“Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there’s half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.” — Martin Luther King Jr., from an address at Western Michigan University, December 18, 1963.

“The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“It is common to say that hell is the absence of God. Such statements are motivated in large part by the dread of even contemplating what hell is like. We try often to soften that blow and find a euphimism to skirt around it. We need to realize that those who are in hell desire nothing more than the absence of God. They didn’t want to be in God’s presence during their earthly lives, and they certainly don’t want Him near when they’re in hell. The worst thing about hell is the presence of God there. When we use the imagery of the Old Testament in an attempt to understand the forsakenness of the lost, we are not speaking of the idea of the departure of God or the absence of God in the sense that He ceases to be omnipresent. Rather, it’s a way of describing the withdrawal of God in terms of His redemptive blessing. It is the absence of the light of His countenance. It is the presence of the frown of His countenance. It is the absence of the blessedness of His unveiled glory that is a delight to the souls of those who love Him, but it is the presence of the darkness of judgment. Hell reflects the presence of God in His mode of judgment, in His exercise of wrath, and that’s what everyone would like to escape. I think that’s why we get confused. There is withdrawal in terms of the blessing of the radical nearness of God. His benefits can be removed far from us, and that’s what this language is calling attention to.” – R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2007), pp. 157-158.

“Eve was deceived into believing what Satan said about God rather than what God revealed about Himself.” — Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

“The new birth is very, very much more than simply shedding a few tears due to a temporary remorse over sin. It is far more than changing our course of life, the leaving off of bad habits and the substituting of good ones. It is something different from the mere cherishing and practising of noble ideals. It goes infinitely deeper than coming forward to take some popular evangelist by the hand, signing a pledge-card, or “joining the church.” The new birth is no mere turning over a new leaf but is the inception and reception of a new life. It is no mere reformation but a complete transformation. In short, the new birth is a miracle, the result of the supernatural operation of God. It is radical, revolutionary, lasting.

Here then is the first thing, in time, which God does in His own elect. He lays hold of those who are spiritually dead and quickens them into newness of life. He takes up one who was shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, and conforms him to the image of His Son. He seizes a captive of the Devil and makes him a member of the household of faith. He picks up a beggar and makes him joint-heir with Christ. He comes to one who is full of enmity against Him and gives him a new heart that is full of love for Him. He stoops to one who by nature is a rebel and works in him both to will and to do of His own good pleasure. By His irresistible power He transforms a sinner into a saint, an enemy into a friend, a slave of the Devil into a child of God.” – A. W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God.

“A lie is a snowball. The longer it is rolled on the ground, the larger it becomes.” – Martin Luther

“Saving faith is resting faith, the trust which relies entirely on the Savior.” – John Stott

“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

“Whatever affects you—be it a changed look, an altered tone, an unkind word, a slight, a wrong, a wound, a demand you cannot meet, a charge you cannot notice, a sorrow you cannot disclose—turn it into prayer, and send it up to God.” – Octavius Winslow

“The souls of natural men are so blinded that they see no beauty or excellency in Christ. They do not see his sufficiency. They see no beauty in the work of salvation by him; and as long as they remain thus blind, it is impossible that they should close with Christ. The heart will never be drawn to an unknown Saviour. It is impossible that a man should love that, and freely choose that, and rejoi…ce in that, in which he sees no excellency. But if your eyes were opened to see the excellency of Christ, the work would be done. You would immediately believe on him; and you would find your heart going after him. It would be impossible to keep it back. But take heed that you do not entertain a wrong notion of what it is, spiritually to see Christ. If you do, you may seek that which God never bestows. Do not think that spiritually to see Christ, is to have a vision of him as the prophets had, to see him in some bodily shape, to see the features of his countenance. Do not pray or seek for any such thing as this. But what you are to seek is, that you may have a sight of the glorious excellency of Christ, and of the way of salvation through him, in your heart. This is a spiritual sight of Christ. This is that for which you must cry to God day and night. God is the fountain of spiritual light. He opens the eyes of the blind. He commands the light to shine out of darkness. It is easy with God to enlighten the soul, and fill it with these glorious discoveries, though it is beyond the power of men and angels.” – Jonathan Edwards

“The fall of man is quite possibly the most forgotten, under appreciated, and misunderstood event in history.” – Burk Parsons

“Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“The time of every man’s death has been fixed by God. We are safe from all risk until God is pleased to call us away.” – John Calvin

“If God has laid your sins upon the Son of His love, you may rest assured that He will never lay them a second time upon you; since, if Christ has borne them and atoned for them to Divine justice, they never again can be found.” – Octavius Winslow

“To declare that divine election leaves no room for urging people to obey the command to repent and to believe the gospel is just like declaring that since it is God that gives us crops at harvest, the farmer need not plough the fallow ground and sow seed. God calls out His people by means of the gospel (the seed). But there will be no “crops” unless God blesses the ground with rain from heaven. He ordains the means as well as the end.” (unknown)

“Every genuine revelation of God has this mark upon it, that it makes him appear more glorious.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“Holiness is the visible side of salvation.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“The motto of all true servants of God must be, ‘We preach Christ; and him crucified.’ A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” – C.S. Lewis

