You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Sanctification' category.
“Grace bid me live, and taught my tongue
To aim at notes divine;
And grace accepts my feeble song,
The glory, Lord, be thine!
John Newton, “The Power of Grace,” Olney Hymns, Book 3 (Hymn 60).
“’Tis a strange mysterious life
I live from day to day;
Light and darkness, peace and strife,
Bear an alternate sway;
When I think the battle won
I have to fight it o’er again;
When I say I’m overthrown,
Relief I soon obtain.”
John Newton, “Bitter and Sweet,” Olney Hymns, Book 3 (Hymn 27).
“The love thy bleeding cross displays,
The hardest heart subdues;
Here furious lions while they gaze,
Their rage and fierceness lose.
Yet we are but renewed in part,
The lion still remains;
Lord, drive him wholly from my heart,
Or keep him fast in chains.”
John Newton, “The tamed lion,” Olney Hymns, Book 2 (Hymn 93).
“. . . you are accountable to God for your time. Time is a talent given us by God; he hath set us our day; and it is not for nothing, our day was appointed for some work; therefore he will, at the day’s end, call us to an account. We must give account to him of the improvement of all our time.”
Jonathan Edwards, Sermon on Ephesians 5.16 (Works, 2.235); cited in T. M. Moore, Consider the Lilies: A Plea for Creational Theology (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005), 168, n. 4.
“I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”
Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 4-5.
“The philosopher as we understand him . . . will make use of religions for his project of cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever political and economic states are at hand . . . For the strong and independent who are prepared and predestined to command and in whom the reason and art of a governing race become incarnate, religion is one more means for overcoming resistances, for the ability to rule — as a bond that unites rulers and subjects and betrays and delivers the consciences of the latter, that which is most concealed and intimate and would like to elude obedience, to the former . . .”
To ordinary human beings, finally — the vast majority who exist for service and the general advantage, and who may exist only for that — religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of the heart, an ennobling of obedience. . . . Religion and religious significance spread the splendor of the sun over such ever-toiling human beings and make their own sight tolerable to them.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 61; cited in Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (Washington DC: Regnery, 2008), 160-61.
“I remember that Staupitius was wont to say: ‘I have vowed unto God above a thousand times, that I would become a better man; but I never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such vow: for I have now learned by experience, that I am not able to perform it. Unless therefore God be favourable and merciful unto me for Christ’s sake, and grant unto me a blessed and happy hour when i shall depart out of this miserable life, I shall not be able with all my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him.’”
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), 149.
“The flesh is accursed, exercised with temptations, oppressed with heaviness and sorrow, bruised by the active righteousness of the law; but the spirit reigneth, rejoiceth and is saved by this passive and Christian righteousness, because it knoweth that it hath a Lord in heaven at the right hand of the Father, who hath abolished the law, sin, death, and hath trodden under his feet all evils, led them captive and triumphed over them in himself (Col. 2.15).”
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), 106.
“This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world doth not know, yea, Christians themselves do not thoroughly understand it, and can hardly take hold of it in their temptations. There fore it must be diligently taught and continually practised. And whoso doth not understand or apprehend this righteousness in afflictions and terrors of conscience, must needs be overthrown. For there is no comfort of conscience so firm and so sure, as this passive righteousness.”
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), 101.
“Christ daily drives out the old Adam more and more in accordance with the extent to which faith and knowledge of Christ grow. For alien righteousness is not instilled all at once, but it begins, makes progress, and is finally perfected at the end through death.”
Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” sermon from 1519, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 88.
