How can a poor tree bear good fruit? Only by grafting… We cannot tell how God has done his work in us, but it is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about, for by the resurrection God has already done it. God has done everything. There is only one fruitful life in the world and that has been grafted into millions of other lives.
Watchman Nee
The Normal Christian Life, Tyndale House 1957/1977, 97-8
Religion has played into the victim mentality because it’s the easiest way to explain away failure. The church has not been effective in helping people overcome things like sickness and financial problems, so they fall into the sacred cow belief that God is allowing this for a reason. God isn’t allowing the bad things in your life. The same power that raised Christ from the dead lives on the inside of every believer, and He is waiting on you to resist the devil and appropriate what He has already provided through Jesus.
Andrew Wommack
Article: “Sacred Cows”
If a man has made me a promise, he cannot refuse to keep it on the ground that I am unworthy; because it is his own character that is at stake, not mine. However unworthy I am, he must not prove himself to be unworthy by failing to keep his word. “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny himself.” Everything hinges upon the character of the Promiser.
CH Spurgeon
Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We all ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is and being a Christian.
Robert Hotchkins
Quoted by Brennan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah 1990/2000, 143-4.
Too many people see the cross only as an act of divine justice. To satisfy his need for justice, God imposed the ultimate punishment on his Son, thus satisfying his wrath and allowing us to go unpunished. That may be good news for us, but what does it say about God?… His wrath wasn’t an expression of the punishment sin deserves; it was the antidote for sin and shame… His plan was not just to provide a way to forgive sin, but to destroy it so that we might live free… Don’t think God was only a distant spectator that day. He was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is something they did together. This was not some sacrifice God required in order to be able to love us, but a sacrifice God himself provided for what we needed. He leaped in front of a stampeding horse and pushed us to safety. He was crushed by the weight of our sin so that we could be rescued from it. It’s an incredible story.
Wayne Jacobsen & Dave Coleman
So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, Windblown Media, 2006, 90-91
If I put a dollar bill between the pages of a magazine, and then burn the magazine, where is the dollar bill? It has gone the same was as the magazine goes – to ashes. Where the one goes the other goes too. Their history has become one. But, just as effectively, God has put us in Christ. What happened to him happened also to us. All the experience he met, we too have met in him. ‘Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin’ (Rom 6:6). That is not an exhortation to struggle. That is history: our history written in Christ before we were born. Do you believe it? It is true! Our crucifixion with Christ is a glorious historic fact. Our deliverance from sin is based, no on what we can do, nor even on what God is going to do for us, but on what He has already done for us in Christ. When that fact dawns on upon us and we rest back upon it (Rom 6:11), then we have found the secret of a holy life.
Watchman Nee
Sit, Walk, Stand, Tyndale House, 1957/1977, 21
Spanish coins before 1492 show the Strait of Gibraltar with the Latin inscription Ne plus ultra—no more beyond. But when Columbus returned from his voyages of discovery, they issued a new coinage, and the inscription read Plus ultra—more beyond. When the Lord Jesus Christ passed through the gates of death, men who saw him go may have thought he had reached the end. But when he came back from the dead, he brought us abundance of grace and of the gift of the righteousness of God. Now we say, “There is everything here, and more beyond.” Abundantly more.
Barnhouse, D. G.
God’s Grace: Romans 5:12-21. Eerdmans
Picture my son Gavin’s first birthday party. Friends and family gather in our backyard, and on the patio table sit dozens of birthday gifts and a big chocolate cake.
To kick off the even with a bang, I feel I should start with a speech. I hold Gavin high atop my shoulders and begin to share what a joy he is to me and his mother. I tell cute and funny stories about things he has done, how he is growing so fast, and all the things we have to look forward to with him.
While I am sharing about Gavin, a friend at the back of the crowd shouts, ‘I’ve got a drinking problem.’ On the heels of that comment, someone else mutters, ‘I’ve got a critical spirit.’ Yet another confesses, ‘I struggle with lust.’
Soon chatter gives way to more chatter, and the whole focus of the event shifts. No longer is anyone concerned with Gavin and what I have to say about him. Instead, everyone seems to be consumed with their own issues.
How ridiculous! How inappropriate! Of course, this event never really occurred. But I tell the tale to illustrate a point. God has lifted his Son high, seating him at his right hand. God has declared that his Son’s works are awesome and that we should marvel at them. The central purpose of our lives is to focus on the Son. In so doing, we please the Father…
If the ridiculous circumstances at Gavin’s party were actually to occur, my only response to those who interrupted would be, “Join the club! We all struggle. But we’re not here to focus on your issues. We’re here to focus on my son.” Similarly, we’re invited to fix our eyes on Jesus, since He’s worthy of our celebration.
Are you consumed with your sins when God says he remembers them no more? Are you willing to agree that the focus is no longer on your failures? Will you please the Father through obsession with the Son?
The Son of God has finished his work. He is risen and is now seated in heavenly places. There’s only one appropriate response. All eyes on Him!
Andrew Farley
The Naked Gospel, Zondervan, 2009, 138-9
There are essentially two ways in which you can go about your life. The first is to depend entirely on your self-efforts, and the other is to depend completely on the unmerited favor and blessings of God… The world’s way to success is based on meritocracy. All religions are also based on this same principle of merit. God’s way to success in the new covenant is in direct contradiction to that and is based on his unmerited favor. You can’t earn it. You can’t deserve it. And you certainly can’t merit it.
Joseph Prince
Unmerited Favor, Joseph Prince Teaching Resources, 2009, x
Then, if Christ’s poverty be such as I have tried to describe it, what must the riches of his people be? If our riches are proportionate to His poverty, what rich people we are! He was as poor as poor can be; and we, if we are believing in Him, are as rich as rich can be.
CH Spurgeon
Sermon: Christ’s Incarnation, 118
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