"Make Jesus your focus..." in the pursuit of holiness

‎"You make a mistake when you hyper-focus on one aspect of your own sanctification. Make Jesus your focus, don't make a better you your focus." - Ray Ortlund @Acts29

"Is your faith in Christ real?"

"Would you like to know whether your faith is real? Then try it by the feelings toward Christ which it produces. Nominal faith may believe that such a person as Christ existed, and was a great benefactor to mankind. It may show Him some external respect, attend His outward ordinances, and bow the head at His name. But it will go no further.

"Real faith will make a person glory in Christ, as the Redeemer, the Deliverer, the Priest, the Friend — without whom they would have no hope at all. It will produce confidence in Him, love towards Him, delight in Him, comfort in Him, as the mediator, the food, the light, the life, the peace of the soul."

~ J.C. Ryle

Don't Think the Bible Is Doing You No Good

"Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced.

"Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading."

-- J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion, p, 136

"No doubt as to what we believe and teach"

"We have nowadays around us a class of men who preach Christ, and even preach the gospel; but then they preach a great deal else which is not true, and thus they destroy the good of all that they deliver, and lure men to error. They would be styled "evangelical" and yet be of the school which is really anti-evangelical.

"Look well to these gentlemen. I have heard that a fox, when close hunted by the dogs, will pretend to be one of them, and run with the pack. That is what certain are aiming at just now: the foxes would seem to be dogs. But in the case of the fox, his strong scent betrays him, and the dogs soon find him out; and even so, the scent of false doctrine is not easily concealed, and the game does not answer for long.

"There are extant ministers of whom we scarce can tell whether they are dogs or foxes; but all men shall know our quality as long as we live, and they shall be in no doubt as to what we believe and teach.

"We shall not hesitate to speak in the strongest Saxon words we can find, and in the plainest sentences we can put together, that which we hold as fundamental truth."

-- Charles Spurgeon

What are the marks of a true Christian?

From Jonathan Edwards: (via Tyler Kenney)

Being a Christian doesn’t only mean that you assent to a certain set of doctrines. There are other equally important things that must be true. Jonathan Edwards explains.

It is essential to Christianity

• that we repent of our sins,
• that we be convinced of our own sinfulness,
• that we are sensible we have justly exposed ourselves to God’s wrath,
• that our hearts do renounce all sin,
• that we do with our whole hearts embrace Christ as our only Saviour;
• that we love him above all, and
• are willing for his sake to forsake all, and
• that we do give up ourselves to be entirely and forever his.

"Religious Affections," 334; bullets added.

Success and Jesus

In my opinion, Ray Ortlund, Jr. is one of the most encouraging, edifying and balanced 'bloggers' out there today.  He's truly a gospel-centered pastor.  Here's another post from him:


In a world of secrets, outward success is everyone’s goal.  If we can just succeed, we won’t have to face ourselves.  No wonder that doesn’t work.  It can’t work.  The reality of what we are will always topple this house-of-cards persona we so earnestly wish were true.

The gospel is not God’s way of giving us an even better self-improvement goal.  The gospel is God’s judgment on our better selves and his replacement of it all with Jesus.

Every one of us thinks, “If only I could do __________ or be __________, then I would arrive.”  So, what does “arrival” look like to you?  If it isn’t Jesus, the risen Lord himself, every arrival you achieve is only another set-back.

If you make financial security your arrival, you are already trapped in anxiety.  If you make a thin body your identity, you will hate yourself more.  If you make a porn-free life your okayness, you are doomed to compulsion.  God’s remedy for you is not more money or better looks or perfect control.  God’s gift to you is Jesus.  With Jesus, we are saved.  Everything is going to be okay.  Without Jesus, we are damned.  Nothing will go right.

Forsake all fraudulent success.  Make Jesus your goal, your arrival, your identity, your comfort, your okayness, and he’ll gladly give himself to you — and on terms of grace.  But reach for anything else, and it will turn into its opposite and betray you.

