“The Father in the gift of His Son has put Himself under eternal obligation to returning sons. Having satisfied the demands of His own holy law, the Father must open His mighty arms and embrace every returning son. And he must do it every day. He has promised to do it (Luke 15:11-32; 1 John 1:8-10), and God cannot lie (Heb. 6:13-20).”
- C. John Miller, Repentance and 21st Century Man (Fort Washington, Pa.: CLC Publications, 2003), 10.
“When God poured out his justice on Christ, he was not only destroying his Son, but destroying the barrier between himself and us. How amazing! The more God vented his holiness on Jesus, the more he was venting his love for us. On the cross, the holiness and love of God, otherwise in tension, were in complete, brilliant cooperation. The more his holiness expressed itself, the more his love was satisfied; the more his love expressed itself, the more his holiness was satisfied.”
- Timothy Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), 65.
“Truly God is love. Love is not something that God may choose to be or choose not to be. He is love, and that necessarily, inherently, and eternally. As God is spirit, as he is light, so he is love.
Yet it belongs to the very essence of electing love to recognize that it is not inherently necessary to that love which God necessarily and eternally is that he should set such love as issues in redemption and adoption upon utterly undesirable and hell-deserving objects.
It was of the free and sovereign pleasure of his will, a good pleasure that emanated from the depths of his own goodness, that he chose a people to be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as ‘I am that I am.’”
—John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 10
“God’s love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.”
- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 130.
“God is the one Being in the entire universe for whom self-centeredness, or the pursuit of his own glory, is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When he does all things ‘for the praise of his glory,’ he preserves for us and offers to us, the only thing in the entire world, which can satisfy our longings. God is for us, and therefore has been, is now and always will be, first, for himself. I urge you not to resent the centrality of God in his own affections, but to experience it as the fountain of your everlasting joy.”
- John Piper, “Is God for Us or for Himself?“
“What we see at the cross is the white-hot revelation of the character of God, of his love providing the price that holiness requires. The cross was his means of redeeming lost sinners and reconciling them to himself, but it was also a profound disclosure of his mercy. It is, in Paul’s words, an ‘inexpressible gift’ that leads us to wonder and worship, to praise and adore the God who has given himself to us in this way.”
- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 129.
“The mother never has such success in showing her affection to her child as when he is in distress, sick, poor, or imprisoned. So Christ shows His affection to His children when tempted, or when bested by temptation.
When His children lie in Satan’s prison, bleeding under the wounds of their consciences, this is the season He takes to give an example of His tender heart in pitying, His faithfulness in praying for them, His mindfulness in sending help to them, His dear love in visiting them by His comforting Spirit.
Thus Jesus Christ, whom Satan thought to bring out of the soul’s favor and liking, comes in the end to sit higher and surer in the saint’s affections than ever.”
—William Gurnall, Christian in Complete Armour
