Quote of the Day

If we refuse to forgive, we have stepped into dangerous waters.  First, refusing to forgive is to put ourselves in the place of God, as though vengeance were our prerogative, not his.  Second, unforgiveness says God's wrath is insufficient.  For the unbeliever, we are saying that an eternity in hell is not enough, they need our slap in the face or cold shoulder to "even the scales" of justice.  For the believer, we are saying that Christ's humiliation and death are not enough.  In other words, we shake our fists at God and say, "Your standards may have been satisfied, but my standard is higher!"  Finally, refusing to forgive is the highest form of arrogance.  Here we stand forgiven.  And as we bask in the forgiveness of a perfectly holy and righteous God, we turn to our brother and say, "My sins are forgivable, but yours are not."  In other words, we act as though the sins of others are too significant to forgive while simultaneously believing that ours are not significant enough to matter.

Voddie Baucham Jr.

Quote of the Day

We get endless sermons on psychology, but amazingly few on Christianity.  Our preachers are afraid to preach on the doctrine of the Atonement and on predestination.  The great cardinal principles of our belief are scarcely ever mentioned, indeed there is a movement on foot to amend them so as to bring them up-to-date.  How on earth can you talk of bringing these eternal truths up to date?  They are not only up-to-date, they are and will be ahead of the times to all eternity.

 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Day

How does all this come to pass?  How does God create a community of saints out of sinful men and women?  How can he avert the reproach of unrighteousness if he makes a covenant with sinners?  How can the sinner become righteous without impairing the righteousness of God?  The answer is that God justifies Himself by appearing as his own advocate in defense of his own righteousness….and it is in the cross of Christ that this supreme miracle happens (Rom. 3:21)…Having thus died with him, we become partakers in the righteousness of God through the death of Jesus….The justification of the sinner therefore consists in the sole righteousness of God…Whenever we desire an independent righteousness of our own we are forfeiting our only chance of justification, which is through God and his righteousness.  God alone is righteous.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Let there be no misunderstanding at this point. The Arminian limits the atonement as certainly as does the Calvinist. The Calvinist limits the extent of it in that he says it does not apply to all persons (although as has already been shown, he believes that it is efficacious for the salvation of the large proportion of the human race); while the Arminian limits the power of it, for he says that in itself it does not actually save anybody. The Calvinist limits it quantitatively, but not qualitatively; the Arminian limits it qualitatively, but not quantitatively. For the Calvinist it is like a narrow bridge which goes all the way across the stream; for the Arminian it is like a great wide bridge which goes only half-way across....

 

Loraine Boettner

Quote of the Day

No amount of tears can atone for sin.  No number of good deeds can make amends for wrong we have done against God.  No quantity of prayer or personal devotion can extenuate our guilt or cover it in any way.  Even everlasting burning in hell will not purify the soul from sin.

John Macarthur

Quote of the Day

 In the new Testament, as understood in the mainstream of Christian tradition, we meet the same God three times.  First of all we meet him in the Father, whom Jesus prayed to and obeyed, at whose bidding he came, lived, suffered and died, by whose hand he was raised from the dead.  But in Jesus Christ himself, we encounter the same divine love and power appearing personally among us as our fellowman.  God is now not only exalted in heaven but made man on earth.  The acts of Jesus are the acts of God, the words of Jesus are the words of God, the suffering of Jesus is the self-sacrifice of God, the person of Jesus is the person of God, so that the confession of the Church echoes the confession of Thomas (John 20:28) and addresses not the Father in heaven but the risen human Jesus, "My Lord and my God".  But with Jesus ascended there comes according to his promise allos Parakletos, "Another of the same kind of Advocate Counselor."  The Holy Spirit who keeps on relating Christians to Christ and the Father, and then to one another, is himself God, God at work in and among men.  He does not hand us over to another, but in this other he keeps on coming to us himself.

 

Thomas Smail

Quote of the Day

C.H. Spurgeon in a letter to his father in the year 1850 shortly after he was 'saved',

"Since last Thursday, I have been unwell in body, but I may say that my soul has been almost in Heaven.  I have been able to see my title clear, and to know and believe that, sooner than one of God's little ones shall perish, God Himself will cease to be, Satan will conquer the King of kings and Jesus will no longer be the Savior of the elect.  Doubts and fears may soon assail me, but I will not dread to meet them if my Father has so ordained it; He knows best.  Were I never to have another visit of grace, and be always doubting from now until the day of my death, yet ' the foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His'  I see now the secret, how it was that you were enabled to bear up under all your late trials.  This faith is far more than any of us deserve; all beyond hell is mercy, but this is a mighty one.  Were it not all of sovereign, electing, almighty grace, I, for one, could never hope to be saved.  God says, 'You shall,' and not all the devils in hell, let loose upon a real Christian can stop the workings of God's sovereign grace, for in due time the Christian cries, 'I will.'  Oh, how little love have I for One who has thus promised to save me by so great a salvation and who will certainly perform His promise!"

