Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Puritans on Loving One Another - from the writings of Ralph Venning, Thomas Manton, Joseph Caryl & John Ball - edited by Rev. Don Kistler

"Indeed, the glory of all our hereafter glory will be oneness of communion with the Father, Son, Spirit, and one another in God, who is one in all and all in one." (pg. 8)

"It is true that the multitude of years teaches wisdom, and so may the youth of days; it is truth, and nothing but the truth, and all the truth, which should have our esteem, whether it is old or young, whether it is the firstborn of time or the last." (pg. 17)

"Jealousy is as quick as martial law: it arraigns, condemns, and executes all in a moment." (pg. 23)

"When we are inferior and others superior, we beg (as did the servant in Matthew 18:26), 'Have patience a little.' Have a little patience! But when we are superior and others inferior, we have no patience at all." (pg. 26)

"Nature is so in love with unity that particular beings will forsake their own interests, their elements and centers which are their rest and happiness, rather than there should be a breach or vacuity in nature. And it is but reasonable that particulars should serve the universal (for they who so lose, shall save), seeing that unless the vessel be preserved their cabins cannot." (pg. 28)

"...none must look upon love as an indifferent thing, which we may practice or forbear at our own pleasure. No, it is a debt or duty by virtue of Christ's express command, a duty to Christ, a debt that we owe to God more than to our neighbor. (pg. 62)

"Those works of love, of love toward man, much more of love toward God, which are the end of the commandment, must flow from a good spring, from a gracious principle, a principle of grace." (pg. 79)

"...the heart is evangelically pure though there is sin dwelling in us, or an indwelling sin; and though sin is stirring, having strong motions in us, it makes war in our souls from day to day, though sin sometimes prevails and gives us that foil; yet, notwithstanding all this, when: First, the soul is free from the command of every sin. Second, when the soul is free from the customary practice of every sin. And, third, when the soul is free from the love of any sin, then the soul is evangelically pure." (pg. 101)

"It is an easy matter to be pure in our own eyes and yet remain altogether unclean." (pg. 102ff)

"Love causes the soul of him who loves to be more where it loves than where it lives." (pg. 119)

Venning, Manton, Caryl, Ball, edited by Rev. Don Kistler, The Puritans on Loving One Another (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1997)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God - by J. I. Packer

"The recovering of old truth, truth that has been a means of blessing in the past, can under God become the means of blessing again in the present, while the quest for newer alternatives may well prove barren." (pg. 13)

"Holiness is always the saved sinner's response of gratitude for grace received." (pg. 22)

"Genuine holiness is genuine Christlikeness, and genuine Christlikeness is genuine humanness - the only genuine humanness there is. Love in the service of God and others, humility and meekness under the divine hand, integrity of behavior expressing integration of character, wisdom with faithfulness, boldness with prayerfulness, sorrow at people's sins, joy at the Father's goodness, and single-mindedness in seeking to please the Father morning, noon, and night, were all qualities seen in Christ, the perfect man." (pg. 27)

"To long for total spiritual well-being is right and natural, but to believe that one is anywhere near it is to be utterly self-deceived." (pg. 39)

"Our time will surely go down in history, at least as far as the West is concerned, as the age of the God-shrinkers. Mainstream thinkers, inside as well as outside the church, have affirmed either the bloodless deism of a God who is cool, faraway, and uninvolved, and who lets His world run free; or the static monism of a God whose achievement is limited to unifying reality by linking all entities and processes with Himself in an interdependent whole; or the pathetic impotence of a God who is revealed in Jesus as an unsuccessful lover; or the faceless force of a God who animates all religions equally, so that none should dream of displacing any other." (pg. 64)

"When almighty love has thus totally taken over the task of getting me home to glory, responsive love, fed by gratitude and expressed in thanksgiving, should surface spontaneously as the ruling passion of my life." (pg. 71)

"Spirituality without ethics corrupts itself by becoming morally insensitive and antinomian, more concerned to realize God's presence than to keep His law. Ethics without spirituality corrupts itself by becoming mechanical, formalistic, proud, and unspiritual." (pg. 86)

"All ventures in holiness go rotten at the core when gain in any form, rather than gratitude, motivates them." (pg. 97)

