Then God stooped to earth and carefully fashioned a piece of clay. He lifted it gently to his lips and breathed into it. The clay began to move. It began to think. It began to feel. It began to worship. It was alive and stamped with the image of its Creator.
Consider the raising of Lazarus from the dead. How did Jesus do it? He did not enter the tomb where the rotting corpse of Lazarus was laid out; He did not have to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He stood outside the tomb, at a distance, and cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” Blood began to flow through the veins of Lazarus, and brain waves started to pulsate. In a burst of life Lazarus quit his grave and walked out. That is fiat creation, the power of the divine imperative.
- R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Tyndale, 1998) pg. 12
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In the ninth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when one makes an appeal to believe or at least help towards the end, instead of preaching faith into a person's heart by laying God's promises before him. Another school of believers dwells much upon the glorious work of the Spirit of God, and rightly and blessedly so. They believe in the Spirit of God as a cleansing power, sweeping the Augean stable of the soul, and making it into a temple for God. But frequently they talk as if they had ceased to sin, or to be annoyed by temptation; they glory as if the battle were already fought, and the victory won. Let us learn from these brethren. All the truth they teach us let us know. Let us become familiar with the hilltops, and the glory that shines thereon, the Hermons and the Tabors, where we may be transfigured with our Lord. Do not be afraid of becoming too holy. Do not be afraid of being too full of the Holy Spirit. I would have you wise on all sides, and able to deal with man both in his conflicts and in his joys, as one familiar with both. Know where Adam left you: know where the Spirit of God has placed you. Do not know either so exclusively as to forget the other. There are two schools of experience, and neither is content to learn from the other; let us be content, however, to learn from both. The one school speaks of the child of God as one who knows the deep depravity of his heart, who understands the loathsomeness of his nature, and daily feels that in his flesh there dwelt no good thing. 'That man has not the life of God in his soul,' they say, 'who does not know and feel this, and feel it by bitter and painful experience from day to day.' It is vain to talk to them about liberty, and joy in the Holy Ghost; they will not have it. Let us learn from these one-sided brethren. They know much that should be known, and woe to that minister who ignores their set of truths. Martin Luther use too say that temptation is the best teacher for a minister. There is truth on that side of the question. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner. Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish, not His own, He did not lay aside His body by an individual act of dying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in His own body. When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I'm going to tell you in this last book. They say ‘the ordinary reader does not want theology; give him plain practical religion’. I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children? Let it be understood that we do not reject good works. Indeed, good works are cherished and taught by us.* We do not condemn them for their own sake but on account of this godless addition to them-namely, that righteousness is to be obtained through them. |
AuthorMy name is still Jonah, and I happen to have a love of reading. Here are quotes I come across in books I read that I find interesting and encouraging. Archives
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