O my soul, is it possible for thee to hear the excellency of Scripture thus opened to thee, and not to burn in love to it? Hast thou been all this while in such a host bath, and still cold and shivering?The Christian Man\'s Calling
We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.
If you allow your love of creature comforts — or even your pleasure in family and loved ones — to outrun your love for the Lord, you cannot be a victorious soldier for Christ.The Christian in Complete Armour, 1:72
The layman has a large field in which he may minister to his fellow man, even if he is not called to full time ministry.Christian in Complete Armour 1:300
Christians need to remember that the sufficiency of Scripture gives us a comprehensive worldview that equips us to wrestle with even the most challenging ethical dilemmas of our time.
In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
He that is mighty in Scripture is the man that can hit this unclean bird in the eye and wound it mortally with one blow (Acts 18:28). Even women, that are the weaker sex, with this sword in their hands, having learned from the Spirit how to use it, have encountered with great doctors, disarmed them of all their philosophical weapons, and shamefully foiled them.
Jewels do not lie upon the surface; you must get into the caverns and dark receptacles of the earth for them. No more do truths lie in the surface and outside of an expression. The beauty and glory of the Scriptures is within and must be fetched out with much study and prayer.
The reading of the Scriptures with general instructions, admonitions, reprehensions, exhortations, and consolations I grant are most necessary, being the groundwork and matter of the cure. But what sound conversion is wrought thereby in any man, without discreet application, let every man that hath profited anything in the school of Christ be judge.
When a man's mind is empty, as in temptation and want of comfort, it is empty of Christ and full of fear. Then it grinds itself, as in a quern or mill when empty of corn, one stone grinds another. The more full a man's mind is, the more free from temptations and fears. Now Scripture matter is the most filling matter.
The devil is a great student in divinity and makes no other use of his Scripture knowledge than may serve his turn by sophistry to do the Christian a mischief, either by drawing him into sin or into despair for sinning, like some wrangling barrister who gets what skill he can in the law merely to make him the more able to put honest men to trouble by his vexatious suit.
The Christian wrestles not with his naked corruptions, but with Satan in them. Were there no devil, yet we should have our hands full in resisting the corruptions of our own hearts, but the access of this enemy makes the battle more terrible because he heads them, who is a captain so skillful and experienced. Our sin is the engine, Satan is the engineer; lust the bait, Satan the angler. When a soul is enticed by his own lusts, he is said to be tempted (James 1:14) because both Satan and our own lusts concur to the completing the sin.
Many have yielded to go a mile with Satan that never intended to go two, but when once on the way have been allured further and further, till at last they know not how to leave his company.
In handling this point of Satan's subtlety, we shall consider him in his two main designs and therein show you his wiles and policies. His first main design is to draw into sin. The second is to accuse, vex, and trouble the saint for sin.