John Stott: A God Who Suffers

"We have to learn to climb the hill called Calvary, and from that vantage-ground survey all life's tragedies. The cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it supplies the essential perspective from which to look at it …

Sometimes we picture [God] lounging, perhaps dozing, in some celestial deck-chair, while the hungry millions starve to death … . It is this terrible caricature of God which the cross smashes to smithereens."

Justin Holcomb: Grace is the Opposite of Karma

“Grace” is the most important concept in the Bible, in Christianity, and in the world. The shorthand for grace is mercy, not merit.

Grace is getting what you don’t deserve and not getting what you do deserve. Grace is the opposite of karma. Grace is the love of God shown to the unlovely, the peace of God given to the restless, the unmerited favor of God. Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving. Grace is unconditional love toward a person who does not deserve it. Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues. Grace is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against him. Grace is one-way love."

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R.C. Sproul: Grace is for Beggars

"Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God's grace and God's grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. 

Grace is for other people - for beggars. We don't want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there."

Don Carson: A Savior Who Suffered

"Frequently it is when we are crushed and devastated that the cross speaks most powerfully to us. The wounds of Christ then become Christ's credentials. The world mocks, but we are assured of God's love by Christ's wounds."

Jerry Bridges: Salvation and Sanctification by Grace

“We could not take one step in the pursuit of holiness if God in His grace had not first delivered us from the dominion of sin and brought us into union with His risen Son. Salvation is by grace and sanctification is by grace.”

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Grace on Twitter (Part 2)

"Love for Jesus happens, not when you tell people how much they need to love Jesus, but when you tell people how much Jesus loves them." - Tullian Tchividjian

"Isn't it amazing that no matter how you performed yesterday, if you're God's child you awoke today to new mercies." - Paul David Tripp

"The world is already drowning in its efforts at life; it does not need lifeguards who swim to it carrying the barbells of their own... efforts." - Robert Farrar Capon

"No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, & never preach again until you have something worth preaching" C.H. Spurgeon via Matthew Sims

"Christian growth is forgetting about yourself." - Gerhard Forde

"He spent 33 years being righteous for you, fulfilling the Law in your place. Why on earth would you think his love for you depends on you?" - Elyse Fitzpatrick

Paul Zahl: Justification by Works = The Opposite of Grace

"If I can do enough of the right things, I will have established my worth. Identity is the sum of my achievements. Hence, if I can satisfy the boss, meet the needs of my spouse and children, and still do justice to my inner aspirations, then I will have proven my worth. 

There are infinite ways to prove our worth along these lines. The basic equation is this: I am what I do. It is a religious position in life because it tries to answer in practical terms the question, Who am I and what is my niche in the universe? 

On this reading, my niche is in proportion to my deeds. In Christian theology, such a position is called justification by works. It assumes that my worth is measured by my performance. Conversely, it conceals, thinly, a dark and ghastly fear: If I do not perform, I will be judged unworthy. To myself I will cease to exist." 

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John Stott: A Savior Who Suffers

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. 

But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. 

There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 

From The Cross of Christ (one of the most beautiful books I have ever read).

John Newton: Only the Gospel...

“The Gospel removes difficulties insuperable to human power. It causes the blind to see, the deaf to hear; it softens the heart of stone and raises the dead in trespasses and sins to a life of righteousness. No force but that of the Gospel is sufficient to remove the mountainous load of guilt from an awakened conscience, to calm the violence of tumultuous passions, to raise an earthly soul from groveling in the mire of sensuality or greed, to a spiritual and divine life, a life of communion with God.”

“No system but the Gospel can communicate motives, encouragements, and prospects, sufficient to withstand and counteract all the snares and temptations with which the spirit of this world, by its frowns or its smiles, will endeavor either to intimidate or to bribe us from the path of duty. But the Gospel, rightly understood and cordially embraced, will inspire the slothful with energy and the fearful with courage. It will make the miser generous, melt the churl [rude person] into kindness, tame the raging tiger in the breast, and, in a word, expand the narrow selfish heart and fill it with a spirit of love to God, a cheerful and unreserved obedience to his will, and benevolence to mankind.”

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Ichabod Spencer: The Aim of Gospel Ministry

"To cut off the sinner from all reliance upon himself, his merits and his powers; and throw him, naked and helpless, into the hands of the Holy Spirit to lead him to Christ in faith; should be the one great aim of the ministry."

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O Love of God

Christian, God loves you and he has shown that love to you in Christ.
On the cross, we see selfless love on full display.

I will admit that we don’t always believe that he loves us. 

