Sinclair B. Ferguson Quotes

Do I learn through dark providences, or simply seem relieved when they are over?

The jewels of spiritual service are always quarried in the depths of spiritual experience. Never is this more true than in revival. Bend the church and save the people.

pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From them the vestiges of a self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them.

Jesus undid everything that Adam did, and did everything Adam failed to do.

God can be trusted even when he cannot be seen or understood.

The determining factor of my existence is no longer my past.

True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, and the permanent from the transient. And, yes, it means distinguishing between the good and the better, and even between the better and the best.

Evil deeds are the fruit of an evil heart. They are not an aberration from our true self but a revelation of it.

No one can will the will to will what it will not will!

The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.

God has chosen us. Our status is not a matter of our worthiness, but of His love.

You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.

But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit. It is the natural instinct of the once-antinomian prodigal who, when awakened, thinks in terms of working his way back into the favor of his father.38

Christian contentment, therefore, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.

The foundation of our love for the Lord lies in the recognition of His holiness, our sinfulness, and His grace.

God possesses personal being in a unified, uncreated, eternal, tri-personal manner.

But, as Paul is at pains to stress, the law is good, and just, and holy.50 And we need to understand, sense, feel, and then delight in the grace of law.51 For unless we are persuaded that God has shown his grace in his law as well as in his Son, all we will hear and see at Sinai is thunder and lightning.

Contentment is an undervalued grace.

Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you.

Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel.

Regeneration, however it is described, is a divine activity in us, in which we are not the actors but the recipients.

We can never reflect too much on God's grace.

The Son of God came to dwell in human flesh for us in order that He might come to dwell in us by His Spirit.

Yes, people will tell us they believe in a "God of love." But they are self-deceived, and their lives reveal it. They neither love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength in return, nor do they worship Him with zeal and energy. The truth is that their mantra "My God is a God of love" is a smokescreen, a phantasm of their imagination. Underneath it all is a deep mistrust of God - otherwise, why not yield the whole of life in joyful abandon to whatever He says or asks?

Christianity is Christ because there isn't anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is, is Christ and your soul.

If you desire anything less for yourself than absolute obedience to God, a life of total devotion to the Lord, a life of absolute sin-less-ness - if you desire anything less, you are fighting against God's desire for you.

This is the key to the enjoyment of assurance precisely because assurance is our assurance that he is a great Savior and that he is ours.

The problem is not in the clarity of the revelation. The problem is in the darkness of the human mind.

It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be!

We are far too good at analyzing what is wrong with the culture and far too myopic at analyzing what is wrong in the church.

Anyone who comes to grips with the issues raised in The Marrow of Modern Divinity will almost certainly grow by leaps and bounds in understanding three things: the grace of God, the Christian life, and the very nature of the gospel itself.

This is thought to be Jesus's best-loved parable, usually because our eyes are on the prodigal and his father. But as with jokes, so with parables: there is a principle in both of "end stress." The "punch line" comes at the end. That being the case the alarming message here is that the spirit of the elder brother, the legalist, is more likely to be found near the father's house than in the pig farm - or in concrete terms, in the congregation and among the faithful. And sometimes (only sometimes?), it appears in the pulpit and in the heart of the pastor.

Then all my servile works were done A righteousness to raise; Now, freely chosen in the Son, I freely choose his ways.

When man became the measure of all things what was lost was man.

Thus the motivation, energy and drive for holiness are all found in the reality and power of God's grace in Christ. And so if I am to make any progress in sanctification, the place where I must always begin is the gospel of the mercy of God to me in Christ Jesus.

This, then, is the foundation of sanctification in Reformed theology. It is rooted, not in humanity and their achievement of holiness or sanctification, but in what God has done in Christ, and for us in union with him. Rather than view Christians first and foremost in the microcosmic context of their own progress, the Reformed doctrine first of all sets them in the macrocosm of God's activity in redemptive history. It is seeing oneself in this context that enables the individual Christian to grow in true holiness.