"Godly Christians have always been marked by a two-sided perception of the numinous [the sense of divine holiness]. On the one hand, the transcendent glory of God's purity and love, as focused in the plan of salvation, fascinates them. On the other hand, the transcendent glory of God's sovereignty, as focused in the divine threat of judgment for impiety, alarms them. This characteristically Christian sense of the mercy and the terror (fear) of the Lord is the seed-bed in which awareness grows that life-long repentance is a 'must' of holy living." (pg. 120ff)

"Some forms of so-called holiness teaching encourage us to be insensitive to, or unconcerned about, the ungodly thoughts and motives that lurk within us, but one index of true holiness is an increasing awareness of them, a growing hatred toward them, and a deepening repentance for them, when we find ourselves harboring them in our hearts." (pg. 136)

"The fact is that Christians today are all victims of our decadent late twentieth century ethos that wrenches public orthodoxy and personal morality apart, implying that the latter does not matter so long as one is valiant for the truth." (pg. 140)

"The point I am trying to drive home is that holiness is the healthy growth of morally misshapen humans toward the moral image of Jesus Christ, the perfect man. This growth is supernatural. It takes the sanctifying work of the indwelling Holy Spirit to effect it." (pg. 152)

"Law-keeping love is the epitome of holiness, though love in any other sense negates it. Law-keeping love is God's prescription for the fulfilling of our humanity." (pg. 163)

"It has been truly said that the greatest social problem of the modern world is extreme emotional immaturity masquerading as an adult lifestyle. In God's ordering of things, the human family is meant to function as a relational network in which the lesson of responsible love and life-strategy will be thoroughly learned. But with the weakening of family life almost everywhere this is not happening." (pg. 182ff)

"Christian endurance, as we have seen, means living lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, and patiently under conditions that we wish were different." (pg. 227)

"...Christian contentment, cheerfulness and joy are fed, not directly by spiritual experiences - feelings, visions, raptures, thrills, which come and go, and in particular cases may hardly come at all - but by cognitive meditation and reflection - that is, by thinking, and thinking often - about the goodness, glory, and grace of the holy Three." (pg. 262ff)

J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2009)

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Famine In The Land: A Passionate Call For Expository Preaching - by Steven J. Lawson

"This is the true nature of preaching. It is the man of God opening the Word of God and expounding its truths so that voice of God may be heard, the glory of God seen, and the will of God obeyed." (pg. 18)

"In seeking to capture the upper hand in church growth, a new wave of pastors is reinventing church and repackaging the gospel into a product to be sold to 'consumers.'" (pg. 25)

"While evangelicals affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, many have apparently abandoned their belief in its sufficiency to save and to sanctify." (pg. 26)

"Rather than expounding the depths of God's Word, many Bible-believing ministers have chosen the path of least resistance, content to scratch the surface of shallow souls and tickle the ears of languid listeners. The result is congregations are starving - even though many of the famished may not be aware of it - settling for sickly sweet, yet totally inadequate, spiritual pabulum." (pg. 38)

"This present-day 'famine' of 'hearing the words of the Lord' (Amos 8:11) must be traced back to a famine of preaching the Word. Surely John Stott is right when he observes, 'The low level of Christian living is due more than anything else to the low level of Christian preaching.' May preachers today expound the Book, the whole Book, and nothing but the Book - so help them God!" (pg. 98ff)

"...the ultimate goal of Bible exposition is changed lives. Preaching must do more than simply inform the mind; it must grip the heart and challenge the will. The entire person - mind, emotion, and will - must be impacted." (pg. 114)

Steven J. Lawson, Famine In The Land: A Passionate Call For Expository Preaching (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2003)

Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13 - by D. A. Carson

"The gospel will purify and transform the people from any cultural heritage who bow unreservedly to Jesus Christ. By this means it will modify or eliminate many of the culturally transmitted values of those new Christians; and they in turn may in some measure influence their culture and society as salt exerts its influence in food (cf. Matt. 5:13)." (pg. 50)

