God so loved us as to be willing to send His only dearest Son into our misery, hell, and death and let Him drain these to the dregs.
HT: @NickRoark
Tag Archives: Gospel
Worship at Home
A family is not born a Church and the little ones born into the family are not born into the Church. They must be born-again before they can be members of the Church—there must have been the work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the members of the family before they can form a Church in the house.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 – 1892)
HT: Reformed Quotes
Prayer, the Mirror of the Gospel
The gospel, God’s free gift of grace in Jesus, only works when we realize we don’t have it all together. The same is true for prayer. The very thing we are allergic to—our helplessness—is what makes prayer work. It works because we are helpless. We can’t do life on our own.
Prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help. We look at the inadequacy of our praying and give up, thinking something is wrong with us. God looks as the adequacy of his Son and delights in our sloppy, meandering prayers.
Paul Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2009), 55
The First Purpose of the Gospel
God’s great and first design, in and by the gospel, is eternally to glorify Himself, His wisdom, goodness, love, grace, righteousness, and holiness, by Jesus Christ.
The Most Wonderful Message the World Has Ever Heard or Ever Will Hear
This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity — hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory — because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.
J. I. Packer in Nancy Guthrie, Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 71.
Salvation Is All of Grace
Salvation is necessarily all of grace. Man’s fall is so complete, God’s justice so inexorable, heaven so holy, that nothing short of Omnipotent love can lift the sinner, magnify the law which he has mutilated, and make him pure enough to dwell in light. The thought of saving sinners is God’s, born in the secret places of His great, loving heart.
The Gospel Is the Priority!
The Christian faith is not a mere collection of doctrines — a bag of truths. Christianity is a comprehensive truth claim that encompasses every aspect of revealed doctrine, but is centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as the apostolic preaching makes clear, the gospel is the priority.
The Church’s Role in My Life
The more I comprehend the full scope of the Gospel, the more I value the church for which Christ died, the more I value the role that I play in the lives of my fellow Christians, and the more I appreciate the role that they must be allowed to play in mine.
The Dear Cost of God’s Love
God loves His saints as the purchase of His Son’s blood. They cost Him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was willing to expend His Son’s blood to gain them, will not deny His power to keep them.
The Enjoyment of God Himself
If the enjoyment of God Himself is no the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, His self-giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond Him for satisfaction.
John Piper, God Is the Gospel, p. 12
Life Is Worship 