Let the Love of God Really Grip You

“God saw Abraham’s sacrifice and said, ‘Now I know that you love me, because you did not withhold your only son from me’ [Gen. 22:12]. But how much more can we look at his sacrifice on the Cross, and say to God, ‘Now, we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from us.’ When the magnitude of what he did dawns on us, it makes it possible finally to rest our hearts in him rather than in anything else.”

- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Dutton, 2009), 18.

Published in: on June 20, 2010 at 12:26 am  Comments (1)  

Let His Love Win Your Love

“When we go to the cross, we see our God dying for us. If you let any other god down, it will beat you up. If you live for people’s approval or your career or possessions or control or anything else and you don’t make it or you mess up, then you’ll be left feeling afraid, downcast, or bitter. But when you let Christ down, he still loves you. He doesn’t beat you up; he died for you.

Let his love win your love, and let that love replace all other affections. The secret of change is to renew your love for Christ as you see him crucified in your place.”

- Tim Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway, 2010), 128.

Published in: on June 12, 2010 at 12:07 am  Comments (2)  

The Love We Trust

“It is an item of faith that we are children of God; there is plenty of evidence in us against it. The faith that surmounts this evidence and that is able to warm itself at the fire of God’s love, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from other sources, is actually the root of holiness. . . . We are not saved by the love we exercise, but by the love we trust.”

- Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1979), 213.

Published in: on August 9, 2009 at 1:19 am  Leave a Comment  

The Father’s Embrace

“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.

Published in: on July 7, 2009 at 12:30 am  Comments (1)  

The Brilliant Cooperation of Holiness & Love

“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.

Published in: on April 22, 2009 at 12:44 am  Comments (3)  

God freely loves

“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

Published in: on April 2, 2009 at 1:34 am  Leave a Comment  

The Price that Love Pays

“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.

Published in: on January 18, 2009 at 3:22 am  Leave a Comment  
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