Richard D. Phillips Quotes

Christ... did not come on earth to be a conqueror or a philosopher, or a mere teacher of morality. He came to save sinners. He came to do that which man could never do for himself - to do that which money and learning can never obtain - to do that which is essential to man's real happiness. He came to 'take away sin'.

Our calling in life really is this simple (although not therefore easy): We are to devote ourselves to working/building and keeping/protecting everything placed into our charge.

Love between a man and a woman simply cannot work without love for God at the center of the relationship; by means of his curses, God mercifully brings

In our witness, we are to shine not our own light but Christ's light. Just as a lamp requires oil, we depend on our fellowship with Christ and the Holy Spirit's enlivening ministry through God's Word in order that Christ's light may shine through us.

Our witness must center not on our experience but on the facts of Christ's coming to this world.

To be clear, male leadership in marriage does not mean the husband does everything or even that he decides everything. Rather, it means he typically initiates and always leads those shared discussions with his wife by which the various aspects of marriage and family life are decided and planned. The wife's opinion is vitally important, and a godly couple should be a close-knit team. But there should be no area of family life in which the husband does not serve as leader, facilitator, and overseer.

Believing in Christ is the world's great need, and our great obligation is to tell all people that they need to do so.

Salvation requires a radical revamping by which we are made inwardly new. J.C. Ryle explains, 'It is a thorough change of heart, will, and character. It is a resurrection. It is a new creation. It is a passing from death to life. It is the implanting of our death hearts of a new principle from above.

So what is true religion? What does real spirituality look like? First, it is a desire for God himself, for his pleasure and his glory; second, it is concerned with the inner realities of sin and righteousness and only then with consequences and external blessings; third, true spirituality is that which draws from God's Word, hearing and believing and doing according to what God has spoken in the Bible.

Indeed, this is what modern and postmodern masculinity has been all about-men behaving like little boys forever, serving themselves in the name of self-discovery. (Can we imagine someone like Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill talking about going on a quest to find his masculine self? They were too busy changing the world.)

We are not called to give lifestyle tips or the self-help plumbing that today's worldly men and women crave. The Bible says the gospel is the "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." (Romans 1:16b), so we must proclaim it.

A. W. Pink rightly says:
Humility is not the product of direct cultivation, rather it is a by-product. The more I try to be humble, the less shall I attain unto humility. But if I am truly occupied with that One who was "meek and lowly in heart," if I am constantly beholding His glory in the mirror of God's Word, then shall I be "changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).24

If we think of the atonement as a bridge spanning a great river, Arminians see it as infinitely wide, but not reaching all the way to the far bank; Calvinists hold that the atonement is a narrow bridge, wide enough only for the elect, but reaching all the way to the other side. We believe that Christ's death actually saves those for whom He died.

I may ... pass for being a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets-that's fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue-that's success. Furnished with money and a little fame ... [I] may partake of trendy diversions-that's pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote ... represented a serious impact on our time-that's fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing-less than nothing, a positive impediment-measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.8