Some Quotations To Think About - PART II

278. Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ill that chequers life. WILLIAM COWPER

279. We turn to God when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them. CHARLES WEST

280. A firm faith in the universal providence of God is the solution of all earthly problems. It is almost equally true that a clear and full apprehension of the universal providence of God is the solution of most theological problems. B. B. WARFIELD

281. It is just like someone who is sick, and who believes the doctor who promises his full recovery. In the meantime, he obeys the doctor’s orders in the hope of the promised recovery, and abstains from those things which he has been told to lay off, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return to health...Now is sick man well? In act, he is both sick and well at the same time. He is sick in reality - but he is well on account of the sure promise of the doctor, whom he trusts, and who reckons him as already being cured...So he is at once and the same time both a sinner and righteous. He is a sinner in reality, but righteous by the sure imputation and promise of God that he will continue to deliver him from sin until he has completely cured him. So he is entirely healthy in hope, but a sinner in reality. MARTIN LUTHER

282. Within each of us exists the image of God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ. Just as the figure of David lay hidden within the marble, discernible only to the eye of its creator, so the image of God (however tarnished by sin) lies within us, see and known by God Himself. Yet God loves us while we are still sinners. He doesn’t have to wait until we stop sinning. Acceptance of His love is a major step along the road that leads to our liberation from the tyranny of sin. ALISTER McGRATH

283. We are justified propter Christum per fidem - that is on account of Christ through faith. The basis of God’s decision to place us in a right relationship with Him lies in Jesus Christ himself. We are justified on account of His obeidence during his lifetime and His death upon the Cross. It is because of Him, and not because of anything we have done or will do, that we are made right with God. But the means by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us. We are not justified on account of faith; we are justified through faith. It is the work of Christ, not our faith, which is the foundatiuon of justification...Faith itself is a gift of God. In other words, both the external foundation and the internal means of appropriation of justification are God-given. Faith is not something we can achieve; it is something achieved with us by God...Faith unites us to Christ and all His benefits. Everything necessary for salvation has been done, and done well, by God. Justification is thus about our status in the sight of God. It is about the way we are viewed by that most significant of all other - God...Believers thus regard themselves (rightly!) as sinners; but in the sight of God, they are also righteous on account of their faith. through faith, the believer is clothed with the righteousness of Christ, in much the same way, Luther suggests, as Ezekiel 16:8 speaks of God covering our nakedness with His garment...faith is the right (righteous) relationship to God. Sin and righteousness thus coexist; we remain sinners inwardly, but we are righteous extrinsically in the sight of God. By confessing our sins in faith, we stand in a right and righteous relationship with God. From our own perspective we are sinners, but in the perspective of God we are righteous...[this] is not necessarily implying that this co-existence of sin and righteousness is a permanent condition...God shields our sin through His righteousness. His righteousness is like a protective covering under which we may battle with our sin. But...the existence of sin does not negate our status as Christians. In justification, we are given the status of righteousness. In that we work with God towards attaining the nature of righteousness. In that God has promised to make is righteous one day, finally eliminating our sin, there is a sense in which we are already righteous in His sight.- ALISTER MCGRATH

284. In ourselves, we are sinners, and yet through faith we are righteous by the imputation of God. For we trust him who promises to deliver us, and in the meantime struggle so that sin may not overwhelm us, but that we may stand up to it until he finally take it away from us. MARTIN LUTHER

285. Through the grace of God, the creation is able to point to its Creator. Through the generosity of God we have been left with a latent memory of Him, capable of stirring us to recollect Him in His fullness. Although there is a fracture, a disjuncture, between the ideal and the empirical, between the realms of fallen and redeemed creation, the memory of that connection lives on, along with the intimation of its restoration through redemption. On account of sin, there is thus a fractured human relationship with God and an unfulfilled receptivity towards God within us. Creation establishes a potentiality, which sin frustrates...We are aware that something is missing. We may not be able to put a name to it. We may not be able to do anything about it. But the Christian gospel is able to interpret our sense of longing, our feeling of unfulfillment, as an awareness of the absence of God - thus to prepare the way for its fulfillment. Once we realize we are incomplete, that we lack something, then we begin to wonder if that spiritual emptiness could be fulfilled.It is precisely this idea that underlies the famous words of Augustine: “You have made us for your self, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The doctrines of creation and redemption combine to interpret this sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment as a loss - a loss of fellowship with God - which can be restored. They yield a picture of a broken human nature, which still possesses an ability to be aware of its loss and to hope that it might be restored. Yet human nature is unable to satisfy itself by it own devices. As Blaise Pascal put it, there is a God-shaped void within us, which nothing else will ever fill. Our sense of emptiness is actually a sense of absence of God from lives which were fashioned in His image. According to Augustine, we experience a sense of separation from the presence of God. He expressed this idea beautifully when he spoke of the ‘loving memory’ of God. It is a memory of God in that it is grounded in the doctrines of creation and redemption, which affirm that we have partially lost something through sin - and are somehow made aware of that loss through grace. It is a loving memory in that it is experienced as a sense of divine nostalgia, of spiritual wistfulness. We long to be attached to God, to cleave to Him once more and have our enforced separation from Him ended. The gospel declares that God has ended this enforced separation by breaking the power of that which enforced it - sin. The cross of Christ marks the end of the reign of sin. Our isolation from God is ended by that cross. Matthew records an incident of vital symbolic importance to our theme of self-esteem. At the moment of Christ’s death, the temple curtain was torn asunder (Matt 27:51). The curtain symbolized the remoteness and distance of God from His people; none save the High Priest were allowed to venture past tat curtain. That barrier is now removed. there is no longer any enforced separation from God. ALISTER McGRATH

