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“It is one thing to produce a religious man — men can do that — but it takes the power of God in Jesus Christ to produce a Christian man, and there is no limit to that power.”
Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 162.
“. . . if Christ be made guilty of all the sins which we all have committed, then are we delivered utterly from all sins, but not by ourselves, nor by our own works or merits, but by him. But if he be innocent and bear not our sins, then do we bear them, and in them we shall die and be damned.”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 138.
“But because I am covered under the shadow of Christ’s wings, as is the chicken under the wing of the hen, and dwell without all fear under that most ample and large heaven of the forgiveness of sins, which is spread over me, God covereth and pardoneth the remnant of sin in me: that is to say, because of that faith wherewith I began to lay hold upon Christ, he accepteth my imperfect righteousness even for perfect righteousness, and counteth my sin for no sin, which notwithstanding is sin indeed.”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 129.
“We therefore do make this definition of a Christian, that a Christian is not he which hath no sin, or feeleth no sin, but he to whom God imputeth not his sin because of his faith in Christ. This doctrine bringeth strong consolation to afflicted consciences in serious and inward terrors. It is not without good cause, therefore, that we do so often repeat and beat into your minds the forgiveness of sins, and imputation of righteousness for Christ’s sake: also that a Christian hath nothing to do with the law and sin, especially in the time of temptation.”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 112.
“To represent transhumanize in words
Impossible were; the example, then, suffice
Him from whom Grace the experience reserves.
If I was merely what of me thou newly
Createdst, Love who governest the heaven,
Thou knowest, who didst life me with thy light.”
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, “Paradiso,” Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Canto I, 70-75; It is Beatrice who is “thy light;” Dante may be referencing 2 Corinthians 12.3-4.
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened.”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 977; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 18 October, 1931.
“My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ ’saved’ or ‘opened salvation to’ the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary: one could see from ordinary experience how sin (e.g. the case of a drunkard) could get a man to such a point that he was bound to reach Hell (i.e. complete degradation and misery) in this life unless something quite beyond mere natural help or effort stepped in. And I could well imagine a whole world being in the same state and similarly in need of miracle. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) 2000 years ago could help us here and now – except in so far as his example helped us. And the example business, tho’ true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (‘propitiation’ – ’sacrifice’ – ‘the blood of the Lamb’) – expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 976; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 18 October, 1931.
“He [brother, Warnie] and I even went together to Church twice: and – will you believe it – he said to me in conversation that he was beginning to think the religious view of things was after all true. MInd you (like me, at first) he didn’t want it to be, nor like it: but his intellect is beginning to revolt from the semi-scientific assumptions we all grew up in, and the other explanation of the world seems to him daily more probable.”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 948; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 10 January, 1931.
“I brought you into the world to be master of this house, and I raised you up; I am not obliged to die for you. I have received no such tradition from my ancestors that fathers should die for their children; it’s not a Greek custom. For yourself were you born, for better or for worse. You got from me all you were entitled to.”
The elder Pheres, chastising his son, Admetus. On this day, Admetus’ wife, Alcestis, died sacrificially that her husband’s life would be preserved; Euripides (485-406 BC), Alcestis (Translation by Moses Hadas and John McLean), lines 681ff.
“The word propitiation has great weight: for God, in a way that cannot be put into words, at the very time when he loved us, was hostile to us till he was reconciled in Christ.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.17.2; cited in J. I. Packer, “What did the cross achieve: The logic of penal substitution,” Lecture delivered at Tyndale House, Cambridge, 17 July, 1973.
