These then are the marks of the ideal Church – love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.
The gospel creates the church, which spreads the gospel, which creates more churches, which in turn spread the gospel further ad infinitum.
We are to be strong in faith, and soft in love.
If Christ seldom makes offers without demands, He also seldom makes demands without offers. He offers His strength to enable us to meet His demands.
God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.
There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center.
The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ’s achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.
The overriding reason why we should take other people’s cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously.
Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.
Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace.
Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership.
God continues to speak through what He has spoken.
God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.
Good conduct arises out of good doctrine.
Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.
The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.
The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.
If we love our neighbor we shall without doubt tell him the good news of Jesus. But equally if we truly love our neighbor we shall not stop there.
So close was Christ’s connection with God that he equated a man’s attitude to himself with the man’s attitude to God.
Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity – Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself.
Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.