God's Love

How many millions of sins in every one of the elect, every one of which is enough to condemn them all, hath this love overcome! What mountains of unbelief doth it remove! Look upon the conduct of any one saint, consider the frame of his heart, see the many stains and spots, the defilements and infirmities with which his life is contaminated, and tell me whether the love that bears with all this is not to be admired. And is not the same towards thousands every day? What streams of grace, purging, pardoning, quickening, assisting, do flow from it every day! This is our Beloved.

John Owen

He first loved us.

 It is that gospel that will melt and renew hearts of stone. It is that sight of the Son of Man, lifted up on the cross, proving the love of His Father, that realigns affections. There we see the full gravity of our sin in what it cost Him. There our blithe hopes of self-righteousness die. And there we see a love in God's heart beyond our wildest fantasies. Where once we had dreaded God as an awful judge and delighted in sin, on the cross we see an entirely unexpected goodness and kindness in God. And it is that revelation that wins us. No longer do we shrink from Him, but seeing His fatherly love, we find our hearts welling up with love for Him in return. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). The sin that pleased us becomes odious. The God we flinched from becomes entrancing.

Michael Reeves Preaching: A God-Centered Vision

Faith is Spirit-Given

 Faith is not self-generated but Spirit-given. Faith does not arise from fallen human nature (1 Cor. 2:14) but from the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63). The Spirit opens the heart, grants understanding, and creates faith through the gospel. As Calvin states elsewhere, "Faith itself is a singular gift of God." — Institutes 3.2.34

Antinomianism

 Errors of Antinomianism:

1. The law is made void by grace. Justification by faith alone renders good works unnecessary. 2. Since good works are unnecessary, obedience to the law is not required of justified persons. 3. God sees no sin in the justified, who are no longer bound by the law, and is not displeased with them if they sin. 4. God therefore does not chastise justified persons for sin. 5. Nor can sin in any way injure the justified. 6. Since no duties or obligations are admitted in the gospel, faith and repentance are not commanded. 7. The Christian need not repent in order to receive pardon of sin. 8. Nor need he mortify sin; Christ has mortified sin for him. 9. Nor ought he be distressed in conscience upon backsliding, but he should hold fast to a full assurance of his salvation in the midst of the vilest sins. 10. Justifying faith is the assurance that one is already justified. 11. The elect are actually justified before they believe, even from all eternity. 12. Therefore, they were never children of wrath or under condemnation. 13. Their sin, as to its very being, was imputed to Christ so as not to be theirs, and His holiness is imputed to them as their only sanctification. 14. Sanctification is no evidence of justification, for assurance is the fruit of an immediate revelation that one is an elect person. 15. No conviction by the law precedes the sinner’s closing with Christ, inasmuch as Christ is freely offered to sinners as sinners. 16. Repentance is produced not by the law, but by the gospel only. 17. The secret counsel of God is the rule of man’s conduct. 18. God is the author and approver of sin, for sin is the accomplishment of His will. 19. Unless the Spirit works holiness in the soul, there is no obligation to be holy or to strive toward that end. 20. All externals are useless or indifferent, since the Spirit alone gives life. (William Young, Reformed Thought, pp. 61-62)

(from James Dorman on Twitter, from @Alfred Sparks)

Full of God's Promises

 The Bible is full of God's promises - to provide for  us spiritually and materially, to never forsake us,  to give us peace in times of difficult circumstances,  to cause all circumstances to work together for our  good, and to bring us safely home to glory. Not one  of those promises is dependent upon our performance.  They're all dependent on the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ.

Jerry Bridges

Not by your own Feelings

 Do not measure God's love and favor by your own feelings. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day—as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof.

—Richard Sibbes

No rest in our faith

 To the man that makes his faith and his trust his rest, and tries to pacify his conscience by getting up evidence of their solidity and excellence, we say, miserable comforters are they all!

—Horatius Bonar

Nothing New

"Preaching is not designed to teach us something new in every sermon, but to put us in remembrance, to call to mind things forgotten, to affect our passions, and engage and fix our resolutions, that our lives may be answerable to our faith." 

 —Matthew Henry

Inward Despair

 Satan is the Accuser. His work is to turn your eyes in on yourself and despair. 