“It is never said, “whom the Lord loveth he enricheth,” but it is said, “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“That this righteousness [the imputed righteousness of Christ] still resides in and with the person of Christ, even then when we stand just before God thereby, is clear, for that we are said, when justified, to be justified ‘in him.’ ‘In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified.’ And again, ‘Surely, shall one …say, In the Lord have I righteousness,’ &c. (Isa 45:24,25). And again, ‘But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us – righteousness’ (1 Cor 1:30). Mark, the righteousness is still ‘in him,’ not ‘in us,’ even then when we are made partakers of the benefit of it; even as the wing and feathers still abide in the hen when the chickens are covered, kept, and warmed thereby. For as my doings, though my children are fed and clothed thereby, are still my doings, not theirs; so the righteousness wherewith we stand just before God from the curse, still resides in Christ, not in us. Our sins, when laid upon Christ, were yet personally ours, not his; so his righteousness, when put upon us, is yet personally his, not ours. What is it, then? Why, ‘he was made to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of 3 God in him’ (2 Cor 5:21).” – John Bunyan

“The quest for God, seeking after Him, starts at rebirth.” – R.C. Sproul

“Guard your thoughts, and there will be little fear about your actions.” – J.C. Ryle

“Look at the cross, think of the cross, meditate on the cross, and then go and set your affections on the world if you can.” – J.C. Ryle

“High views of sin lie at the root of correct and high views of God; and low thoughts of God inevitably engender low perceptions of sin.” – Octavius Winslow

“When the New Testament speaks of the church’s glory, it is speaking of its dignity. By analogy, the husband is called to give himself to the purpose of establishing his wife in the fullness of dignity. When he uses his authority to destroy his wife’s dignity, he becomes the direct antithesis of Christ. He mirrors not Christ but the Antichrist.” – R.C. Sproul, The Intimate Marriage, P&R Publishing, 1975, p. 57-58.

“The lie has always had the greater following, the truth is smaller. Indeed, I know if only a few insignificant men were attacking me, then what I have taught and written would not be the truth from God. St. Paul caused a great uproar with his teaching, as we read in Acts [17:5,18; 18:12; 19:23-41], but that did not prove his teaching false. Truth has always caused disturbance and false teachers have always said ‘peace’ as Isaiah and Jeremiah tell us.” – Martin Luther

“Three things God cannot do. He cannot die. He cannot lie. And He cannot be deceived.” – Charles Spurgeon

“People forget how fast you did a job – but they remember how well you did it.” – Howard W Newton

“It is false that the will, left to itself, can do good as well as evil, for it is not free, but in bondage.” – Martin Luther

“To care most about anything less than the glory of God is itself treason.” – Thabiti Anyabwile in Holy, Holy, Holy

[but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. – 1 Cor. 1:23-24]

“Let me very briefly tell you what I believe preaching Christ and him crucified is. My friends, I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to give people a batch of philosophy every Sunday morning and evening, and neglect the truths of this Holy Book. I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to leave out the main cardinal doctrines of the Word of God, and preach a religion which is all a mist and a haze, without any definite truths whatever. I take it that man does not preach Christ and him crucified, who can get through a sermon without mentioning Christ’s name once; nor does that man preach Christ and him crucified, who leaves out the Holy Spirit’s work, who never says a word about the Holy Ghost, so that indeed the hearers might say, “We do not so much as know whether there be a Holy Ghost.” And I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith without works; not unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor, I think, can we preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for his elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation, after having believed. Such a gospel I abhor. The gospel of the Bible is not such a gospel as that. We preach Christ and him crucified in a different fashion, and to all gainsayers we reply, “We have not so learned Christ.”” – C.H. Spurgeon

“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. My chat this afternoon is not for these great originals, but for you who are content to… learn of holy men, taught of God, and mighty in the Scriptures. It has been the fashion of late years to speak against the use of commentaries…A respectable acquaintance with the opinions of the giants of the past, might have saved many an erratic thinker from wild interpretations and outrageous inferences. Usually, we have found the despisers of commentaries to be men who have no sort of acquaintance with them; in their case, it is the opposite of familiarity which has bred contempt. It is true there are a number of expositions of the whole Bible which are hardly worth shelf room; they aim at too much and fail altogether; the authors have spread a little learning over a vast surface, and have badly attempted for the entire Scriptures what they might have accomplished for one book with tolerable success…who can pretend to biblical learning who has not made himself familiar with the great writers who spent a life in explaining some one sacred book?” – C.H. Spurgeon

C. S. Lewis: When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. This has echoes of Augustine’s Confessions (XI.29):

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

Writing to Dom Bede (April 16, 1940), Lewis mentioned a great line he spotted from Denis de Rougemont’s Passion and Society about sensual love: “It ceases to be a devil when it ceases to be a god.

Lewis comments, Isn’t that well put? So many things—nay every real thing—is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.

“Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms.” – J.I. Packer

“Within the Trinity, there is one saving purpose, one saving plan, and one saving enterprise.” – Steven Lawson in Pillars of Grace

“Obedience to legitimate authority is one of the fruits and evidences of Christian sincerity.” – Charles Hodge

“For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6)

(Immutability) means that, being perfect, God cannot and does not change. In order to change, a moral being must change in either of two ways. Either he must change for the better or he must change for the worse. God cannot get better, because that would mean that He was less than perfect earlier, in which case He would not have been God. But God cannot get worse either, because in that case He would become imperfect, which He cannot be. God is and must remain perfect in all His attributes. – James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets, v. 2, Baker, 1986, p. 600.

“Is there nothing to sing about to-day? Then borrow a song from to-morrow; sing of what is yet to be. Is this world dreary? Then think of the next.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“So which shall we choose?

Experience or truth?

The left wing of the airplane, or the right?

Love or integrity?

Study or service?

Evangelism or discipleship?

The front wheels of a car, or the rear?

Subjective knowledge or objective knowledge?

Faith or obedience?

Damn all false antithesis to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings whose oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ.” — D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 234.