"The man who has not got eternal life does not know God, he is outside the life of God; and that means that he is dead." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The doctrine of regeneration is absolutely foundational... This is a vital fact about the Christian. Every born again person knows it... You cannot have life without knowing it." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The man who is trying to be a Christian is trying to hold on to something. The man who is a Christian feels that he is being held by something. It has been put to him, it is there; it may even seem to be in spite of him, but it is there. It is not what he is doing that matters to him; it is what has been done to him, it is what he has become, it is the awareness of this power within him -- life. Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The world's good, moral people are admired so much today; and yet the Apostle's words describe exactly where they stand. They are as much 'after the flesh' and they as much 'mind the things of the flesh' as does the man who falls into drunkenness or gives rein to his passions and lusts. It is purely a difference of degree... The only difference between the obvious so-called 'sinner' and the highly cultured good moral man is purely a social difference, a superficial one." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We can do nothing, it is all of God... If God had not quickened us we should still be dead. A dead man cannot give himself life. God quickened us, and because God has put new life into us we are alive in Christ Jesus, and in the realm of the Spirit." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"There are many who are interested in 'religion' who are actually antagonistic to the things of the Spirit... You may be very interested in religious organizations, in religious activities, in denominations, in activities of your particular church, and so on, but it may have nothing to do with minding the things of the Spirit." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"You can be a member of a church and hotly resent the things of the Spirit. You may be very interested in religious organizations, in religious activities, in denominations, in activities of your particular church, and so on, but it may have nothing to do with minding the things of the Spirit. Indeed, as I say, it can be the greatest enemy of such things." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"It is possible for a man with his natural mind to grasp a theological system in an intellectual way only. That may be of no spiritual value to him at all; it can even be the cause of his damnation." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The things of the Spirit are the things to which the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, always draws attention... They are completely hidden from the world. The man who is after the flesh knows nothing about them... These things are hidden mysteries, hidden wisdom, altogether outside him... It means something that is inaccessible to the natural mind, but which God in His grace has revealed to the Christian by the Spirit." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The trouble with modern men is not that they do not understand the terminology of the Authorized Version of the Bible, it is that they are spiritually dead." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We alone, as Christians, understand what is wrong with the world. We see powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world, behind the visible and seen phenomena, and we see perplexed politicians trying to deal with the problems, and failing. We know they must fail because they do not see what is at the back of it all. We see it as the conflict between heaven and hell." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The doctrine of regeneration is absolutely foundational. It is because so many do not realize this that they have a wrong view of evangelism, and become interested overmuch in decisions." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The ultimate test, that by which I know whether I am a Christian or not, lies here: 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.' If any man has the Spirit of Christ, he is His. Do I have the Spirit of Christ? Does the Spirit of Christ dwell in me? How can I know? There is a much deeper test than the test of profession... The Apostle's teaching does not mean 'catching the spirit of Christ'; it does not mean living what is called the 'Christ-like' life. It means that the Spirit of Christ dwells in you, and the Spirit of Christ only dwells in those who no longer belong to the flesh and the world, but who have been regenerated by the Spirit, and who, because of re-birth, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The Christian man has been born again, he has been given a new life and a new nature and has become a child of God; he has been adopted into a new kingdom... He has proof of this because God has put His Spirit - His own Spirit - within him; the 'Spirit of Christ', the 'Spirit of God', the 'Holy Spirit'." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"You cannot be a Christian without having received the Holy Spirit. There is no question about that; it is impossible, it is inconceivable." Romans - Assurance |
"Are you troubled about the state of the world, and perplexed that it should be as it is? You should not be, if you are a Christian." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The gift of God, which we have already received, is eternal life. If you are a Christian you have it now; you are not waiting for it." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"There is no second death for the man who has been regenerated." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"As regards my spirit I am saved, as saved as I ever shall be. I have been quickened with Christ, I have been raised with him, I am seated in the heavenly places in Christ, my spirit at this moment is alive in Christ Jesus." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The Christian must abstain from sin. It is as simple and direct as that... You have no right to say, 'I am weak, I cannot, and temptation is very powerful.' The answer of the New Testament is, Stop doing it!" Romans - The Sons Of God |
"Are you still looking to the statesmen and others to solve all problems and to put the world right? Do you still believe that some kind of Utopia is going to come? If you do, you can take it as certain that you are not being led by the Spirit, that you are not a child of God." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We are aware that we have an antagonist, an adversary, who often persuades people that they have the Spirit of adoption when that is not true of them." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"There is the very real danger that many who are assumed to be Christians, and who themselves assume that they are Christians, are not really Christians at all. That is why the Apostle urges the Corinthians and others to examine themselves, to prove their own selves, to make sure that they are in the faith." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We should thank God for every time that we are disturbed. We should thank God when we are ever forced to examine ourselves, to make sure whether we are in the faith or not. There is no greater danger to our highest interests than this kind of easy believism which is really not the work of the Holy Spirit at all." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"It is not true faith unless an element of feeling is involved. If there is no such element it may be nothing but intellectual assent, nothing but a kind of historical faith. There is nothing to stop anyone saying, 'I believe that; I believe that evidence.' That does not make him a Christian." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"In every single instance that is given in the New Testament of people receiving this gift of the Holy Spirit, it is always accompanied by much and strong feeling, and by the knowledge that they have received it." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The answer of the New Testament is that when the Holy Spirit came upon the early Christians they knew it." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"A certain teaching tells us to 'take it by faith' and not to worry about feelings. 'You may feel nothing at all,' it says, 'but if you believe this Word and its teaching you can take the Holy Spirit by faith irrespective of any feeling.' The whole of the New Testament teaches the opposite. So does the subsequent history of the Christian Church." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"You cannot be baptized or filled with the Spirit without knowing it. It is the greatest experience one can ever know. The teaching that assures us that we may feel nothing at all runs entirely contrary not only to the teaching of the Scripture but to the recorded experiences of countless Christians throughout the centuries." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"Any teaching which prevents us from examining and searching ourselves, testing and proving ourselves, condemning our own superficiality, and from seeking for something bigger and deeper, is of necessity condemned. And such is the invariable effect of the teaching which tells us to 'take it by faith and not to worry about our feelings,' and to thank God for it, because we have taken it, and assume that all is well." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"The whole object of the sealing of the Spirit is to give us certainty about our inheritance. It is an earnest, a foretaste, of good things to come. It is essentially experimental... though the intensity or the degree may vary considerably, the experience itself is always unmistakable." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"But - and thank God for this - once you have had it [the sealing of the Spirit], the memory of it will remain with you as long as you live; you will look back to it as the greatest joy in your life." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"Why is it that some have believed? It is because the Spirit has sanctified them, has set them apart, has called them out. It is the call of the Spirit; it is the work of the Spirit in conviction, and calling out, and giving power to believe." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We should never be content with anything less than what is described as possible to the Christian in the New Testament." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"We must with the whole of our being give diligence to make our calling and election sure, and there is no better way of doing so than by receiving this testimony of the Spirit with our spirits that we are the children of God." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"Faith does not lay hold on the blessing itself, it lays hold on the One Who gives the blessing, and pleads with Him." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"But the highest assurance of all results from the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God... This is essentially experimental, experiential; and so to tell people that they can take this, of all blessings, by faith and not to worry about their feelings, is sheer confusion of thought and a denial of the teaching of the Scriptures about the highest and the greatest experience possible to a human being." Romans - The Sons Of God |
"Apart from justification, apart from that which has been done for us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no peace between God and man." Romans - Assurance |
"Nothing is more wonderful than to know that God loves you; and no man can truly know that God loves him except in Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Romans - Assurance |
"Every doctrine is dangerous, and can be - and has been - abused." Romans - Assurance |
"The man who is a true Christian is a man who has had a glimpse of Hell, and who knows that there is only one reason for the fact that he is not bound for it." Romans - Assurance |
"The final perseverance of the saints is guaranteed by their relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans - Assurance |
"The Christian is a man who should have assurance; it is the business of every Christian to have assurance... The Roman Catholic Church not only does not teach the doctrine of Assurance of Salvation, it preaches and teaches against it. Why? The explanation is quite simple. As long as you are uncertain, you are dependent upon the Church, you are dependent upon the priests. If you have assurance of salvation you do not need a priest, you do not need the help of the Virgin Mary, or the works of supererogation of the saints; you go directly to God through Christ. Assurance of salvation militates against the whole policy and activity of that Church with its teaching about purgatory and need of indulgences and so on; so they denounce that doctrine. That is, of course, because they put their own tradition before the Scripture, indeed because they here deny the plain teaching of the Scripture. They are thoroughly unscriptural and they can only establish their whole system, and keep it going, in defiance of the Scriptures." Romans - Assurance |
"Over and above your intelligent apprehension of it, over and above your intelligent and intellectual deduction of it, there is a direct and immediate assurance given by the Holy Ghost who sheds abroad the love of God in your heart. You are overwhelmed by it, it is poured out in your heart, and there is no uncertainty any more... We do not take it by faith; we know; we have tasted it, we have felt it... It is a sensibile something; it is experimental; it affects the emotions and the feelings; it is direct and immediate, not indirect and mediate. There is surely nothing more precious in the whole of Scripture, and yet how little we hear about it today. It seems to have dropped out of evangelical teaching. It is because of that psychological teaching about taking it by faith and not worrying about your feelings." Romans - Assurance |
"No man has ever had the love of God shed abroad in his heart without knowing it; and it always leads to the shout!" Romans - Assurance |
"Our Lord's death on the Cross is the supreme manifestation of the love of God." Romans - Assurance |
"Man is totally incapable, he is without any strength at all in the matter of his salvation... Man as he is born into this world is totally unable to please God. His righteousness is but as filthy rags. Man does not like to be told that, and he does not believe it." Romans - Assurance |
"Ultimately it is only the man who feels quite hopeless about himself who really trusts God." Romans - Assurance |
"The universality of sin is only truly explained by the doctrine of the Fall... It is sin that has brought in death. Sin is the cause of the infliction of death. Death is penal; it came in as the punishment of sin; it was not there before." Romans - Assurance |
"If you say to me, 'Is it fair that the sin of Adam should be imputed to me?' I will reply by asking, 'Is it fair that the righteousness of Christ should be imputed to you?'" Romans - Assurance |
"There is no blessing that ever comes to man from God without coming through the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans - Assurance |
"Do we delight to talk about free grace and free gift? Pharisees never do so because they realize that these terms make them out to be paupers as all others. They like to feel that they have earned salvation or at least that they have made a contribution towards it." Romans - Assurance |
"He who as Son of God had made the Law with his Father put Himself under it in order to redeem us." Romans - Assurance |
"There is no greater sinner in the universe than the man who has never seen his need of the blood of Christ. There is no sin greater than that - murder and adultery and fornication are nothing in comparison with it." Romans - Assurance |
"There has been no such thing as freedom since Adam fell. Adam was free. Not a single child of Adam has ever been free... Man's will has been bound ever since the fall of Adam. By nature man is not free to choose God." Romans - Assurance |
"No Christian should be surprised at the state of the world today; he should expect it." Romans - Assurance |
"Grace is in no sense contingent upon or dependent upon what man does." Romans - Assurance |
"No man is saved unless he is predestinated and elected. This is not my statement; it is Paul who says it. There is nothing accidental about salvation." Romans - Assurance |
"Not only is grace irrestible, it must be irrestible. For if grace were not irrestible no one would ever have been saved... The idea that grace presents itself to us, but that the final choice remains with us as to whether we are going to take advantage of it or not, is not only a contradition of the verse we are considering, it is a contradiction of the entire biblical teaching concerning the way of salvation." Romans - Assurance |
"The restraining power of grace is manifested in God's people even before their conversion. They are not allowed to sin to such a degree that they put themselves outside the scope of salvation. They are never allowed to blaspheme against the Holy Ghost." Romans - Assurance |