"Overemphasis on the futuristic aspects of eschatology, e.g., at the expense of the realized aspects, may foster unhealthy speculation regarding what God has not revealed, date-setting as to when Christ will return, a denial of the graces and benefits we have already received, and a depreciation of the importance of living together as Christians who constitute a kind of outpost of the new heaven and new earth. The opposite imbalance may prompt us to neglect the promises the Bible gives us regarding the future, to forget to live lives that look forward to and long for Christ's return, and to act as if the fullness of all Christ provided by his cross-work is already our due." (pg. 53ff)

"Christians are especially open to the kind of cunning deceit that combines the language of faith and religion with the content of self-interest and flattery. We like to be told how special we are, how wise, how blessed, especially if as a consequence others are gently diminished. We like to have our Christianity shaped less by the cross than by triumphalism or rules or charismatic leaders or subjective experience. And if this shaping can be coated with assurances of orthodoxy, complete with cliche, we may not detect the presence of the archdeceiver, nor see that we are being weaned away from 'sincere and pure devotion to Christ' to a 'different gospel.'" (pg. 96ff)

"...if we hold that God has revealed himself to men, supremely in the person of his Son, but also in the words and propositions of Scripture, then however many interpretative difficulties may still afflict us, we have no right to treat as optional anything God has said." (pg. 111)

"Very often in the Scriptures, weakness is not the condition of grace in the sense that it serves as the necessary precursor of grace, but in the sense that it serves as a continuing vehicle of grace." (pg. 155)

"... We are more concerned to pray that we may not do evil, than that we may not suffer evil' (Henry)." (pg. 185)

"Here is the heart of a true apostle, a Christian so steeped in radical discipleship and firm self-discipline that his every care is for the people he serves, not for his own reputation." (pg. 186)

D. A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1984)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Jesus Christ And Him Crucified - by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"And this is what the world needs to be told tonight: that all it has trusted to, and the men it has trusted, have led them to the present chaos, and have nothing to offer us, and have no hope." (pg. 17)

"Your greatest need and mine - the greatest need of the whole world - is to be reconciled to God." (pg. 25)

"The Christian is not afraid of life, he is not afraid of death. He knows that there is a glory." (pg. 28)

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Jesus Christ And Him Crucified (Carlyle, PA: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 2003)

Monday, March 29, 2010

Manly Dominion: in a passive-purple-four-ball world - by Mark Chanski

"Thomas Steele writes: Indeed activity (of labor) is so natural and delightful to man, that if idleness had the sanction of a law to enforce it, no doubt many would willingly pay their fine for liberty to work." (pg. 68)

"A hyper-spiritual, unbiblical view of decision making cripples many believers with thought patterns that result in unwarranted delay and vacillation on the one hand, and irresponsible, impulsive, emotionally loaded judgments on the other." (pg. 84)

"The soul that lives in accordance with manly dominion will not permit itself to be tossed to and fro by every wind of emotional anxiety or internal misgiving. Christian, please note: Subjective peace is not necessarily the compass needle for life-directing decisions." (pg. 103)

[quote from Sinclair Ferguson] "There is much that is mysterious about the way God guides us. What is plain to him is frequently obscure to us. But we are not called by god to make the mysterious, the unusual, and the inexplicable, the rule of our lives, but his word." (pg. 109)

"Manly dominion and aggressiveness does not independently plow forward without seeking wise advice. The man of true dominion is able to rule and subdue his pride that boasts in his own competence." (pg. 115)

Mark Chanski, Manly Dominion: in a passive-purple-four-ball world (Merrick, NY: Calvary Press Publishing, 2004)

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship - by Jerry Bridges

"The Greek word for fellowship is koinonia. It is translated several ways in the New Testament: for example, 'participation,' 'partnership,' 'sharing,' and, of course, 'fellowship.' These various uses of koinonia convey two related meanings: (1) to share together in the sense of joint participation or partnership, and (2) to share with in the sense of giving what we have to others." (pg. 16)

"One of the amazing privileges that believers have is to share with God in communion, actually giving something to Him." (pg. 58)

"To be objectively in fellowship with other believers while we experientially deny that very fellowship is to contradict the clear teaching of the Bible and to live in disobedience to the revealed will of God." (pg. 65)

"As we build up and enjoy one another, we are in fellowship, but as we join together to spread the gospel we are in partnership; our objectives are focused outside ourselves on those who need to be brought into the fellowship of God's people." (pg. 96)

