Quote of the Day

As long as we treat sin as a minor category, we will always question the atoning death of the God-man to solve our problem.  Show me a person who questions the incarnation and you have shown me a person who takes the categories of sin and God's holiness rather lightly…..The second step is to belittle God.  The biblical picture of God banishing Adam and Eve from Eden for eating a piece of forbidden fruit is replaced with a God who will basically put up with anything.  He is a God more interested in sincerity than holiness, content to tolerate anything we do because he has a love affair with human free will.

….Once we have neutered God of the attribute of his holy wrath and toned down talk of sin by minimizing its dastardly effects - fashioning ourselves as good people who occasionally err - we have effectively removed the requirement for atonement.  It is then a short step to questioning the incarnation.  Why insist on God becoming human and solving a problem we are quite capable of solving ourselves?  The modern propensity to  downplay the divinity of Jesus is tied to a watered-down version of what constitutes sin, and a wishy-washy portrayal of a God too tolerant and friendly to worry about it.  

Victor Kuligin

Quote from his book:

The Language of Salvation:  Discovering the Riches of What it Means to Be Saved

Quote of the Day

"Well,” says one, “I like to be my own master.” Yes, and that involves two things; first, you have a very bad master; and, next, your master has a fool for his servant.

 

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

As holiness is the beauty of all God’s attributes, so power is that which gives life and action to all the perfections of the Divine nature. How vain would be the eternal counsels, if power did not step in to execute them. Without power His mercy would be but feeble pity, His promises an empty sound, His threatenings a mere scarecrow. God’s power is like Himself: infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; it can neither be checked, restrained, nor frustrated by the creature.

Stephen Charnock

Quote of the Day

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight. At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on - how many such 'from-now-ons' have there already been! - to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism. They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want. But that is an evil illusion: only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past. Only where God is can there be a new beginning. We cannot command God to grant it: we can only pray to God for it. And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must make that new beginning……People who want to live solely by their good intentions have no idea where those intentions actually come from. It's worth a closer look. Our so-called good intentions are nothing but anxious byproducts of a weak heart that fears all kinds of evils and sins and now arms itself with very human weapons in order to go against those powers. But whoever is afraid of sin is already in the middle of it. Fear is the net that evil throws over us, so that we become entangled and soon fall. Those who are afraid have already fallen. If we are on a difficult mountain climb and are suddenly consumed with fear, we will surely stumble. Hence, such anxious good intentions do us no good. We can certainly never make a new beginning with them. How can we make a fresh start? 'No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back…' (Luke 9:62). One who guides a plow does not look back - or into the immense distance - but to the next step that must be taken. Backward glances are not a Christian thing to do. Leave fear, anxiety, and guilt behind. And look to the One who gives you a new beginning.

 

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

The plain fact is, dear reader, that to the present generation the Most High of Holy Writ is 'the unknown God."  It is just because people today are so ignorant of the Divine character and so lacking in godly fear, that they are quite in the dark as to the nature and glory of divine justice, presuming to arraign it.  This is an age of blatant irreverence, wherein lumps of animate clay dare to prescribe what the Almighty ought and ought not to do.  Our forefathers sowed the wind, and today their children are reaping the whirlwind.  The "divine rights of kings"  was scoffed at and tabooed by the sires, and now their offspring repudiate the "divine rights of the King of kings."  Unless the supposed "rights" of the creature are "respected," then our moderns have no respect for the Creator, and if His high sovereignty and absolute dominion over all be insisted upon, they hesitate not to vomit forth their condemnation of Him.  And, "evil communications corrupt good manners" (I Cor.  15:33)!  God's own people are in danger of being infected by the poisonous gas which now fills the air of the religious world. 

Arthur Pink

Quote of the Day

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

 

Jonathan Edwards