“Religion moves you to do what you do out of fear, and self-righteousness, but the gospel moves you to do what you do more and more out of grateful joy in who God is in himself. Times of revival are seasons in which many nominal and spiritually sleepy Christians, operating out of the semi-Pharisaism of religion, wake up to the wonder and ramifications of the gospel. Revivals are massive eruptions of new spiritual power in the church through a recovery of the gospel.” – Tim Keller
“I would encourage us to be slow to jettison the wisdom of our fathers. That is, just because we don’t know why they did things the way they did doesn’t mean they didn’t have good reason, reasons we ought to know and understand. A smug assurance that whatever reasons they must have had must be stuffy, stifling and sectarian is silly, self-righteous and, well, smug. It may just be that we have something to learn from them, and that their caution is grounded in biblical wisdom.” – R. C. Sproul, Jr
“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” – C. S. Lewis
“Paul’s gospel not only contradicted the religion, philosophy and culture of the day, but it also declared war on them. Not a political war, not a military war, but a spiritual war of truth. It refused truce or treaty with the world and would settle for nothing less than culture’s absolute surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Even to every thought of our mind being held captive to Christ. We would do well to follow Paul’s example. We must be careful to shun every temptation to conform our gospel to the trends of the day or the desires of carnal men.” – Paul Washer
“The defeat of the ungodly and of the powers of evil is final, total, irretrievable. Glory be to God, however high the powers of darkness may carry it at this present, the time hastens on when God shall defend the right, and give to evil such a fall as shall for ever crush the hopes of hell; while those who trust in the Lord shall eternally praise him and rejoice in his holy name.” – C. H. Spurgeon
Do you believe that modern evangelicals have lost their grip on the biblical gospel?
“Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind’s redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God’s work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.” – J. I. Packer, “An Interview with Dr. J. I. Packer,” The Founders Journal, 16 (Spring 1994), The Founders Journal Website, http://www.founders.org/FJ16/interview.html (accessed February 8, 2010).
“Though infinitely better able to do without prayer than we are, yet [Christ] prayed much more than we do.” C. H. Spurgeon
“God imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent the pains of hell for, either: All the sins of all men. All the sins of some men, or Some sins of all men. In which case it may be said: If the last, some sins of all men, then have all men some sins to answer for, and so shall no man be saved. If the second, that is it which we affirm, that Christ in their stead and room suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the world. But if the first be true, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins? You answer, “Because of their unbelief.” I ask, “Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it is, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!” – John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Banner, Carlisle, 1959, p. 173-4
“They that know God will be humble; they that know themselves cannot be proud.” – John Flavel
John Piper: Let’s do this inductively. I ask. You answer.
John 3:17, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Why did God send his Son? _______________
John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
Does not obeying the Son (e. g., when he commands us to trust him) bring us under God’s wrath or leave us under his wrath? _______________
So what did God send his Son to save us from? _______________
Is this a felt need among the unbelievers you know? _______________
What are the implications for the content of preaching and evangelism? ____________
As I type these words on my keyboard, next to my computer are seven different Study Bibles in five different English translations. Those are just the Bibles on my desk. On the shelf behind me, I have more. And that’s just my office. I have more in the living room, close to my comfy chair where I can sit and read without distraction with a cup of English tea (some traditions die hard).
(1) Does the Doctrine of Unconditional election make God a “respecter of persons”? My friend John Hendryx of monergism.com writes, “The charge we often hear from those who reject God’s unconditional election is that it makes God a respecter of persons. As is the case with most protests against unconditional election it is important to point out that this is a moral rather than exegetical argument. And if this is the basis for their rejecting the doctrine of salvation by grace ALONE, rather than appealing directly to the Scriptures which repeatedly declare unconditional election (Eph 1:3,4; Rom 9), then one is basing their theological future on shaky ground… Nonetheless I still think it is important to face up to this charge to see if it has any validity. To do this we need to understand how the Bible uses the concept of “respecter of persons” and then let it interpret itself as to what it actually means, and then determine whether or not God would be guilty of it if unconditional election were true. Below is a wide sampling of its occurrence in the Scripture: More