointing out her imperfections. Christ loved his church, and let us do the same. I have no doubt that the Lord can see more fault in his church than I can; and I have equal confidence that he sees no fault at all. Because he covers her faults with his own love—that love which covers a multitude of sins; and he removes all her defilement with that precious blood which washes away all the transgressions of his people.” – C. H. Spurgeon

Scottish-born reformed theologian John Murray taught for many years at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. In the 1920s he was a seminary student at Princeton. For his final homiletics class he wrote a sermon on John 3:30–John the Baptist’s words, ‘He must increase, I must decrease.’ Murray wrote:

We are not to think of these words as spoken in stoical, disappointed submission, but as the expression of a heart full of holy joy that the goal on which he had set his heart had now been actually achieved. His popularity, his increase at the expense of the honor of Christ, would have been his deepest sorrow. . . .

The desire for self-supremacy is an expression of the sin which above all others seeks to undermine the very purpose of the gospel and the gospel ministry, which is the restoration of the kingdom of God and the rule and supremacy of God alone in all spheres and departments of life. May God grant that we follow in the footsteps of John and imitate his self-effacement, self-abasement, self-renunciation, self-forgetfulness! ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.’

– Iain H. Murray, The Life of John Murray (Banner of Truth, 1984), 2

“The friendly preacher who fails to warn of the reality of Hell, betrays the Son of God with a kiss.” – Ray Comfort

“It is part of the character and genius of the Church that its foundation members were discredited men; it owed its existence not to their faith, courage, or virtue, but to what Christ had done with them; and this they could never forget.” – C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge University Press, 1968), 416 n. 1

Don’t be surprised when lost people in your church who think they’re saved don’t evangelize.

“Our works do not generate righteousness, rather our righteousness in Christ generates works.” – Martin Luther

“God never clothes men until He has first stripped them, nor does He quicken them by the gospel till first they are slain by the law.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“A good teacher like John the Baptist, clears the way, declares the way, and then gets out of the way.” – Derek Prime & Alistair Begg

“Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.” – Søren Kierkegaard

“If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord’s will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel , insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“It is easier to cry against one-thousand sins of others than to kill one of your own.” – John Flavel

“You cannot reason with people who are deceived by the devil; it needs the trumpet call of God, it needs the power of the Spirit.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Ephesians – Darkness And Light)

“Our Lord’s thirty-three years of loving his Father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and his neighbor as himself, is the basis for our acceptance before God.” – Michael Horton

“Sex is from God. He gave it to us as a gift. It’s a wedding gift.” – Bill Shannon

“God propitiates his own wrath. Know anybody else like that? Will China pay off the US debt? Will any of the victims of Bernie Madoff personally pay his financial debts? When does the offended personally provide the means to take away his own offense? Only God. This is why he is love.” – Steve DeWitt

“Self-reliance is the unspoken claim that I can do it myself. It is behind our ever-present bent toward self-righteousness. We need to intentionally bathe our minds and hearts in the gospel every day. Remember, we need the gospel not only as a door into an initial saving relationship with Christ, but also to keep our daily lives from becoming a performance treadmill.” – Jerry Bridges

“It is not your hold of Christ that saves you, but His hold of you.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“A great attitude is not the result of success; success is the result of a great attitude.” – Earl Nightingale

?”Not only is grace irresistible, it must be irresistible. For if grace were not irresistible no one would ever have been saved… The idea that grace presents itself to us, but that the final choice remains with us as to whether we are going to take advantage of it or not, is not only a contradition of the verse we are considering, it is a contradiction of the entire biblical teaching concerning the way of salvation.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones