This doctrine is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. What Luther Says: An Anthology Vol 2 (704)
Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown. John Calvin: Selections from His Writings (95)
Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.Systematic Theology, 513
the Article of justification is the Master and the prince, the lord, the ruler, and judge, over all the kinds of doctrine, which preserves and governs the entire church doctrine and sets up our conscience in the sight of God.
Believe God's word and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your Rock is Christ, and it is not the Rock which ebbs and flows, but your sea.
Let us remember that our justification means not only that our sins are forgiven and that we have been declared to be righteous by God Himself, not merely that we were righteous at that moment when we believed, but permanently righteous.Spiritual Depression (74)
It is its conviction that there is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only 'when we believe.' It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always on His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest.Miserable-Sinner Christianity in the Hands of the Rationalists, chapter III in Perfectionism, Part One, vol. 7 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (New York: Oxford University Press, repr., 2000), 113-114
If we knew the glory of our elder Brother in heaven, we should long to be there to see Him. We children think the earth a fair garden, but compared with the garden of the Lord it is but wild, cold, barren ground. All things are fading that are here; it is our happiness to make sure of Christ.
If you win Christ, though not in the sweet and pleasant way you would have Him, it is enough. For the Well Beloved comes not our way; He must choose His way Himself. He cuts off your love to the creature that you might learn that God only is the right owner of your love, sorrow, loss, sadness, death, or the worst things that are.
O that the heaven, and the heaven of heavens were paper, and the sea ink, and the multitude of mountains pens of brass, and I able to write my dearest, my loveliest, my sweetest, my matchless, and my most unequaled and marvelous Well Beloved! Woe is me, I cannot set Him out to men and angels! I am put to my wit's end how to get His name made great. How sweet is Christ's back! O, what there is in His face! Those that see His face, how are they able to get their eye plucked off Him again!Garden of Spices, 41
O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy. Who knows the truth of grace without a trial?Garden of Spices, 151-152
Grace is not educed or extracted out of the potency of any created nature. Grace is born in heaven, and came from the inmost of the heart of Christ; it hath neither seed nor parent on earth, therefore the Lord challengeth it as his own
It is an abasement of Christ, that he who gives such a ransom to justice for free-grace, should wait for a penny from sinners; that sinners must bid and buy, and engage him to give, and Christ say, you must give me more, I must sell, not give grace for nothing. Your penny-worths cannot roll about that everlasting wheel of free-grace, the decree of election, or bow or break Christ's free heart to save you, rather than another.https://www.monergism.com/christ-dying-and-drawing-sinners-himself-ebook
The manner of grace's working on saints is gracious, and so essentially free; as is evident in our first drawing to Christ, when many sins are forgiven, and so the soul loves much; and the sweetest burden in heaven, or out of heaven, is a burden of the love of Christhttps://www.monergism.com/christ-dying-and-drawing-sinners-himself-ebook
Men have a sort of satisfaction in their natural condition: a whole man desires no physician. A dead man hath some negative content to lie in grave; he can have no acts of sorrow for want of life. (2.) We do not put forth any stirring of life or desire toward that which is naturally above us: a child in the belly hath no acts toward a crown or a kingdom in this life, because desires are bottomed and founded on nature; as an ape, or a horse, hath no desire to be a man.https://www.monergism.com/christ-dying-and-drawing-sinners-himself-ebook
We believe that repentance and mortification involve a real, personal turning from sin—a weakening of the lusts of the old nature, a dying to the pleasures of sin, and a growing desire for heavenly things. This flows from union with Christ in His death and resurrection, apprehended by faith.https://www.monergism.com/modest-survey-secrets-antinomianism-ebook
The Law commands us to love God with all our heart. That law required Abraham to offer his son, and Judah to return from exile— not because those acts were written in specific commandments, but because love for God requires obedience to whatever He commands. In this way, we are bound to obey God the Redeemer as well as God the Lawgiverhttps://www.monergism.com/modest-survey-secrets-antinomianism-ebook
Grace is not lawless. True grace is: Active and obedient, Thankful and holy, Eager to honor the Lawgiver, Concerned for the glory of the gospel, Joyful and bold in Christ, Yet tender and reverent, as if there were no gospel— And free and fearless, as if there were no curse.https://www.monergism.com/modest-survey-secrets-antinomianism-ebook