Quotes from Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

We do not need more frightening punishments and more withering scoldings. We need the all-sufficiency of Jesus applied in rich measure to our deepest points of personal need.

So then, the striking thing about the laws of the Old Testament is not that some of them are beneath the modern conscience but that they are above the other law codes of the ancient world. As

There is a humanitarian ethos in Israelite penal law, which is acknowledged by all who have compared it with contemporary ancient Near Eastern collections of law."29

She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong." But she is not using her strengths and abilities to compete with her husband. She is not driven by an identity crisis or treating her marriage as a matter of sexual politics. She is too mature for that. She is giving herself away to her husband, her family, and her community with wholehearted selflessness. A woman of this quality is rare: "An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.

The spring of Christian power runs all the way down to what we desire. Most of what we do in life, we do out of the desires of our hearts. This is humbling, but true. So the more our hearts love the Lord, the more progress we will make.

How does a husband do that? Not by browbeating his wife—God doesn't treat us that way—but by encouraging her:

God, through the perfect life, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, rescues all his people from the wrath of God into peace with God, with a promise of the full restoration of his created order forever—all to the praise of the glory of his grace.

In response to the good news of all that Jesus has done, I hurl myself at him as my only hope.

And in this world, Cain's purpose succeeds. The rest of the Bible tells the story of the offspring of the Serpent dominating human affairs, as insecure fugitives gather together, convinced that this world they control is all that matters. They

Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation. Its design never was our own made-up arrangement of infinite malleability. It was given to us, at the beginning of all things, as a brightly shining fixity of eternal significance. We might not always live up to its true grandeur. None of us does so perfectly. But we have no right to redefine it, and we have every reason to revere it.

The Bible has its eye primarily on the ultimate marriage between the Son of God and his redeemed bride. That eternal romance is the biblical view of marriage, offering both instruction and hope for our own marriages today.

Reformation is the recovery of biblical truth in its redemptive claim on the whole of life. Revival is the renewal of human flourishing by the Holy Spirit according to the gospel. Marriage is one of the primary flashpoints of controversy where we most need both reformation and revival in our times.

if we strive to re-create reality more to our liking, we will trend not toward freedom and hope but toward disgusting and impious degradations, and there is no depth to which we will not fall even further. But

Solamente la poderosa presencia del Señor resucitado puede hacer que una iglesia esté centrada en el evangelio.

But if we humbly bend to the sorrows and buffetings of this life, trusting God, we will be surprised to discover beauty where God has hidden it—not in our fantasies but in his realities. God's

The first claim of the Bible, then, setting the stage for marriage, is that manhood and womanhood are not our own cultural constructs. Human concepts are too small and artificial a context for the glory of our sexuality. Manhood and womanhood find their true meaning in the context of nothing less than the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, the universe, the entire creation. That is the first claim of the biblical love story.

Headship did not come down to us historically as an artifact of oppressive patriarchy; it began in heaven and came down into this world creationally as a pathway to human flourishing.

A church can offer living and palpable proof that the gospel makes a real difference for real people living in the real world.

We didn't ruin God's plan; we are his plan, his eternal plan to love the undeserving, for the display of his glory alone.

As Matthew Henry commented centuries ago, the woman was "not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

So Genesis 1 and 2 honor marriage as nothing less than the crowning glory of the creation of the universe. For us modern people who may see marriage as a product of human preference driving social evolution, that is a stunning claim. Moreover,

Gospel doctrine – gospel culture = hypocrisy Gospel culture – gospel doctrine = fragility Gospel doctrine + gospel culture = power