The Mindset of a Pilgrim

November 13, 2009 · Posted in Holiness, Ryle, Sanctification

A holy man will follow after spiritual mindedness. He will endeavor to set his affections entirely on the things above, and to hold things on earth with a very loose hand. He will not neglect the business of the life now is; but the first place in his mind and thoughts will be given to the life to come. He will aim to live like one whose treasure is in heaven, and to pass through this world like a stranger and pilgrim traveling to his home.

To commune with God in prayer, in the Bible, and in the assembly of His people – these things will be the holy man’s chiefest enjoyments. He will value every thing and place and company, just in proportion as it draws him nearer to God.

—J.C. Ryle
Faithfulness and Holiness: The Witness of J.C. Ryle

Via: J.C. Ryle Quotes

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Monergistic Regeneration

November 12, 2009 · Posted in Regeneration

Since faith is infinitely beyond all the power of our unregenerated human nature, it is only God who can give the spiritual ears to hear and eyes to see the beauty of Christ in the gospel. God alone disarms the hostility of the sinner turning his heart of stone to a heart of flesh. It is God, the Holy Spirit, alone who gives illumination and understanding of His word that we might believe; It is God who raises us from the death of sin, who circumcises the heart; unplugs our ears; It is God alone who can give us a new sense, a spiritual capacity to behold the beauty and unsurpassed excellency of Jesus Christ.

The apostle John recorded Jesus saying to Nicodemus that we naturally love darkness, hate the light and WILL NOT come into the light (John 3:19, 20). And since our hardened resistance to God is thus seated in our affections, only God, by His grace, can lovingly change, overcome and pacify our rebellious disposition. The natural man, apart from the quickening work of the Holy Spirit, will not come to Christ on his own since he is at enmity with God and cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor 2:14). Shining a light into a blind man’s eyes will not enable him to see, because eyesight first requires a set of healthy eyes. Likewise, reading or hearing the word of God alone cannot elicit saving faith in the reader (1 Thess 1:4, 5) unless God plows up the fallow ground of our hearts and the Spirit “germinates” the seed of the word, opening our eyes to see Christ’s true beauty and excellency and uniting us to Him through a Spirit-wrought faith.

So the problem of conversion is not with the Word or God’s Law but with man’s prideful heart. The humility required to submit to the gospel is, therefore, not prompted by man’s will but by God’s mercy (Rom 9:16) since no one can believe the gospel unless God grants it (John 6:63, 65). As an example of how the Spirit uses the means of the spoken word to disarm closed hearts, the Book of Acts records the work of the Holy Spirit during the preaching of the apostles and, in one instance, states that “the Lord opened her [Lydia's] heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul,” (Acts 16:14). The Spirit must likewise give all His people spiritual life and understanding if their hearts are to be opened and thus respond to Christ in faith.

—John Hendryx

Via: Reformation Theology

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Justification and Imputation

November 10, 2009 · Posted in Imputation, Justification

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.

—The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 11, Point 1

Via: Paul Helm

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Beware of Self-Righteousness!

November 9, 2009 · Posted in Ryle, Salvation

Oh, let us beware of self-righteousness! Open sin kills its thousands of souls. Self-righteousness kills its tens of thousands. Go and study humility with the great apostle of the Gentiles. Go and sit with Paul at the foot of the cross. Give up your secret pride. Cast away your vain ideas of your own goodness.

Be thankful if you have any grace, but never glory in it for a moment. Work for God and Christ, with heart and soul and mind and strength, but never dream for a second of placing confidence in any work of your own.

—J.C. Ryle
Old Paths

Via: J.C. Ryle Quotes

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

The Office, the Bloodshed, and the Life

November 8, 2009 · Posted in Atonement, Christ, Imputation, Salvation

Consider well of the office, the bloodshed, and the holy life of Christ — His office is to expiate sin, and to destroy it. His blood was shed for it: his life condemned it. Love Christ, and thou wilt hate that which caused his death. Love him, and thou will be made more like him.