"The teaching of the New Testament Epistles is directed only and solely to Christians, to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is utterly wrong and heretical to take the teaching of any New Testament Epistle and apply it to the world in general." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Church is not an institution, she is primarily a gathering, a meeting of saints." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"We must learn to shed once and for ever the false dichotomy which Roman Catholicism has introduced at this point. It picks out certain people and calls them saints... But that is wrong and unscriptural. Every Christian is a saint; you cannot be a Christian without being a saint... We have accepted the false idea that only certain Christians are saints, we have not realized that every Christian is meant to be separate from the world." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"However much we may delude ourselves, there is no such thing as a theoretical Christian. It is possible to hold the doctrine of the faith in the lecture room, to give an intellectual assent to these things, but that does not make us Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"You cannot, you must not try to divide Christ. It is a false doctrine which says that you can be justified without being sanctified... Holiness is a characteristic of every Christian, and if we are not holy, our profession of Christ is valueless." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Man was never meant to be a god, but he is for ever trying to deify himself." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"It is because man has an inadequate conception of sin that he has an inadequate conception of the grace of God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Anything which claims to be Christianity without having Christ at the beginning and the centre and the end is a denial of Christianity, call it what you will." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"He is Jehovah, but He is also Jesus - the God-man... He is the Lord Jehovah become Jesus, taking upon Himself our nature, taking upon Himself our problems, and even our frailties, and eventually our sin." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Christian position is always and inevitably Trinitarian. Christian worship must be Trinitarian if it is true worship." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"There is no such thing as a Christianity which is not experimental." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Any attempt to equate the teaching of the New Testament with any one of the political parties, or any other party, is to do violence to the teaching of Christ... The greatest tragedy in the world is that the Church, instead of preaching her own message, is preaching an earthly, human, carnal message. Has the Church nothing better to preach than an appeal to statesmen to solve problems? That is really a denial of the Christian faith, and reveals an abysmal ignorance of the heavenly places." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Christian, and he alone, sees God's plan and purpose." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The teaching is that those who enjoy these spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ do so because they have been chosen by God to do so... Such is the Apostle's categorical statement." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"There are many Christian people today, it seems to me, who claim to be believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures but who nevertheless quite deliberately avoid large portions of Scripture simply because they are difficult. But if you believe that the whole of Scripture is the Word of God, such an attitude is sinful; it is our business to face the Scriptures." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Not only does the Bible not argue; it reprimands us for our arrogance in bringing our difficulties and pitting them against what God has revealed." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"If we hold that we become regenerate because we have already believed, then we have to show why we need to be regenerated at all... The doctrine of regeneration has a great deal to say about election and this doctrine of divine choice... The natural man hates this doctrine more than any other." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"People often argue that this doctrine of divine election and choice leaves no place for evangelism, for preaching the gospel, for urging people to repent and to believe, and for the use of arguments and persuasions in doing so. But there is no contradiction here any more than there is in saying that since it is God that gives us the crops of corn in the autumn, therefore the farmer need not plough and harrow and sow; the answer to which is that God has ordained both. God has chosen to call out His people by means of evangelism and the preaching of the Word. He ordains the means as well as the end." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Bible is a whole, and we have no hope of understanding the New Testament gospel unless we accept the first chapters of the Book of Genesis with their account of the Fall of man into sin." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"God's desire for us that we be holy comes before His desire for our happiness or anything else." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"You cannot be justified before God and decide later on to be sanctified." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The man who is not being chastened is a bastard; he is not a child of God... God, who has chosen you to holiness, will make you holy; and if the preaching of the gospel does not do so, God has other means and methods... Antinomiansim is nonsense. If you are chosen of God unto holiness and to be without blemish, He will bring you to that condition; and if you defy Him, well then, terrible things may happen to you." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Theological and spiritual understanding are clearly as important in the work of translation as linguistic proficiency, and arguably they are more important." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The world knows nothing about true honour and riches... The glory God gives is an unseen glory, but it is a real glory because it is given by Him." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"I do not hesitate to assert that there is no teaching which is finally so inimical to our souls and their salvation as this teaching about the universal Fatherhood of God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Salvation is not according to man's desire or request. Man by nature, and in sin, does not desire salvation. Salvation is not a response on God's part to anything in man; it is entirely from God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"In our redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ we see the glory of God at is greatest height." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"There is only one answer to the question as to why Christ had to die - the holiness of God!" Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Our Lord did not come to tell us what we have to do in order to save ourselves; He came to save us... The Christian doctrine of salvation and redemption is this - that Christ Himself is the salvation." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Nowhere is sin so brought home to us as at the Cross of Christ and by the blood of Christ. Before we are forgiven we must realize something of the enormity of sin, and it is at the Cross that we do so. We see it as something so terrible, so horrible, such an affront to God, that it necessitates the Cross. The Cross therefore condemns us before it sets us free. This is why it is an offence to the natural man... Sin is so terrible, so foul, and so vile that nothing could deal with it but the blood of Christ." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Make sure that you know something of the power of the Holy Spirit working in you." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven is a mystery; and He makes it known to disciples only... It is a mystery in the the sense that man with his unaided, fallen mind and intellect can never discover and arrive at... The entire New Testament teaching turns upon this, that believers in Christ have entered into the secret, have had the mystery revealed to them. SAVING TRUTH is no longer a mystery to the Christian, it is only a mystery to the non-Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Men come to the New Testament with all their ability and understanding and training but they do not see the truth. They can never do so without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, and His operation upon us, are absolutely essential before we can receive the truth and begin to understand it... Whatever a man may be, and however great his natural ability may be, if he is not enlightened by the Holy Spirit he will not and cannot understand the Scriptures. The truth which they reveal is spiritually discerned." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"To me the greatest tragedy of all at the present time is that so many Christian leaders, when they try to deal with this world situation, concentrate on what they think statesmen should do to resolve the recurring crises and to avert certain dangers... There are many who believe that it is possible to Christianize the world, and that the main business of preaching is to try to persuade people to apply Christian teaching to the affairs of the world. But to expect Christian behaviour from people who are not Christian betokens a colossal ignorance of sin and its ways as they are revealed in the Bible. That is not the message that is revealed here and indeed anywhere in the Bible." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Christ is central, Christ is essential, and anything which calls itself Christianity which does not go on repeating the blessed Name is ultimately a denial of Christianity." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"In spite of the arguments based upon a philosophic ideal of the love of God, the Scripture draws the ultimate distinction between eternal salvation and eternal destruction." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"It is particularly interesting to observe that God's way in Christ is so very different from that which frequently passes as Christianity at the present time, with all its emphasis on the political and social application of the gospel." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"All troubles in the world, between nations, between individuals, stem from a failure at some point in the realm of relationships... But this does not mean, as so many teach, that what is needed is the application of the teaching of Christ to modern problems, and that the Church's business is to tell people how to behave in a Christian manner and to apply Christian principles. That is not the teaching of Paul. There is no greater heresy, in a sense, than to expect Christian conduct from people who are not Christians." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Church is largely wasting her time in talking politics, and in imagining that, if you give people the Christian ethic and urge them to practise it, the problems of the world will be solved. It cannot be done: regeneration is essential." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The kingdom of God and of His Christ is coming; and nothing can stop it. And we who are in Christ are certain to be there... Men and women who believe this truth, and who know that it is true of themselves, are not over-interested in this world and what happens in it." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"In every view of salvation the place given in it to the glory of God provides the ultimate test. The proof that it is truly scriptural is that it gives ALL the glory to God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"A man cannot be in the kingdom of God unless he is a child of God; and he cannot be a child of God without the Spirit... It is God's action, in which He bears witness that we are His children, that He is our Father, and that we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. It is God's authentication of the fact that we really belong to Him." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The teaching of the Scripture is that the moment a man is born again his sanctification has and must have started. The process of making him holy and separating him unto God has already begun. There is no greater error than to teach that you can receive your justification by faith and then later on you receive your sanctification by faith. Sanctification is not an experience, not a gift to be received: it is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart which starts from the moment of regeneration." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"What our Lord promised happened at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost as we are told in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. Yet in spite of the account of the event given there I am asked to believe that it is non-experimental, that it did not lead to any feelings or to anything whatsoever in the sphere of consciousness... We are so afraid of excesses, we are so afraid of being labelled in a certain way, that we claim the baptism of the Spirit to be something unconscious, non-experimental, a happening that does not affect a man's feelings. Such an argument is utterly unscriptural." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"There is nothing in contemporary Christianity which is so dangerous and so unscriptural as the the teaching that, with regard to each and every blessing in the Christian life, all that we have to do is to take it by faith and not worry about feelings... The teaching of take it by faith is responsible, I believe, for much of the present undesirable state of the Christian Church." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Let us be clear in our minds, then, that we do not receive this blessing in that way and apart from feelings; when we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God we shall know it. It is not to be accepted by faith apart from feelings... When God seals you with the Spirit you will know it. You will not have to take it by faith irrespective of your feelings and your condition... You will not have to persuade yourself; the persuasion will be done by the Holy Ghost." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"When we have this seal of the Spirit we know it, and others know it. It is the highest, the greatest experience which a Christian can have in this world." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The sealing with the Spirit, or the baptism with the Spirit, is clearly experimental and experiential." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The Holy Spirit within us gives us what we as Christians should be enjoying - a foretaste of heaven." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"In this expression - Lord Jesus - we have the mystery of godliness, namely, that God was manifest in the flesh, together with all that followed the birth at Bethelem." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The first commandment to the Christian is not that we should love one another but that we should believe in the Lord Jesus. We are told about the early disciples that they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. Today the fellowship is put first, and the doctrine is almost regarded as a hindrance and an obstacle. For this reason the church is in her present perilous condition. She has departed from the Apostolic order - faith in the Lord Jesus first, doctrine first; and then love towards all saints." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Man claims that he wants knowledge. To that demand the Bible says: If you want knowledge, if you want wisdom, if you want true understanding, there is only one place in which you can find it - here it is!" Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The extent of man's fall is so great and extensive that no man by the exercise of his own will or understanding can ever save himself or become a Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"God, through the gospel and by the Holy Spirit, sends out this general call to the whole world, but He calls certain people in particular, and no man is a Christian unless he is called in this special sense... They are people in whom the Word of God has been made effective; it has come to them in power, it has come as a command which they find to be irrestible, and they readily respond to it with the whole of their being." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Roman Catholics dislike the doctrine of assurance of salvation, and denounce it. They do not want us to have personal certainity; our assurance must lie in the Church to which we commit ourselves... But the essence of Protestantism, as Martin Luther discovered to his great and eternal joy, is that the individual Christian may know his salvation is certain; he may defy all devils and hell and Satan himself; the Christian knows the Christ whom he has believed; his hope is sure; his calling and election are sure." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"One of the greatest and most practical grounds of assurance is the doctrine of the new birth, or of regeneration. If I am born of God, of the Spirit, I cannot fall away; it is impossible." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"No man was more concerned about decent, proper living in this world than John Calvin. The story of that man and how he reformed the life of Geneva, has inspired many others who have borrowed his ideas, and this has been the greatest motive power in the history of democracy." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The only man who really respects life in this world is the man who knows that this world is only the antechamber to the next world." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Do you know that you are a saint? Are you certain that you are one of God's people? Make certain of it." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"A Christian is the result of the operation of God, nothing less, nothing else. No man can make himself a Christian; God alone makes Christians... A Christian is one who has been created anew; and there is only One who can create, namely, God. It takes the power of God to make a Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The mightiest foes, the devil, death, and hell have already been vanquished, and the resurrection of Christ is the proof of it." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Our very believing is the result of the power of God... There is a strong tendency to talk in a superficial manner about believing, as if it were an easy thing which any man can do if he feels disposed to it. How lightly and glibly many talk about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, or about believing the gospel... There is much emphasis on believing and decision; and it is suggested that anyone who wants to become a Christian can easily accomplish it... There are two main explanations of this superficial, indeed false, view of believing. The first is that it is due to an appalling failure on our part to realize the consequences of sin and the Fall of man... The second is our failure to realize what is involved in the new birth, or regeneration; we fail to realize the greatness of the change that is described in those terms, and what is included in them, and why regeneration is ever necessary. These are the cause of all glib use of the word believe, and the tendency to to say that the natural man is able to believe." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"There is a defect even in man's will. Sin has affected the whole of man. Our failure to appreciate the power of God in our very act of believing is due to our failure to realize the devastating effect of the Fall. It marred and defaced God's image in us, with the inevitable consequences that our minds and wills became defiled." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"When we come to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, do we realize that it was the greatest manifestation of the energy of the strength of God's might that the world has ever known?... From the moment God puts His hand upon a man and brings him to the new birth and new life, He continues to exert this power in him... If we are to understand this power which is working in us we must see it as it is illustrated in what God has done in Christ, in the power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. What a display of power that was!" Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"The line between the Church and the world is almost invisible, and the people of God no longer stand out in their uniqueness as they once did." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"We recognize no human being as the Head of the Church; Christ alone is the King and the Head of the Church." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose |
"Christianity is not a movement for world reform. The Bible is quite explicit about this." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The Bible has no comfort whatsoever to give to people who are not Christians - none at all; indeed the exact opposite. The Bible has nothing to say to such people except to warn them to flee from the wrath to come. It tells them that the sufferings of this present hour are not worthy to be compared with the sufferings they are going to endure, that these are but a foretaste of what is coming to them, that the account of the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all similar calamities are but faint pictures of the suffering that is going to come to those who do not belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no comfort here for an unbeliever - none at all." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"This present world is passing, transient, temporary. The world to come is the real, the permanent world. That is the one that has substance and which will endure for ever. And it is coming for certain: nothing can stop it." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Man is in a totally unsatisfactory position when he imagines that he can hold on to the doctrines of the Christian Faith and yet reject the factual, the historical element." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The Apostle says that you should know that you were saved, and you should have absolute certainty and assurance concerning it... We should know the witness of the Spirit with our spirit that we ARE - not that we are HOPING to be - but that we ARE the children of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Hope is the measure of true Christianity, which is through and through other-worldly. Pseudo-Christianity always looks chiefly at this world. Popular Christianity is entirely this-worldly and is not interested in the other world. But true Christianity has its eye mainly on the world which is to come... This is not our world. I am a stranger here, heaven is my home... Such is the Christian position, such is the Christian attitude. The world will call it escapism. Let it call it what it chooses; its language but reminds us of its blindness and darkness." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"We must examine the world, and see it for what it is. Do not be mislead by the world, do not be captivated by it. See the rottenness, the ugliness, the foulness; and do not allow it to monopolize your time and your attention. You must see through it. Then, having seen through it, keep yourself from it." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"To tell people to start praying as they are is virtually to deny the whole of the Christian gospel. The gospel's first message is to tell us that there is only one way into God's presence, and the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, and lived and died to this end, that he might bring us to God... There is no entry into the presence of God, and there is no true prayer, except through the Lord Jesus Christ by the influence and power of the Holy Spirit... This is the way to pray, the only way, and simply to tell all and sundry, when they are in difficulties, to start praying immediately and to keep on doing so, is a denial of the New Testament gospel. It makes the Cross of Christ unnecessary, and it is ultimately to do despite to the very blood of the Cross itself." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"If you bombard God with certain particular, personal, material requests, there is the possibility that He will let you have them; and you will bitterly regret it. He may grant you your request; but because it was not a true request, nor in your best interests, and because you would not listen to Him and His discouragements, He will let you have your request but you will find leanness in your soul." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"There are those who teach that the prayer of faith means that you say to yourself, I believe it. You try to work yourself up into saying, Yes, I do believe it; it is the Word of God, I do believe it. But it means no such thing; indeed, it means almost the exact opposite... There is a prayer given sometimes by the Spirit concerning which He tells you that it is going to be answered. That is the prayer of faith. It is not an experiment, it is not a trying to persuade yourself, or to work yourself up. It is an ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that is given by the Spirit, and you know, therefore, when you are praying and making your requests, that your prayer is answered. And it happens because the prayer was given, and the assurance of it was given, by the blessed Holy Spirit Himself." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Any translation of the Bible that does away with the variations in the styles of the authors is a bad translation." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The word called - to call - is used in two main senses in Scripture: the one indicating a general call, and the other an effectual call... There are some who have misunderstood the doctrine of the great reformers and who say this should not be done, that the gospel is only to be offered to those who are chosen and elect. Many in their IGNORANCE regard that as Calvinism. But it is hyper-Calvinism. John Calvin taught that the general call, the offer, SHOULD be made to everyone, to all creatures." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"There are no promises to the effect that all things work together for good to them who do not respond to the call of the gospel; indeed they are threatened with the damnation of hell. God's wrath is upon them... It is only to people who have been effectually called in this way, and who are thus saints, that this great promise is made." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Are you aware of this calling of God? All things work together for good to them who are the called according to His purpose. Has He laid His hand upon you and arrested you and apprehended you?... Whether you are or are not a church member, if the truth of the gospel does not ravish your heart, if you do not feel that it is the most glorious thing you have ever heard, you have never been called." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"At this point we are face to face with what is called the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints... The Roman Catholics, as I have had occasion to point out before, do not believe this doctrine; they reject it in toto.There would really be no place for their church if they believed it to be true, which explains why they have always fought it with such great zeal." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The more certain I am that I am going to heaven and to glory where I shall see Christ, the more concerned I am about preparing myself for that experience." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"God's purpose came into being before the foundation of the world... God Himself not only planned the purpose, and thought of it, and initiated it; it is God ultimately who is carrying it out and putting it into operation... The purpose of God is carried on and fulfilled through the work of the Spirit, who applies the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ to us." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Salvation is not ultimately for our sakes; but for the glory of God. God in salvation is vindicating Himself, and manifesting Himself to the whole universe. He is displaying His everlasting and eternal glory. Hence His purpose cannot and will not fail." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The philosopher believes that he can work out everything in his own mind; he has a pathetic faith in his own reasoning... Some go so far as to say that the sole purpose of preaching is to tell people that God loves them whether they believe in Him or not." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Our Lord is unique as the only begotten Son of God. There is no other such Son of God, and there never will be. As the only begotten Son of God He is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. He is God the Son, the second Person in the blessed Holy Trinity." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"A race started in Adam; another race started in Christ." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The ultimate end and object of salvation is the glorification of the Son." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Our ultimate and final salvation is absolutely graranteed; and it is guaranteed because it is the purpose of God with respect to us. Moreover God has ordained every single step in this process that is going to bring us to that ultimate glorification. And one of the steps is this calling. It means that God causes the word of the gospel, which is preached to all creatures, to come to these people whom He has foreknown, with power, the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"THe startling fact is that there is a single Christian in the whole world. The amazing thing is not that most people do not believe; what is astounding is that anyone believes... What God has predestined for these people whom He has foreknown would never come to pass in a single instance were it not that God, in His infinite love and mercy, quickened us and awakened us by His Spirit through His effectual calling." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"It is God who grants repentance. Even repentance is a gift. No man would ever repent were it not for the effectual call of God." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"If God did not make this call effectual for the people whom He has marked out they would not believe. This is the way in which God guarantees their full salavtion and glorification. He calles them in such an effectual manner by the Spirit that this is what they now desire above everything else." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"How did he ever become the Apostle Paul? Did he decide to believe in Christ? Did he decide to accept the message? We know what happened. The Lord of Glory appeared to him. He saw Him in His glorified state! And immediately he believed, immediately his will desired Him. What wilt thou have me to do, Lord? A perfect picture of the effectual call." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The change that takes place in all who become Christians is the change from Saul to Paul - not as regards office, of course, but as regards nature. It happens to every one of us who is a Christian, but it would never happen to anyone were it not that the Spirit reveals these things unto us. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us - not to everyone, but unto US." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"There is nothing the natural man hates more than to be told that he is a sinner, and that his nature is twisted and perverted." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"If we are certain of our calling, we can be certain of our ultimate glorification. If God has called us it means that He has justified us, and if He has justified us, it means that He has glorified us; because if we are in any one of these positions we are in them all... The one thing that matters, therefore, from our experimental standpoint is to be sure that we are in the purpose of God. Do we know that we have been called?" Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The ultimate sin is intellectual pride... There is no point in saying that you accept the Bible as the Word of God if you are determined to reject statements which you cannot understand." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The more you believe in the effectual call the deeper will be your concern about your soul. The people who are most careless about their souls and their lives are those who have been most ignorant of doctrine and who are not aware of these profundities." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"In expounding Scripture we must keep to the Scripture and not go outside it and begin to reason in terms of our failure to understand. For the moment you begin to import anything from the realm of philosophy, you are not only of necessity confusing the issue, but also in a sense denying the sufficiency of revelation." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"It is possible to spend a lifetime in the Christian ministry, and at the end to be disapproved as ministers and have nothing to show for all our labour." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"That was why five of these virgins were foolish. They pick up their lamps and rush off, but then they feel tired and fall asleep; and so, when the bride groom comes and the call is given, they suddenly find they have no oil. They have never troubled about that... That was precisely the trouble with the foolish virgins - assuming, taking things for granted, not making sure, not examining, not proving their own selves, not examining their own selves as the Scriptures tell us to do... If you are heedless and thoughtless, and never examine yourself at all, and resent any call to self-examination, then I suggest very seriously that you had better examine the very foundation as to whether you are a Christian at all." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"It is possible for the Holy Ghost to influence us to a certain point and still leave us short of regeneration." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The cardinal error into which many tend to fall is to think of ourselves as Christians in terms of our believing and our holding on, instead of looking at ourselves in the way in which Scripture always presents the position to us... There has been so much emphasis upon decision, receiving, yielding, being willing, and giving ourselves that salvation is regarded almost exclusively in terms of our activity... Many are in trouble simply because they do not realize the truth concerning the new birth... Nothing is more glorious than the doctrine of the rebirth; and this is obviously the work of God in us through the Spirit. We do not give birth to ourselves, we are not reborn because we believe. We believe because we are reborn." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The plan of salvation not only cannot fail, it will not fail because the glory of God is involved in it. It must succeed. The proof of this is that the whole of salvation depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God... God has chosen the people whom He has given to His Son; and the Son has said that He came into the world to do this work for them at the behest of His Father... God's own Son is the guarantee of success. He has conquered all our enemies; and we are joined to Him." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"You will never find an unbeliever who accepts the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints... The same applies to those who are known as higher critics, or liberals in their theology... St. Augustine believed this doctrine and that explains why his teaching was the one light that illuminated the darkness of so much of the dark Middle Ages. It was also the doctrine of the Protestant Reformers. Martin Luther believed it with all his soul, as also did John Calvin... George Whitefield, the greatest evangelist and preacher that England has ever produced, believed it, preached it, and rested upon it... Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached it, as all volumes of his sermons testify. He went so far as to say that he really doubted whether a man who did not believe the doctrine was a Christian at all." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The great slogan today, and especially in evangelical circles, is always be positive, never be negative. That is utterly unscriptural; it is the exact opposite of the Apostle Paul's method... Do not be misled by this spurious notion of love. We must not only assert the truth; we must attack the evil and the false." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"We are faced with the devil in all his power and malignity. We must not underestimate the power of the enemy; to do so is no part of the New Testament teaching." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"There is nothing more foolish or self-defeating than for a Christian to say that he is not interested in doctrines." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"It was God who ordained the death on Calvary's hill, and not men... it was God's eternal Son who died there, and not a human martyr." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"When God put our sins upon His own Son He did not withhold any part of the punishment from Him; He poured it all upon Him, everything that it deserved. God kept nothing of it back, and the Son submitted Himself to it willingly. That God delivered Him up for us all means that He poured all the vials of His wrath against sin upon Him. He smote Him, He struck Him, He wounded Him, He oppressed Him, He afflicted Him. He put Him to grief, nothing was withheld." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"Nothing shall be able to separate US - the Christians - those who are the called according to God's purpose. God's love is to them, and to them only. God's wrath is against all others." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"God's character and honour demand that a man who has been justified should finally be glorified, and His power guarantees it." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints |
"The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge [antinomianism] being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. That is a very good test of gospel preaching. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel." Romans - The New Man |
"While an expert knowledge of Greek is good, it can also be dangerous." Romans - The New Man |
"The main trouble with the Christian Church today is that she is too much like a clinic, too much like a hospital; that is why the great world is going to hell outside!... What most of us need is not a clinic, but to listen to the sergeant major drilling his troops, commanding them, warning them, threatening them, showing them what to do." Romans - The New Man |
"There are many preachers who never preach justification by faith at all, because they do not believe it. They regard the New Testament message as no more than an ethical system, and they are always exhorting people to live better lives, and to stop doing this and that. They apply this in a more general sphere, and so are always making protests to Governments and other powers. They talk unceasingly about applying the Christian ethic... we can say without any hesitation that such men are not preaching the Gospel." Romans - The New Man |
"It is God's purpose that guarantees the final perseverance of the saints, the final glorification of His people." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"There is no better test of our spiritual state and condition than our missionary zeal, our concern for lost souls. That is always the thing that divides people who are just theoretical and intellectual Christians from those who have a living and a vital spiritual life." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"If you are clear in your theology and in your doctrine you will know that no natural man cannot believe the gospel... So if you expect a natural man to believe the gospel simply because you are putting it to him, you are denying the gospel; you have not understood it yourself." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"When you talk about covenant as it is used in the Bible, to say that it is the same as two people arriving at an agreement is not only an inadequate conception, it is an utterly false conception and entirely wrong... a covenant in the Bible is a sovereign act of God's grace in which He pledges Himself to do something... Covenant in the Bible is always something that is entirely and solely and only from God's side." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"God brought Isaac into being by His own action in order that His purpose might be carried out in him and through him. And as the Apostle argues in Galatians 1 and 4, it is the sole explanation also of anybody who is a Christian, anywhere and at all times." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"So what is it that makes certain that the word of God will not fall down but will stand and be firm and secure? Oh, it is, Paul says, that God's purpose is always carried out through the process of election... 'not of works, but him that calleth' ... It is not of the works of man, so this shuts out once and for ever the thought that the purpose of God through election is something that works out simply through God foreseeing that certain people are going to do good works." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"This purpose of God is worked out through election entirely as the result of the action and the activity of God Himself. It is completely independent of anything in us, our birth, our nationality, our good works or anything else whatsoever... It is God's free choice, and it is an absolute and a sovereign choice." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"God deliver us from this modern trust in scholarship which does not hesitate to criticize the writings of a divinely inspired Apostle!" Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"God does not create evil or put it there, but He aggravates what is there for His own great purpose." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"Well, I have already shown you where man's responsibility is; he is responsible for his damnation, he is not responsible for his salvation." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"Do not talk to me about free will; there is no such thing. There is no such thing as free will in fallen man. The Bible teaches that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"The only man who has ever had free will was Adam, and we know what he did with it. Since then, we have all been born in sin, we are shapen in iniquity. And what makes any man a Christian is the purpose and the will and the choice of God." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"We have no claim upon God at all; we deserve nothing but punishment and hell. If you think that you deserve anything else, then you do not know God and you do not know yourself either." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"If you do not believe in God's wrath there is no real need for the sacrifice on Calvary's hill." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"The Bible is the history of redemption. That is what it really amounts to. And all the history, all that you have about other nations, comes in simply because it throws some light upon the history of redemption... It is always the history of God searching for lost man. When God, as it were, came down from heaven into the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had fallen, that is the beginning of that history, and all the rest just has reference to that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"The riches of God's glory are to be seen supremely in the person of His Son." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"Salvation is always the immediate result of the action of God Himself. Man does not save himself, nor does he determine his own salvation." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"A man does not become a Christian by taking a decision. He is made a Christian by God, who had marked him out before the foundation of the world and who sees to it that he is born, and sees to it that he believes." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"We are responsible for our rejection of the gospel, but we are not responsible for our acceptance of it. That is the result of the electing grace of God." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"If you say that it is our belief and faith that saves us, then you have turned believing into a work and a man is entitled to glory and to boast in that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"The Lord Jesus Christ is the acid test of the value of any supposed belief in God... That people say they believe in God is of no value whatsoever unless they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that people may have very exalted views about life and living does not matter at all unless they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; that people do not believe in war, or that they do believe in doing good, does not make the slightest difference if they do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that people may make great sacrifices for the sake of others and, as they believe, in order to praise God, is utterly useless unless they believe on our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ utterly and absolutely as your Saviour, what you are really doing is pitting yourself against God and flinging His own actions back into His face... It is a rejection of God's own plan and God's own provision." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"There are still people who think of this country as a Christian country. What utter nonsense! There is no such thing." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"You can believe in God and still not be a Christian." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"We should have seen very clearly that we must not rely even upon our belief; even our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not my belief that saves me; it is not my faith that saves me. If I say that, I am turning my belief and my faith into works. I am taking credit to myself, and I must not do that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"If you take the Scriptures with this prejudiced mind and understanding you can make them prove almost anything you like... We must always beware of prejudice. We must never read the Scriptures without praying. We should never approach them without asking the Holy Spirit to lead us and to guide us and to direct us." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"This chapter [Romans 9] is a perpetual warning to us against regarding all people, who are members of the Christian church in a visible sense, as being Christians... It seems to me that the main argument for the so-called ecumenical movement is just this -- that all people who call themselves Christians and who are members of the Christian church are therefore Christians and that we must regard them all as such." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"The fifth deduction is the question of the significance of numbers in connection with the church and her function. And the answer is that numbers do not matter at all. God preserves a remnant. He preserves a seed... We must cease to think in terms of numbers, we must think in terms of the purpose of God and the purity of the witness and the testimony God will preserve this seed. He will carry it on in spite of everything, thank God, if we belong to the faithful remnant." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"A church which is not actively propagating the truth, witnessing to it and concerned about the lost, is unworthy of the name of the church of Jesus Christ." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose |
"There is no such thing as salvation without Christ at the centre. We must not listen to people who tell us how God is blessing them, unless Jesus Christ is central." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"Nothing is so tragic in the history of mankind as the fact that though God has placarded the cross before us we turn our backs upon it and seem to think that God can bless us without it. But He does not." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"Do we understand that nothing but this almighty power of God that was manifested in the resurrection and exaltation of our Lord, nothing but that, nothing less than that, could make us Christians?" Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"Many think of salvation, and of Christianity, in terms of a little bit of morality and of decency. What an insult to the Christian! as if the Christian were just a good and a nice and harmless individual. Not at all! He is a man who has undergone this tremendous change. There has been this dynamic action. He has been raised, resurrected; he is in the heavenly places. This is the power of God!" Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"Christian people are but a handful in the world today." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The trouble with all false evangelism is that it does not start with doctrine, it does not start by realising man's condition... If you and I realised that every man who is yet a sinner is absolutely dominated by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, if we only understood that he is really a child of wrath and dead in trespasses and sins, we would realise that only one power can deal with such an individual, and that is the power of God, the power of the Holy Ghost. And so we would put our confidence, not in man-made organisations, but in the power of God, in the prayer that holds on to God and asks for revival and a descent of the Spirit. We would realise that nothing else can do it. We can change men superficially, we can win men to our side and to our party, we can persuade them to join a church, but we can never raise the spiritually dead; God alone can do that." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The gospel of Jesus Christ is thoroughly realistic, and it starts with us exactly where we are, and that is, at the bottom of a pit of corruption." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"No man will ever have a true conception of the biblical teaching with regard to redemption if he is not clear about the biblical doctrine of sin." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The devil is so subtle that he dominates man and persuades him at the same time that he is not being dominated." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The biblical doctrine of sin really went out of men's thinking some sixty or seventy years ago, and psychology came in in its place." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"There has been no such thing as free will as regards obeying God since Adam fell. Adam had free will; no one else has ever had it. Freedom of the will was lost in the Fall; man there became a slave of sin and under the dominion of the devil... In spite of that, everything man does he does deliberately. He wills to sin, he enjoys sinning, he glories in sinning. He does exert his will negatively in sin; what he cannot do is to will positive good, to will spiritual good. He is incapable of that and that is why he needs to be born again and to have a new nature. But he can will evil and he delights to do so." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"We tend to think of sin in terms of separate acts of the will; and therefore we tend to lose sight of the fact that we are ourselves sinful apart from our actions, that sin is in us and is a part of our very nature... The fatal mistake is to think of sin always in terms of acts and of actions rather than in terms of nature, and of disposition." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"You cannot understand the modern world apart from the doctrine of original sin... That is why we must believe the early chapters of Genesis if we are to believe the New Testament. You cannot have a true doctrine of salvation apart from this." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"To expect Christian conduct from people who are not yet Christians is dangerous heresy." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"What is this Christian message? We start by saying that it is NOT a great appeal for patriotism: that is not the Christian message... The only message of the Christian faith to an unbelieving world, in the first instance, is simply about judgment, a call to repentance, and an assurance that if they do repent and turn to Christ they shall be delivered. The Church, therefore, the Christian faith, has no message to the world apart from that." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"If I may so put it, God would never have sent His Son from heaven to earth and to the cross of Calvary to solve a social problem. The problem to God was His own glory, His own majesty, His own everlasting greatness. This had been queried and questioned by the devil and all who belong to him... Why did God ever send His Son? God forbid that we should give some sentimental, subjective answers only, and fail to see that God sent Him in order to vindicate Himself. It is the grandest theodicy of the ages; God is vindicating and declaring and showing the truth concerning Himself." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"There is no more monstrous idea than the idea that you can fall away from grace, that you can ever be born again and then be damned. The character of God is involved! It is impossible. His object is not merely to save me, it is to vindicate His own being and nature, and I am being used to that end. The end is absolutely certain because God's character is involved in it." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"What vast numbers of men and women still think of the blessings that come from God, apart from Christ Jesus! There are thousands of people in the world today who are worshippers of God, as they THINK, and are anxious to be blessed by God, and believe that they are being blessed by God, but they seem to be able to speak about all that without mentioning Christ Jesus. They talk about praying to God, they talk about being blessed by God, of being healed by God, being led by God, and so on, but they do not mention the name of Jesus Christ. The apostle was aware of that danger, that is why he never misses an opportunity of saying, 'through Christ Jesus.' The whole essence of Christianity is to say that God deals with man and blesses man ONLY in and through Christ Jesus. Everything comes from God to us through Him." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"We must always be extremely careful, therefore, never to say that it is our believing that saves us... In other words they say that by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ a man saves himself. But that is to turn faith into works because it says it is our action that saves us... Belief does not save. Faith does not save. Christ saves. Christ and His finished work. Not my belief, not my faith, not my understanding, nothing that I do." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The first thing the sinner needs is life. He cannot ask for life, for he is dead. God gives him life, and he proves that he has it by believing the gospel. Quickening is the first step. It is the first thing that happens. I do not ask to be quickened. If I asked to be quickened I would not need to be quickened. I would already have life." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"Sin not only separates men from God and from one another, it produces a state of enmity against God and enmity against one another." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"People who think that you can cut out the early chapters of Genesis and still have a Christian gospel are just displaying their ignorance." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"The world can go on developing intellectually and in every other respect, it can add to its knowledge of science and of sociology and of psychology and all else, it can multiply its institutions, it can train us in this respect and that respect, but it will all lead to nothing because the problem can never be solved except in, and through, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"How monstrous it is, therefore, for the Church to say to the statesmen, All you have to do is to apply our teaching and you will produce peace amongst the nations. It is a denial of the whole doctrine of the Church. It is a denial of the doctrine of regeneration. It is indeed a complete misrepresentation of the teaching of our blessed Lord." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"There is no such thing as a Jewish section of the Christian Church. There is no such thing as a Gentile section of the Christian Church. And there never will be. The old has been done away with." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"All the minor and secondary divisions and separations and quarrels among men are ultimately due to the fact that all men are separated from God." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"It is a sheer waste of energy and of breath and of time to try to get Christian behaviour from people who are not Christians." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"I cannot kneel down together with, and look up with people, one of whom is looking at Confucius and another at Mohammed and another at the Buddha, and another at some philosopher. I cannot! There is only One to look at; it is this blessed Son of God... What is the value of talking about having things in common and claiming that we are all one, if there is any question about Him, as to whether He is Son of God or only man? If there is any doubt about it there is no unity, there is no fellowship. We must confess together that there is only one Saviour, one only Lord Jesus Christ, God and Man, two natures in one person, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen again. There must be no question about Him! There is no unity unless we are agreed about Him! The same Saviour, the same Person!" Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"If a man tells me that he knows that he is a hopeless, vile, condemned, damned sinner, and that he relies only on the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ died for his sins, that His body was broken and His blood shed for his sins, that he trusts only to that atoning, reconciling work of Christ, that Christ was his Substitute, and that God in Christ by the Spirit has made a new man of him, and given him a new nature, I am one with such a man." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"There is no greater change known to man in any realm or department than the change that we all undergo when we become Christians. It is a new creation, nothing less." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"If you are simply hoping or trying to be a Christian you are not one." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation |
"If we are not, in some shape or form, suffering persecution for Christ's sake, we are not Christians." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Without the enlightenment which the Holy Spirit alone can give, gospel truths remain as dark and as hidden to us as they did to the princes of this world when the Lord of glory was actually amongst men... We need the inspiration and the anointing and the unction of the Holy Ghost before we can receive and understand divine truth." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If a man is not always conscious of the honour and dignity of being a Christian at all, and especially of having the privilege of preaching the gospel and of his own inadequacy and insufficiency, he is in a very false position." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"It is the effectual working of the power of God that makes anyone a Christian. It means a rebirth, a regeneration. It is not the result of our decision, it is not something that you and I decide to do; it is what is done to us!" Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"No man can truly preach the gospel in his own strength and power. He can talk perhaps, and talk eloquently; but talk is not preaching, and it will lead to nothing." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The business of any man who claims to have been called to be a minister of the gospel is to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"It is not the business of the Christian Church to preach patriotism. It has often done so. The Church has often been nothing but a recruiting agency, a recruiting station in times of war. That is a travesty of the Christian ministry." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There is nothing contingent about God's plan. God never had to improvise, or to modify, His policy because of what someone else has done." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Salvation is the activity of God; not your activity and mine." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There is not held out a vestige of hope in the Bible for peace among men and nations in this world until Christ comes back again and finally destroys sin and evil." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If your knowledge of doctrine does not make you a great man or woman of prayer, you had better examine yourself again. The more you know, the more it should show itself in your prayer life, in your holy living, in every other respect." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Doctrine, I repeat, is meant to be practical and is meant to lead to a great richness in the Christian life. But it is equally important to say that your Christian life will never be rich unless you know and apprehend doctrine. These things must not be separated; they are one and the indivisible." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Let us banish from our thinking once and for ever the artificial and unscriptural, and indeed sinful, dichotomy which is found in all forms of Catholic teaching, the teaching which divides people into two groups, the religious and the laity. There is no such distinction in Scripture." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"A central message of the New Testament is that there is no possibility of prayer, or of entry into the presence of God, except in and through and by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... There is always much interest in prayer when the world is in trouble. When people are driven to their wits' end they turn to prayer and to God. But according to the Scriptures -- and I have no other knowledge apart from this -- there is no entrance into the presence of God except in and through the Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The best teaching in the world is useless unless the Holy Spirit takes hold of it and applies it and opens our understanding to it, and gives it a deep lodging place in our whole being." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"You cannot reason anyone into the Christian life. You can give the reasons for believing but you cannot reason them into belief. You can put the case before them, but you cannot prove it as if it were a matter of a theorem in geometry. We must realize that while we are instructing them, we must also be praying for them. It is only as the Holy Spirit deals with them and prepares them and opens their understanding that they can receive the truth." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Wherever we may be, whatever our circumstances, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ we can always come face to face with God." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"True Christian praying -- praying in the Spirit, praying in Christ -- is not only spiritual in character, but it is always specific also." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"It is of the essence of the Bible's method to show us that because this is a sinful world there must of necessity be trials and troubles and problems and tribulations in it... Sin, the lust that is in the human breast and heart, is the cause of war and discord and of all our troubles, and while it continues thus there will be troubles." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"When we become Christians, and receive the gift of the new birth and the new life, a new man is put into us, a new order of life begins, and we enter a new realm, a spiritual unseen realm." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"When Christ enters the heart the glory is such, the power is such, that the very physical frame seems to collapse beneath it, and we are made to tremble and shake." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If you are making no real effort to understand this Epistle to the Ephesians, or all the other profound teaching in the New Testament, you are guilty of sin." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If Christ is in your heart, then Christ has manifested Himself to you. And when Christ manifests Himself to us it is not merely a figure of speech, it is real, it is actual. It is so definite that there is no doubt at all about it." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"It is possible for us to read the Scriptures with much intellectual understanding, but without faith it is possible to read over these great words without understanding their real meaning." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There should be little difficulty in stating the doctrine of Justification by Faith clearly. One who cannot do so should never stand in a pulpit." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The New Testament, unlike the Roman Catholic Church and other forms of Catholicism, does not divide believers into religious and laity. There are no specialists in the Christian life." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"When a Christian is sealed with the Spirit he has a consciousness of Christ and is aware also of the power of the Spirit." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If there is no subjective element you are not a Christian at all; you may only be giving an intellectual assent to truth." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There is much to be said for the view that we should not sing certain hymns in public. We can often be dishonest as we sing hymns." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If Christ is in our hearts then certain other things must not be, and cannot be, in our hearts... There is no need to argue about this. Certain things are incompatible. There is no concord between Christ and Belial. If Christ is in my heart there are certain things that have to go out of my heart. He will not dwell with them. He is the Son of God; He is holy and sinless." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"One simply cannot believe that the Son of God came on earth and gave Himself to the death of the Cross for us, and for our sins, without there being an element of grateful love toward Him immediately." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Knowledge in the truly Christian sense is never merely intellectual. This is so, and that because it is the knowledge of a Person. The purpose of all doctrine, the value of all instruction, is to bring us to the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The day of judgment will be a revelation, a day of surprises. What appeared to us to be very great may then appear to be nothing at all; and what appeared to us to be trivial will then be seen to be of great value with the arc-light of God's love shed upon it. What a reversal of our judgments and our conceptions we shall find!" Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Much more important than to say our prayers, and more important than what we may say and desire in our prayers, is our attitude towards God when we pray to Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If your knowledge of the Scriptures and of the doctrines of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has not brought you to this knowledge of the love of Christ, you should be profoundly dissatisfied and disturbed. All biblical doctrine is about this blessed Person; and there is no greater snare in the Christian life than to forget the Person Himself and to live simply on truths concerning Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Biblical truth is not one subject among others; it is not something that belongs to a syllabus. It is living truth about a living Person." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Love is powerful and weighty. Love is not weak and flabby and sentimental. Love is dynamite, love is power. God is love, and His might and majesty and power are in that love. Thus when you feel the love of God you are feeling something of the might of God, and the weight and the eternity of God's glory." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The one and only way to get rid of self is to look at Christ. You do not get rid of self by going into a monastery and becoming a monk. You do not do so by being a hermit on tope of a mountain or by living on a lonely island all on your own. You can be as full of self in such places as you ever were. There is only one way to lose self, and that is, to love Another and to be lost in Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There are, unfortunately, even many evangelical Christians who deny that God has any direct dealings with men today, and who hold feeling and emotion at a discount... They are afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and so afraid of certain excesses which are sometimes found in mysticism and in certain people who claim to have unusual experiences of the Holy Spirit, that they quench the Spirit and never have any personal knowledge of Christ. Indeed, they often go so far as to deny the possibility of such a knowledge." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There is, of course, a false mysticism... There is a morbid, introspective, selfish, impractical and useless type of mysticism. But because certain mystics have been guilty of such things we should not allow ourselves to be blinded to that which is a true and healthy mysticism, a mysticism which is taught in the Bible itself." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