We are prone to wander from this amazing truth. 

We are so quick to forget the reality of his love for us, but God loves us nonetheless.

If you are a believer, you can rest knowing that God loves you dearly. 
He loves you as you are, not as you will be; and nothing can ever separate you from that love.

St. Paul says it best: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

God loves you. When you don’t feel that love - he loves you.

When you mess up - he loves you.

When you have your private devotions (and then get arrogant about it) - he loves you.

When your heart is burning for God - he loves you.

When your heart is far from God and you are in the midst of spiritual famine - he loves you.

When you win - he loves you.

When you lose - he loves you.

This is incredible news! The everlasting Creator of all things, the omnipotent, omniscient God of the universe loves you and I on a personal level.

He loves you despite your lust, your pride, your hubris, your Phariseeism, your lack of devotion, your greed, and your anger.

He simply loves you because of who he is, not who you are.

He loves you because of what he has done, not what you do.

It is an eternal love. It is a one-way love. It is a love without conditions.

In Christ, God loves you.

Believe it!

Tullian Tchividjian: Identity

"The law is God’s first word, but thank God it’s not the last.  The last word is the one that comes straight from the mouth of Jesus himself, when he says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

If you’re a Christian, here’s the good news: Who you really are has nothing to do with you — how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior (good or bad), your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ’s accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours."

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J. I. Packer: Weakness is the Way

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. - 2 Cor. 12:9

Portrait

"The Bible is the portrait of Jesus Christ." - John Stott

Matt Chandler: Forgiveness

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Elyse Fitzpatrick: He is Preeminent

“We neglect the glorious gospel when we fail to recognize his preeminence. How frequently we forget that everything is for him and about him. We forget that he is to be first, in our honor and in our worship. 

Whenever the gospel slips from our conscious thought, our religion becomes all about our performance, and then we think everything that happens or will ever happen is about us. 

When I forget the incarnation, sinless life, death, resurrection, and ascension, I quickly believe that I'm supposed to be the unrivaled supreme, and matchless one. 

It's at this point that I'm particularly in need of an intravenous dose of gospel truth. He is preeminent.” 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Christianity or Morality?

“Christianity is confused with morality.  It has been very common in this country in all ranks of society.  It is what is sometimes called ‘public school religion,’ which was started by Dr Thomas Arnold of Rugby.  His idea of Christianity was that ‘it is morality touched with emotion,’ nothing more!  The Christian is the perfect little gentleman, the man who does not do certain things!

But that is not Christianity; that is not the kingdom of God.  You can do that yourself.  Yet that is what Dr Arnold taught; it is nothing but ethics and morality, a negative, cold, miserable religion, something that was always prohibiting everything and never giving anything at all.

Now it is a part of the preaching of the gospel to say things like that.  I do not defend the Victorians; I think they did great harm to the kingdom of God.  They really did bring it down, most of them, to the level of morality and respectability and they made their Sunday a cheerless joyless day. . . .

So, according to them, Christianity is that which makes men and women miserable, which makes them feel that they are always failures.  They try to be better, and they cannot succeed, but they must go on trying because it is the only way to get into the kingdom of God, to get into heaven.  It is by your life and your own activities that you do it; so you go on trying and trying and, in the words of Milton, you ‘scorn delights and live laborious days,’ ever trying but never succeeding.”

The Kingdom of God (Wheaton, 1992), pages 73-74.

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C. S. Lewis: Grace in Marriage

"We must go back to our Bibles. The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the church–read on–and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25).

This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is–in her own mere nature–least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence.

As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labors to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other) never despairs."

–C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves,  [via]

Jesus Loves Barabbas

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John Stott: This is Love

“Only one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive, has ever been performed in the history of the world, namely the self-giving of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners. 

That is why, if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.”

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A Tale of Two Cups (Good Friday Message)

Here is a brief (8 minute) message that I gave last week on Good Friday. 

Richard Sibbes: Victory Through Resurrection

“Christ hath conquered all our spiritual enemies; and his resurrection is an evidence of his conquest. For if he had not conquered he could not have risen; and therefore when he rose again he bade his disciples not to fear (Mat. 28:10).

Fear not death, for I have overcome death; and witnessed the same by my resurrection. Fear not sin, for I have satisfied for it. Fear not the devil: I by my resurrection have bruised his head; nor the world, for I have overcome it.

He hath trode upon the necks of all our spiritual enemies, and conquered them all. Fear not, for if once you be risen with Christ, you are begotten to a lively hope.”

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