“The tares of ruin grow and ripen. The sand runs low within the glass. Our days are numbered. ‘Repent or perish,’ says the Christ. The sign of Jonah is our need, Christ, crucified and risen! The God who kills and makes alive, our only hope and only fear!”
- Geoffrey T. Bull, The City and the Sign (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Book House, 1970), 110.
“Consider well of the office, the bloodshed, and the holy life of Christ — His office is to expiate sin, and to destroy it. His blood was shed for it: his life condemned it. Love Christ, and thou wilt hate that which caused his death. Love him, and thou will be made more like him.”
- Richard Baxter, quoted by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson in Counsel from the Cross (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009), 148.
“Spiritual experience that does not arise from God’s word is not Christian experience. . . . Not all that passes for Christian experience is genuine. An authentic experience of the Spirit is an experience in response to the gospel. Through the Spirit the truth touches our hearts, and that truth moves our emotions and effects our wills.”
- Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway Books, 2008), 31.
“If once God’s electing love rises upon the soul, it never sets.”
—Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1997), 68
“We glorify God by working out our own salvation. God has twisted together his glory and our good. What an encouragement is this to the service of God, to think, while I am hearing and praying, I am glorifying God; while I am furthering my own glory in heaven, I am increasing God’s glory.
Would it not be an encouragement to a subject, to hear his prince say to him, You will honour and please me very much, if you will go to yonder mine of gold, and dig as much gold for yourself as you can carry away? So, for God to say, Go to the ordinances, get as much grace as you can, dig out as much salvation as you can; and the more happiness you have, the more I shall count myself glorified.”
—Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1997), 13-14
“‘Mercy triumphs over Judgment’
Mankind’s sentence now appealed;
From the holy God offended,
Righteousness has been revealed!
Glory to the Justifier!
Praise His great and gracious plan;
Bless the holy love of God,
Who gave His Son to ransom Man!”
- Kevin Hartnett, Mercy Triumphs over Judgement (1998)
“O magnify the Lamb
Who bravely paid the price,
And walked the path alone
To brutal sacrifice.
His work commands the praise
Of all whose breath there be,
And shouts the grace of God
Into eternity. “
- Kevin Hartnett, Naked and Alone, Hung the Son of God (June, 2001)