To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “I’ve lost everything, and I don’t even care, because now I get Jesus” (Philippians 3:8).

How we think of God, how we think of the atonement

"All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell–deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before. "

— John Stott
The Cross of Christ
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 109

With Jesus, we have everything...

More gospel-centered Biblical wisdom from Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

"In a world of secrets, outward success is everyone’s goal.  If we can just succeed, we won’t have to face ourselves.  No wonder that doesn’t work.  It can’t work.  The reality of what we are will always topple this house-of-cards persona we so earnestly wish were true.

"The gospel is not God’s way of giving us an even better self-improvement goal.  The gospel is God’s judgment on our better selves and his replacement of it all with Jesus.

"Every one of us thinks, “If only I could do __________ or be __________, then I would arrive.”  So, what does “arrival” look like to you?  If it isn’t Jesus, the risen Lord himself, every arrival you achieve is only another set-back.

"If you make financial security your arrival, you are already trapped in anxiety.  If you make a thin body your identity, you will hate yourself more.  If you make a porn-free life your okayness, you are doomed to compulsion.  God’s remedy for you is not more money or better looks or perfect control.  God’s gift to you is Jesus.  With Jesus, we are saved.  Everything is going to be okay.  Without Jesus, we are damned.  Nothing will go right.

"Forsake all fraudulent success.  Make Jesus your goal, your arrival, your identity, your comfort, your okayness, and he’ll gladly give himself to you — and on terms of grace.  But reach for anything else, and it will turn into its opposite and betray you.

"To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “I’ve lost everything, and I don’t even care, because now I get Jesus” (Philippians 3:8)."

The Beauty of God's Holiness and Love

"If we stress the love of God without the holiness of God, it turns out only to be compromise.  But if we stress the holiness of God without the love of God, we practice something that is hard and lacks beauty.  And it is important to show forth beauty before a lost world and a lost generation.  All too often young people have not been wrong in saying that the church is ugly.  In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we are called upon to show to a watching world and to our own young people that the church is something beautiful.

"Several years ago I wrestled with the question of what was wrong with much of the church that stood for purity.  I came to the conclusion that in the flesh we can stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but that in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously.  In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit.  Spirituality begins to have real meaning in our moment-by-moment lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God."

-- Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church before the Watching World (Downers Grove, 1971), page 63.

The Implications of Divine Judgment

"It must be emphasized that the doctrine of divine judgment, and particularly of the final judgment, is not to be thought of primarily as a bogey with which to frighten men into an outward form of conventional righteousness. It has its frightening implications for godless men, it is true; but its main thrust is as a revelation of the moral character of God, and an imparting of moral significance to human life."

- J. I. Packer

Packer on Why We Should Meditate on the Four Gospels More than Any Other Book

J. I. Packer:

"[We can] correct woolliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading: for gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him.

"The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels.

"Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord Jesus in person.

"We should think, rather, of the theology of the epistles as preparing us to understand better the disciple relationship with Christ that is set forth in the gospels, and we should never let ourselves forget that the four gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth."

—J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), p. 70, 71.
HT: Justin Taylor

A Sanctity of Life Sunday sermon from John Piper

What does Roe vs. Wade actually say?

Jesus as Lord and Friend

"The companionship of Jesus is indeed a gracious thing for burdened souls; but it is a terrible thing for those who have any trust in a righteousness of their own. No man can call Jesus friend who does not also call Him Lord; and no man can call Him Lord who could not say first; ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, Lord.’

"At the root of all true companionship with Jesus, therefore, is the consciousness of sin and with it the reliance upon His mercy; to have fellowship with Him it is necessary to learn the terrible lesson of God’s law. "


— J. Gresham Machen
"What is Faith?"

"Is there enough teaching in the church?"

More counter-(church)cultural thinking from Kevin DeYoung.

"Making necessary distincitions...."

A call to discernment from Michael Horton