Of First Importance

“There is no victory over the indwelling power of sin, and there is no pardon for the guilt of sin, but as the soul deals with the blood of Christ. All true sanctification comes through the cross.

Seek it there. Go to the cross—oh, go to the cross of Jesus. In simplicity of faith, go. With the strong corruption, go. With the burden of guilt, go, go to the cross.

You will find nothing but love there—nothing but welcome there—nothing but purity there. The precious blood of Jesus ‘cleanses us from all sin.’ And while you are kept low beneath the cross, your enemy dares not approach you, sin shall not have dominion over you, nor shall Satan, your accuser, condemn you.”

—Octavius Winslow, Morning Thoughts (January 8)

“Q: Who has truly pondered the weight of sin?

A: The one who has truly pondered the weight of the cross.”

- Anselm of Canterbury, quoted by Micahel D. Williams in Far as the Curse is Found (Phillispburg, NJ; P & R Publishing, 2005), 76.

“To grow in your passion for what Jesus has done, increase your understanding of what He has done.

Never be content with your grasp of the gospel. The gospel is life-permeating, world-altering, universe-changing truth. It has more facets than any diamond. Its depths man will never exhaust.”

- C.J. Mahaney, The Cross Centered Life (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2002), 67.

“To use the magnificent words of B.B. Warfield, ‘Jesus dies on the cross, but not of the cross.’ The cross was the means by which He died, but not the reason why He died. He died through being crucified, but not because He was crucified. He was nailed to the tree, but that wasn’t the cause of His dying.

The cause of His dying is precisely because He is there as the substitutionary atonement for the sins of His people. He dies bearing my sins in His body to that tree, so that I might live; so that through His condemnation at Calvary, the Judge in heaven will say to the sword of justice as it hangs over my head for my sins, ‘Do not slay my son. Jesus has been crucified. He has been put to death’; and I am now pardoned through His dying, justified by His blood, saved from the wrath to come.”

- Iain D. Campbell, “The Children of Abraham Walk in Abraham’s Faith”

(HT: Ligon Duncan)

“Thus knowledge of Christ’s death for us as our sin-bearing substitute requires us to see ourselves as dead, risen, and alive forevermore in him. We who believe have died - painlessly and invisibly, we might say - in solidarity with him because he died, painfully and publicly, in substitution for us.”

- J.I. Packer, In My Place Condemned He Stood (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 86.

“The one thing that the poor strengthless sinner has to fix his mind upon, and firmly retain, as his one ground of hope, is the divine assurance that ‘in due time Christ died for the ungodly.’ Believe this, and all inability will disappear. As it is fabled of Midas that he turned everything into gold by his touch, so it is true of faith that it turns everything it touches into good. Our very needs and weaknesses become blessings when faith deals with them.”

- C. H. Spurgeon, All of Grace (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, n.d.), 66.

“God the Father entered into an eternal covenant with God the Son; he made Christ the head, the representative of the elect, as Adam was the head, the representative of all his seed. For these the Lord Jesus Christ undertook to fulfill the covenant of works. For these Jesus Christ died a painful, cursed, ignominious death; and by his obedience, and by his death, wrought out an everlasting righteousness for them.”

- George Whitefield, quoted by Steve Jeffery, et al. in Pierced for Our Transgressions (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway Books, 2007), 193.