Ethan Smith

“Probably more trouble is caused in the Christian life by an inadequate or mistaken view of this doctrine [of justification] than any other. When the child of God loses his sense of peace with God, finds his concern for others dried up, or generally finds his sense of the sheer goodness and grace of God diminished, it is from this fountain that he has ceased to drink. Conversely, if we can gain a solid grounding here, we have the foundation for a life of peace and joy.”
Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life

“Forgiveness remits our debts and cancels our liability to punishment; justification bestows on us a righteous standing before God.”
John Stott, The Cross of Christ

“Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy I shall lift up my head.”
Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf

“Faith is holding on to the faithfulness of God. Faith does not even look at itself. I go further. Faith is never interested in itself and never talks about itself. That to me is a very good test. I always distrust people who talk about their faith. That is the characteristic of the cults. They always direct attention to themselves . . . the emphasis is on self. But faith looks at God, holds on to the faithfulness of God. Abraham ‘gave glory to God.’”
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“If I’m laden at all
Then I’m laden with sadness
That everyone’s heart
Isn’t filled with the gladness
Of love for one another”
The Hollies

“[The righteousness of God] is his just justification of the unjust, his righteous way of ‘righteoussing’ the
unrighteous.”
John Stott

“Dumbledore gulped at the goblet, drained every last drop, and then, with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over onto his
face.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“To please God … to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness … to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted
in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our
thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
C.S. Lewis

“It was the kind of church where you could show your ugly heart to everybody and they just loved you harder and
handed you a beer.”
Harrison Scott Key

“It can seem gentler and kinder to think of human beings as basically good, our intuitions basically correct and our
motives basically pure. But then we run into the hard facts of greed, genocide, abuse, oppression, lies, tyranny, hatred,
jealousy, violence, murder, enslavement and even mundane selfishness, impatience, arrogance or resentment in our
own heart. … If I am a sinner, then my enemy and I have something in common: We are both wayward and in deep
need of grace.”
Tish Harrison Warren

“We cannot present a reason for Christ to finally close off his heart to his own sheep. No such reason exists. Every
human friend has a limit. If we offend enough, if a relationship gets damaged enough, if we betray enough times, we
are cast out. The walls go up. With Christ, our sins and weaknesses are the very resumé items that qualify us to
approach him.”
Dane Ortlund

“Cheer up! God’s Spirit works in your weakness.”
Jack Miller

“I just want to be forgiven. Can’t I be forgiven? I just want to be forgiven.”
“Joel Maisel” in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

“A moralistic religion of self-salvation is our default setting as fallen creatures. If we are not explicitly and regularly
taught out of it, we will always turn the message of God’s rescue operation into a message of self-help.”
Michael Horton, Christless Christianity

“The essence of faith is rest in the life and death of Jesus …. You may have a weak faith that you wish were stronger, but
you have a strong Savior who could not be more powerful. If you are his, it is not because your trust never wavers but
because his love never fails.”
David Cassidy, Indispensable