" There is always the danger of rejecting a true teaching because we dislike a false presentation of it." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The Lord Jesus Christ is not among us in the flesh now; but in the Spirit He can be much more real, and we can know Him with an intimacy that the disciples and apostles did not enjoy when He was here in the days of His flesh." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"We have made of activity an end in itself. We say we must be getting busy. And in a carnal manner we are attempting to do God's work. But how little happens! It is not surprising. We are forgetting the true motive and the energizing power. We should not work as Christians simply because it is good and right for Christians to work. The motive is all-important. We must work because of the love of Christ. We must not work because we decide to do so or because we are told that now we are converted we must get busy. Our motive must not be to fill the churches again. That is a travesty of the New Testament picture and manner, as is the whole idea of training people to be witnesses and to do personal evangelism. Everything today has to be organized, and the impression is given that no Christian can witness without under-going a course of training... The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"We cannot command blessings or claim them. God in His own sovereign will and grace dispenses His blessings. But though we cannot command them, we can do what blind Bartimaeus did... The Lord walks along certain roads; it is His custom and His habit to pass in certain directions. So all I can do is to tell you how to take up your position along the side of these roads." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"No one has ever been tempted in this world by the devil as the Son of God was tempted; and the closer we get to Him the more shall we be tried and tempted." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The more we seek the Lord's face and the knowledge of His love, the more shall we become acquainted with the wiles of the devil and the fiery darts of the wicked one. The devil thereby pays us a great compliment; but we must remember that he is powerful and mighty, and if we go in our own strength and power he will certainly defeat us... If you seek to be near to Christ the devil will bring out all his reserves against you, and you will become aware of the depths of Satan in a manner you have never even imagined." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Christian people who do not know what it is to be subjected to an onslaught of Satan or to a Satanic attack are but babes in Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Prayer really means talking to God, listening to God, and having communion with God." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"In a sense the central purpose of Scripture is to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ. This is true of the Old Testament as well as the New." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The fact is that God has continued to speak to the saints through His word throughout the centuries." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"To be as God, is -- for man, Christian or otherwise -- a sheer impossibility. Indeed, it was the original sin of man to listen to the suggestion of the devil that this was a possibility." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"You cannot be holy without knowing your doctrine. Doctrine is the direct key that leads to holiness." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"If we really desire to do things for God and for Christ, then, according to the New Testament teaching we do not begin to act at once; we must first make certain that we are filled with the fullness of God, and the power that follows of necessity from that." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"The Christian faith necessitates an entirely different type and mode of thinking. The new man in Christ has a spiritual sense, a spiritual instinct, which enables him to follow and understand spiritual truth which means nothing to the natural man, the non-Christian." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"When God controls our hearts we have ceased to be governed by self. When the love of God comes in, the love of self goes out. And when the love of self goes out and the love of God comes in, we begin to love others." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"There is an instinct in the child of God for holiness and for righteousness. He no longer complains that the Christian life is narrow and restricting. If you feel that it is, you are confessing that you lack this instinct of the new-born babe in Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"I take leave to say in all humility, that there is nothing more blessed under heaven than to know something of the power of the Holy Spirit." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Sometimes in our prayers we think that we have been somewhat daring, and that we have asked for something which is quite impossible. The Apostle tells us that we must never harbour such thoughts, because God is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"God is not only able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask; but also beyond all that we can imagine, all that we can think of, all that we can conjure up with our highest and most inspired thoughts and imaginations." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Surely our greatest trouble in the Christian life is our failure to realize that God is not as man. The greatest sin of every Christian, and of the Christian Church in general is to limit the eternal, absolute power of God to the measure of our own minds and concepts and understandings." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"How constantly are we guilty of limiting the power of God in our petitions and requests for ourselves... We are guilty of the same unbelief when we limit our petitions with respect to others... God's word to us today, as of old, is 'Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.'" Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"No man can believe the gospel in and of himself; the power of the Spirit alone can lead anyone to belief; without it we are spiritually dead and lost and ruined, and under the wrath of God." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ |
"Salvation is something that is entirely dependent upon the purpose of God. Before the creation of the world and of man, God conceived the purpose of saving many of those who would fall and this he does in accord with his election of them... There is therefore no more to be said. Salvation is entirely of God. Men and women can never boast of the fact that they have saved themselves, not even their faith saves them." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If a man is saved, it is because God has saved him. But if a man is lost, that is to be attributed to his own rejection of the gospel and his rebellion against God's way of salvation." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If a man is saved it is because God saves him; if he is lost it is because he has not believed. Paul teaches both and we must not try to get rid of either." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The greatest evangelists this world has ever known have been men who have believed in the sovereign, free election of God. Let us not forget that! Two of the greatest evangelists that England has ever produced have been George Whitefield and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and they both preached and believed in unconditional election. They said that no man is saved unless God has chosen him and set him apart for Himself -- the doctrine of Romans 9 -- yet they were two men who were indefatigable as evangelists, urging men and women to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The same thing can be said of others in other countries: Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland in Wales; Jonathan Edwards in American, Samuel Davies, the writer of many hymns, and David Brainerd, who evangelized the Indians. All these men held this high doctrine of election, but they were indefatigable in their evangelism and in their praying. But here is another interesting thing. The founders of the great missionary enterprise, the modern missionary movements, were all men who held to this high doctrine of Romans 9. William Carey believed that if someone was saved it was because this was the purpose of God according to election; and yet he was, in so many senses, the father of the modern missionary movement." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If you find that you put greater emphasis upon doing than upon being, it is always an indication that you should be careful. If you are more anxious to do things than to be a saint, you had better examine your zeal again." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Christian people are mistaking natural qualities, niceness, a cultural veneer or politeness, for true Christian grace. It seems that we are no longer capable of differentiating between the two. How often today is affability mistaken for saintliness! ‘What a gracious man he is,’ they say. What they really mean is this: he never criticizes and he agrees with everybody and everything. I know of nothing more dangerous than that. These so-called gracious men are of course, altogether nicer than John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul! I do not hesitate to go further -- they are very much nicer than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who denounced the Pharisees! Affability is not saintliness. A mere intellectual, oral flabbiness, is not synonymous with graciousness and with the possession of grace!" Romans - Saving Faith |
"Our best deeds are impure, polluted, unworthy. Any man who talks about his goodness and his righteousness has completely misunderstood the whole of the biblical teaching. His words are an abomination in the sight of God, who does not see as man sees nor judge as man judges." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The last people to believe the gospel, and to be saved, are always those who think that they can save themselves." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Any teaching concerning salvation which does not express itself in terms of the demands of the law of God is a false teaching... any teaching, or any thinking, about salvation which does not put it in terms of satisfying the law of God is completely false and is to be rejected as being of the devil himself." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The law is God's expression of His holy character and shows what He expects from the human race. So we must never say that the law has been abolished by the coming of our Lord and that God no longer demands that it be kept. He does. he demands it still of everybody. There is no greater error than to set law and grace in opposition... Indeed, we must go further and say that even though we become Christians we do not say farewell to the law, we must still keep it. It still makes its demands and shows the kind of life which we should be living. And one of the purposes of salvation is to enable us to live a life such as is demanded by the holy law of God. It is a very dangerous teaching which says that the Christian now has a lower standard." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Adam, the first, was perfect, but he could not keep the law; he failed. If God had created another Adam, he, too, would have failed in exactly the same way. The devil is too strong. There is only one way of salvation -- God must become flesh. And God did become flesh! The incarnation is an absolute necessity. Christ came into the world because He had to." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Paul says that the purposes of God have not failed, in spite of Jewish unbelief. The mistake, of course, was to assume that it was God's purpose to save everybody who belonged to Israel. That was the cardinal error." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Salvation is entirely a matter of God's free, sovereign choice... Nevertheless, it is equally true to say that if a man is not saved, it is because of his own rejection of the gospel which is offered to him." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If you have all the bishops in the universe preaching justification by works, it does not matter at all. This is not what God says, and they are wrong! And we must not be afraid of saying so. They will say that we have a wrong spirit. We will say that something worse is true of them: they are liars and blasphemers who are substituting their own thoughts for God's plain, explicit commandment. You see how far astray we have gone at the present time with all this niceness, and these warnings that we must not criticise. We must criticise! This is a doctrine that leads to hell and to damnation! It is a denial of the doctrine of God and of His dear Son" Romans - Saving Faith |
"The world will praise you if you try to justify yourself by your works; it is doing so. It praises men and women as great Christians who deny the very elements of the Christian faith. But that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Trying to keep God's law is a way of despair, of hopelessness, it is a way of death." Romans - Saving Faith |
"We are not saved by our understanding but by a simple trust in, that is an abandonment of ourselves to, the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Those who say that they can make themselves Christians -- well, there is no difficulty about them, they are altogether wrong; they have not started seeing the gospel at all!" Romans - Saving Faith |
"In many Roman Catholic churches you see Mary and, somewhere behind her, there He is on the cross! Or look at their pictures. Very often Jesus is represented as a baby; He is either that or someone who is far removed! Mary is always central and prominent. And this is an utter denial of Paul's teaching. We do not need her. Nor do we need the saints... Do not be mislead, dear Christian people, by niceness. Realise what their teaching is, what Roman Catholic doctrine says, and you will see, as Luther saw, that it is a denial of the plain teaching of the Scripture." Romans - Saving Faith |
"When we say, JESUS IS LORD, we mean that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is God and man! We say with the Apostle Paul, GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS: GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH; and with John, THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, DWELT AMONG US. We must not just utter these words without realising what we are confessing." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Jesus Himself claimed to be the Lord and did so many times. It is almost impossible to select examples of this because there are so many of them." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Our Lord performed His miracles primarily in order to say that He was the Lord... He had not come primarily to heal people's sicknesses. He did do that, but He performed healing miracles mainly that they should be proofs that He is the Son of God, who has control over all things." Romans - Saving Faith |
"We cannot play fast and loose with the four Gospels. There is your evidence to prove that Jesus is indeed Lord. That is the first element in the content of saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The resurrection of Christ is a proclamation of the fact that He is the Lord, the eternal Son of God." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The essence of the gospel therefore is those two things: that Christ died for our sins and that He rose again from the dead. All this is a fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Old Testament. In other words, if we do not believe that Jesus is the Lord, if we do not believe that He had to die before we could be saved, we are not Christians. If we do no believe in the resurrection we cannot be Christians. These are the first principles without which there is no such thing as Christianity at all." Romans - Saving Faith |
"I cannot understand the type of Christian who dislikes doctrine... doctrine is nothing but the biblical answer to our questions... the Bible is full of doctrine; the Bible answers our questions. God is so gracious that He even asks them for us and then answers them." Romans - Saving Faith |
"You cannot believe truly in the resurrection without believing in the doctrine of the wrath of God upon all sin... If you deny one of these doctrines, fairly soon you will be denying them all. If you are logical and consistent you will have to. All these doctrines belong together -- every single one of them. It is a complete body of doctrine. Omit any one of them and you are bound to be in trouble with all the rest." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If our Lord had not risen from the dead and been glorified, He would never have been able to send the Spirit as He did on the day of Pentecost. This was a very important doctrine in the early church, and it should be in the church today. Often it is not; but it should be. It has been a vital doctrine in every great period of revival, and it is something that is intimately connected with the resurrection." Romans - Saving Faith |
