Of First Importance

“You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a daycare in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we’re all good people.

That is a lie. God looks down and says ‘I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,’ and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says, ‘Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.’ This is a miracle.”

- Mark Driscoll, “Jesus Took Our Wrath”

“Faith is not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us; that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for our sins. Faith is one thing, the Saviour is another. Faith is one thing, and the cross is another. Let us not confound them, nor ascribe to a poor, imperfect act of man, that which belongs exclusively to the Son of the Living God.

Our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith maybe: if it touches the perfect One, all is well. God has asked and provided a perfect righteousness; He nowhere asks nor expects a perfect faith. So a feeble, very feeble faith, will connect us with the righteousness of the Son of God; the faith, perhaps, that can only cry, ‘Lord, I believe; help mine unbelief.’ “

- Horatius Bonar, “Not Faith, But Christ”

“For eighteen centuries men have laboured to find some other medicine for weary consciences, but have laboured in vain. Thousands, after blistering their hands, and growing grey in hewing out ‘broken cisterns that can hold no water’ (Jer 2:13), have been obliged to come back at last to the Old Fountain, and have confessed in their latest moments that here, in Christ alone, is true peace.”

- J.C. Ryle, Holiness, (Durham, UK: Evangelical Press, 1991), 260.

“Christ walked with men on earth that He might show them what God is like and make known the true nature of God to a race that had wrong ideas about Him.”

- AW Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“The apostles were conscious of standing at the consummation of the ages and were vividly aware that the events that precipitated this watershed in history were the incarnation, obedience, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth. The coming Messiah fulfilled ancient promises and age-old longings for deep redemption and an eternal Ruler who would reign in holy justice and in mercy. It filled up and filled in previous patterns and shadows in Israel’s communion with her covenant Lord, and this filling process also entailed a transformation of ancient institutions into new forms better suited to more intimate interactions between the King and his joyful subjects.”

Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2007), 16-17.

“To focus on Jesus as example is to reduce him from sovereign Savior to ethical coach, and to transform his gospel into law.”

- Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2007), 15.

“To that righteousness is the eye of the believer ever to be directed; on that righteousness must he rest; on that righteousness must he live; on that righteousness must he die; in that righteousness must he appear before the judgment-seat; in that righteousness must he stand for ever in the presence of a righteous God.”

- Richard Haldane, quoted by Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace (Colorado Springs, Co: NavPress, 1994), 49.