Quote of the Day

The Bible assuredly knows nothing of those qualms about good works, by which we only try to excuse ourselves and justify our evil works.  The Bible never draws the antithesis between faith and good works so sharply as to maintain that good works undermine faith.  No, it is evil works rather than good works which hinder and destroy faith.  Grace and active obedience are complementary.  There is no faith without good works, and no good works apart from faith….But all our good works are the works of God himself, the works for which he has prepared for us beforehand.  Good works then are ordained for the sake of salvation, but they are in the end those which God himself works within us.  They are his gift, but it is our task to walk in them at every moment of our lives, knowing all the time that any good works of our own could never help  us to abide before the judgment of God.  We cling in faith to Christ and his works alone.  For we have the promise that those who are in Christ Jesus will be enabled to do good works, which will testify for them in the day of judgment.  They will be preserved and sanctified until the last day…From this it follows that we can never be conscious of our good works.  Our sanctification is veiled from our eyes until the last day, when all secrets will be disclosed.  IF we want to see some results here and assess our own spiritual state, and have not the patience to wait, we have our reward.  The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress on the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.  Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord.   God alone knows our good works, all we know is His good work……The believer will be justified, the justified will be sanctified and the sanctified will be saved in the day of judgment…The fruit of their liberation from sin through the death of Christ is that whereas they once surrendered their members as servants to iniquity, they may now use them in the service of righteousness unto sanctification (Rom.6:19-22)  ……How does this come to pass?...How can the sinner become righteous without impairing the righteousness of God?  The answer is that God justified himself by appearing as his own advocate in defense of his own righteousness……The justification of the sinner therefore consists in the sole righteousness of God, wheirin the sinner is utterly and completely unrighteous, and has no righteousness whatever of his own, side by side with the righteousness of God.  Whenever we desire an independent righteousness of our own we are forfeiting our only chance of justification, which is through God and his righteousness, God alone is righteous….The ground  for our justifcation is the justification of God.  "That thou [i.e. God] mightest be justified in thy words, and mightest prevail when thou comest to judgement" (Rom. 3:4).  All that matters is that God's righteousness should prevail over ours, that God's righteousness should be maintained in His own eyes, and that he alone should be righteous.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Assurance concerns the realization that a person has eternal life.  But security is a true fact whether or not an individual has assurance of that or not.

Charles Ryrie

His Robes For Mine

This is an excellent song! You can listen to it here:  http://www.sacredaudio.com/previews/player.php?id=1005_18  

His robes for mine: O wonderful exchange!
Clothed in my sin, Christ suffered ‘neath God’s rage.
Draped in His righteousness, I’m justified.
In Christ I live, for in my place He died.

Chorus:

I cling to Christ, and marvel at the cost:
Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God.
Bought by such love, my life is not my own.
My praise-my all-shall be for Christ alone.

His robes for mine: what cause have I for dread?
God’s daunting Law Christ mastered in my stead.
Faultless I stand with righteous works not mine,
Saved by my Lord’s vicarious death and life.

His robes for mine: God’s justice is appeased.
Jesus is crushed, and thus the Father’s pleased.
Christ drank God’s wrath on sin, then cried “‘Tis done!”
Sin’s wage is paid; propitiation won.

His robes for mine: such anguish none can know.
Christ, God’s beloved, condemned as though His foe.
He, as though I, accursed and left alone;
I, as though He, embraced and welcomed home!

- Written by Christ Anderson.  The sheet music can be purchased here:  http://www.bjupress.com/product/279752?path=169192&spot=1

Quote of the Day

…Now we can see why up to now Jesus has said nothing about himself in the Sermon on the Mount.  Between the disciples and the better righteousness demanded of them stands the Person of Christ, who came to fulfill the law of the old covenant.  This is the fundamental presupposition of the whole Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed in the Old Testament law and prophets.  He has in fact nothing to add to the commandments of God, except this, that he keeps them.  He fulfills the law, and he tells us so himself, therefore it must be true.  He fulfills the law down to the last iota…he alone understand the true nature of the law as God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law.  It was the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law their God and their God a law.  The disciples were confronted with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether and divorcing God from his law.  Both errors lead to the same result.  By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to use the law to exploit the Law-Giver: He was swallowed up in the law and therefore no longer its Lord.  By imagining that God and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation.  In both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver:  God was denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with the promise of salvation.

Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates the divine authority of the law.  God is its giver and its Lord, and only in personal communion with God is the law fulfilled.  There is no fulfillment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfillment of the law…Jesus, the Son of God, who alone lives in perfect communion with Him, vindicates the law of the old covenant by coming to fulfill it.  He was the only Man who ever fulfilled the law, and therefore he alone can teach the law and its fulfillment….It is Jesus Himself who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which comes between Jesus and the disciples.  They find their way to the law through the cross of Christ……Because between the disciples and the law stands One who has perfectly fulfilled it, One with whom they live in communion.  They are faced not with a law which has never yet been fulfilled, but with one whose demands have already been satisfied.  The righteousness it demands is already there, the righteousness of Jesus, which submits to the cross because that is what the law demands.  This righteousness is therefore not a duty owed, but a perfect and truly personal communion with God, and Jesus not only possesses this righteousness', but is himself the personal embodiment of it. He is the righteousness of the disciples.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

 Did Jesus satisfy God’s justice on the cross? Or do we satisfy God’s justice when we believe?

Michael Horton

Quote of the Day

Where is it said (in the Bible) that Christ doth intercede for men that they may have faith if they do such and such things? Nay, what condition can rationally be assigned this desire?  Some often intimate that it is," if they suffer the Spirit to have his work upon their hearts, and obey the grace of God." Now, what is it to obey the grace of God? Is it not to believe? Therefore it seems that Christ intercedeth for them that they may believe, upon condition that they do believe.(!)

John Owen

Quote Of The Day

 They (Believers who do not accept a definite atonement/Arminians) necessarily turn away from a substitutionary atonement altogether. Christ did not die in the sinners stead, it seems, to bear his penalties and purchase for him eternal life; He died rather to make the salvation of sinners possible, to open the way of salvation to sinners, to remove all the obstacles in the way of salvation. But what obstacle stands in the way of salvation besides the sinner's sin? And if this obstacle (their sin) is removed, are they not saved?

Benjamin B. Warfield