“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.

Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free. Psalm 118:5

“Note the great art and wisdom of faith. It does not run to and fro in the face of trouble. It does not cry on everybody’s shoulder, nor does it curse and scold its enemies. It does not murmur against God by asking, ‘Why does God do this to me?’ . . . Faith does not despair of the God who sends trouble. Faith does not consider him angry or an enemy, as the flesh, the world and the devil strongly suggest. Faith rises above all this and sees God’s fatherly heart behind his unfriendly exterior. . . .

Do not sit by yourself or lie on a couch . . . . Do not destroy yourself with your own thoughts by worrying. Do not strive and struggle to free yourself, and do not brood on your wretchedness, suffering, and misery. Say to yourself: ‘Come on, you lazy bum; down on your knees, and lift your eyes and hands toward heaven!’ Read a psalm or the Our Father, call on God, and tearfully lay your troubles before him. . . . It is his desire and will that you lay your troubles before him. He does not want you to multiply your troubles by burdening and torturing yourself. He wants you to be too weak to bear and overcome such troubles; he wants you to grow strong in him. By his strength he is glorified in you.

Out of such experiences men become real Christians. Otherwise, men are mere babblers, who prate about faith and spirit but are ignorant of what it is all about.” – Martin Luther

“Christ dies as Someone for some people —
as King for his people,

as Husband for his bride,

as the Head for his body,

as Shepherd for his sheep,

as the Master for his friends,

as Firstborn for his brothers and sisters,

as the Second and Last Adam for a new humanity.” – Taken from the introduction to From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective by David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson.

“The Puritans made me aware that all theology is also spirituality, in the sense that it has an influence, good or bad, positive or negative, on its recipients’ relationship or lack of relationship to God.

If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both;

if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief;

if it fails to promote humility, in inevitably feeds pride.

So one who theologizes in public, whether formally in the pulpit, on the podium or in print, or informally from the armchair, must think hard about the effect his thoughts will have on people–God’s people, and other people.” – J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), 15.

John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787):

“If I never write to you more, let these be my last words:

There is none like Christ-none like Christ-none like Christ. . . .

There is no learning nor knowledge like the knowledge of Christ.

No life like Christ living in the heart by faith.

No work like the service, the spiritual service of Christ,

No reward like the free-graces wages of Christ.

No riches nor wealth like “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

No rest, no comfort, like the rest, the consolation of Christ;

No pleasure like the pleasure of fellowship with Christ.

Little as I know of Christ, and it is my sin and shame that I know so little of him, I would not exchange the learning of one hour’s fellowship with Christ for all the liberal learning in ten thousand universities, during ten thousand ages, even though angels were to be my teachers.” – Cited in Joel Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 220-21.

“A saying of Chrysostom’s has always pleased me very much, that the foundation of our philosophy is humility. But that of Augustine pleases me even more: ‘. . . so if you ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, first, second and third, and always I would answer ‘Humility.’”

John Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.11.

“Another observation, in a former letter of yours, has not escaped my remembrance – the three lessons which a minister has to learn: 1. Humility. 2. Humility. 3. Humility. How long are we learning the true nature of Christianity!”

Charles Simeon, quoted in Charles Simeon, by H. C. G. Moule (London, 1956), page 65.

“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, 1958), page 94.

“Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am Your sin. You took on You what was mine; yet set on me what was Yours. You became what You were not, that I might become what I was not.” – Martin Luther

“If a man is saved, it is because God has saved him. But if a man is lost, that is to be attributed to his own rejection of the gospel and his rebellion against God’s way of salvation.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans – Saving Faith

“As the corruption of our nature shews the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the absolute necessity of regeneration plainly proves the corruption of our nature; for why should a man need a second birth, if his nature were not quite marred in the first birth?”- Thomas Boston

“God’s grace is not diminished as it covers our deficiencies. Furthermore, by grace God provides one hundred percent of what is necessary for the salvation of one hundred percent of the people He is saving. Grace is not doled out in proportion to our misdeeds. God’s superabundant supply never runs dry!” – James Boice

“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name …so that they may be one as we are one.”—John 17:11 “We have here Christ’s petition in behalf of his people, not only those at that place, but all others that then did or afterwards would believe on him. Alas! It is not your own strength or wisdom that keeps you, but you are kept by the mighty power of God. This protecting power of God does not, however, exclude our care and diligence but implies it. God keeps his people, and yet they are to keep themselves in God’s love (Jude 21), to, above all else, guard their hearts (Prov. 4:23).” – John Flavel

“Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature … God’s grace in Christ is not merely necessary but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace. We reaffirm that in salvation we are rescued from God’s wrath by his grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.” – Cambridge Declaration

“Since God has promised to His Son a certain people for His inheritance, to deliver them from sin and condemnation, and to become the participants of eternal life in glory, it is certain that He will not allow any of them to perish.” – A. W. Pink

“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

And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” Mark 9:29

“You failed there, he said in effect to these disciples, because you did not have sufficient power. You were using the power that you have, and you were very confident in it. You did it with great assurance, you were masters of the occasion, you thought you were going to succeed at once, but you did not. . . . You will never be able to deal with ‘this kind’ unless you have applied to God for the power which he alone can give you.

You must become aware of your need, of your impotence, of your helplessness. You must realize that you are confronted by something that is too deep for your methods to get rid of or to deal with, and you need something that can go down beneath that evil power and shatter it, and there is only one thing that can do that, and that is the power of God. . . .
We must ask ourselves how we can succeed if we do not have this authority, this commission, this might and strength and power. We must become utterly and absolutely convinced of our need. We must cease to have so much confidence in ourselves, and in all our methods and organizations, and in all our slickness. We have got to realize that we must be filled with God’s Spirit.

And we must be equally certain that God can fill us with his Spirit. We have got to realize that, however great ‘this kind’ is, the power of God is infinitely greater, that what we need is not more knowledge, more understanding, more apologetics, more reconciliation of philosophy and science and religion, and all modern techniques – no, we need a power that can enter into the souls of men and break them and smash them and humble them and then make them anew. And that is the power of the living God.

And we must be confident that God has this power as much today as he had one hundred years ago, and two hundred years ago, and so we must begin to seek the power and to pray for it. We must begin to plead and yearn for it. ‘This kind’ needs prayer.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Wheaton, 1987), pages 18-19.

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.