Tag Archives: Christianity

Don’t Walk around Looking Like You Were Weaned on Sour Pickles

Posted on by under J. C. Ryle

True religion was never meant to make [people] melancholy. On the contrary, it was intended to increase real joy and happiness among [people]. . . . The Christian who withdraws entirely from the society of his fellow men, and walks the earth with a face as melancholy as if he was always attending a funeral, does injury to the cause of the gospel. A cheerful, kindly spirit is a great recommendation to a believer. . . . A merry heart, and a readiness to take part in all innocent mirth, are gifts of inestimable value. They go far to soften prejudices, to take up stumbling-blocks out of the way, and to make way for Christ and the gospel.

J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John Vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2012), 64.

Does Your God Contradict You?

Posted on by under Timothy Keller

We know that in mutually loving relationships, both parties must be active agents, able to contradict as well as affirm each other. If person A is never allowed to express a contradictory opinion to person B, then person B has a power relationship with person A, but not a personal one.

Now, if you choose to believe only those things in the Bible that you agree with, in what way do you have a God who can contradict you? Only if your God can say things that upset you will you know you have a real God and not a creation of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible . . . is not the enemy of a personal love relationship with God. . . . It is the precondition.

Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism, p. 113

HT: @mph_II

Conflictless Christianity

Posted on by under J. C. Ryle

The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight against spiritual apathy in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a brief round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But of the great spiritual warfare – its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests – of all things they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own.

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

To Deny the Resurrection Is to Deny Christianity

Posted on by under John MacArthur

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single greatest event in the history of the world. It is so foundational to Christianity that no one who denies it can be a true Christian…A person who believes in a Christ who was not raised believes in a powerless Christ, a dead Christ. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then no redemption was accomplished at the cross and “your faith is worthless,” Paul goes on to say; “you are still in your sins” (v. 17).

John MacArthur (1939-  )