by J.C. Ryle
Take advice this day, and resolve to possess the realities of Christianity, as well as the name, and the substance, as well as the form. Do not be content until you know something of the peace, hope, joy, and consolation which Christians enjoyed in former times. Ask yourself what is the reason that you are a stranger to the feelings which men and women experienced in the days of the Apostles: ask yourself why you do not “joy in the Lord,” and feel “peace with God,” like the Romans and Philippians, to whom Paul wrote. Religious feelings, no doubt, are often deceptive; but surely the religion which produces no feelings at all is not the religion of the New Testament. The religion which gives a person no inward comfort can never be a religion from God. Reader, take heed to yourself. Never be satisfied until you know something of the rest that is in Christ.
by J.C. Ryle
by Joseph Chambers
An encounter with Jesus Christ where you are totally transformed into a new creature is the greatest moment you will ever experience. Heavens joy will flood your soul and at the same time the burden of sin will disappear. Martin Luther rightly said, “A Born Again Christian can do what they please to do.” When you have been totally “re-born” by the Word and the Spirit, you are a free soul. A “New Born” Christian is not bound to the Law they actually live above the Law. The law was a “school master” to bring us to Christ. It shows us how wretched we are and how desperately we need a Redeemer.
We must remember that regardless of how religious or upright we live, unless we are “Born Again” we are still eternally lost. The multitude of decent people that will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire is the saddest thought I ever have. I watch people, share their burdens, even preach funerals and see their lost condition and weep. Jesus left no room to doubt,
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3b)
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by A.B. Simpson
I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you—Galatians 4:19
It is a blessed moment when we are born again and a new heart is created in us after the image of God. It is a more blessed moment when, in this new heart, Christ Himself is born and Christmas time is reproduced in us as we, in some real sense, become incarnations of the living Christ. This is the deepest and holiest meaning of Christianity. It is expressed in Paul’s prayer for the Galatians. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.
There will yet be a more glorious era when we, like Him, shall be transformed and transfigured into His glory, and in the resurrection shall be, in spirit, soul and body, even as He.
Let us be, under the power of the inspiring thought, incarnations of Christ, not living our life, but the Christ life, and showing forth the excellencies, not of ourselves, but of Him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. As a result our lives shall be to all the reliving of the Christ life, as He would have lived it had He been here.
by A.B. Simpson
by Vance Havner
God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 6:14
We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross bearing the marks of the cross.
Paul was a MAN of the cross. He gloried in it. “I am crucified with Christ.” (Gal. 2:20). With him it was not a theory but an experience. His message was the cross.
“I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
He bore the marks of the cross:
“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. 6:17).
We are hearing a new version of Christianity that avoids all this. It is not foolishness to the world and it is without offense. It involves no crucifixion of self, it presents no bleeding Saviour, it offers medals instead of scars. But if any man or an angel preach a crossless Christ let him be accursed. For such a Christ is without offense and without effect.
by Vance Havner
by J.C. Ryle
When the apostle Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans, he used five words which the wisest of the heathen could never have used. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca were wise people. On many subjects they saw more clearly than most people in the present day. They were people of mighty minds, and of a vast range of intellect. But not one of them could have said as the apostle did,
“I have peace with God.” (Rom 5:1)
When Paul used these words, he spoke not for himself only, but for all true Christians. Some of them no doubt have a greater sense of this privilege than others. All of them find an evil principle within, warring against their spiritual welfare day by day. All of them find their adversary, the devil, waging an endless battle with their souls. All of them find that they must endure the enmity of the world. But all, notwithstanding, to a greater or less extent, “have peace with God.”
by J.C. Ryle
by A.W. Tozer
Whoever does not have the Spirit cannot receive the gifts that come from God’s Spirit. Such a person really does not understand them; they are nonsense to him, because their value can be judged only on a spiritual basis (TEV). 1 Corinthians 2:14
Surely God has that to say to the pure in heart which He cannot say to the man of sinful life. But what He has to say is not theological, it is spiritual; and right there lies the weight of my argument. Spiritual truths cannot be received in the ordinary way of nature.
"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
So wrote the apostle Paul to the believers at Corinth. Our Lord referred to this kind of Spirit-enlightened knowledge many times. To Him it was the fruit of a divine illumination, not contrary to but altogether beyond mere intellectual light. The fourth Gospel is full of this idea; indeed the idea is so important to the understanding of John’s Gospel that anyone who denies it might as well give up trying to grasp our Lord’s teachings as given by the apostle John. And the same idea is found in John’s first epistle, making that epistle extremely difficult to understand but also making it one of the most beautiful and rewarding of all the epistles of the New Testament when its teachings are spiritually discerned.
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by The Berean Call
Men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end.
Some years ago I was in a company of teachers of the Bible in the colleges and other educational institutions of America. One of the most eminent theological professors in the country made an address. In it he admitted that there are unfortunate controversies about doctrine in the Epistles of Paul; but, he said in effect, the real essence of Paul’s teaching is found in the hymn to Christian love in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians; and we can avoid controversy today, if we will only devote the chief attention to that inspiring hymn.
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by J.C. Ryle
