Quotes from Sinclair B. Ferguson

Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia-forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity-you are in Christ.

His work is the real thing. It preserves us from two dangers. The first is the (Arminian) danger of false revivalism. Familiarity with the genuine is the best safeguard against the false. The second is the (Reformed?) danger of a false superiority.

Only God-the One through whom all things were made (1:3, cf. v. 10), in whom was life and light (v. 4)-can reverse creation's death and dissipate the darkness caused by sin. 2. But since that death and darkness are within creation, within man, the Word must become flesh in order to restore it from within. The Creator must enter His own creation, groaning as it is under the burden of alienation from Him.

There are few things more destructive to the Christian church as a whole or to any congregation, large or small, than an individual who "loveth to have the preeminence" (3 John 9, KJV). And yet, as we have seen before, God never leaves Himself without a testimony to the saving and transforming power of the gospel.

pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From them the vestiges of a self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them.

What is a godly pastor, after all, but one who is like God, with a heart of grace; someone who sees God bringing prodigals home and runs to embrace them, weeps for joy that they have been brought home, and kisses them—asking no questions—no qualifications or conditions required?

Christian liberty does not mean that you welcome fellow Christians only when you have sorted out their views on X or Y (or with a view to doing that).

We need to be cautious in using language in a pejorative way. Words ending in -ism and -ist seem to lend themselves to emotive rather than descriptive use.

The invisible is more substantial than the visible; ?he future shapes the past; The new is more fundamental than the old.

God possesses personal being in a unified, uncreated, eternal, tri-personal manner.

Growth in sanctification will always include a deepening appreciation of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To express it in the bold words of Professor Murray: 'sin may be said to have ruled over him [Christ]'. But he broke its dominion, and because we are united to him he has thereby broken its dominion over us.

In Christ we are no longer dominated by the flesh, but by the Spirit; but we are not yet delivered from the flesh. So long as this eschatological tension exists for the believer, so long will there be—in Calvin's view—a gap between the definition of faith and the actual experience of the believer:

There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power.

If sin's reign over us is ended, then we must not—indeed cannot—go on living as though we were still its subjects. It now becomes irrational to use the body as if it were still the body in which sin reigned. Since grace now reigns; sin shall not be our master!

There had been occasions when David could have seized position and power by means that would have compromised his commitment to the Lord.

The offer of the gospel is to be made not to the righteous or even the repentant, but to all. There are no conditions that need to be met in order for the gospel offer to be made.

The Marrow Controversy raised a major question about how the gospel is to be preached. But the answer to that question depends on our answer to a more fundamental one: What is the gospel? Contemporary discussion simply underlines how central this question is and the extent to which the answer we give determines how we preach and communicate the gospel.

Asombrarse de la gracia de Dios es un signo de vitalidad espiritual. Es una prueba de fuego de cuán firme y real es nuestra comprensión del evangelio cristiano y cuán cerca caminamos de Jesucristo. El cristiano en crecimiento descubre que la gracia de Dios asombra y sorprende.

But, as Paul is at pains to stress, the law is good, and just, and holy.50 And we need to understand, sense, feel, and then delight in the grace of law.51 For unless we are persuaded that God has shown his grace in his law as well as in his Son, all we will hear and see at Sinai is thunder and lightning.

Repentance then is not the punctiliar decision of a moment but a radical heart transformation that reverses the whole direction of life.

Thus it is understanding God's grace—that is to say, understanding God himself 178—that demolishes legalism. Grace highlights legalism's bankruptcy and shows that it is not only useless; it is pointless; its life breath is smothered out of it.

God demonstrated His wisdom in that, even as people in Europe began despising the gospel, He was already preparing to go somewhere else.

Far more important, it is only through such empowering that we will get beyond witnessing to fellow Christians about the Reformed faith and start witnessing to non-Christians about saving faith.