Result of the Fall: Relational Abyss

Paul Tripp:

"What seemed once unthinkably wrong and out of character for the world that God had made now became a daily experience. Words like falsehood, enemy, danger, sin, destruction, war, murder, sickness, fear, and hatred became regular parts of the fallen-world vocabulary. For the first time, the harmony between people was broken. Shame, fear, guilt, blame, greed, envy, conflict, and hurt made relationships a minefield they were never intended to be. People looked at other people as obstacles to getting what they wanted or as dangers to be avoided. Even families were unable to coexist in any kind of lasting and peaceful union. Violence became a common response to problems that had never before existed. Conflict existed in the human community as an experience more regular than peace. Marriage became a battle for control, and children's rebellion became a more natural response than willing submission. Things became more valuable than people, and they willingly competed with others in order to acquire more. The human community was more divided by love for self than united by love of neighbor. The words of people, meant to express truth and love, became weapons of anger and instruments of deceit. In an instant, the sweet music of human harmony had become the mournful dirge of human war."

'You Are The Very Person'

Spurgeon:

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

-All of Grace

.....

That is a shot of joyful hope for sleepy souls such as mine.

The Majesty of God

"Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.”

Calvin, Institutes. I.I.III

I Want This

Marsden, commenting on the glories of God revealed to Edwards...

"The new sensibilities grew during the spring. As he wandered in the fields, woods, and hills near New Haven for his meditations he repeatedly saw the glory and beauty of God's love in Christ. He experienced an 'inward sweet sense' of Christ's love expressed in 'the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.' He spent much time reading the love poetry of the Canticles or Song of Songs

..."The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ." Such contemplations would carry him away 'from all the concerns of the world' into 'a kind of vision...sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God.' This new sense of divine things 'would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet buying in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that i know not how to express.'

What overwhelmed him was two seemingly opposite attributes of the triune God "in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness."


...I'll have what he's having.

Winnie the Pooh Theology

Winnie the Pooh: "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think!"

Tim the Pastor: "You are more sinful than you could ever dare imagine, yet more loved an accepted than you could ever dare hope"

Paul the Apostle: "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord"

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Galatians 2:11-16

"For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I id not receive it from any man, nor was I thought it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me..."


No explanation needed.

Piper on Free Will

"In his freedom to will, fallen man cannot on his own do anything but sin. Such “free will” is a devastating reality. Without some power to overcome it’s bent, our free will only damns us."