Of First Importance

“Faith in Christ and a reliance on ourselves, even to the smallest degree, are mutually exclusive.”

- Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace (Colorado Springs, Co: NavPress, 1994), 50-51.

“The resurrection validated that Jesus was himself sinless and that he died for our sins, just as he said. Acts 2:24 says, ‘God raised [Jesus] up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.’ Why did the justice of God make it impossible for Jesus to stay dead? It was impossible for Jesus to stay dead because he had lived a perfectly righteous life and therefore death, as God’s just punishment for sin, had not crime against God to pin itself to. On the streets of Boston, the kids salute the law of justice by saying, ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ In the case of Jesus, the voice of justice says, ‘He can’t do the time, ’cause he did no crime.’”

- John Ensor, The Great Work of the Gospel (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2006), 101.

“Self-righteousness and self-sufficiency are the darlings of nature, which she preserves as her life. That makes Christ seem ugly to nature. Nature cannot desire Him. He is just opposite to all nature’s glorious interests. Let nature but make a gospel, and it would make it quite contrary to Christ; it would be to the just, the innocent, the holy, etc. Christ makes the gospel for you, that is, for needy sinners, the needy, the ungodly, the unrighteous, the accursed.”

- Thomas Wilcox, “Honey Out of the Rock“

“From the beginning Christianity was the religion of the broken heart; it is based upon the conviction that there is an awful gulf between man and God which none but God can bridge. The Bible tells us how this gulf was bridged; and that means the Bible is a record of facts.

Of what avail, without the redeeming acts of God, are all the lofty ideals of Psalmists and Prophets, all the teaching and example of Jesus? In themselves they can bring us nothing but despair.

We Christians are not interested merely in what God commands, but also in what God did; in a triumphant indicative; our salvation depends squarely upon history; the Bible contains that history, and unless that history is true the authority of the Bible is gone and we who have put our trust in the Bible are without hope.”

- J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ

(HT: The Reformed Reader)

“There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.

This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His ‘blood and righteousness’ alone that we can rest.”

- B.B. Warfield, Works 7:113

(HT: Justin Taylor)

“Jesus is the lead actor on the stage of history, and the whole supporting cast acts with respect to the lead, playing roles either of children of light or sons of disobedience. Jesus’ story reveals God and God’s will to bring grace and power.”

- David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2003), 51.

“When Satan, the grand enemy, had conquered and overthrown man, the business of resisting and conquering him was committed to Christ. He henceforward undertook to manage that subtle powerful adversary. He was then appointed the Captain of the Lord’s hosts, the Captain of their salvation.”

- Johnathan Edwards, Works, vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 537.