"We may be sure that God has equipped us, both in natural ability and in spiritual gifts, for the function He has called us to perform." (pg. 108)

"Our abilities and even our temperaments have to be laid at the foot of the Cross and left there for God to either take up and use in our lives or, if He so chooses, to leave lying at the foot of the Cross." (pg. 127)

"The reason we don't experience this family-like empathy with our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ is that we have not yet been fully gripped by the truth that we are in a community relationship with them." (pg. 162ff)

"Missionary statesman Bob Pierce prayed, 'God break my heart with the things that break your heart.'" (pg. 165)

"When we are being served, we need to be sensitive to the demands we make and careful to express gratitude when someone else serves us. But when we are serving, we need to accept our role and serve as unto the Lord, whether or not considerateness and gratitude are shown." (pg. 178)

Jerry Bridges, The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1985)

Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Everlasting Righteousness - by Horatius Bonar

"Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not as guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge. Herein lies the essential faultiness of all mere human religions or theologies. They fail to acknowledge the judicial aspect of the question, as that on which the real answer must hinge; and to recognise the guilt or criminality of the evil-doer as that which must first be dealt with before any real answer, or approximation to an answer, can be given." (pg. 3)

"Sin is too great an evil for man to muddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt. Only God can deal with sin, either as a disease or as a crime; as a dishonour to Himself, or as a hinderer of man's approach to Himself." (pg. 7)

"God's free love to the sinner is the first part of our message; and God's righteous way of making that free love available for the sinner is the second. What God is, and what Christ has done, make up one gospel. The belief of that gospel is eternal life." (pg. 23)

"The resurrection was the great visible seal set to this completeness. It was the Father's response to the cry from the cross, 'It is finished.' ... The resurrection added nothing to the propitiation of the cross; it proclaimed it already perfect, incapable of addition or greater completeness." (pg. 57ff)

"Men object not to receive any kind or amount of this world's goods from another, though they have done nothing to deserve them, but everything to make them unworthy of them; but they refuse to accept this favour of God, and a standing in righteousness before Him, on the ground of what a substitute has done and suffered. In earthly things they are willing to be represented by another, but not in heavenly things. The former is all fair, and just, and legal; the latter is absurd, an insult to their understanding, and a depreciation of their worth!" (pg. 91ff)

"Though faith is not 'the righteousness,' it is the tie between it and us. It realizes our present standing before God in the excellency of His own Son; and it tells us that our eternal standing, in the ages to come, is in the same excellency, and depends on the perpetuity of that righteousness which can never change." (pg. 113)

"Let it be granted that Christ in us is the source of holiness and fruitfulness (John xv. 4); but let it never be overlooked that first of all there must be Christ FOR US, as our propitiation, our justification, our righteousness. The risen Christ in us, our justification, is a modern theory which subverts the cross." (pg. 121)

"For Him resurrection was joy, not merely because it ended His connection with death, but because it introduced Him into the fulness of joy, - a joy peculiar to the risen life, and of which only a risen man can be capable." (pg. 139)

"...let us know that assurance was meant to be the portion of every believing sinner. It was intended not merely that he should be saved, but that he should know that he is saved, and so delivered from all fear and bondage, and heaviness of heart." (pg. 174)

"The love of God to us, and our love to God, work together for producing holiness in us. Terror accomplishes no real obedience. Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness. Only the certainty of love, forgiving love, can do this." (pg. 183)

Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness (Carlisle, PA: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 1993)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Right Thinking In A World Gone Wrong: A Biblical Response To Today's Most Controversial Issues - by John MacArthur

"The rise of postmodern thought has similarly skewed the church's understanding of right and wrong - as an unbiblical tolerance (in the name of love) has weakened churches to the point where they are as soft on truth as they are on sin." (pg. 7)

"In a culture where parents excel at sanitizing little hands, bandaging little cuts, and vaccinating little immune systems, we must not neglect the spiritual well-being of little eyes, ears, and hearts." (pg. 54)

"Critics may claim capital punishment is hateful and destructive, but it is actually an outworking of God's common grace to humanity, enabling sinful societies to maintain civil order and deter criminal activity." (pg. 116)