The Spirit is the Comforter. His work is to turn your eyes to Jesus, the rest for our souls.

Michael Reeves.

Remaining Sin

 The problem of continuing sin in the believer

God's grace is sometimes spoken of as deliverance, when we are freed from the bondage of sin, and sometimes as restitution, when we renounce the old nature and are restored to the image of God. Sometimes it is described as regeneration, when we become new creatures, and sometimes as resurrection, when God causes us to die to self and by his power raises us to life. However, we must understand that deliverance is never so complete that no part of us remains under sin's yoke; that restitution is never such as to efface all traces of the earthly man, or to do wholly away with the old nature. As long as we are confined to this bodily prison, we always carry with us the remnants of our flesh which thus limit our freedom. That is why the believing soul, from regeneration onward, is divided into two continually warring parts. For insofar as it is ruled and governed by God's Spirit, it has a love and yearning for immortality which leads and provokes it to righteousness, purity and holiness. Hence its sole thought is for the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom, and it wholly longs for fellowship with God. But insofar as it retains its natural inclination, it is mired in the earth's slime, entangled in evil desires, and does not know what to aim for or where true happiness lies. It is held captive by sin and is turned away from God and his righteousness.

This produces a conflict which sorely tries the believer throughout his life, because he is raised high by the Spirit but brought low by the flesh.

In the Spirit he yearns fervently for immortality; in the flesh he turns aside into the path of death. In the Spirit he purposes to live uprightly; in the flesh he is goaded to do evil. In the Spirit he is led to God; in the flesh he is beaten back. In the Spirit he despises the world; in the flesh he longs for worldly pleasures. This is no idle speculation divorced from our experience of life; it is a practical doctrine whose truth we experience for ourselves if we are God's children.

So we see that flesh and Spirit are like two combatants laying separate claim to the believing soul, and turning it into a battle-ground. Yet it is the Spirit who wins out in the end. For when it is said that the flesh turns the soul away from God, distances it from immortality, stops it following holiness and righteousness and alienates it from the kingdom of God, we must not think that its temptations are strong enough to overthrow and destroy the Spirit's work and to extinguish his power. God forbid! The truth is that when the flesh strives to pull man down, it burdens the Spirit's work; when it seeks to divert him from his path, it slows and impedes it; when it tries to suppress in him all love of righteousness, it weakens it somewhat; when it contrives to blot it out entirely, it makes it flag a little. In the midst of such difficulties, God's servant must be so roused that his heart's chief wish and inclination is to yearn for God, to endeavour to seek him out and continually to sigh and lament because his flesh does not allow him to press on as he should.

This is the point Paul makes when he says: If we are God's sons, let us not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-14). When he speaks of conflict he affirms that the Spirit of God is the stronger and that he will win. It is easy, then, to see the difterence between the natural man and the regenerate. The natural man is pricked and goaded by his conscience so that he does not completely slumber in his sins. Nevertheless he is disposed with all his heart to enjoy them, to revel in them and to give them free rein, fearing nothing except the penalty which he knows awaits all sinners. The regenerate man, on the other hand, clings with the chief part of his heart to the righteousness of the law, detesting and loathing the sin which he commits through his weakness. It pains him, he cannot condone it, but instead takes pleasure and delight in God's law and finds it sweeter than all the world's enticements. Moreover he never sins knowingly unless it be against his own inclination, for not only his conscience but part of his feelings are opposed to evil.

–John Calvin

“Institutes of the Christian Religion”

Christ came for you.

 Christ came for you.

Christ lived for you. Christ died for you. Christ rose for you. Christ ascended for you. Christ reigns for you. Christ intercedes for you. Christ will return for you. The whole Christ is yours, and this is good news.

Jeffery Perry

Drive You to Christ

 The law is perfect. It reveals God's holiness, exposes our sin, and leaves the whole world accountable before Him (Rom. 3:19). The weakness is not in the law but in our flesh (Rom. 8:3). Therefore, do not lower God's standard when you fail. Let the law humble you and drive you to Christ, who fulfilled it perfectly and secured righteousness for all who trust in Him.

Monergism.

Bruisest Me

Thou Lord bruisest me, but I am abundantly satisfied, since it is from Thy hand.

--John Calvin.