286. Having ingrafted us into his body, [Christ] makes us partakers, not only of all his benefits, but also himself. [Christ is not] received merely in the understanding and imagination. For the promises offer him, not so that we end up with the mere sight and knowledge of him, but that we enjoy a true communication of him. JOHN CALVIN

287. Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. As Paul teaches us, Christ and the soul become one flesh by this mystery (Eph 5:31, 32). And if they are one flesh, and if the marriage is for real - indeed, it is the most perfect of all marriages, and human marriages are poor examples of this one true marriage - then it follows that everything that they have is held in common, whether good or evil. So the believer can boast of and glory of whatever Christ possesses, as though it were his or her own; and whatever the believer has, Christ claims as his own. Let us see how this works out, and see how it benefits us. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The human soul is full of sins, death and damnation. Now let faith come between them. Sins, death and damnation will be Christ’s. And grace, life and salvation will be the believers. MARTIN LUTHER, The Liberty of a Christian

289. There is a principle of self, which disposes us to despise those who differ from us; and we are often under its influence, when we think we are only shewing a becoming zeal in the cause of God. JOHN NEWTON

290. The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what others think, or say, or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make make or break an organization, a school, a home. We cannot change our past...We cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can dois play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it and so it is with you... CHUCK SWINDOLL

291. When the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen...This is the chief article from which all other doctrines have flowed...It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defnds the church of God; without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour...[it is] the master and prince, the lord, the ruler, and the judge over all kinds of doctrines. MARTIN LUTHER

292. [Justification is] the main hinge on which salvation turns. JOHN CALVIN

293. Justification is the very hinge and pillar of Christianity. An error about justification is dangerous, like a defect in a foundation. Justification by Christ is a spring of the water of life. To have the poison of corrupt doctrine cast into this spring is damnable. THOMAS WATSON

294. Justification is an act of God by which he declares sinners to be righteous by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. R. C. Sproul and James M. Boice

295. Worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable. JOHN STOTT

296. ...To great sections of the church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the 'program.' This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us. A. W. TOZER, The Pursuit of God1948

297. To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. WILLIAM TEMPLE

298. My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertain them. I wish to make them better." HANDEL

299. Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. MARTIN LUTHER

300. A good hymn book is a wonderful companion to the Bible. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER

301. On the cross Jesus was guilty of nothing but God treated Jesus as if he had committed personally every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe...though in fact he committed none of them. That's what substitution means. Then God exploded the full fury of His wrath against all the sins of all who will ever believe against Jesus. And God exhausted His wrath on Jesus. Jesus was no sinner; God treated Him as though he was. On the other side, God did it in our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus...Jesus lived a perfect life to fulfill all righteousness. Why? So his life could be imputed to us...On the cross Jesus wasn't a sinner; God treated him as if he was; you're not righteous but He treats you as if you are. On the cross, God treated Jesus as if he lived your life so he could treat you as if you had lived his. That's imputation; that's substitution. Jesus came to be poor to exchange his life for yours in order to fulfill the elective plan of God that he might do the will of God perfectly and in the end back the very love gift the Father had given to him. JOHN McARTHUR

