Scripture: Psalm 1
“The person who knows that she is justified is a person of unbounded confidence and assurance. She knows that none of her failures can overturn the divine verdict. It is guaranteed and settled in heaven forever.”—Sinclair Ferguson
“People often think of Christianity as a kind of bargain in which God says “If you keep a lot of rules, I’ll reward you, and if you don’t, I’ll do the other thing.” I don’t think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, that part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole with all your innumerable choices all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature, either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and other creatures and with itself or else into one that is in a state of war with God and with other creatures and itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven, that is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”—C.S. Lewis
“The picture of Jesus as the coming Judge is the central feature of another absolutely vital and non-negotiable Christian belief: that there will indeed be a judgment in which the creator God will set the world right once and for all. The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and post liberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.”—N.T. Wright
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