Tag Archives: Christianity

The irony of desiring to study God’s holiness

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R.C. Sproul from his book, The Holiness of God:

The Holiness of God

It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man – a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.

This captures well the paradox of my own desires. Like Sproul, I desire to know of God’s holiness precisely because I am not holy myself. I pray for humility as I progress in my understanding of God’s holiness, and as I strive for obedience in becoming holy as God is holy.

Confession of Sin Endears Christ to the Soul.

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From DesiringGod.org.

Thomas Watson:

Confession of sin endears Christ to the soul. If I say I am a sinner, how precious will Christ’s blood be to me! After Paul has confessed a body of sin, he breaks forth into a gratulatory triumph for Christ: “I thank God through Jesus Christ” (Romans 7:25).

If a debtor confesses a judgment but the creditor will not exact the debt, instead appointing his own son to pay it, will not the debtor be very thankful? So when he confesses the debt, and that even though we should forever lie in hell we cannot pay it, but that God should appoint his own Son to lay down his blood for the payment of our debt, how is free grace magnified and Jesus Christ eternally loved and admired!

The Doctrine of Repentance, 1668, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 35.

Bonhoeffer on cheap grace:

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Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate… Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Tozer on treasuring God.

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“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.”

A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)