Worship is not something we "work up," it is something that "comes down" to us, from the character of God.

God's guidance will require patience on our part. His leading is not usually a direct assurance, a revelation, but His sovereign controlling of the circumstances of our lives, with the Word of God as our rule. It is therefore, inevitable that the unfolding of His purposes will take time - sometimes a very long time.

What the prophets of God did spiritually, the Prophet of God did quite literally and physically.

God protects us from Satan even at times when we are not aware of His protection. But how can we develop Jesus-like discernment? By Spirit-aided digestion of the solid food of God's wisdom.

The knowledge of our union with Christ ... gives us confidence in prayer. It was when Jesus had begun to expound the closeness of this union that he also began to introduce the disciples to the true heart of prayer. If Christ abides in us and we abide in him, as his word dwells in us, and we pray in his name, that God hears us (Jn 15:4-7). But all of these expressions are simply extensions of the one fundamental idea: If I am united to Christ, then all that is his is mine. So long as my heart, will and mind are one with Christ's in his word, I can approach God with the humble confidence that my prayers will be heard and answered.

The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional ... it is theological.

Biblical repentance, then, is not merely a sense of regret that leaves us where it found us. It is a radical reversal that takes us back along the road of our sinful wanderings, creating in us a completely different mind-set. We come to our senses spiritually (Luke 15:17). Thus the prodigal son's life was no longer characterized by the demand "give me" (v. 12) but now by the request "make me . . ." (v. 19). This lies on the surface of the New Testament's teaching. Regret there will be, but the heart of repentance is the lifelong moral and spiritual turnaround of our lives as we submit to the Lord.

Christians have a new identity. We are no longer 'in Adam' but 'in Christ'; no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit ...

True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

The holiness of God teaches us that there is only one way to deal with sin- radically, seriously, painfully, constantly. If you do not so live, you do not live in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.

By way of contrast he wanted to stress that the gospel's center is found in Jesus Christ himself, who has been crucified for sin and raised for justification, with the inbuilt implication that Christ himself thus defined and described should be proclaimed as able to save all who come to him.

Repentance, turning from sin, and degrees of conviction of sin do not constitute the grounds on which Christ is offered to us. They may constitute ways in which the Spirit works as the gospel makes its impact on us. But they never form the warrant for repentance and faith.

When I am tempted and feel the power of sin and its tug on my affections, the gospel gives me something to say: 'Christ bled and died for this sin - I will therefore have nothing to do with it. I am now united to Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit - how can I drag him into my sin?

I've often reflected on the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time in the Upper Room speaking to them about the mystery of the Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it!

There are actually only ever two pastoral problems you will ever encounter. The first is this: persuading those who are under the dominion of sin that they are under the dominion of sin. That's the task of evangelism. And [second], persuading those who are no longer under the dominion of sin that they are no longer under the dominion of sin because they're Christ's.

If the benefits of Christ's work (justification, reconciliation, adoption, and so on) are abstracted from Christ himself, and the proclamation of the gospel is made in terms of what it offers rather than in terms of Christ himself, the question naturally arises: To whom can I offer these benefits?

When I know that Christ is the one real sacrifice for my sins, that His work on my behalf has been accepted by God, that He is my heavenly Intercessor - then His blood is the antidote to the poison in the voices that echo in my conscience, condemning me for my many failures. Indeed, Christ's shed blood chokes them into silence!

If you are justified, you can no more be unjustified than Christ can be pulled down from heaven.

An inability to encourage someone else is usually rooted in an absorption
with self that is blind to the needs or gifts of others, or a pride that cannot bring itself to praise God's grace in them.

Living in the Spirit means a daily commitment to please Christ and not to please self.

The fear of the Lord tends to take away all other fears ... This is the secret of Christian courage and boldness.

Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the final rehearsed words, "Treat me as one of your hired servants" are smothered by his father's embrace! He will not have his son home only on condition that he "does penance" in order to work his way back into his father's grace. He does not need to "repent enough" to be accepted.

