“The holiness of God is his glory and crown. It is the blessedness of his nature. It renders him glorious in himself, and glorious to his creatures. “Holy” is more fixed as an epithet to his name than any other. This is his greatest title of honor. He is pure and unmixed light, nature, and operations. He cannot be deformed by any evil. The notion of God cannot be entertained without separating from him whatever is impure and staining. Though he is majestic, eternal, almighty, wise, immutable, merciful, and whatsoever other prefections may dignify so sovereign a being, yet if we conceive him destitute of this excellent perfection, and imagine him possessed with the least contagion of evil, we make him but an infinite monster, and sully all those perfections we ascribed to him before.
It is a contradiction for him to be God and to have any darkness mixed with his light. To deny his purity, makes him no God. He that says God is not holy, speaks much worse than if he said there is no God at all. Where do we read of the angels crying out Eternal or Faithful Lord God of hosts? But we do hear them singing Holy, Holy, Holy. God swears by his holiness (Psa. 89:35). His holiness is a pledge for the assurance of his promises. Power is his hand, omniscience his eye, mercy his heart, eternity his duration, but holiness his beauty. It renders him lovely and gives beauty to all his attributes. Every action of his is free from all hints of evil. Holiness is the crown of all his attributes, the life of all his decrees, and the brightness of all his actions. Nothing is decreed by him and nothing is acted by him that is not consistent with the beauty of his holiness.” – Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. Quoted from Voices from the Past.
I will continue with the quotes below, but reading these words above causes me to stop in my tracks, lift my voice and simply worship this amazing holy God who has made me to stand in His presence through the cross of Christ. Sing with me, how great is our God!!!
“Here is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at My word.” – Isaiah 66:2
“True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of His gracious attributes.” – C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 53
“The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the way we all make progress in the kingdom.” – Tim Keller
“Jesus was guilty of nothing. Yet on the cross, the Father treated Him as if He had committed personally every sin ever committed by every individual who would ever believe. Though He was blameless, He faced the full fury of God’s wrath, enduring the penalty of sin on behalf of those He came to save. In this way, the sinless Son of God became the perfect substitute for the sinful sons of men. As a result of Christ’s sacrifice, the elect become the righteousness of God in Him. In the same way that the Father treated the Son as a sinner, even though the Son was sinless, the Father now treats believers as righteous, even though they were unrighteous. Jesus exchanged His life for sinners in order to fulfill the elective plan of God. And He did it so that, in the end, He might give back to the Father the love gift that the Father gave to Him.” – Dr. John MacArthur
“To return evil for evil is demonic. To return good for good is human. But to return good for evil is divine!” – unknown
“So what should we do in sharing the love of God, whose full enjoyment constitutes the happy life? It is God from whom all those who love him derive both their existence and their love; it is God who frees us from any fear that he can fail to satisfy anyone to whom he becomes known; it is God who wants himself to be loved, not in order to gain any reward for himself but to give to those who love him an eternal reward–namely himself, the object of their love.” – Augustine, On Christian Teaching (1.64)
Dane Ortland – “Though he is famous largely for his zeal in the pulpit and imagery-saturated preaching, Spurgeon firmly believed in the importance of clear doctrinal instruction. One example of this is how he treated the atonement as he taught his students. Many of the lectures given at his Pastor’s College have been preserved for us in his well-known Lectures to My Students. On one occasion, we read, Spurgeon firmly declared to this group of young men that
“there will be no uncertain sound from us as to the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot leave the blood out of our ministry, or the life of it will be gone; for we may say of the gospel, “The blood is the life thereof.” The proper substitution of Christ, the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, on the behalf of His people, that they might live through Him—this we must publish till we die.”
At another time he pressed his point home just as strongly: “Beloved brethren, we must be most of all clear upon the great soul-saving doctrine of the atonement; we must preach a real bona fide substitutionary sacrifice, and proclaim pardon as its result.” Spurgeon then explains why he is so adamant about this:
“Cloudy views as to atoning blood are mischievous to the last degree; souls are held in unnecessary bondage, and saints are robbed of the calm confidence of faith, because they are not definitely told that “God hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” We must preach substitution straightforwardly and unmistakably, for if any doctrine be plainly taught in Scripture it is this.”
“Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.” Cicero
J. I. Packer – “Jesus Christ our Lord, moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgment for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won us forgiveness, adoption and glory.” Breaking it down, “penal” means that by virtue of his holy wrath God punished Christ; “substitutionary” means this was in the place of sinners like you and me; and “atonement” sums the whole thing up, being derived from a combination of words still observable: at-one-ment. God and sinners are united again—at one place, so to speak—through the cross of Christ. Perhaps Peter sums it up best when he writes:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, (penal)
the righteous for the unrighteous, (substitutionary)
that he might bring us to God. (atonement) (1 Pet. 3:18)”
“Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any we’ve ever created.” – Bill Gates
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.” – Hudson Taylor
“Over the centuries, seasons of reformation and revival in the church have come when the sovereign grace of God has been openly proclaimed and clearly taught. When a high view of God has been infused into the hearts and minds of God’s people, the church has sat on the elevated plateaus of transcendent truth. This lofty ground is Calvinism—the high ground for the church. The lofty truths of divine sovereignty provide the greatest and grandest view of God. The doctrines of grace serve to elevate the entire life of the church.” – Dr. Steve Lawson, A Long Line of Godly Men
“An enthusiastic young man once introduced himself to a well-known Bible teacher with the words, ‘Oh, Sir, I’d give the world if I knew the Bible like you do.’ The older man looked him straight in the eye and replied, ‘Good, because that is what it will cost you.'” – Iain H. Murray, John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock (Banner of Truth, 2011), 17
“Christianity is not a “life,” as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that—exactly the other way around—it is a life founded on a doctrine.” – Gresham Machen
“Q 27. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty–all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.
Q 28. How does the knowledge of God’s creation and providence help us?
A. We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.” – Heidelberg Catechism
During the Great Awakening there was, of course, lots of revival among the dissenting church, as Whitefield, Wesley and other took to the open fields. But there was also revival in the official church. One such pastor was the slightly eccentric John Berridge, whom Wood claims paved the way for Charles Simeon. One happy anecdote from Berridge’s life is told by Wood as follows:
Berridge found himself on the Episcopal carpet more than once. On one occasion he was reproved for preaching at all hours of the day and on all days of the week. “My lord,” he replied, “I preach only at two times.” And when the Bishop enquired, “And which are they, Mr. Berridge?” he quickly responded, “In season and out of season, my lord.”
“What am I the better if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense of sweetness in my heart from hence that he is a God in covenant with my soul? What will it avail me to evince, by testimonies and arguments, that he hath made satisfaction for sin, if through my unbelief, the wrath of God abideth on me, and I have no experience of my own being made the righteousness of God in him–if I find not, in my standing with God, the excellency of having my sins imputed to him and his righteousness imputed to me? Will it be any advantage to me to profess and dispute that God works the conversion of a sinner by the irresistible grace of his Spirit, if I was never acquainted experimentally with the deadness and utter impotency to good, that opposition to the law of God, which is in my own soul by nature, with the efficacy of the exceeding greatness of the power of God in quickening, enlightening, and bringing forth the fruits of obedience in me?
It is the power of truth in the heart alone that will make us cleave unto it indeed in an hour of temptation. Let us, then, not think that we are anything the better for our conviction of the truths of the great doctrines of the gospel, for which we content with these men, unless we find the power of the truths abiding in our own hearts, and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellency in our standing before God and our communion with him.” – John Owen, Works, 12:52; quoted in Sinclair Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life (Banner of Truth, 1987), 281.
“It is impossible for science to correct the Word of God, but it is possible for science to correct the word of the theologian.” – R.C. Sproul
“I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals.” – Martin Luther
“He will tend his flock like a shepherd.” Isaiah 40:11
“Jesus, the good shepherd, will not travel at such a rate as to overdrive the lambs. He has tender consideration for the poor and needy. Kings usually look to the interests of the great and the rich, but in the kingdom of our Great Shepherd he cares most for the poor…. The weaklings and the sickly of the flock are the special objects of the Savior’s care…. You think, dear heart, that you are forgotten, because of your nothingness and weakness and poverty. This is the very reason you are remembered.” – C. H. Spurgeon, Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:575-576.
