Quote 4071
One great use for which the moral law serveth is to bring men to a sight and sense of their sins and imperfections, and humble them before God: Rom. 7:7, 'I had not known sin but by the law, for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet;' and to undeceive them of conceits of their own goodness and righteousness. Look into thy bill, what owest thou
Thomas Manton
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The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
though the moral law be thus far abolished, it remains as a perpetual rule to believers. Though it be not their Saviour, it is their guide. Though it be not foedus, a covenant of life; yet it is norma, a rule of life. Every Christian is bound to conform to it; and to write, as exactly as he can after this copy. 'Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid.' Rom iii 31. Though a Christian is not under the condemning power of the law, yet he is under its commanding power.The Ten Commandments, 44
Besides public ordinances, we should give ourselves to spiritual exercises in secret.
All the time we can spare from our necessary, civil, and natural actions should be employed in calling to mind what we have seen, heard, or felt of God.
We are continually thinking of whatsoever we love.
Love causes the soul to be more where it loves than where it lives.Works 7:479
A child of God findeth a greater treasure in one chapter of the Bible than worldly men in all their lands and honours and large revenues.
You can never part with sin soon enough; it is a cursed inmate, that will surely bring mischief upon the soul that harbours it. It will set its own dwelling on fire.Works 7:147
God gave the Spirit to the rest of the apostles, but he gave the purse to the son of perdition.
The church is live a river. If it gets wider instead of deeper it will lose its power.
What a man delights in he will be talking of.Works 7:476
The whole work of sanctification, from its first step to its last period, is all of grace, all must be ascribed to God's free goodness.
To own and stand up for a hated and despised truth will bring more comfort to our souls than all the pleasure the wicked have in their sensual delights.
The devil seeks to weaken our opinion of God's goodness.
To humble us in our converses with God. He is good, but we are evil; he is heaven, but we are hell; he is perfect, but we are poor defective creatures. Therefore in all our approaches to him we should come the more humbly to him, and go the more holy from him; for it is sad when we come to the good God, and are never the better. If we go to the fire, we expect to be warm. Oh! when you come to the fountain of goodness, we should come away better.https://www.monergism.com/rich-young-ruler-exposition-mark-1017-27-ebook
The moral teaching of Christ and his apostles is the old law deepened and reapplied to new circumstances--life in the kingdom of God, where the Savior reigns; and in the post-Pentecost era of the Spirit, where God's people are called to live heaven's life among themselves and to be God's counterculture in the world.Concise Theology, Section 34
As the excellency of his nature giveth him a fitness and a sufficiency for the government of mankind, his creation, preservation, and other benefits give him a full right to make what laws he pleaseth, and to call man to an account whether he hath kept them, yea or no.Works, Volume 10
Christ in fact had not the least intent of making any change or innovation in the precepts of the law. God there appointed once for all a rite of life which he will never repent of... so let us have no more of that error, that here a defect of the law is corrected by Christ; Christ is not to be made into a new law-giver, adding anything to the everlasting righteousness of his Father, but is to be given the attention of a faithful interpreter, teaching us the nature of the law, its object and its scope.
Men are ready to anger, slow to mercy, quickly enflamed, and hardly appeased; but it is quite contrary with God.
The kingdom of grace yields "joy unspeakable" (1 Peter 1:8), though not glory unspeakable. We have "songs in the house of [our] pilgrimage" (Ps. 119:54). God will have us to enter upon our possession by degrees: joy enters into us before we enter into our Master's joy. We have first the daystar, then the sun. What a good Master do we serve that gives us a part of our wages ere we have done our work! While we are sowing we have peace, the conscience and contentment of a good action.
Works are an evidence of true faith. Graces are not dead, useless habits; they will have some effects and operations when they are weakest and in their infancy. It is said of Paul as soon as he was regenerate, "Behold, he prayeth" (Acts 9:11). Newborn children will cry, at least before they are able to go. This is the evidence by which we must judge, and this is the evidence by which Christ will judge. Riches
The divine jealousy will not brook a rival. God delights in this honor of being the sole author of all our good and therefore cannot endure that we should give it to another. When God was about to work miracles by Moses's hand, He first made it leprous (Ex. 4:6).
There is no wrinkle on the brow of eternity.
a sin that breaks both tables at once. It begins in discontent with God and ends in injury to man. It is the root of hatred against godliness. They that are at the bottom of the hill fret at those that are at the top, and men malign what they will not imitate. Wicked men would have all upon the same level.
Some commands of God, as those which are inward, are contrary to our affections; others, as those which enforce duties external, are contrary to our interests. But we must take Christ's yoke (Matt. 11:29). A main thing to be looked at in our first applications to God is this: Are we willing to give up ourselves to the will of God without reservation? Can I subject all without any hesitancy and reluctance of thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5)?
There are times of desertion when graces are not visible. In darkness we can neither see black nor white. In times of great dejection and discouragement, the work of a Christian is not to try, but believe: "Let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God" (Isa. 50:10). It is most seasonable to encourage the soul to acts of faith and to reflect upon the absolute promises rather than conditional. The absolute promises were intended by God as attractives and encouragements to such distressed souls. There is a time when the soul is apt to slumber and to be surprised with a careless security; then it is good to awake it by a serious trial. To a close carnal spirit an absolute promise is as poison; to a dejected spirit, as cheering wine. When the soul lies under fear and sense of guilt, it is unable to judge; therefore, examination only increases the trouble. But again, when the heart is drowsy and careless, trial is most seasonable, and it is best to reflect upon the conditional promises, that we may look after the qualifications expressed in them ere we take comfort.
You will say, "Who are now under the covenant of works?" There is a vulgar prejudice abroad which supposes that the first covenant was repealed and disannulled upon the fall and that God now deals with us upon new terms, as if the covenant of grace wholly shut out the former contract, wherein they think Adam only was concerned. But this is a gross mistake because it was made not only with Adam but with all his seed. And every natural man, whilst natural, whilst merely a son of Adam, is obliged to the tenor of it. The form of the law runs universally: "Cursed is every one that"…(Gal. 3:10), which rule allows no exception but that of free grace and interest in Christ.
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