302. Too often debates between traditional and contemporary worship parallel the question of the Samaritan woman. I know some advocates of traditional worship forms who believe that the moving grandeur of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion is a divinely inspired means of grace. Many among this group will argue for such pieces not necessarily because they are the most godly and Christ-saturated music in Christian hymnody, but because the style appeals to their own tastes. They also seem to think that God has not visited the congregation in his grace unless specific words have been uttered. In short, they see their liturgies or forms of worship not as the best way of preaching Christ, but as nearly magical formulas for regulating divine presence. So, if the standard procedures are followed, God is present. If they are not, he is absent. Proponents of contemporary worship are remarkably like their critics. The difference is that they think they have God in their control by negating everything the traditionalist holds dear. They too seem to believe that their novel forms are the keys that unlock the Holy Spirit's gilded imprisonment in classical idioms. They believe that by not uttering specific words, by not using classic hymns or choral arrangements, by not following any particular structure or pattern, their spontaneity and honesty will be rewarded by the Spirit. They have made themselves "open" and "available" by getting rid of written prayers, learned sermons, richly biblical hymns and formal opportunities for public confession, Scripture reading and the declaration of forgiveness. The question is not whether we worship God on this mountain or another, whether we follow the formalism of yesterday or the novelty of today. The question is whether we are joining the heavenly choir in joyful assembly around our crucified King and ascended Lord, directed by the heavenly conductor through his Word. We should ask: Is our worship directed by this world or are we attempting to mirror that heavenly Jerusalem that is coming down out of heaven? May we more earnestly pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." MICHAEL HORTON, We Believe - Recovering the Essentials of the Apostles' Creed

303. We need not simply to feed the sheep but to teach them how to cook. People don't know their way around the Bible or the simple Sunday school stuff we used to be taught. In the Old Testament, we have Jesus predicted. In the Gospels, we have Jesus revealed; In Acts, we have Jesus preached. In the Epistles, we have Jesus explained. In the Revelation we have Jesus expected. As simple as that is it is a helpful principle especially when people get into their Bible studies. ALISTAR BEGG

304. Our cause [i.e. the cause of evil] is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he been forsaken, and still obeys. master demon Screwtape to his young nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letter

305. I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction sake; though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in every thing just as he taught." JONATHAN EDWARDS, from the Preface to The Freedom of the Will

306. To see God is the promised goal of all our actions and the promised height of all our joys. St. AUGUSTINE

307. God justifies us on the first genuine act of saving faith, but in doing so he has a view to all subsequent acts of faith contained, as it were, like a seed in that first act. What we are trying to do here is own up to the teaching of Romans 5:1, for example, that teaches that we are already justified before God. God does not wait to the end of our lives in order to declare us righteous. In fact, we would not be able to have the assurance and freedom in order to live out the radical demands of Christ unless we could be confident that because of our faith we already stand righteous before him. Nevertheless, we must also own up to the fact that our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience which comes from faith. The way these truths fit together is that we are justified on the basis of our first act of faith because God sees in it (like he can see the tree in an acorn) the embryo of a life of faith. This is why those who do not lead a life of faith with its inevitable obedience simply bear witness to the fact that their first act of faith was not genuine. What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism by the Bethlehem Baptist Church Staff

308. I have no hope at all but in thy great mercy. Grant what thou commandest and command what thou wilt. Thou dost enjoin on us continence...Truly by continence are we bound together and brought back into that unity from which we were dissipated into a plurality. For he loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee, which he does not love not for thy sake. O love that ever burnest and art never quenched! O Charity, my God, enkindle me! Thou commandest continence. Grant what thou commandest and command what thou wilt. AUGUSTINE, Confessions(X,40)

309. There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this...God's absolute sovereignty...is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of any thing that I see with my eyes...The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God...God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me, a great part of his glory. It has often been my delight to approach God, and adore him as a sovereign God. JONATHAN EDWARDS, Personal Narrative

310. Edwards wept openly when George WHitefield preached in his church, because of how he loved the message he preached. Whitefield was a great evangelist in the 18th century. He said, "I embrace the Calvinistic scheme, not because of Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me." ARNOLD DALIMORE, George Whitefield

311. I [George Whitefield] cannot bear the thoughts of opposing you [John Wesley]; but how can I avoid it, if you go about (as your brother Charles once said) to drive Calvin out of Bristol. Alas, I never read anything that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from Christ and His apostles; I was taught them of God...The doctrines of our election, and free justification in Christ Jesus are daily more and more pressed upon my heart. They fill my soul with a holy fire and afford me great confidence in God my Saviour. ARNOLD DALIMORE, George Whitefield from Whitefield's letter to John Wesley