“Growth in loving God repairs the deformed self. The point is not that a proper understanding of self leads to finding God but that a proper understanding of God is the only way to come (gradually) to a purified self–that is, a happy self.” – Ellen Charry exegeting Augustine’s thought in By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, 131
Some of the family correspondence leading up to and in the wake of Jonathan Edwards’ death is very moving. I love especially the short note – short because she was debilitated by a “great deal of pain in her neck” (according to one of her daughters) – Sarah wrote to her daughter Lucy after hearing the news of Jonathan’s unexpected death:
“My very dear Child,
What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a very dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be.
Your ever affectionate mother,
Sarah Edwards”
From the sermon “Regeneration and Conversion” on John 1:13 by Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), disciple of Jonathan Edwards and New England pastor:
“This regeneration of which I am speaking consists in a change of the will or heart. The truth of this observation appears from the foregoing, as it is a plain consequence from it. If the depravity and corruption of the heart is the only ground of the necessity of regeneration, then regeneration consists in removing this depravity, and introducing opposite principles, and so laying a foundation for holy exercises. But depravity or sin lies wholly in the heart, and not in the intellect or faculty of understanding, considered as distinct from the will, and not including that. So far as the will is renewed or set right, the whole mind is right; for sin and holiness lie wholly in this. If moral depravity does not lie in, or properly belong to, the faculty of the understanding or the intellect, as distinguished from the will, or heart, then that operation of the Spirit of God, by which this is in some measure removed and moral rectitude introduced, does not immediately respect the understanding, but the will or heart, and immediately produces a change in the latter, not in the former. It is allowed by all, I suppose, that regeneration does not produce any new natural capacity or faculty in the soul. These remain the same after regeneration that they were before, so far as they are natural. The change produced is a moral change, and, therefore, the will or heart must be the immediate subject of this change, and of the operation that effects it; for every thing of a moral nature belongs to the will or heart.
As depravity or sin began in the will, and consists wholly in the irregularity and corruption of that, so regeneration, or a recovery from sin in the renovation of the mind, must begin here, and wholly consists in the change and renewal of the will. There is not, nor can there be, any need of any other change, in order to the complete renovation of the depraved mind, and its recovery to perfect holiness. Therefore, I think I have good grounds to assert, that in regeneration the will or heart is the immediate subject of the divine operation, and so of the moral change that is effected hereby. The Spirit of God in regeneration gives a new heart, an honest and good heart. He begets a right and good taste, temper, or disposition, and so lays a foundation for holy exercises of heart.” – E. Hindson, ed., Introduction to Puritan Theology: A Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 179-180.
“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergy or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell, and set up the kingdom of heaven upon earth.” – John Wesley, Cited in Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed, 87
“The Bible must be the invention of either good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. (1) It could not be the invention of good men or angels, for they neither would nor could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” when it was their own invention. (2) It could not be the invention of bad men or devils, for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell to all eternity. (3) Therefore I draw this conclusion that the Bible must be given by divine inspiration.” – John Wesley
“Fisherman seek after fish; but we find those who are called fishers of men waiting for the fish to seek after them.” – Gideon Ouseley
“An arrogant or condescending Calvinist is like me trashtalking my two brothers after beating them in a game of 2-on-2 basketball when they both had to play blindfolded while hopping on one foot and my teammate was Lebron James (and he picked me to be on his team) and I didn’t score any of the baskets–in fact, the only time I ever touched the ball I dribbled it out of bounds off my foot. Lebron would have been better off without me.
Sure, I may have won. But I had absolutely, positively, and in all other ways nothing to do with it. My boasting in the victory ought to have melted into gratitude to Lebron, and humility at my failure to contribute.
A proud Calvinist is an oxymoron because Calvinism sees more clearly than any other theology that it is sheer and utter grace from first to last that puts anyone right with God. I am a 5-point Calvinist…, and I don’t apologize for my theology. But I am sad about those, including myself at times, who have so manifestly failed to allow this true and right and beautiful doctrine to percolate down into the very fiber of their being, as it should, so that love and wonder and gratitude and downright puzzlement at being saved seep out. When Calvinists get cut, they ought to bleed love.” – Dane Ortland
“Don’t forget in the dark what you learned in the light.” – unknown