The Spirit is not given to make Bible study needless, but to make it effective.
The unceasing activity of the Creator whereby, in overflowing bounty and goodwill, He upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for His own glory.
Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow.
Scripture is the most up-to-date and relevant reading that ever comes my way.
Our best works are shot through with sin and contain something for which we need to be forgiven.
The gospel tells that our Judge has become our Savior.
Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by Biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions.
Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.
Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.
God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep.
The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.
The incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.
Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.
Calvary not merely made possible the salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they would be brought to faith and their salvation made actual.
There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire.
When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping.
Were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all.
We are not fit for a place in God’s family; the idea of his loving and exalting us sinners as he loves and has exalted the Lord Jesus sounds ludicrous and wild – yet that, and nothing less than that, is what our adoption means.