312. Before this period [when I came to prize the Bible alone as my standard of judgment] I had been much opposed to the doctrines of election, particular redemption (i. e. limited atonement) and final perserving grace. But now I was brought to examine these precious truths by the Word of God. Being made willing to have no glory of my own in the conversion of sinners, but to consider myself merely an instrument; and being made willing to receive what the Scriptures said, I went to the Word, reading the New Testament from the beginning, whith particular reference to these truths. To my great astonishment I found that the passages which speak decidedly for electionn and perserving grace, were about four times as many as those which speak apparently against these truths; and even those few, shortly after, when I had examined and understood them, served to confirm me in the above doctrines. As to the effect which my belief in these doctrines had on me, I am constrained to state for God's glory, that though I am still exceedingly weak, and by no means so dead to the lusts of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, as I might be, and as I ought to be, yet, by the grace of God, I have walked more closely with Him since that period. My life has not been so variable, as I may say that I have lived much more for God than before. GEORGE MUELLER, Autobiography

313. I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism...It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel...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 do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought through the Cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away adter they are called. CHARLES SPURGEON, Autobiography

314. Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did not see the grace of God. When I was comming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me...I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths in my own soul -- when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron...One week night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, "How did you come to be a Christian?" I sought the Lord. "But how did you come to seek the Lord?" The truth flashed across my mind in a moment -- I should not have sought tHim unless there had come some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How come I came to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a momment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day; and I desire to make this my constant confession, "I ascribe my change wholly to God." CHARLES SPURGEON, Autobiography

315. It is because God has assigned worth to men and women that human dignity is established.From his creation to his redemption, man's dignity is preserved. His origin is significant. His destiny is significant. He is significant. The conviction that permeates each chapter is the importance of daily respect for the dignity of other people which requires a sensitivity to their self-esteem. We are also led to the realization that the most fragile mechanization on this planet is the human ego. R. C. Sproul, The Hunger for Significance

316. Every person needs to feel significant. We want our lives to count. We yearn to believe that in some way we are important and that hunger for significance--a drive as intense as our need for oxygen--doesn't come from pride or ego. It comes from God because he wants each of us to understand how important we are. ... We must seek our roots, our origin, and our destiny so that we can know our present value. ...Written for anyone who shares the hunger for significance. This book explores the human cry for dignity, the hallowed longing for love and respect. ...Wherever people come together, we can help each other discover our self-worth. We can help each other realize that we are persons of significance being made in the image of God. R. C. SPROUL

317. Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God. JOHN CALVIN

318. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, Chapter I, Section 6

319. Indeed the saints in themselves have no excellence as they are in and of themselves.... They are in themselves filthy, vile creatures and see themselves to be so. they have an excellence and a glory in them because they have Christ dwelling in them.... Tis some. thing of God. This holy heavenly spark is put into the soul in con version, and God maintains it there. All the power of hell cannot put it out.... Though it be small ... 'tis a powerful thing. It has influence on the heart to govern that, and brings forth holy fruits in the life, and won't cease to prevail 'til it has consumed all the corruption that is left in the heart and 'til it has turned the whole soul, as it were, into a pure, holy and heavenly flame. JONATHAN EDWARDS

320. The necessity of Christ's satisfaction to divine justice is, as it were, the center and hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation. Other doctrines are of little importance comparatively except as they have respect to this. JONATHAN EDWARDS

321. If it be enquired how man came to sin, seeing he had no sinful inclinations in him, except God took away his grace from him that he had been wont to give him and so let him fall, I answer there was no need of taking away any that had been given him, but he sinned under that temptation because God did not give him more. He did not take away that grace from him while he was perfectly innocent which grace was his original righteousness, but he only withheld his confirming grace given now in heaven, grace as shall surmount every temptation.... JONATHAN EDWARDS, Miscellany 290

322. And this must be what is meant when we say that God gave our first parent sufficient grace tho he withheld an efficacious grace or a grace that should certainly uphold him in all temptations he could meet with. I say this must be meant by his having sufficient grace viz. that he had grace sufficient to render him a free agent not only with respect to h is whole will but with respect to his rational or the will that arose from a rational judgment of what was indeed best for himself. JONATHAN EDWARDS

323. We are under greater obligations to love a more lovely being than a less lovely; and if a being be infinitely excellent and lovely, our obligations to love him are therein infinitely great.... The unworthiness of sin or opposition to God rises and is great in proportion to the dignity of the object and inferiority of the subject; but on the contrary, the value of respect rises in proportion to the value of the subject…Likewise, in one of his most famous sermons, Edwards labors this point in establishing the "justice of God in the damnation of sinners"... Every crime or fault deserves a greater or less punishment, in proportion as the crime itself is greater or less.... The faulty nature of anything is the formal ground and reason of its desert of punishment; and therefore the more anything hath of this nature, the more punishment it deserves. And therefore the terribleness of the degree of punishment, let it be never so terrible, is no argument. J.EDWARDS

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