"Rather than focusing on the God-given priority of evangelism (from the same Greek word that means "evangelical"), American evangelicalism has spent billions of dollars and millions of man hours fighting to legislate morality. Not only is it a battle we cannot win (since legislated morality cannot change the sinful hearts that make up a depraved society), it is also a battle we have not been called to fight." (pg. 122ff)

"The Bible does not place a premium on ignorance; thus, believers should have a basic understanding of and appreciation for economic principles and practices. The danger comes when understanding and appreciation turn into obsession and anxiety." (pg. 133)

"This earth was never ever intended to be a permanent planet - it is not eternal. We do not have to worry about it being around tens of thousands, or millions of years from now because God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth. Understanding this fact is important to holding in balance our freedom to use, and responsibility to care for, the earth." (pg. 148)

"The gospel enables the believer to see his identity in Christ as spiritual, not ethnic. Our ethnic and cultural identities are secondary as we assume the primary identity of citizens of God's kingdom. Here and only here can we find a common identity, which is an eternal one." (pg. 164)

"While we must recognize the equality of every race, we cannot also affirm the equality of every faith system. Religious pluralism is a great threat to the church, often coming on the heels of the noble pursuit of cultural diversity." (pg. 168)

"God uses the troubles of our lives, culminating in the inevitability of our own deaths, to pry our grips off this world and refocus our hearts on what lies ahead with Him." (pg. 187)

John MacArthur, Right Thinking In A World Gone Wrong: A Biblical Response To Today's Most Controversial Issues (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2009)

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose In The Glory Of Christ - by John Piper

"At the all-important pivot of human history, the worst sin ever committed served to show the greatest glory of Christ and obtain the sin-conquering gift of God's grace. God did not just overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil." (pg. 12)

"If any person or any power or any wisdom or any love awakens any admiration or any amazement or any joy, let it be the greatest person and the greatest power and the greatest wisdom and the greatest love that exists - Jesus Christ." (pg. 32ff)

"The Son of God, Jesus Christ, will be more highly honored and more deeply appreciated and loved in the end because he defeats Satan not the moment after Satan fell, but through millennia of long-suffering, patience, humility, servanthood, suffering, and decisively through his own death." (pg. 49)

"He created the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools. And our lives will be tragic in the end." (pg. 57)

"Thousands of languages around the world and thousands of different peoples limit the global aspirations of arrogant mankind." (pg. 69)

"If God plans four hundred years of affliction for his people (Gen. 15:13) before the Promised Land, we should not be surprised that he says to us, 'through many tribulations you must enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22)." (pg. 77)

"God's allegiance to his own name is the foundation of his faithfulness to us. If God ever forsook his supreme allegiance to himself, there would be no grace for us. If he based his kindness to us on our worth, there would be no kindness to us." (pg. 93)

John Piper, Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose In The Glory Of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin - by Randall C. Zachman

"The conscience is that power of the soul that judges what the person does on the basis of what the person should do, thereby rendering the person either condemned or acquitted - that is, justified - before God. Apart from the grace of Christ, the conscience only finds such condemnation by the performance of good works. The grace of Jesus Christ frees the conscience from its attempt to justify itself before God by trusting in its own works, and places the trust of the conscience in the righteousness and forgiveness of Christ alone." (pg. 2)

"The question that the testimony of a good conscience addresses is not, 'Do I have a gracious God?' but rather, 'Is my faith in the grace of God sincere or hypocritical?' In other words, the testimony of the good conscience builds on the foundation of God's witness to us in the gospel and cannot replace that foundation." (pg. 6)

"The church cannot be judged by its appearance, but only by whether it has the Word of Christ crucified. Hence the primary task of the church is to preach the Word of God, while letting externals take their course." (pg. 10ff)

"On the basis of the evidence, I am convinced it is possible to show that the theologia crucis is the governing motif of Luther's theology, and that the Fatherhood of God in the Son through the Holy Spirit is the guiding doctrine of Calvin's theology." (pg. 14)

"...at the heart of all false knowledge of God - which Luther calls either theologia gloriae, general knowledge (cognitio generalis), or legal knowedge (cognitio legalis) - is the conscience's attempt to testify to itself about God and its status before God on the basis of what it sees and feels, that is, works of the law." (pg. 20)

