The preacher’s job is to minimize his own opinions and deliver the truth of God.
John Piper (via thereforethecross)
Many today who are becoming interested in the interrelationship of the gospel to broader doing-mercy-type deeds tend to run the stereotypes like this: “The previous generation came down either on the social-transformation side or on the gospel-fidelity side, and we want to put together both.” These stereotypes don’t work. Do not get yourself in the place where you are thinking self-righteously about those who have come before you. It’s so easy for any generation to start saying, “They did it this way wrong and this way wrong, but we’ve got it right.” Avoid casting what you’re trying to do on the background of a stereotype in which everybody else has got it wrong. It’s not good for you spiritually, and it’s not fair historically.
DA Carson on the Gospel & Social Action.
In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin, and forgiveness, death and life.
Diedrich Bonhoeffer 1930
What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?
J. Gresham Machen, Christian Faith in the Modern World, 57
(via Of First Importance)
God made man small and the universe big to say something about Himself…The disproportion between us and the universe is a parable about the disproportion between us and God. And it is an understatement. But the point is not to nullify us but to glorify Him.
John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, page 34
It is impossible to forgive someone if you feel superior to him or her.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God (p55) (via lifeinthestory)
