GOSPEL-GREATNESS
Other men may
preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.
I sometimes
wonder that you do not get tired of my preaching, because I do nothing but
hammer away on this one nail. With me it is, year after year, "None but
Jesus!" Oh, you great saints, if you have outgrown the need of a sinner's
trust in the Lord Jesus, you have outgrown your sins, but you have also
outgrown your grace, and your saintship has ruined you!
C.H. Spurgeon
No other
religion has ever claimed that its historical founder is the one and only
supreme deity. Nor has any other religion ever dared to suggest that the one
true God loves us enough to die for us. This is the glory and the beauty of
Christianity. Because God is just, there had to be a payment for sin. Because
God is love, He was willing to make the payment in the Person of His own Son.
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p. 44.
We face a
humanity that is too precious to neglect. We know a remedy for the ills of the
world too wonderful to withhold. We have a Christ too glorious to hide. We have
an adventure that is too thrilling to miss.
Theodore Williams
The prophet Isaiah
says all of us are like wandering sheep. We've all gone astray. Every one of us
has followed our own sinful path and the Lord gathered all the iniquity of all
of us and laid it on Him. This is the amazing reality that Jesus Christ, God's
Son, is the sinless substitute for our sins. He offered Himself, the sinless
One, for the sinful one. Every person has sinned, and for everyone who puts
trust in Jesus Christ, that sin is paid for. This is at the heart of the
Christian gospel, Jesus the sinless one, dying as a substitute for sinners... God, the judge, determining what the punishment must be, and
executing it on his own Son. Then when we put our trust in Him, with His
death applied to us, our sins are forever covered, and the righteousness of
Christ is given to us. It is in this great truth of the Christian faith, in
which, we rejoice supremely. This rescues us from eternal judgment and gives us
eternal peace with God.
John MacArthur
The repeated
promises in the Qur'an of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah
are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighed in Allah's
scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol
of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.
John Stott
Authentic Christianity.
Christianity Today, v. 41, n. 1.
The gospel is
so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that
studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.
Charles Hodge
This
is the rock where we stand when the dark clouds gather and the floods lick at
our feet: justification is by grace alone (not mixed with our merit),
through faith alone (not mixed with our works) on the basis of Christ
alone (not mingling his righteousness with ours), to the glory of God
alone (not ours).
John Piper
Faith Alone and the Fight for Joy
taken from When the Darkness Will Not Lift by John Piper, 2006, Crossway Books,
a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 16.
This God, who
is King, is worthy to be known and to be proclaimed for who He is. The
missionary who proclaims this God cannot fail. If his message extols the sovereign
God, it will be significant even supposing it is never the means of winning one
soul. The message will not be lost. It cannot be lost. It will remain as
something precious. Before men and angels – yes, and before the demons of hell
– it will be praise to God! “For we are unto God a sweet savour
of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish” (2 Corinthians
2:15).
Tom Wells
A Vision for Missions, Permission by The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. p. 51-52.
The Gospel is
so simple that a small child can understand it, and it is so profound that
studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical
Celebration
This We Believe, John Armstrong and John
Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, 2000, p. 70.
This Gospel
anticipates a world far different from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, where it is “always
winter, and never Christmas.” The promise of the Gospel is that it is “always
Christmas.” To be “in Christ: is to enjoy each morning as a Christmas morning
with the family of God, celebrating the gift of God around the tree of life.
Kevin VanHoozer
This We Believe, John Armstrong and John
Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, 2000, p. 76.
[The Gospel]
tells rebellious men that God is reconciled, that justice is satisfied, that
sin has been atoned for, that the judgment of the guilty may be revoked, the
condemnation of the sinner canceled, the curse of the Law blotted out, the
gates of hell closed, the portals of heaven opened wide, the power of sin
subdued, the guilty conscience healed, the broken heart comforted, the sorrow
and misery of the Fall undone.
A.B. Simpson
They may seem
weak in the eyes of the worldly strong. They may seem foolish in the eyes of
the worldly wise. But the Gospel message is the power of God unto salvation,
and the Gospel means are effectual to salvation. These are the Spiritual
instruments given by God with which Christian congregational Spiritual life is
nurtured, the Spirit’s tools of grace and growth in grace appointed by God in
the Bible.
Ligon Duncan
The
Ordinary Means of Growth, Tabletalk, October 2007, p. 14. Used by Permission of
Ligonier Ministries.
The glory of
the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she
invariably attracts it.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
I’m tired of
hootenanny religion, the new brand of Christianity that pagans do not feel
embarrassed to join. I’m tired of Batman, the Beatniks, the Beatles, the “God
is dead” movement, the new morality, situation ethics, existentialism, and the
latest theological aberration out of Germany. If my faith were so weak that a
professor down in Georgia could shake it, I’d get another kind. I’m tired of
hearing in our church bodies that we must get away from our humble beginnings, shake the hayseed out of our hair, and come of
age. I hear a lot today about grandstand seats in glory, but I don’t hear much
about the baptism of Christ’s suffering. We’re wearing a lot of medals these
days, and not many scars.
Vance Havner
If
you are going to bore people, don’t bore them with the Gospel. Bore them with
calculus, bore them with earth science, bore them with world history.
But, it is a sin to bore people with the Gospel.
Howard Hendricks
But the Lord
God of His infinite and great goodness towards man exceeding His favour unto the lost angels had before all beginning of His
great love towards [the] elect appointed of His free gift the means whereby His
wrath should be satisfied, man’s sin and guilt done away, and he brought into a
far more blessed state than he was created in Adam.
John Penry
A Puritan
Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by
permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 252.
We must
repudiate our confused loyalties and concerns for the passing world and put
aside our misguided efforts to change culture externally. To allow our
thoughts, plans, time, money, and energy to be spent trying to make a
superficially Christian America, or to put a veneer of morality over the world,
is to distort the gospel, misconstrue our divine
calling, and squander our God-given resources. We must not weaken our spiritual
mission, obscure our priority of proclaiming the gospel of salvation, or become
confused about our spiritual citizenship, loyalties and obligations. We are to
change society, but by faithfully proclaiming the gospel, which changes lives on the inside.
John MacArthur
Titus, Moody, 1996, p. 138.