'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

A Marker of Healthy Theology

All too often those in the reformed circles get the reputation of the stuffy, stodgy, cantankerous curmudgeon who is chomping at the bit for any opportunity to beat people over the head with a doctrinal bat. Unfortunately, that reputation exists for a reason. I see that in myself as well as others. While robust doctrine is absolutely necessary to live lives pleasing to God, it derails when we use it to drive unnecessary wedges in the body of Christ.

In George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards, he explains how Edwards (usually the Superman of the reformed circles) held tightly to particular and confessional convictions while simultaneously yearning for unity in thought and deed in the church.

This, I'm convinced, is a marker of healthy theology.

"Edwards' call for peace was so strong that he sounded almost like one of Boston's Calvinist moderates.

 'The gospel spirit is a catholic spirit, a noble and unconfined benevolence, like unto that of our Creator, not confined to any particular part of mankind exclusive of others...To make the wickedness of men the cause of contention and strife in us, is to make one sin the cause of another. We cannot please the devil better than by hating men's personals under pretense of duty.'

Even doctrinal differences are no excuse for hatred. People can not help what they believe.

'Tis as unreasonable to strive with others because they can't be in everything of our minds, as to quarrel with another because he differs in the color of his hair or the features of his face...However pernicious his tenets, yet we ought, as much as in us lies, to endeavor to live peaceably with him.'"

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.

Church Planting, Heroes-->Idols

The Church Planter’s Rude, Great Awakening


Certainly guilty of this.

The Gift of Gifts

Valley of Vision... read it. It's gospel defibrillation.

O SOURCE OF ALL GOOD
What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,
    thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
    my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
    his self-emptying incomprehensible,
    his infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.
Herein is wonder of wonders:
   he came below to raise me above,
   was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love;
   when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace,
      to raise me to himself
Herein is wisdom;
   when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
      and no intellect to devise recovery,
he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
   as man to die my death,
          to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
          to work out a perfect righteousness for me.
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
   and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
   and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
   my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
   my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;
place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
   to look with them upon my Redeemer's face,
   and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart
   embrace him with undying faith,
   exulting that he is mine and I am his.
In him thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.