"We are living in a time when there is a great emphasis on evangelism, and when pressure is brought upon preachers to get decisions... I myself have been in meetings when I would have said that the gospel was not preached at all. Nevertheless, appeals have been made at the end and people have come forward: but did they know what they were doing? This is a danger that confronts us at a time like this. Men and women may think that a mere subscription to a formula saves them; indeed, according to some, merely going forward saves them. Many people think that, having gone forward, they are automatically saved, though they do not know what they believe and exactly what they have done." Romans - Saving Faith |
"We are living in a time of trouble; may people are unhappy and face great problems... Now if you merely say to those people, 'Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead,' I say you are misleading them. If you merely say to them, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,' and then ask, 'Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?' and they say, "Yes!', if you then reply, 'You are saved,' you are misleading them. It is our business to make quite certain that they know what they are believing." Romans - Saving Faith |
"There is all the difference in the world between having your preaching controlled by theology, and preaching theology." Romans - Saving Faith |
"We must not say that we have saved ourselves by believing, because the answer is, 'For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.' So we must clear that preliminary point." Romans - Saving Faith |
"'Faith is not the basis of our salvation; it is only the instrument. The foundation, the basis, of our salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on our behalf. Faith, then, is nothing but the channel by means of which the work of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes efficacious in the children of God." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Theological intellectualism is as bad as Sandemanianism, it is as bad as the Roman Catholic position, it is as bad as believism or decisionism. A man who thinks that mere acceptance of a body of doctrine is saving faith, is a man who is deluding himself." Romans - Saving Faith |
"It is a terrible thing to feed people's intellects at the expense of their souls." Romans - Saving Faith |
"You do not merely accept the truth with your mind, you must be born again. That is the New Testament teaching, and I am convinced that the main explanation of the state of the Christian church today is the neglect of the doctrine of regeneration. That is the fundamental need. There is too much believism without regeneration. There is intellectualism without life. But the whole emphasis of the Lord's teaching is on the absolute necessity of regeneration." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Conviction is not repentance; conviction leads to repentance. But you can be convicted without repentance." Romans - Saving Faith |
"You cannot have saving faith without knowing something about this sorrow - sorrow that you have grieved a holy, loving God, sorrow that you have treated God, who has been so kind and gracious, in the way that you have... And if you have never felt that you are unworthy, if you have never hated yourself, then I think you had better examine the foundations again. Christians are people who hate themselves because they see that they are miserable sinners who have rebelled against their Maker and Creator. Godly sorrow! It is essential." Romans - Saving Faith |
"I cannot possibly regard men and women as Christians unless they have known an element of fear: fear because they have sinned against God; fear because they realize that they are in the hands of God, and that He is a holy, just and righteous God, and they have got to stand before Him in the Judgment. If people know nothing about the fear of death and of the Judgment, I cannot see how they can be Christians at all. Fear! It is a vital part of saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If you have the true view of saving faith and belief, you will know that when people are convicted by the Spirit of God, they will seek help. You need not force them to: they will have to, they will be so miserable, frightened and alarmed." Romans - Saving Faith |
"You can believe with your mind that Jesus is the Son of god, you can have your head packed with theology, but unless you have felt your need of a Saviour, and unless you have committed yourself utterly to Him and rely only upon Him and give yourself to Him that He may save you, you have not got saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Saving faith is not a natural quality which everybody possesses... Saving faith is a matter of the heart, and the human heart is by nature desperately wicked and deceitful... When we realize this, when we understand that we are all dead in trespasses and sins, that we must be born again, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned, then we see that it is no use saying we have all got the faith we need. We have not; not one of us has it... Saving faith is something that is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit of God." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Faith is the first active, positive demonstration the soul gives that it is born again. Before men and women can believe, their hearts must be changed... We have not got this faith! It is the gift of the Spirit of God. It is the work that He does in the soul, in the heart, and without that, saving faith is a sheer impossibility." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Faith is not some natural endowment which we all have. As the Scripture teaches everywhere, it is the gift of God... Nobody has faith except the believer. It is the special possession of those who are the called by God and are the children of God." Romans - Saving Faith |
"When men and women are convicted, they know and feel it, something has happened in the realm of their emotions. So there is always that element of knowledge in true saving faith. Those who have never felt anything at all have not got saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If a man tells me that ht has believed in Christ and tells me at the same time that he feels exactly as he did before, that he has no desire which is different from what he had before, that he is not anxious not to sin, that he has no sense of anxiety to serve God and the Lord Jesus Christ -- then I say that that man is not saved." Romans - Saving Faith |
"This distinction between accepting Christ as Saviour and taking Him as Lord is utterly unscriptural... You cannot divide Him, He is one." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The difficult point, of course, is the point at which you decide where you cross the line from proclaiming that you are a Christian to parading the fact... It is one thing to proclaim, it is another and a very different thing to parade." Romans - Saving Faith |
"My thinking, if I believe that Jesus is the Lord, must be governed entirely by the Bible. In other words, I am not governed by modern thought. If I am governed by that, then Jesus is not the Lord of my intellect. So I cannot be governed by modern thought or by recent knowledge or by the latest discoveries of science. The moment I begin to be governed by those things, then Jesus is no longer Lord to me. I am putting myself in a superior position. I am making myself the lord." Romans - Saving Faith |
"I have no understanding of the way of salvation unless I believe that an individual man fell -- that is the argument of Romans 5:12-21. The whole case depends upon this: that as in Adam... so in Christ. The one man fell and brought down calamity; the other man gave obedience and thereby saves. That is Christian salvation. The moment I begin to deny the fall of man or believe that man is gradually evolving upwards, there is no need for an atonement, no need for miracles and so on." Romans - Saving Faith |
"When you hear certain modern scholars talking about a new morality you just know that it is the lie of the devil." Romans - Saving Faith |
"It is not a light matter to say that you believe that Jesus is Lord, and that God has raised Him from the dead. If these things are true, then nothing else matters. This is everything. Everything is subordinated to this and has to be fitted in to it. This is the thing that controls my life -- mind, and heart, and will, the whole personality, everything I am... Our whole person proclaims that Jesus is the Lord, that He is our own personal Saviour and Redeemer, and that we have no hope in life, in death, or in eternity, save in this same Jesus, who is Son of God and Lord of glory." Romans - Saving Faith |
"This element of foretelling in prophecy is one of the greatest proofs of the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Scripture and therefore of the authority of the Bible as a whole." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The law of God has become an enemy to us, thought it is the law of God. It is an enemy because of our weakness. It makes a demand of us that, in and of ourselves, we can never fulfill. So Christ, in order to save us, has to deal with the law. And he has. Believe on Him and there will never be an occasion when the law can bring anything whatsoever against you which will condemn you." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The Lord Jesus Christ, as we say in working out the meaning of the statement that Jesus is Lord, is Jehovah, and Jehovah -- God -- is the Lord of the whole universe." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If all fullness is in Him, you do not need to add to Him. You cannot add to God, can you? Well, you do not add to Jesus Christ either. It is an insult to Him to do so... That is why some of us cannot abide nor tolerate a doctrine which tells us that Mary is Co-redemptrix! That is why we cannot grant that we need to pray to any of the saints, or to anybody else, for help, or do penances and so on. It is simply a denial of this teaching in the Epistle to the Colossians, as of the whole of the "Bible." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Faith is a gift of God: He gives us the faith... What else do you need? Well, anything you may need is all in Christ, in His glorious all-sufficiency." Romans - Saving Faith |
"If you have any confidence in the flesh you are not a Christian." Romans - Saving Faith |
"There is no greater sin than not to see your need of Christ... There is nothing more abhorrent to God than that men and women should think that anything about them is sufficient to commend them to God. There is no greater sin than to refuse the Son of God and His sacrificial atoning death." Romans - Saving Faith |
"There is only one way of salvation, there has always been only one way and there will never be another. Salvation is always by the grace of God in and through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Romans - Saving Faith |
"There is a general call to tall people everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. But it is not efficacious in the case of all. A person belongs to the company of the 'whosoever' because of the efficacious call, this special call, which goes beyond the general." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The primary cause of anybody's condemnation is the sin of Adam... Adam was the representative of the entire human race, and when Adam sinned we all sinned. That is the main cause of our condemnation. If we had done nothing at all, we are all already condemned in Adam. It is quite unscriptural and wrong to say that it is belief or rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ that now determines salvation. It is not. A man or woman is already condemned... Everyone is born in sin and in condemnation. We have all sinned and we are all dead in Adam." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The message of the Bible needs to be presented in a manner that is calculated to lead to salvation." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Today, because people do not believe in preaching, they believe in new translations of the Bible... great terms like justification and sanctification, glorification and many others, I would argue, cannot be presented simply by using alternative translations. They are terms that have to be expounded and illustrated. Modern translations are evacuating these terms of their real meaning. It is only the preacher who can really show their profound content... Many translations are ultimately standing between the people and the real meaning of the terms." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Christianity is Christ. Christianity centres in Christ -- it is in Him. Without Him there is no Christianity. It is the Person who matters; it is the Lord who counts." Romans - Saving Faith |
"I believe that the state of the church is to be explained by one thing only, and that is that the message of the gospel is not being preached, and has not been preached for a number of years. I believe that the people have been more or less driven out of the churches by false gospels, by false preaching, and that is why it is so important that we must be clear concerning the true gospel." Romans - Saving Faith |
"When God has started doing something to me, He will finish it; and if He gave up His Son to the death of the cross that I might be forgiven, He is not going to abandon me now. He will go on with the work until it is complete. If I am reconciled by the death of the Son, how much more shall I be saved by the life of the Son!" Romans - Saving Faith |
"You can never have such a thing as general faith. Faith is always specific and it is always about Christ. There is no saving faith unless it is centred on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People may think they believe in God, they may think they are being blessed by God, but if their faith is not centred on Jesus Christ and Him crucified, it is of no avail." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Faith comes out of -- is produced by -- that Word of God as it is applied and planted in us by the Holy Spirit." Romans - Saving Faith |
"There are so many people who give an intellectual assent to the truth, but that is not faith. We have got to draw the line between merely accepting propositions, merely giving an agreement with our minds to certain things we hear, and a real and a true faith." Romans - Saving Faith |
"Nobody can have faith unless the Lord opens the heart. It is impossible." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The great danger that people fall into is this: they forget that an essential part of biblical teaching in connection with election and predestination is to assert, at the same time, our responsibility... Faith is the gift of God. All who are saved are saved because God has foreknown them, chosen them, predestinated and called them. Yes, but those who hear the gospel and who do not believe it are responsible for their unbelief." Romans - Saving Faith |
"The true way of salvation can be summed up like this: it is entirely the result of God's election... There is only one explanation of why any single person has ever been saved, and it is the action and the choice of God. There is nothing in us that contributes to salvation - nothing at al!" Romans - Saving Faith |
"There is a general call of the gospel, and there is a special call. The universal invitation goes out but all do not obey. Who are those who obey? They are the ones who are the called of God, those who receive this effectual call, this result of the election of grace." Romans - Saving Faith |
"It is to me one of the most inexplicable things that any Christian person should ever object to the doctrine of the election of God. My dear friends, the Christian church would have perished centuries ago, probably in the first century, without the election of God... The Word of God would ahve taken none effect were it not that God had kept it going, and He keeps it going by the principle of election, and election is entirely a matter of grace. Nobody is chose because he is good or because he believes. If you take credit to yourself because you believe the gospel you are denying the essential teaching of the New Testament." Romans - To God's Glory |
"Nobody is saved apart from the election of God. If you take credit for the fact that you are a believer in Jesus Christ I almost suggest to you that you are not saved... the teaching of the Scripture is that no man can contribute anything to his own salvation; it is all according to the election of God." Romans - To God's Glory |
"Punishment is taught in the whole Bible from beginning to end. You cannot take it out of the Bible and have a Bible left. It is integral to its whole message from the very beginning." Romans - To God's Glory |
"If the gospel cannot save those to whom we tend to react so violently, it is no gospel." Romans - To God's Glory |
"I know people who say, We now understand things in the Bible which we did not before, because of our recent knowledge. The moment you say that you have already gone wrong, because obviously the Apostle uses illustrations which could be understood two thousand years ago, and if you can only understand an illustration in terms of modern scientific knowledge you are wrong. That knowledge was not available then, so the Apostle's illustration would have been of no value." Romans - To God's Glory |
"God does not act according to nature in the matter of salvation. It takes a miracle to save a man." Romans - To God's Glory |