—Richard Baxter
Quoted by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson in Counsel from the Cross

Via: Of First Importance

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

A Love That Rises and Never Sets

November 6, 2009 · Posted in Election, Love, Salvation

If once God’s electing love rises upon the soul, it never sets.

—Thomas Watson
A Body of Divinity

Via: Of First Importance

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Prayerlessness is Unbelief

November 6, 2009 · Posted in Prayer

Prayer is essential for the Christian, as much for what it says about us as for what it can do through God.  The simple act of getting on our knees (or faces or feet or whatever) for 5 or 50 minutes every day is the surest sign of our humility and dependence on Father in heaven.  There may be many reasons for our prayerlessness—time management, busyness, lack of concentration—but most fundamentally, we ask not because we think we need not or we think God can give not.   Deep down we feel secure when we have money in the bank, a healthy report from the doctor, and powerful people on our side.  We do not trust in God alone.  Prayerlessness is an expression of our meager confidence in God’s ability to provide and of our strong confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves without God’s help.

Too often when we struggle with prayer we focus on the wrong things.  We focus on praying better instead of focusing on knowing better the one to whom we pray.  We focus on our need for discipline rather than our need for God.  Almost all of us want to pray more frequently, and yet our lives seem too disordered.  But in God’s mind our messy, chaotic lives are an impetus to prayer instead of an obstacle to prayer.

You don’t need to work and work at discipline nearly as much as you need faith.  You don’t need an ordered life to enable prayer, you need a messy life to drive you to prayer.  You don’t need to have everything in order before you can pray.  You need to know you’re disordered so you will pray.  You don’t need your life to be fixed up.  You need a broken heart.  You need to think to yourself: “Tomorrow is another day that I need God.  I need to know him. I need forgiveness. I need help. I need protection. I need deliverance. I need patience. I need courage. Therefore, I need prayer.”

If you know you are needy and believe that God helps the needy, you will pray.  Conversely, if we seldom pray, the problem goes much deeper than a lack of organization and follow through.  The heart that never talks to God is the heart that trusts in itself and not in the power of God.  Prayerlessness is unbelief.

Prayerfulness, on the other hand is an evidence of humility and faith, which is why God loves it when we pray.

—Kevin DeYoung

Via: Kevin DeYoung

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Happy Reformation Day

October 31, 2009 · Posted in Reformation

Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

The Infinite Glory of the Cross

October 31, 2009 · Posted in Atonement, Salvation, Spurgeon

We want the fact of substitution to strike us, and then the cross will grow sublimely great. In vision I behold it! Its two arms are extended right and left till they touch the east and west and overshadow all races of men; the foot of it descends lower than the grave, till it goes down even to the gates of hell; while upward the cross mounts with a halo round about it of unutterable glory, till it rises above the stars, and sheds its light upon the throne of the Most High.

Atonement is a divine business; its sacrifice is infinite, even as the God who conceived it. Glory be to his name for ever! It is all that I can say. It was nothing less than a stretch of divine love for Jesus to give himself for our sins. It was gracious for the Infinite to conceive of such a thing; but for him to carry it out was glorious beyond all.

—Charles Spurgeon

Via: Of First Importance

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Make Much of Christ’s Death

October 28, 2009 · Posted in Ryle, Salvation

We can never attach too much importance to the atoning death of Christ: it is the leading fact in the Word of God, on which the eyes of our soul ought to be ever fixed. Without the shedding of His blood, there is no remission of sin. It is the cardinal truth on which the whole system of Christianity hinges.

Without it the Gospel is an arch without a keystone, a fair building without a foundation, a solar system without a sun. Let us make much of our Lord’s incarnation and example, His miracles and His parables, His works and His words, but above all let us make much of His death.

—J.C. Ryle
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew

Via: J.C. Ryle Quotes

Resources: Printable Version | Short URL

Page 25 of 56
1
...
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
...
56