Archive for the ‘Quotations’ Category
Piper on vocation
Piper writes of ways to make much of Christ in our vocations:
- We can make much of God in our secular job through the fellowship that we enjoy with him throughout the day in all our work.
- We make much of Christ in our secular work by the joyful, trusting, God-exalting design of our creativity and industry.
- We make much of Christ in our secular work when it confirms and enhances the portrait of Christ’s glory that people hear in the spoken gospel.
- We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning enough money to keep us from depending on others, while focusing on the helpfulness of our work rather than financial rewards.
- We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God.
— John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life
HT: Justin Taylor
Christ is Lord of our time
John Newton was a busy pastor. He wrote of having “seldom one-hour free from interruption. Letters, that must be answered, visitants that must be received, business that must be attended to.” Yet he had this perspective of God’s claim on his time:
When I hear a knock at my study door,
I hear a message from God.
It may be a lesson of instruction;
perhaps a lesson of patience:
but, since it is his message,
it must be interesting.
By our frequent reaction to the circumstances God brings our way, one would believe that we thought ourselves sovereign lords of our schedule. But the reality is that Christ is lord of our time. He gives us regular responsibilities to carry out for his sake. He brings us unexpected situations where we must patiently and humbly set aside our expectations and represent and serve him. And he gives us recreation and sleep as gifts. In fact, every circumstance that he brings about, and every way that he apportions our time, is in some fashion a good gift from him.
Let’s pray that we will better understand his lordship over our time, better see his goodness in that, and thus better trust in him.
Quotes from John Piper
Crossposted to Reflections on Upchurch
Murray on Vocation
We know how intriguing, even to godless men, is the scientific quest (and the artistic quest!), and how untiring are their labours to discover the secrets of what they call nature (and what they call art!). How incomparably more intriguing and defeatlessly rewarding would have been the quest of sinless man when, at every step of his path and in every detail of progressive understanding, the marvels of the Creator’s wisdom, power, goodness, righteousness, and lovingkindness would have broken in upon his heart and mind, and every new discovery, every additional conquest, would have given cause afresh for the adoration, ‘O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches’ (Psa 104:24). We get a glimpse of the stupendous undertaking and the unspeakable glory of it all. We begin, perhaps, to understand a little of what culture should be. This is the culture that would have engaged and inspired man if he had been confirmed in his integrity. It would have been culture untiringly inspired by the apprehension of the Creator’s glory and by the passion to apprehend and exalt that glory more. That our culture is so little inspired by that ideal is but proof that man has fallen. That any of this culture is found in the earth is proof of redemptive grace.
The earth is full of God’s riches, and one of the callings of the Christian — one of the ways we are to carry out our daily work — is to discover those riches and thereby magnify God.
HT: Daniel Baker
Calvin on the sanctity of life
Yesterday was sanctity of life Sunday; providentially, my pastors reached the sixth commandment in their series in Exodus.
John Calvin has this to say on the sanctity of life, connecting Leviticus 19:14 with the sixth commandment:
Since the Law comprehends under the word murder, all the wrongs whereby men are unjustly injured, that cruelty was especially to be condemned by which those wretched persons are afflicted, whose calamity ought rather to conciliate our compassion. For, if any particle of humanity exists in us, when we meet a blind man we shall be solicitous lest he should stumble or fall, and, if he goes astray, we shall stretch out our hands to him and try to bring him back into the way; we shall also spare the deaf, for to insult them is no less absurd or barbarous than to assail stones with reproaches. It is, therefore, gross brutality to increase the ills of those whom our natural sense impels us to relieve, and who are already troubled more than enough. Let us, then, learn from these words, that the weaker people are, the more secure ought they to be from all oppression or injury, and that, when we attack the defenseless, the crime of cruelty is greatly aggravated, whilst any insult against [those who suffer calamity] is altogether intolerable to God.
— John Calvin, Harmony of the Law, Volume 3
Calvin indicates that, negatively, in the sixth commandment God especially forbids us from bringing harm to the weak. Positively, God requires us to defend the weak.
This is why abortion is such a critical — and unusually political — issue for the church today: it is a matter of obedience and worship to God. With largely private sins our primary responsibility is to preach the gospel — pleading with men to let go of their sin and turn to Christ. But abortion is not a private sin; it represents the murder of the most weak and defenseless persons of all. As such we are bound by duty and love not only to call individuals to repentance and faith, but to earnestly contest this murder by every possible legitimate means.
Crossposted to Reflections on Upchurch
Piper on justification and sanctification
“The only sin we can fight against successfully is a forgiven sin”:
All the sins of God’s people, past, present and future, are forgiven because of the death of Christ once for all. . . . This justification on the basis of Christ’s death for us is the foundation of sanctification — not the other way around. I put it like this: the only sin we can fight against successfully is a forgiven sin. Without a once-for-all justification through Christ, the only thing that our striving for holiness produces is despair or self-righteousness.
