I like to collect worthwhile quotes and in recent days gathered the following on various different themes, including the cross, Christian ministry, the holiness of God and divine election:

“Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; but the Father, for love!” – Octavius Winslow

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement. . . . God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us. If it is God’s wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is God’s love which did the propitiating.” – John Stott

“Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more … raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.” – George Whitefield

“Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy, that the whole earth is full of His glory.” – R.C. Sproul

“The message of the gospel is a noise, not a communication, until God tunes the set of man’s heart.” – Arthur C. Custance

“Why do you “thank” God for your conversion? It is because you know in your heart that God was entirely responsible for it. You do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, or prudence, or sound judgment, or good sense.” – J.I. Packer

“Some may say “because I am elect, it doesn’t really matter how I live or what I do.” Well the one thing I can say for sure about you is that you might be elect, but you are not yet converted.” – Dr. Joseph Pipa