Month: July 2011

Jesus the Redeemer: God and Man

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

According To The Will of God

When we ask pardon for sin, with secret reserves in our hearts to continue in sin, we ask the choicest mercy of the covenant, to spend it on our lusts. The end of the promise the apostle tells us, 2 Corinthians 7:1, “Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” When we ask what is in the promise, as it is in the promise, to this end of the promise, our supplications are according to the will of God.

—John Owen
Of Communion With God

Via: The Essential Owen

You Just Pray

I dare not lay down too strict rules on such points as these. I leave them to your own conscience. You must be guided by circumstances.

Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed on a mountain;
Isaac prayed in the fields;
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall as he lay upon his bed;
Daniel prayed by the riverside;
Peter, the Apostle, on the housetop.

I have heard of young men praying in stables and haylofts. All that I contend for is this, you must know what it is to “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:6).

There must be stated times when you must speak to God face to face, you must every day have your times for prayer – you must pray.

—J.C. Ryle
Thoughts For Young Men

Via: Desiring God Blog

Communion with God

Communion presupposes union. By nature we are strangers, yea, enemies to God; but we are reconciled, brought nigh, and become his children, by faith in Christ Jesus. We can have no true knowledge of God, desire towards him, access unto him, or gracious communications from him, but in and through the Son of his love.

He is the medium of this inestimable privilege: for he is the way, the only way, of intercourse between heaven and earth; the sinner’s way to God, and God’s way of mercy to the sinner. If any pretend to know God, and to have communion with him, otherwise than by the knowledge of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent, and by faith in his name, it is a proof that they neither know God nor themselves.

God, if considered as abstracted from the revelation of himself in the person of Jesus, is a consuming fire; if they should look upon us without respect to his covenant of mercy established in the Mediator, we could expect nothing from him but indignation and wrath. But when his Holy Spirit enables us to receive the record which he has given of his Son, we are delivered and secured from condemnation; we are accepted in the Beloved; we are united to him in whom all the fullness of the Godhead substantially dwells, and all the riches of divine wisdom, power, and love, are treasured up.

—John Newton
The Works of John Newton: Volume 1

Via: Desiring God Blog