But I did not say that the work of God in justification makes the work of God in sanctification optional. I didn’t say (the Bible doesn’t say) that forgiveness makes holiness optional. It doesn’t make it optional, it makes it possible. What we will see today is that the God who justifies also sanctifies. The faith that justifies also satisfies — it satisfies the human heart and frees it from the deceptive satisfactions of sin. Faith is the expulsive power of a new affection (Thomas Chalmers). That is why justification and the process of sanctification always go together. They both come from the same faith. Perfection comes at the end of life when we die or when Christ returns, but the pursuit of holy living begins with the first mustard seed of faith. That’s the nature of saving faith. It finds satisfaction in Christ and so is weaned away from the satisfactions of sin.
— John Piper, God Sanctifies His People
Lauterbach on censoriousness
Mark Lauterbach has just finished an excellent series on censoriousness, which he defines (from Jonathan Edwards) as “a disposition to think evil of others.” Lauterbach shares thoughts from Edwards and himself on this sinful tendency.
Isn’t God holy? Yes, but then I reflect on how my Lord critiques me
and I think of Ps 130 — if the Lord numbered our sins, who could stand?
But he does not — he is patient and selective and gentle with us.
This series has six posts:
- Censorious thoughts, 1, introduction;
- Censorious thoughts, 2, on pride;
- Censorious thoughts, 3, also on pride;
- Censorious thoughts, 4, on receiving criticism;
- Censorious thoughts, 5, on love; and
- Censorious thoughts, final, on encouraging and supporting the work of the Spirit.
Packer on the incarnation
How are we to think of the Incarnation? The New Testament does not encourage us to puzzle our heads over the physical and psychological problems that it raises, but to worship God for the love that was shown in it. For it was a great act of condescension and self-humbling. “He, who had always been God by nature,” writes Paul, “did not cling to his privileges as God’s equal, but stripped Himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born a man. And, plainly seen as a human being, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, to the point of death, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal” (Phil 2:6-8 Phillips). And all this was for our salvation. . . .
The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context. . . . The taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it — not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.
– J. I. Packer, Knowing God, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993; pp. 58-59.
Van Til on belief in God
Perhaps you think that the only real reason I have for believing in God is the fact that I was taught to do so in my early days. Of course I don’t think that is really so. I don’t deny that I was taught to believe in God when I was a child, but I do affirm that since I have grown up I have heard a pretty full statement of the argument against belief in God. And it is after having heard that argument that I am more than ever ready to believe in God. Now, in fact, I feel that the whole of history and civilization would be unintelligible to me if it were not for my belief in God. So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him, without already having taken Him for granted. And similarly I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God’s existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time. Or to use another illustration, God is like the emplacement on which must stand the very guns that are supposed to shoot Him out of existence. . . . My whole point will be that there is perfect harmony between my belief as a child and my belief as a man, simply because God is Himself the environment by which my early life was directed and my later life made intelligible to myself.
— Cornelius Van Til, from the excellent essay Why I Believe in God
Bavinck on Christian warfare
We may not be a sect. We may not want to be one, and we cannot be one, except by a denial of the absolute character of the truth. Indeed, the kingdom of heaven is not of this world. But it does demand that everything in this world serve it. It is exclusive and jealous, and it will indulge no independent or neutral kingdom of the world alongside of itself. Naturally, it would be much easier to leave this age to its own ways, and to seek our strength in a quiet withdrawal. No such rest, however, is permitted to us here. Because every creature is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving, since all things are sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, therefore the rejection of any creature were ingratitude to God, a misjudgment or under-evaluation of His goodness and His gifts. Our warfare may be conducted against sin alone. No matter how complicated the relationships may be, therefore, in which the confessors of Christ are placed in this time, no matter how serious, difficult, and virtually insurmountable the social, political, and especially the scientific problems may be, it were faithlessness and weakness in us proudly to withdraw from the struggle, perhaps even under the guise of Christian motivation, and to reject the culture of the age as demonic.
— Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, p. 10.
HT: Nathan
Packer on adoption and obedience
While it is certainly true that justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one’s newfound Father. Law-keeping is the family likeness of God’s children; Jesus fulfilled all righteousness, and God calls us to do likewise. Adoption puts law-keeping on a new footing: as children of God, we acknowledge the law’s authority as a rule for our lives, because we know that this is what our Father wants. If we sin, we confess our fault and ask our Father’s forgiveness on the basis of the family relationship, as Jesus taught us to do — “Father . . . forgive us our sins” (Lk 11:2, 4). The sins of God’s children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children’s fellowship with their Father. “Be holy, for I am holy” is our Father’s word to us, and it is no part of justifying faith to lose sight of the fact that God, the King, wants his royal children to live lives worthy of their paternity and position.
— J. I. Packer, Knowing God, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993; p. 223
I gotta have my orange juice. 