Our Living Guide

"The Holy Spirit is the living guide to Jesus.

It is He who says, with power, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’

It is He who convinces of sin, who wounds, and probes the wound, and lays open the evil of our nature—causing us to know that we are corrupt within and without.

But He not only thus discovers the malady—He also applies the remedy. He abases the sinner; and exalts the Savior. He gives the deep sense of sin–that the great salvation may be more appreciated and enjoyed."

       — Ruth Bryan   "The Living Guide to Jesus"

HT: Of First Importance

The Crucial Paradox

"Hence the Cross, conceived as the expiatory penal sacrifice of the Son of God, is the fulfillment of the scriptural revelation of God, in its most paradoxical incomprehensible guise. It is precisely in His revelation that the God of the Bible is incomprehensible, because in His nearness He reveals His distance, in His mercy His holiness, in His grace His judgement, in His personality His abosluteness; because in His revelation His glory and the salvation of man, His own will and His love for men, His majesty and His “homeliness” cannot be separated from one another."

— Emil Brunner, quoted by David Wells in Above All Earthly Pow'rs (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdman's Publishing, 2005), page 225

HT: Of First Importance

The Main Problem

"The main problem in the Christian life is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel, we have not ‘used’ the gospel in and on all parts of our life."

          — Tim Keller,  "The Centrality of the Gospel"

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Imperfect Preview

“The gospel creates the kind of community that is even now an imperfect preview of the kingdom’s marriage feast that awaits us. The church originates, flourishes, and fulfills its mission as that part of God’s world that has been redeemed and redefined by this strange announcement that seems foolish and powerless to the rest of the world.”

— Michael Horton  The Gospel-Driven Life  (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), page 11

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White-Hot Reveal

“What we see at the cross is the white-hot revelation of the character of God, of his love providing the price that holiness requires. The cross was his means of redeeming lost sinners and reconciling them to himself, but it was also a profound disclosure of his mercy. It is, in Paul’s words, an ‘inexpressible gift’ that leads us to wonder and worship, to praise and adore the God who has given himself to us in this way.”

— David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), page 129

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Is Your Gospel Too Small?

"A gospel which is only about the moment of conversion but does not extend to every moment of life in Christ is too small.

A gospel that gets your sins forgiven but offers no power for transformation is too small.

A gospel that isolates one of the benefits of union with Christ and ignores all the others is too small.

A gospel that must be measured by your own moral conduct, social conscience, or religious experience is too small.

A gospel that rearranges the components of your life but does not put you personally in the presence of God is too small."

— Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), page106

HT: Of First Importance

BTW- This is a VERY good book!

Holder of the Keys

"The descent of Christ could be no lower. He fathomed the fathomless, and met sin’s consequences at its last dark frontiers. He tasted death to its limits and tasted it for every man.

There is nothing in death or judgement He has not borne. In all its vast extent and utmost extremity, our Lord has answered it. There is no area in the vast abyss left unexplored. He holds the keys to death and hades.

  — Geoffrey T. Bull, The City and the Sign (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1970), page 95

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Kingdom Center

"In the center of the kingdom of God, you do not find a gargantuan palace inhabited by an unapproachable king. No, in the center of the kingdom of God is a bloody cross, on which hung a broken King, who welcomes us as we are."

— Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), page 158

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The Word In Community

"The gospel word and the gospel community are closely connected. The word creates and nourishes the community, while the community proclaims and embodies the word."

— Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church  (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 55

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Identity Change

"We don’t change so we can prove ourselves to God. We’re accepted by God so we can change. God gives us a new identity, and this new identity is the motive and basis for our change."

— Tim Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2010), 29

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The Likeness Redrawn

"You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material.

Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself. "

    — St. Athanasius,    On the Incarnation
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Radical Abandonment

"If Jesus is who he says he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus."

— David Platt, Radical (Colorado Springs, Co.: Multnomah Books, 2010), page 3

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Spring Break

“For just as spring break is a taste of summer time in the midst of the semester, so also the kingdom of God is present in the midst of history, as we taste of its blessings now, and look forward to the summer time of God’s kingdom when Christ returns, the Holy City the New Jerusalem descends, and the whole creation is restored in new heavens and the new earth. Amen, come Lord Jesus.”

      — David Naugle   "The Gospel of the Kingdom of God"

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To Good, But True!

"Please understand that when God speaks in ways that are completely contrary to our expectations, then we have encountered something genuine. No one could invent a god who, in response to rebellion, is so generous that he gives his entire kingdom. Since this is too good to be true, it must be true. This, indeed, must be the Holy One."

— Ed Welch  Running Scared  (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), page 68

Deepest Law of Acceptance

"In the cross God demonstrates the deepest law of acceptance. For to be convinced that I have been accepted, I must be convinced that I have been accepted at my worst. This is the greatest gift an intimate relationship can offer — to know that we have been accepted and forgiven in the full knowledge of who we are, an even greater knowledge than we have about ourselves. This is what the cross offers."

— Rebecca Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons  San Francisco, Ca.: Harper & Row, 1989), page 105

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Liberated From Self

"Not self-conscious nor self-confident, a Christian is liberated to be self-forgetful."

— Tim Keller, Ministries of Mercy (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1989), page 64

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Joyful Confession

"If you are truly trusting in Christ, you can’t confess a sin for which God has not provided forgiveness in Jesus.

Indeed, if you work at the discipline of confessing your sin, it should not lead to despair at all, but rather to rejoicing over the extent of God’s love to you in Christ. "

— Mark Dever and Michael Lawrence, It Is Well: Expositions on Substitutionary Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), page 42

Hearts More Deeply Gripped By Reality

"At the root of all our disobedience are particular ways in which we continue to seek control of our lives through systems of works-righteousness.

The way to progress as a Christian is to continually repent and uproot these systems the same way we become Christians, namely by the vivid depiction (and re-depiction) of Christ’s saving work for us, and the abandoning of self-trusting efforts to complete ourselves.

We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ-crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what he did and who we are in him,"

— Tim Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (New York, NY: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), page 61

HT: Of First Importance

Grace and Glory

"One thing is past all question; we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from Him much grace."

— Charles Spurgeon,  An All-Around Ministry

HT: Justin Taylor, Of First Importance

He is Everything

"When you put your trust in Christ, the overpowering attraction of the world is broken. You are a corpse to the world, and the world is a corpse to you. Or to put it positively, you are a ‘new creation’ (Galatians 6:15). The old you is dead. A new you is alive — the you of faith in Christ. And what marks this faith is that it treasures Christ above everything in the world. The power of the world to woo your love away is dead.

Being dead to the world means that every legitimate pleasure in the world becomes a blood-bought evidence of Christ’s love and an occasion of boasting in the cross. When our hearts run back along the beam of blessing to the source in the cross, then the worldliness of the blessing is dead, and Christ crucified is everything."

— John Piper, Fifty Reason Why Jesus Came to Die,  Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004 Page 85


HT: Of First Importance