Of First Importance

“Self has no claims upon us, for it has done nothing for us. It has been a wall of iron between us and Christ. Is that a reason that we should serve it? It has been a mountain of ice between us and the world to come. Is that a ground of claim over us?

No, brethren, self has done nothing to make us either live to it or die to it. It never can do anything; shall we then bow to it; shall we serve it; shall we do it homage?

We ask on the other hand—What has the Lord not done? What indissoluble, innumerable bonds are there between us and him, as the living, the dying, and the rising one.

The whole of our life is to be his, as his life was for us. Surely he has earned this, if he has earned anything at all. The least that we can give him is our life; the undivided service of our being, in every part; in our doing, in our speaking, in our planning, and in all our daily round of business, so that every part of our life shall be a witness-bearing for him.”

—Horatius Bonar, “Self or Christ; Which Is It?”

“I have paraphrased John 17:26 in order to pray it like this: ‘Father, grant me power from the Holy Spirit to love the Son of God like you love him.’

I pray this in the morning when I get up; I pray it during the day when my mind slips into neutral; and I pray it when I fall asleep at night. My heart has been captured by this prayer.

When I pray it, I am confessing to God that if he does not grant me a work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I will never acquire passion for the Son of God. I am confessing to him that my godliness, my discipline, my knowledge of the Word, though all good, are insufficient to produce passion for the Son of God.

I can change my mind, but only the Holy Spirit can change my heart. Divine love can only be divinely imparted.”

—Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 201

“Redemption is God saving us from our whoops and restoring back to us our original wow.”

- John Ensor, Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007), 37.

(HT: Marty Jones)

“To worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.”

- D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 2002), 37.

“The Trinitarian view of worship is that it is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father. That means participating in union with Christ, in what he has done for us once and for all, in his self-offering to the Father, in his life and death on the cross. It also means participation in what he is continuing to do for us in the presence of the Father and in his mission from the Father to the world. There is only one true Priest through whom and with whom we draw near to God our Father. There is only one Mediator between God and humanity. There is only one offering which is truly acceptable to God, and it is not ours. It is the offering by which he has sanctified for all time those who come to God by him (Heb. 2:11; 10:10, 14).”

- James B. Torrance, quoted by D.A. Carson in Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 2002), 42.