“Let us take comfort in the thought that the Lord Jesus does not cast off His believing people because of failures and imperfections.
He knows what they are.
He takes them, as the husband takes the wife, with all their blemishes and defects, and, once joined to Him by faith, will never leave them. He is a merciful and compassionate High priest. It is His glory to pass over the transgressions of His people, and to cover their many sins.”
- J.C. Ryle, The Gospel of Mark, 1857
“Forgiven souls are humble. They cannot forget that they owe all they have and hope for to free grace, and this keeps them lowly. They are brands plucked from the fire – debtors who could not pay for themselves – captives who must have remained in prison for ever, but for underserved mercy – wandering sheep who were ready to perish when the Shepherd found them; and what right then have they to be proud? I do not deny that they are proud saints. But this I do say – they are of all God’s creatures the most inconsistent, and of all God’s children the most likely to stumble and pierce themselves with many sorrows.”
- J.C. Ryle
Christ saw us ruined by the fall, a world of poor, lost, ship-wrecked sinners. He saw and He pitied us; and in compliance with the everlasting counsels of the Eternal Trinity, He came down to the world, to suffer in our stead, and to save us.
He did not sit in heaven pitying us from a distance: He did not stand upon the shore and see the wreck, and behold poor drowning sinners struggling in vain to get to shore. He plunged into the waters Himself: He came off to the wreck and took part with us in our weakness and infirmity becoming a man to save our souls.
As man, He bore our sins and carried our transgressions; as man, He endured all that men can endure, and went through everything in man’s experience, sin only excepted; as man He lived; as man He went to the cross; as man He died. As man He shed His blood, in order that He might save us, poor shipwrecked sinners, and establish a communication between earth and heaven! As man He became a curse for us, in order that He might bridge the gulf, and make a way by which you and I might draw near to God with boldness, and have access to God without fear.
—J.C. Ryle, Old Paths (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1999), 440
“That same Jesus who once died for sinners, still lives at the right hand of God, to carry on the work of salvation which He came down from heaven to perform.
He lives to receive all who come unto God by Him, and to give them power to become the sons of God.
He lives to hear the confession of every heavy-laden conscience, and to grant, as an almighty High Priest, perfect absolution.
He lives to pour down the Spirit of adoption on all who believe in Him, and to enable them to cry, Abba, Father!
He lives to be the one Mediator between God and man, the unwearied Intercessor, the kind Shepherd, the elder Brother, the prevailing Advocate, the never-failing Priest and Friend of all who come to God by Him.
He lives to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to all His people—to keep them in life, to support them in death, and to bring them finally to eternal glory.”
—J.C. Ryle, Old Paths (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1999)
“Our Lord Jesus Christ is doing for His people the work which the Jewish high-priest of old did on behalf of the Israelites. He is acting as the manager, the representative, the mediator in all things between His people and God.
He is ever presenting on their behalf His own perfect sacrifice, and His all sufficient merit, before God the Father. He is ever obtaining daily supplies of fresh mercy and of fresh grace for His poor, weak servants, who need daily mercy for daily sins, and daily grace for daily necessities.
He ever prays for them. He presents their names before God the Father. He carries their names upon His heart, the place of love; and upon His shoulder, the place of power, as the high-priest carried the names of all the tribes of Israel, from the least to the greatest, when he wore his robes of office. He presents their prayers before God. They go up before God the Father mingled with Christ’s all-prevailing intercession, and so are so acceptable in God’s sight.
He lives, in one word, to be the friend, the advocate, the priest, the all-prevailing agent, of all who are His members here upon earth.”
—J.C. Ryle, Old Paths (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1999), 441
“I have heard of a book entitled ‘The Story without an End.’ I know no story deserving that title so well as the everlasting Gospel: this is indeed and in truth the story without an end.
There is an infinite ‘fulness’ in Christ; there are in Him ‘unsearchable riches;’ there is in Him a ‘love which passeth knowledge;’ He is an ‘unspeakable gift’ (Col 1:19; Eph 3:8; Eph 3:19; 2 Cor 9:15).
There is no end to all the riches which are treasured up in Him—in His person, in His work, in His offices, in His words, in His deeds, in His life, in His death, in His resurrection.”
—J.C. Ryle, “Christ’s Power to Save” in Old Paths (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1999), 346
“The foundation of the true church was laid at a mighty cost. It needed that the Son of God should take our nature upon Him, and in that nature live, suffer and die, not for His own sins, but for ours. It needed that in that nature Christ should go to the grave, and rise again. In needed that in that nature Christ should go up to heaven, to sit at the right hand of God, having obtained eternal redemption for all His people. No other foundation could have met the necessities of lost, guilty, corrupt, weak, helpless sinners.
The foundation, once obtained, is very strong. It can bear the weight of the sins of the world. It has borne the weight of all the sins of all the believers who have built on it. Sins of thought, sins of imagination, sins of the heart, sins of the head, sins which everyone has seen, and sins which no man knows, sins against God, and sins against man, sins of all kinds and descriptions — that mighty rock can bear the weight of all these sins, and not give way. The mediatorial office of Christ is a remedy sufficient for all the sins of all the world.”
- J.C. Ryle, Holiness (Darlington, Co. Durham: Evangelical Press, 1991), 215.
