“The man who talks about his experience as a Christian, who never does anything for Christ, is , I am afraid, only and idle dreamer.”
~ Charles Spurgeon, 1893, Sermon 2315
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But if any one fact is clear, … it is that the Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message. It is perfectly clear that the first Christian missionaries did not simply come forward with exhortation; they did not say: “Jesus of Nazareth lived a wonderful life of filial piety, and we call upon you our hearers to yield yourselves as we have done to the spell of that life.” Certainly that is what modern historians would have expected the first Christian missionaries to say, but it must be recognized at least that as a matter of fact they said nothing of the kind. They came forward, not merely with an exhortation or with a program, but with a message,—with an account of something that had happened a short time before. “Christ died for our sins,” they said, “according to the Scriptures; he was buried; he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
This message, even the small excerpt from it quoted by Paul in 1Cor. 15:3ff., contains two elements—it contains (1) the facts and (2) the meaning of the facts (“for our sins”). The narration of the facts is history; the setting forth of the meaning of the facts is doctrine. These two elements are always contained in the Christian message. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”-that is history. “He loved me and gave himself
for me”—that is doctrine. Without these two elements, inextricably intertwined, there is no Christianity.
The character of primitive Christianity, as founded upon a message, is summed up in the words of the eighth verse of the first chapter of Acts—”Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” It is entirely unnecessary, for the present purpose, to argue about the historical value of the Book of Acts or to discuss the question whether Jesus really spoke the words just quoted. In any case the verse must be recognized as an adequate summary of what is known about primitive Christianity. From the beginning Christianity was a campaign of witnessing. And the witnessing did not concern merely what Jesus was doing within the recesses of the individual life. To take the words of Acts in that way is to do violence to the context and to all the evidence. On the contrary, the Epistles of Paul and all the sources make it abundantly plain that the testimony was primarily not to inner spiritual facts but to what Jesus had done once for all in His death and resurrection.
~ J. Gresham Machen, (1881-1937), Liberalism or Christianity?, THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, Vol. 20, 1922, Page 97
There are those who think that Charles Hyden Spurgeon was not a Calvinist. So, here’s a quote from Spurgeon on “limited atonement.”
The Armenians say, Christ died for all men. Ask them what they mean by it. Did Christ die so a
s to secure the salvation of all men? They say, “No, certainly not.” We ask them the next question – Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any man in particular? They answer “No.” They are obliged to admit this if they are consistent. They say “No, Christ has died that any man may be saved if” – and then follow certain conditions of salvation. We say, then we will just go back to the old statement – Christ did not die so as beyond doubt to secure the salvation of anybody, did he? You must say “No”; you are obliged to say so, for you believe that even after a man has been pardoned, he may yet fall from grace, and perish. Now who is it that limits the death of Christ? Why, you. You say that Christ did not die so as to infallibly secure the salvation of anybody, We beg your pardon, when you say we limit Christ’s death; we say, No my dear sir, it is you that do it. We say Christ so died that he infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number, who through Christ’s death no only may be saved, but are saved, must be saved, and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.
- Charles H. Spurgeon, “Particular Redemption,” sermon preached February 28, 1858.
“What good does it do to me to tell me that the type of religion presented in the Bible is a very fine type of religion and that the thing for me to do is just to start practicing that type of religion now? …I will tell you, my friend,. It does me not one tiniest little bit of good.
…What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?”
~John Gresham Machen, “Christian Faith In The Modern World”, (New York: Macmillan, 1936, pg 57
“For the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas: it bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. …A right view of these things is not possible without a right understanding of justification; so that, when justification falls, all true knowledge of the grace of God in human life falls, all true knowledge of the grace of God in human life falls with it, and then, as Luther said, the church itself falls. A society like the Church of Rome, which is committed by its official creed to pervert the doctrine of justification, has sentenced itself to a distorted understanding of salvation at every point. Nor can these distortions ever be corrected till Roman doctrine of justification is put right. And something similar happens when Protestants let the thought of justification drop out of their minds: true knowledge of salvation drops out with it, and cannot be restored till the truth of justification is back in its proper place. When Atlas falls, everything that rested on his shoulders comes crashing down too.”
