Quotes from Steven J. Lawson

The lamp of divine, written revelation reveals the will of God for the believer. Whether it is expressed by biblical command or precept, by scriptural example or principle, the Word illumines the path every believer must take. This divine light in Scripture is not a mere option, but an absolute necessity for every follower of Christ.

What is most important in heaven is not the streets of gold, nor the gates of pearl. The greatest gain of being in heaven is not even to be reunited with loved ones. The greatest profit will be to stand before Christ and behold him as he is. The glory of heaven is found in Jesus Christ himself.

There is a kind of preaching that God blesses, specifically the proclamation that exalts the crucified Christ by the power of the Spirit. Conversely, there is a kind of preaching that God does not bless, a mere echoing of man's empty wisdom that is devoid of Christ.

What God has to say to man is infinitely more important than what man has to say to God.

What Epaphroditus felt for the Philippians we should feel for one another. Our ministry must be carried out not only with our hands, but with our heart. We must be emotionally connected with others in our service for the Lord. We must seek to feel with them, and feel for them.

The law and will of the devil is written as well in our hearts as in our members, and we run headlong after the devil with full zeal, and the whole swing of all the power we have; as a stone cast up into the air comes down naturally of his own self, with all the violence and swing of his own weight.15

We may never say, "I was looking for God, and I found him." We may only ever testify, "I was not looking for any God other than myself—and he found me." You did not work it out. Our seeking never does. He sought you out and he saved your soul, and this is the testimony we all share.

God always starts with renewing the mind before he revives the emotions and redirects the will.

Predestination … and salvation are clean taken out of our hands, and put in the hands of God only … for we are so weak and so uncertain, that if it stood in us, there would of a truth be no man saved; the devil, no doubt, would deceive us.23

By grace (that is to say, by favor) we are plucked out of Adam, the ground of all evil, and grafted in Christ, the root of all goodness.28 You are chosen for Christ's sake to the inheritance of eternal life.29

Grace does not diminish our responsibility to the moral requirements of what God requires. Grace does not lower the standard. Rather, grace enables us to meet it. Grace empowers us to fulfill what God requires. Obedience to the word is never optional for the Christian.

In this fallen state, sinful man is unconscious of his desperate need for the gospel. Only the law can awaken him to the ruin of his spiritual condition.

It was not for the entire world that Christ made atonement, for if He had, all the world would be saved.

The end of your life must be secure before the present can be stable.

For those in Christ, death becomes the means of graduating to glory and gaining access into the presence of Christ. Such a sure hope gives us confidence to live day by day to the fullest.

He first considered the forest before exploring the individual trees.

If we are to be profitable servants, we must be self-denying, and not self-focused. If we are to be a useful instrument to the Lord, we must be large-hearted, just as Timothy was. Ask God to enlarge your heart for others.

To preach the gospel is to proclaim with trumpet tongue and flaming zeal the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus, so that men may hear, and understanding, may turn to God with full purpose of heart.30

Take Christ from Christianity, and you disembowel it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the centre of Christianity, all else is circumference." (Basic Christianity, page 27)

No matter how doctrinally sound we may be, if we are without love, we are "a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1). Without love for others, regardless of how involved we are in Christian activities, we are "nothing.

Gain" means to receive a great profit. Paul realizes that death will usher him to a much greater gain. The grave will graduate him to glory.

While some who do not hold to Spurgeon's view of the doctrines of grace might wonder how he could be a Calvinist and yet be evangelistic, Lawson clearly demonstrates that the prince of preachers was a bold evangelist precisely because of his Calvinism.

El tema central de toda la Biblia es Jesucristo, el Redentor de todos los que lo invocan

Calvin was not a silver-tongued orator, but a Bible-teaching expositor. Above all else, he desired to bring his people to the Scriptures.