Of First Importance

“He who looks upon sin merely as a fiction, as a misfortune, or as a trifle, sees no necessity either for deep repentance or a great atonement.

He who sees no sin in himself will feel no need of a Saviour. He who is conscious of no evil at work in his heart, will desire no change of nature. He who regards sin as a slight affair will think a few tears or an outward reformation ample satisfaction. The truth is no man ever thought himself a greater sinner before God than he really was. Nor was any man ever more distressed at his sin than he had just cause to be.”

- William S. Plumer, quoted by Robin Boisvert in This Great Salvation (Gaithersburg, Md.: Sovereign Grace Ministries, 1992), 20.

“We know that all that is possible or conceivable of what is good and fair and blessed shall one day be real and visible. Out of all evil there comes the good; out of sin comes holiness; out of darkness, light; out of death, life eternal; out of weakness, strength; out of the fading, the blooming; out of rottenness and ruin, loveliness and majesty; out of the curse come the blessing, the incorruptible, the immortal, the glorious, the undefiled!

Our present portion, however, is but the pledge, not the inheritance. The inheritance is reserved for the appearing of the Lord. Here we see but through a glass darkly. It does not yet appear what we shall be. We are now but as wayfaring men, wandering in the lonely night, who see dimly upon the distant mountain peak the reflection of a sun that never rises here, but which shall never set in the ‘new heavens’ hereafter.”

—Horatius Bonar, “Home”

“Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?

The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.”

—Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 116

“Put simply, the Christian story unravels unless God brings the entire course of human history under His visible and perfect judgment, unless God’s justice is perfectly displayed, unless the Christ is revealed in glory so that every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father [Phil. 2:11], unless Christ claims His redeemed people, unless God’s triumph in Christ over death, sin, evil, and injustice is made universal. Put simply, unless every eye is dry and every tear is wiped away.

There is no Christian Gospel if history simply unwinds into a meaningless puddle, if the cosmos simply escapes into a cataclysmic black hole, or if the universe finally dies of exhausted energy. Without belief in a biblical eschatology, there is no Christian hope. Without a sense of perfect moral judgment in the end, the human heart is homeless.”

—Albert Mohler, “The End of History — The Moral Necessity of Eschatology”

“Poor folks must either borrow or beg the rich, and the only thing that commendeth sinners to Christ is extreme necessity and want. Christ’s love is ready to make and provide a ransom and money for a poor body who hath lost his purse. ‘Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy’ (Isa 55:1). That is the poor man’s market.”

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2007) 13.

“This is what happens when we become Christians. Christ assumes our liabilities and graciously gives us his assets.”

- Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Winston-Salem, NC: Punch Press, 2006), 55.

“Ungrudgingly he took our nature upon himself to impart to us what was his, and to become both Son of God and Son of man in common with us. Hence that holy brotherhood which he commends with his own lips when he says: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ (John 20:17). In this way we are assured of the inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom; for the only Son of God, to whom it wholly belongs, has adopted us as his brothers.”

- John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter XII, Number 2.

(HT: Together for Adoption)