"There is only one way of salvation and it has always been the same... There has never been a way of salvation except by faith. Never!... It does not matter who we are, it is always by faith, and it is always by God's supernatural action." Romans - To God's Glory |
"The Christian church is one and one only. It takes the same grace of God to convert a Jew as a Gentile, and the Gentile as a Jew, and they will share the same blessings, they are all joint heirs of exactly the same promise and of the same blessed hope." Romans - To God's Glory |
"If you think you are saved by your nationality or by your own inherent goodness or any merit that belongs to you, you are denying the whole of the Christian teaching with regard to salvation." Romans - To God's Glory |
"Men and women get into trouble always because instead of taking the revelation of the character of God and His ways with respect to men as we have it revealed in the Bible, they substitute their own ideas for that, or they take a part of the teaching of the Bible and they reject the remainder." Romans - To God's Glory |
"The devil, our adversary, cannot prevent our becoming Christians, but he can cause much damage among us. One of his methods is to make us look back on that from which we were called, rather than forward to that to which we are called." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"By and large, we have forgotten that we are strangers and pilgrims in this world. The fact is, the New Testament does not offer us very much in this world." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Protestantism has become almost the exact opposite of what it was at its beginning in the sixteenth century. Why does such a thing happen? It occurs as a result of the struggle between the spirit and the form... Certain dangers arise, and the biggest danger of all is that the form tends to cripple the spirit... Now perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of all this is the way in which the so-called Higher Critical movement came in, in the nineteenth century. There was the church; she was orthodox; perhaps not as alive as she should have been but at any rate she was fairly orthodox up until about 1830. But this teaching gradually came in from Germany and it began to insinuate its way into theological colleges in this country. People began to notice but instead of dealing with it they thought that these new ideas would gradually pass. It went on and by now it has become dominant and the truth is having to fight for its life." Romans - To God's Glory |
"The history of the church shows a constant repetition of this -- that it is those who belong to the visible church who are always the most bitter persecutors of the true Israel. It is as true today as it has always been." Romans - To God's Glory |
"We have nothing to do with a church that is apostate, with a church that puts organization before the truth, tradition before the truth, which has forgotten the very principle that brought it into being and made it what it is. A church which has departed from that is no longer a church, and for us to be associated with such a body is to partake of its sin and to be partly responsible for its apostasy." Romans - To God's Glory |
"There is only one thing that admits anybody into the church of God and that is faith. Or putting it negatively, the only hindrance and obstacle is unbelief. There is only one principle which God ever uses in His dealings with men and He has never used another, it has always been faith from the very beginning. There never will be any other way whatsoever. Salvation is always by faith, and by faith only. This is the cardinal doctrine of justification by faith only." Romans - To God's Glory |
"There is nothing here to teach that a man can be saved, then lost, then saved again. Such a thing is taught nowhere in the Scriptures. There is only one reason why people ever teach anything like that and that is that they forget the doctrine of regeneration. They put so much emphasis on a man's decision." Romans - To God's Glory |
"The way to unity is to preach the Gospel, not to set up new offices and organizations. Unity results from a comprehension and understanding of the truth." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"The end of all doctrine is to lead us to the knowledge of God, and the worship of God; any knowledge we may have is useless if it does not bring us to that point." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Every individual Christian has been saved in exactly the same manner as everyone else. The Apostle Paul's salvation is no different qua salvation from any other Christian's salvation. All conversions are essentially the same... Regeneration is the work of the Spirit of God, and Him alone. It is a miracle in every single case, and it is always the same miracle." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Let us be careful to observe that the Apostle does not lay down a rigid system of church order. Indeed it is questionable whether any such thing is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures... Christ in the Church is the Head of the Church, and wherever two or three are gathered together in His name He is there in the midst." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Nothing is so far removed from the Apostle's picture of the Church as institutionalism and ecclesiasticism. These 'isms' are not to be found anywhere in the New Testament. Institutionalism is a denial of the picture of the Church as the body of Christ, and of Christ alone as the Head, and of the Holy Spirit making and preserving this blessed unity." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"There is a gradation of offices in the Church; some are more important and others are less important, but all are essential... But I must add immediately that we must no harden this into a rigid absolute division. There is nothing in the Scriptures to support a monarchial idea of Church government. We are to call no man lord in the Church." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"The first question with regard to the problem of evangelization is not the state of the world outside, it is the condition of the Church. Defective views of the Church and her functioning lead to the employment of worldly and carnal methods... The real problem is the still the nature of the Church." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"The work of the ministry does not consist in talking about current affairs or events, the minister is not to find his message in newspapers, he is not to be entertaining the people by telling them stories, or provoking laugher. He is to preach the Word." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"The history of the Church shows clearly that her great and glorious periods, such as during and after the Protestant Reformation, always follow the mighty preaching of doctrine... The great doctrines of the faith must be the basis of the Christian diet. Following the doctrine must come the teaching which applies the doctrine." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"There is far too much complacency in the Church. The position is really desperate, and judgment must begin at the house of God. Do we realize our responsibility for the state of the Church, and the state of the world? We shall be held accountable." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Nothing is more devastating than a ministry which is only intellectual, and which never disturbs." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"Any presentation of Christian truth that tends to produce a sameness in its people is, by that test, wrong and false. The cults, as we have seen, always reproduce a type; their members are almost identical, and all conform to a pattern. They use the same expressions, they speak them in the same manner. There is no suggestion of this in the New Testament; and it is never a characteristic of a true work of the Holy Spirit... Counterfeits are always mechanical and they show that they are such by reproducing people who are identical in most respects. The glory of the Church lies in this extraordinary variety and variation; there is not only unity but also the perfection of each of the parts." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"There is one invariable characteristic of the false teaching, which is, that it always takes from and detracts from the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ... Everything is to be tested by the position given to the Lord Jesus Christ. If He is not essential, if He is not central, if He is not unique and above and beyond all, and dwarfing everyone and everything, then the teaching is false." Ephesians - Christian Unity |
"There is only one way of salvation, and Jew and Gentile enter into it in exactly the same way. And there is only one position for Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, and that is members of the Body of Christ." Romans - To God's Glory |
"It is not scriptural to speak of the church OF anywhere under the sun, because we must ever preserve this distinction. The church is a gathering of Christian believers... I think that a great deal of the modern confusion is due to the fact that we are talking far too much about the "church" instead of thinking in terms of "churches", instead of thinking of gatherings of the saints where Christ is in the midst, and it is rather an important distinction." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Martyrs are men who know what they believe." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"This idea that you can believe in Christ first as your Saviour only, and then perhaps, years later, go on to take Him as your Lord, is a denial of Scripture." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"My friends, the doctrine of the Trinity is the differentiating doctrine of the Christian faith... There are other religions that believe in God, but there is not another that preaches and teaches the doctrine of the blessed Holy Trinity." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Scripture is my authority and I must never go outside it. I must never add to it; I must never take from it. This is the whole revelation of God to man, and it is the only authority." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Hold on to your Old Testament, my friend, and beware lest you interpret the New at any point or in any respect in a manner that does not show that the New is the fulfillment of the Old." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"There are people today who seem to teach and to believe that you can take Christ as your Saviour without taking Him as your Lord. They say you can take justification without taking sanctification. They say you can get forgiveness of sins without holiness. It is a lie." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That does not mean that the Lord Jesus Christ is a bearer of good news from God. No! It means that He Himself is the good news." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"There is nothing which I know of which is more unscriptural, and which is more dangerous to the soul, than to divide doctrine from life... The reason for this is that if your life and your mode of living is not the outcome of your doctrine, it is not Christian living; it is something else." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"God does not look on a man favourably until he is in Christ." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"God is Father to the Christian. He is not Father to anybody else." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"A revival never needs to be advertised, it always advertises itself. You do not need to advertise the work of the Holy Spirit; it is its own advertisement." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Oh, that the church would concentrate on experiencing the power of the Holy Ghost! Believe me that when the Holy Ghost descends into a single heart or into a group of people in power, in a most amazing manner, in a manner that no one can understand, the news will go and spread, and hearts will be kindled and people will make journeys." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"The only authority in the church that the New Testament recognizes is spiritual authority. I mean by that, authority given, not to an office, but to a man. There is no inherent authority in an office. The authority is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the man." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Face to face with God all men are miserable, wretched, hopeless sinners, and you and I as Christians must make that clear to them." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Had you ever noticed that Christ gives repentance quite as much as He gives forgiveness of sins?... Repentance is the gift of grace, the gift of God." God The Holy Spirit |
"Regeneration must come at the very beginning because if it is possible for me to do something which will eventually lead to my regeneration, I do not need regeneration... So regeneration is not only essential, but is essential at the beginning; you can have nothing without it. It is impossible for anything to happen in us which can make us Christians until regeneration has taken place." God The Holy Spirit |
"The seed of faith is placed in us in regeneration and will be called into activity by the effectual call." God The Holy Spirit |
"Faith is not a matter of reason. Some people teach that it is. They say that if only men and women would use their minds, they would be bound to become Christians; they can reason themselves into Christianity. But that is thoroughly unscriptural. They cannot because the natural man or woman's reason is also fallen. Not only that, there are supernatural and miraculous elements in faith to which reason cannot attain." God The Holy Spirit |
"The gospel is the power of God. It does not depend upon me or my faithfulness. If it did we would all be lost. It is God's power to save and to keep, to justify and to sanctify and to glorify - to take us right into heaven itself... The gospel works and will work, until all that God has purposed by its means shall have been completed." Romans - To God's Glory |
"All that God has done in and through the Lord Jesus Christ for us, all the riches of God's grace in Christ, come to us by the power of the Holy Spirit through the word of the gospel. That is how God does it." Romans - To God's Glory |
"There is no such thing as being too great a sinner to be saved. The number of your sins does not come into the matter at all. The character of your sins does not matter one scrap. There is no difference in the sight of God between the murderer and the most self-righteous person - none whatsoever! Both are equally lost." Romans - To God's Glory |
"Let us be clear about this expression "By faith". What does it mean? Well, it does not mean that faith is the condition of salvation. It does not mean that our faith is the thing that determines our salvation. It does not mean that faith is something which is demanded as a condition of our being saved." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"Faith is the contradiction of everything that is meritorious in man. Faith is the contradiction and the negation of every tendency in man to say that his merit is enough... so that if what you call your faith has not pushed right out of your life every sense of worthiness you ever had, you have not got faith." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"There is the theory of Evolution, for instance, which the average man takes for granted now, a century or so after the publication of Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species. Now what an important book that was! That one book, I suppose, has been more responsible for undermining people's faith and belief in the Scriptures, and in God's way of salvation, than any other single book." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"The gospel that was preached by the Apostle Paul was never man-centered; it was always and invariably God-centered." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"The business of the gospel is to bring people to God, and to reconcile them to God. Not to fill churches! Not to have good statistics! But to reconcile men to God - to save them from the wrath to come." Romans - The Gospel Of God |
"The business of Christianity is not to improve the world. No! it is to take men out of the world, to save them from it, and to form this new realm, this new kingdom, and this new humanity. We must get hold of that idea. It is not a kind of Christianisation of the world that is taught in the Bible. People are to be taken out of it, to be separated from it, and to be translated into a different position." Ephesians - Darkness And Light |
"We can never repeat this too often; a mere knowledge of doctrine, which does not lead to a new life, is of the devil... A knowledge, a personal knowledge of the Saviour, is the end and object of all doctrine." Ephesians - Darkness And Light |
"It is in Christ Jesus that are hid ALL the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge. All the truth is in Jesus, and there is no truth apart from Him, for everything is in Him and He alone IS the Truth... God forbid, I say again, that we should ever separate our doctrine from His Person! God forbid that we should become academic and theoretical and detached, and forget even for a second that salvation has come in a Person, in this particular Person, Jesus, in whom God has stored all the treasures of His own wisdom and His own knowledge." Ephesians - Darkness And Light |