True religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the Divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle’s phrase, ‘it is Christ formed within us.’
—Henry Scougal
The Life of God in the Soul of Man
Via: Of First Importance
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Here is the watershed of human history where the misery of the race is transformed into grandeur. Here the kerygma, the proclamation of the early church, was born with the cry “He is risen.” We can view this event as a symbol, a lovely tale of hope. We can reduce it to a moralism that declares, as one preacher put it, “The meaning of the Resurrection is that we can face the dawn of each new day with dialectical courage.”
The New Testament proclaims the Resurrection as sober historical fact. The early Christians were not interested in dialectical symbols but in concrete realities. Authentic Christianity stands or falls with the space/time event of Jesus’ resurrection. The term Christian suffers from the burden of a thousand qualifications and a myriad of diverse definitions. One dictionary defines a Christian as a person who is civilized. One can certainly be civilized without affirming the Resurrection, but one cannot then be a Christian in the biblical sense. The person who claims to be a Christian while denying the Resurrection speaks with a forked tongue. From such turn away.
The resurrection of Jesus is radical in the original sense of the word. It touches the radix, the “root” of the Christian faith. Without it Christianity becomes just another religion designed to titillate our moral senses with platitudes of human wisdom. The apostle Paul spelled out the clear and irrefutable consequences of a “resurrectionless” Christianity. If Christ is not raised, he reasoned, we are left with the following list of conclusions:
- Our preaching is futile.
- Our faith is in vain.
- We have misrepresented God.
- We are still in our sins.
- Our loved ones who have died have perished.
- If all we have is hope, we are of all men most to be pitied.
These six consequences sharply reveal the inner connection of the Resurrection to the substance of Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus is the sine qua non of the Christian faith. Take away the Resurrection and you take away Christianity.
—R.C. Sproul
Who Is Jesus?
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CHRISTIAN:
Hello, Death, my old enemy. My old slave-master. Have you come to talk to me again? To frighten me?
I am not the person you think I am. I am not the one you used to talk to. Something has happened. Let me ask you a question, Death.
Where is your sting?
DEATH, sneeringly:
My sting is your sin.
CHRISTIAN:
I know that, Death. But that’s not what I asked you. I asked, where is your sting? I know what it is. But tell me where it is.
Why are you fidgeting, Death? Why are you looking away? Why are you turning to go? Wait, Death, you have not answered my question. Where is your sting?
Where is, my sin?
What? You have no answer? But, Death, why do you have no answer? How will you terrify me, if you have no answer?
O Death, I will tell you the answer. Where is your sting? Where is my sin? It is hanging on that tree. God made Christ to be sin—my sin. When he died, the penalty of my sin was paid. The power of it was broken. I bear it no more.
Farewell, Death. You need not show up here again to frighten me. God will tell you when to come next time. And when you come, you will be his servant. For me, you will have no sting.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
—1 Corinthians 15:55-57—John Piper
Via: Desiring God Blog
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For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
—2 Corinthians 5:21
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” – so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
—Galatians 3:13-14
Via: Heidelblog
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The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death – we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship
Via: Desiring God Blog
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The greatest of men—like the apostle Paul and St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther and John Calvin and George Whitefield and William Carey and Jonathan Edwards and Billy Graham—the most admirable of men are only meteors on the sky of history. They last about a third of a second and then are gone. But God is like the sun. And generation after generation he rises on the just and the unjust and never fades in his glory. “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to ALL GENERATIONS, FOR EVER AND EVER. Amen.”
—John Piper
Via: Tullian Tchividjian
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Let no one say . . . that the doctrine of election by the sovereign will and mercy of God, mysterious as it is, makes either evangelism or faith unnecessary. The opposite is the case. It is only because of God’s gracious will to save that evangelism has any hope of success and faith becomes possible. The preaching of the gospel is the very means that God has appointed by which he delivers from blindness and bondage those whom he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world, sets them free to believe in Jesus, and so causes his will to be done.
—John R. W. Stott
The Message of Ephesians
Via: Of First Importance
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“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew 6:13).
James 1:13 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13).
That’s true. But the Bible also says, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1).
So God does not do the tempting — he does not put evil desires in our hearts (for he can have no evil desires in his heart) — but he does bring us into the presence of many tests and temptations. “A man’s steps are from the Lord” (Proverbs 20:24).
In fact, every step we take is a step into the presence of temptation. There is no moment of your life that is not a moment of temptation — a moment when unbelief and disobedience is not a possibility.
The Lord’s prayer does not teach us to pray against that kind of sovereign guidance.
What it teaches us to pray is that the temptation does not take us in. Don’t lead me into temptation. Deliver me from this evil that is set before me.
Today I will stand before innumerable temptations. That’s what life is: endless choices between belief and unbelief, obedience and disobedience. But, O mighty God, forbid that I would yield. Hold me back from stepping inside the temptation.
—John Piper
Via: Desiring God Blog
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If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.
—D.A. Carson
A Call to Spiritual Reformation
Via: Of First Importance
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The most important prayer is that the most important person in the universe do the most important act in the universe.
That’s why Jesus put this request at the beginning of the Lord’s prayer: “Hallowed be your name.”
God is the most important person in the universe. More important than all others put together.
All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17).
The whole-souled act of hallowing God’s name is the most important act in the universe.
To “hallow” means to “sanctify” which in God’s case means to set apart in your mind and heart as supremely great and beautiful and valuable.
“Hallowed be your name” means, “See to it that your name is hallowed. Use your infinite power and wisdom and love to stir up billions of hearts and minds to admire you and prize you above all things."
We ask him to fulfill this promise:
I will sanctify [hallow] my great name, which was profaned among the nations…. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord…when I shall be sanctified [hallowed] in you before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 36:23)
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isaiah 48:11)
Ask the Lord to help you make the most important prayer your most common prayer. And the one you desire most to see answered.
—John Piper
Via: Desiring God Blog
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