~J.I. Packer, “Introductory Essay,” in James Buchanan, “The octane of Justification: An Outline Of Its History In The Church And Of Its Exposition From Scripture, London: Banner of Truth, 1961, pp. viii, ix
“Whenever I feel that I have sinned and desire to overcome that sin for the future, the devil at the same time comes to me and whispers, ‘How can you be 
a pardoned person and accepted with God while you still sin in this way?’ If I listen to this I drop into despondency , and if I continued in that state I should fall into despair, and should commit sin more frequently than before; but God’s grace comes in and says to my soul, ‘Thou hast sinned; but did not Christ come and save sinners? Thou art not saved because thou art righteous; for Christ died for the ungodly.’ And my faith says, ‘Though I have sinned, I have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and I am a child of God still.” And what then? Why the tears begin to flow and I say, ‘How could I ever sin against my God who has been so god to me? Now I will overcome that sin,” and I will get strong to fight with sin through the conviction that I am God’s child.”
~ Charles Hayden Spurgeon, (source unknown) taken from “John MacArthur, “Saved Without A Doubt”, Victor Books, Cook Communications, 2006, pg. 124
“It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is to keep the peace when truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God’s truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time that He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and falsehood.”
~Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662), cited in Dietrich von Hildebrand, “The Charitable Anathema”
Let’s face it: the idea that the entire human race is fallen and condemned is simply too harsh for most people’s tastes. They would rather believe that most people are fundamentally good. Virtually every popular arbiter of our culture’s highest, noblest values – from Oprah Winfrey to the Hallmark Channel – tells us so consistently. All we need to do, they say, is cultivate our underlying goodness, and we can fix everything wrong with the human society. That’s not terribly different from what the Pharisees believed about themselves.
- John MacArthur, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore, pg.47
There are several things which may help to make the life fair in the eyes of men, but nothing will make it amiable in the eyes of God, unless the heart be changed and renewed. Indeed, all medicines that can be applied, without the sanctifying work of the Spirit, though they may cover, they can never cure the corruptions and diseases of the soul… Such civil persons go to hell without much disturbance, being asleep in sin, yet not snoring to the disquieting of others; they are so far from being awaked that they are many times praised and commended. Example, custom, and education, may also help a man to make a fair show in the flesh, but not to walk after the Spirit. They may prune and lop sin, but never stub it up by the roots. All that that these can do, is to make a man like a grave, green and flourishing on the surface and outside, when within there is nothing but noisomeness and corruption.
- George Swinnock, “Do You Worship God”, a sermon from the Puritan era on I Timothy 4:7. reprinted in Free Grace Broadcaster, Issue 177, Summer 2001, 21-22
Most Christians expect little from God, ask little, and therefore receive little and are content with little.
~A. W. Pink
If the truth cannot be fearlessly proclaimed in the church, what place is there for truth at all? How can we build a generation of discerning Christians if we are terror-struck at the thought that non-Christians might not like hearing the unvarnished truth?
- John MacArthur, The Truth War pg. 199
“…we must not only try to evaluate the accuracy of the emerging church’s cultural analysis, but also the extent to which its proposals spring from, or can at least be squared with, the Scriptures. To put the matter differently: Is there at least some danger that what is being advocated is not so much a new kind of Christian in a new emerging church, but a church that is so submerging itself in the culture that it risks hopeless compromise?” ~ D. A. Carson, “Becoming Conversant With The Emerging Church” pg.45
According to Scripture, the moral law is a revelation of the character of God. It therefore exposes sin (Rom. 7:7), but it also points to the nature of the believer’s future glorification. Salvation has as its purpose the recovery of sinners to the image of God in Christ; the provisions of redemption are not therefore a substitute for law, rather, as Paul writes, it is by the gospel that “we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31). Christ died, believers are told, “that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:4). “Free from the law” means deliverance from its condemnation through Christ; not exemption from the moral perfection it requires. It is the deepening awareness of the holiness God requires that leads the Christian to a growing awareness of sin, and to humility before God. ~ Iain Murray, Truth Endures, pg 51-52
The post-modernist takes the position that when a person speaks from conviction, especially the conviction that is born from the Scriptures he is arrogant. But this kind of thinking is nothing new and G. K. Chesterton saw it years ago when he commented;
“…is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition…[and] settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. We are on a road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, New York; Doubleday, 1959, pg. 27-28
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