"False teaching creates a false conscience. 'It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.'" (pg. 27)

"The more the conscience is guided by its feelings of piety, the more it falls from works that are good in themselves to works that seem to be good and holy but are in fact worthless and even harmful." (pg. 35)

"According to God's own self-revelation in the Word, however, the acquittal of God is offered only to those who are condemned before God in their own consciences; and the law is preached not so that we might attain an approving testimony of conscience through works, but so that the conscience might stand condemned before God on the basis of its own works. The self-revelation of God thus directly contradicts the testimony of the conscience to itself about God." (pg. 41)

"Without the revelation of sin in the Word, the conscience could never arrive at the conclusion that we are helpless sinners who deserve only the wrath of God." (pg. 45)

"In sum, because of the limitations of the natural mind, compounded by the blindness inflicted by Satan, the conscience is not capable of hearing the Word of the law and acknowledging its truth. Unless God works inwardly in the heart and conscience, the Word will be rejected as a lie." (pg. 47)

"Just as no one but Christ could perform the work of redemption, so no one but Christ could testify as to the significance of that work; for the testimony that God wishes to be gracious to sinners is unknown to the heart, mind, and conscience of humanity." (pg. 58)

"...faith believes God's promise to have mercy on sinners to be true, even though both reason and conscience oppose such a promise." (pg. 60)

"Works are done with a free conscience when they are not performed to improve our relationship with God but are done out of confidence and trust in the mercy of God revealed in Christ." (pg. 73)

"The testimony of the good conscience has its most direct use not before the judgment seat of God - for there we are all sinners - but before the judgment of the world." (pg. 80ff)

"In sum, the good conscience testifies to the truth of our faith, yet true faith trusts only in Christ and not in the testimony of conscience." (pg. 86)

"This darkness of mind is especially apparent when the human mind judges the governance and providence of God in the world; in its ignorance the mind thinks that all things are tumbled about fortuitously, and believes in fortune or chance instead of providence. The mind's limitations are also apparent in our contemplation of the works of God in general, for in contemplating creation we look only at the works and do not consider their author." (pg. 107)

"Even though we are aware of our sins by the accusing testimony of conscience, we are not aware of our inability to do anything but sin, because of our ignorance of the sin of concupiscence, which gives birth to all actual sins; thus we think that the solution lies not in the grace of repentance given by Christ, but in our own efforts to do good and shun evil." (pg. 120)

"Hypocrites pretend to worship the God from whom they flee, but when they hear the Word of God they cannot help but openly blaspheme God. In this way the Word of God discloses the thoughts of many hearts (Luke 2:35)." (pg. 125)

"Without the Holy Spirit, the Word of God only removes all excusing ignorance of God by awakening the condemning judgment of conscience." (pg. 125)

"The fountain of every good is only known by participation in the triune life of God itself: for the Son and Holy Spirit bring about our participation in the powers of God that can only come from the Father. No creature will be able to know or call on God as Father without being engrafted into the Son by the Holy Spirit." (pg. 133)

"Any desire or motion of the heart or conscience not in accord with the holiness of God is a mortal sin." (pg. 147)

"The essential functioning of the conscience is short-circuited by pride and self-love, so that its accusing testimony results not in humility but in hypocrisy. It is therefore necessary for the conscience to be awakened by the teaching of the law so that it might come to a genuine knowledge of its sin and a serious awareness of the judgment of God." (pg. 149)

"To call Jesus the Christ is the same as to call him the fountain from which we must draw every good thing." (pg. 165)

"Because it is axiomatic that God is true and cannot lie, God's witness in the gospel of Jesus Christ establishes our minds, hearts, and consciences in certainty, which all human opinion taken together is unable to do." (pg. 179)

"Only the godly simultaneously have confidence in God as their Father while they fear God as their Lord and judge." (pg. 182)

"The testimony of a good conscience that arises out of our conformity to Jesus Christ has as it primary purpose the confirmation that our knowledge of Christ is genuine and our confession of faith sincere." (pg. 198)

"Justification is the irreducible basis, and sanctification is the irreducible goal, of our adoption as children of God in Jesus Christ." (pg. 213)

Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2005)