|
dcc768e
|
One day Christ will return in the full glory of His resurrection power. The light will be switched on permanently. The Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world will be present in the new heavens and earth as their lamp. Neither sun nor moon will be needed (Rev. 21:23). As He will be the Life, so He will be the Light of the new world. "Jesus said to her, `I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he ..
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
06f4bba
|
What the prophets of God did spiritually, the Prophet of God did quite literally and physically.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
873c42d
|
Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
2f613a6
|
True Christian liberty, unlike the various "freedom" or "liberation" movements of the secular world, is not a matter of demanding the "rights" we have."
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
82095cd
|
This is the key to the enjoyment of assurance precisely because assurance is our assurance that he is a great Savior and that he is ours.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
f48af39
|
An inability to encourage someone else is usually rooted in an absorption with self that is blind to the needs or gifts of others, or a pride that cannot bring itself to praise God's grace in them.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
efc04e1
|
So we are Ephesians 2:15-16 Christians: the ceremonial law is fulfilled. We are Colossians 2:14-17 Christians: the civil law distinguishing Jew and Gentile is fulfilled. And we are Romans 8:3-4 Christians: the moral law has also been fulfilled in Christ. But rather than being abrogated, that fulfillment is now repeated in us as we live in the power of the Spirit.40
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
c375026
|
Such experiences can make us bewail how the Western world gives itself over annually to its Claus-mass or commerce-mass. We celebrate a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions, one in which the only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshiped, not the Savior; pilgrims go to the stores with credit cards, not to the manger with gifts. It is the feast of indulgence, not of the incarnation.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
674334b
|
Evil deeds are the fruit of an evil heart. They are not an aberration from our true self but a revelation of it.
|
|
religion-christianity
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
ae2e072
|
Our problem, like Jonah's, does not lie in the parts of Scripture we find difficult to understand. Like him, we turn away from the word of the Lord that we do understand. We do not read it, we do not love it, we have become almost incapable of meditating upon it; we are careless, if not actually callous about submitting to it.
|
|
religion-christianity
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
99ef1bf
|
The invisible is more substantial than the visible; ?he future shapes the past; The new is more fundamental than the old.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
b5c4261
|
There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present--while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
c0fbe0a
|
But, as Paul is at pains to stress, the law is good, and just, and holy.50 And we need to understand, sense, feel, and then delight in the grace of law.51 For unless we are persuaded that God has shown his grace in his law as well as in his Son, all we will hear and see at Sinai is thunder and lightning.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
c3bb8a5
|
God demonstrated His wisdom in that, even as people in Europe began despising the gospel, He was already preparing to go somewhere else.
|
|
europe
joel-beeke
michael-haykin
missionary
missions
revival
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
66df3e3
|
If you are going to resist the desires of the flesh (negative), you will need to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and walk according to his disciplines (positive).
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
6b51dd1
|
Growth in grace sometimes depends on the relatively mundane expedient of knowing ourselves well enough to recognise what are the points of lowest resistance in our lives.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
e88df19
|
The Father of Glory does not lurk behind His Son with sinister intent to do us ill, restrained only by the cruel and bloody sacrifice His Son has made! No, a thousand times no! The Father loves us in the love of the Son and the love of the Spirit (John 16:27).
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
1080e66
|
If I insist on knowing exactly what God is doing and what He plans to do with my future, if I demand to understand His ways with me in the past, I can never be content until I am equal with God.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
0bd9934
|
Peter's life can only be properly understood as the transformation of a man from what he was into what Christ intended him to be.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
f0e8600
|
bears repeating: in Eve's case antinomianism (her opposition to and rejection of God's law) was itself an expression of her legalism!
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
5084bf7
|
The heart of the Christian life is the crucified and risen Christ; the heart of the Christin experience is fellowship with him; the key to Christian growth is by sharing in all the implications of his death and resurrection.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
6bc5c7c
|
And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son. Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
217db87
|
The heart of the Christian life is the crucified and risen Christ; the heart of the Christian experience is fellowship with him; the key to Christian growth is by sharing in all the implications of his death and resurrection.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
02687e6
|
These considerations give us some clues as to why legalism and antinomianism are, in fact, nonidentical twins that emerge from the same womb. Eve's rejection of God's law (antinomianism) was in fact the fruit of her distorted view of God (legalism).
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
7ac39ab
|
The message of the incarnate Christ is glorious indeed, but it must never be severed from the message of the indwelling Christ. He who came for us as a baby now dwells in us as the Lord of glory through His Spirit. That is His gift to us. The indwelling Christ seeks one gift from you in return. You.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
c19255f
|
The fruit of the Spirit is love. But love is the most costly of fruits.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
fcf0e04
|
In acting, there can be a great discrepancy between the part which is played and the reality of the life which lies behind it. Paul suggests that the same can be true of faith. We can profess much and possess little.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
df25a1a
|
To become a Christian believer is to be brought into a reality far grander than anything we could ever have imagined. It means communion with the triune God.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
4273484
|
Christianity in China from 150 years prior to the time of its inscription, circa 780.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
1cb8660
|
Sincerity on its own is always inadequate before God. But faith without it is impossible.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |
|
bc13cb6
|
Spiritual growth is measured not only by external indications but by the amount of opposition which has to be overcome in order to express them.
|
|
|
Sinclair B. Ferguson |