You may have rare intellectual gifts, and high mental attainments — you may sway kingdoms by your counsel, move millions by your pen, or keep crowds in breathless attention by your tongue — but if you have never submitted yourself to the yoke of Christ, and never honored His Gospel by heartfelt reception of it — then you are nothing but chaff in His sight.

—JC Ryle
The Great Separation

Via: JC Ryle Quotes

All your real power is in Christ. In His strength you can do great things for God, and suffer great things for Jesus. Bring your strong corruptions to His grace, and your little strength to His omnipotence, and your very weakness shall turn to your account by drawing you into a closer alliance with the Lord in whom you have righteousness and strength. Thus you will be taught to understand the apostle’s sacred paradox – “When I am weak, then am I strong.”

—Octavius Winslow
Emmanuel, or The TItles of Christ

Via: Aaron Armstrong

Men and women who hear the Gospel regularly, I often fear much for you. I fear lest you become so familiar with the sounds of its doctrines, that insensibly you become dead to its power. I fear lest your religion should sink down into a little vague talk about your own weakness and corruption, and a few sentimental expressions about Christ, while real practical fighting on Christ’s side is altogether neglected. Oh, beware of this state of mind! Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. No victory — no crown! Fight and overcome!

—J.C. Ryle
The Great Battle

Via: J.C. Ryle Quotes

The preacher who smiles benignly from his pulpit assuring us that “God accepts you just the way you are” tells a monstrous lie. He sugarcoats the gospel of love with saccharine grace. God does not accept the arrogant; He turns His back to the impenitent. He maintains love toward His fallen creatures, inviting them back to restored fellowship, but strings are securely attached for we must come on bended knee.

…

God creates men and moves heaven and earth to redeem them when they fall. Our origin is in creation and our destiny is for redemption. Between these points every human heartbeat has value. The future of our race is not grim as long as a Creator-Redeemer runs the universe. We are not a lost planet wandering aimlessly in space; we are a visited planet with a glorious destiny.

—R.C. Sproul
The Hunger for Significance

Via: Ligonier Ministries Blog

Via: Tim Challies

In your moment of disappointment and despair, Jesus meets you with the gracious words, “Bring it here unto Me.” And now your spirit revives, your heart bounds at the words, and you exclaim, “Behold, Lord, I come!”

Jesus says, “Bring your sorrows to Me!” Never did the soul find so powerful a magnet, attracting to itself affliction in every form, and sorrow in every shade — as Jesus. Standing as in the center of a world of woe — He invites every daughter of sorrow, of sin, of grief to repair to Him for support, sympathy, and healing. As the High Priest of His Church for whom alone He suffered, and wept, and sobbed — He unveils a bosom capacious enough and loving enough, and sympathizing enough — to embrace every sufferer, and to pillow every grief. Accept, then, His compassionate invitation, and bring your grief to the soothing, sustaining, sanctifying grace of His heart!

—Octavius Winslow

Via: A Puritan At Heart

The Lord Jesus, in whom the Gospel bids us believe, is, without doubt, almighty God–equal to the Father in all things, and able to save to the uttermost all those that come unto God by Him. But that same Jesus is no less certainly perfect man–able to sympathize with man in all his bodily sufferings, and acquainted by experience with all that man’s body has to endure. Power and sympathy are marvelously combined in Him who died for us on the cross. Because He is God, we may rest the weight of our souls upon Him with unhesitating confidence. He is mighty to save. Because He is man, we may speak to Him with freedom, about the many trials to which flesh is heir. He knows the heart of a man. Here is rest for the weary! Here is good news! Our Redeemer is man as well as God, and God as well as man.

—J.C. Ryle
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John – Volume 1

Via: J.C. Ryle Quotes

So, then, this also is hid in Christ — the great and unspeakable riches of the wisdom of God, in pardoning sin, saving sinners, satisfying justice, fulfilling the law, repairing his own honour, and providing for us a more exceeding weight of glory — and all this out of such a condition as wherein it was impossible that it should enter into the hearts of angels or men how ever the glory of God should be repaired, and one sinning creature delivered from everlasting ruin. Hence it is said, that at the last day God “shall be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). It shall be an admirable thing, and God shall be for ever glorious in it, even in the bringing of believers to himself. To save sinners through believing shall be found to be a far more admirable work than to create the world of nothing.

—John Owen
Of Communion With God

Via: The Essential Owen

Believers all call themselves by the name of Christ and in communion with this Christ they are themselves anointed as prophets, priests, and kings.

Christ is given many other names in Scripture. He is called the Son of God, the only-begotten, beloved Son of God, the Word, the image of God, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, the firstborn of all creation, the true God and eternal life, God to be praised above all, Immanuel.

In addition, He is called the Son of Man, the son of Joseph and David, the Nazarene, the Galilean, the holy and righteous one, the second Adam, the Lord of heaven, the firstborn of all creatures, and the firstborn of the dead.

Finally, in terms of His office and work, He is called Prophet, Master, Teacher, Priest, the Great Priest, the High Priest, the Servant of the Lord, the Lamb of God, the King, the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, the King of kings, the Lord, the Lord of glory, the Lord of lords, the head of the church, the bridegroom of the church, the shepherd and guardian of souls, the pioneer and perfecter of the faith, the pioneer of salvation, the way, the truth, and the life, the bread of life, the prince of life, the resurrection and the life, the shepherd of the sheep, the door of the sheepfold, the light  of world, the shining morning star, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the judge of the living and the dead, the heir of all things by whom, in whom, and for whom all things have been created.

All these names sufficiently prove the incomparable dignity and entirely unique place that belong to Christ. He is the mediator of both creation and re-creation.

—Herman Bavinck
Reformed Dogmatics

Via: Tolle Lege

Since Christ is thus comfortably set out to us, let us not believe Satan’s representations of him. When we are troubled in conscience for our sins, Satan’s manner is then to present Christ to the afflicted soul as a most severe judge armed with justice against us. But then let us present him to our souls as offered to our view by God himself, holding out a sceptre of mercy, and spreading his arms to receive us.

—Richard Sibbes

Via: A Puritan At Heart