Sinclair B. Ferguson. The Whole Christ (Kindle Locations 1913-1916). Crossway.

It's the centrality of the Word and not the person who preaches it that's important.

You must first have Christ himself, before you can partake of those benefits by him.19

Thankfulness grows best in the seed-bed of conviction, just as some plants must be placed in the soil in the winter if they are to flower in the summer.

Confessional orthodoxy coupled with a view of a heavenly Father whose love is conditioned on his Son's suffering, and further conditioned by our repentance, leads inevitably to a restriction in the preaching of the gospel. Why? Because it leads to a restriction in the heart of the preacher that matches the restriction he sees in the heart of God!

...we are always entertaining the delusion that we will go on forever in this world. The result is that the very things which ought to be of assistance to us in our pilgrimage through life, become chains which bind us.

The true church is too different for the world to tolerate it.

For worship is, essentially, the reverse of sin. Sin began (and begins) when we succumb to the temptation, "You shall be as gods." We make ourselves the center of the universe and dethrone God. By contrast, worship is giving God his true worth; it is acknowledging Him to be the Lord of all things, and the Lord of everything in our lives. He is, indeed, the Most High God!

When I look at the cross, I learn to say: 'The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me' (Galatians 2:20). I begin to believe with Paul that if God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to the cross for me, then He loves me so much He will always give me only what will bring me blessing (Romans 8:32).

Secular humanism debases the human.

Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a 'working God.' Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence.

Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ

Those who are most conscious of forgiveness are invariably those who have been most acutely convicted of their sin.

I began to read for myself and realised that here was somebody who could teach me profound biblical theology, get inside my heart with his spiritual analysis, and help me to become a minister of the gospel, which is what I wanted to be.

Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.

There is a difference between going to a service "for the worship" and going to a service "to worship the Lord." The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!

As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His.

No short-cut that tries to bypass the patient unfolding of the true character of God, and our relationship to him as his children, can ever succeed in providing long-term spiritual therapy.

The Father did not require the death of Christ to persuade Him to love us. Christ died because the Father loves us.

Spiritual growth depends on two things: first a willingness to live according to the Word of God; second, a willingness to take whatever consequences emerge as a result.

Only God-the One through whom "all things were made" (1:3, cf. v. 10), in whom "was life" and "light" (v. 4)-can reverse creation's death and dissipate the darkness caused by sin.
2. But since that death and darkness are within creation, within man, the Word must become flesh in order to restore it from within. The Creator must enter His own creation, groaning as it is under the burden of alienation from Him.

Probably no theologian in English language has ever rivaled Owen stressing the absolute centrality of Christ's penal substitution and therefore his as Priest ... For that reason alone The Priesthood of Christ is worth all the time it takes to read it with humility, care, and reflection.

In the New Testament the basic command of old covenant life, 'Be holy as I am holy', now means, 'Become like Jesus.' God involves himself in this work as the triune Lord: the Father commands it; the Son has died to provide the resources for it; the Spirit indwells us in order to effect it in our lives. As Augustine famously prayed, God commands what he wills and gives what he commands.

We discover the will of God by a sensitive application of Scripture to our own lives.

When the New Testament speaks about the fullness of grace which we find in Christ, it does not mean only forgiveness, pardon and justification. Christ has done much more for us. He died for us, but he also lived for us. Now he has sent his own Spirit to us so that we might draw on his strength. He grew in grace, and when we draw on his power we shall likewise grow in grace.

Humility is not simply feeling small and useless - like an inferiority complex. It is sensing how great and glorious God is, and seeing myself in that light.

you cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness. The world-centered love of our hearts can be expelled only by a new love and affection-for God and from God. The love of the world and the love of the Father cannot coexist in the same heart

The weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.

Remember that you are not saved by increased levels of holiness, however desirable it is that you should reach them ... It is Christ who saves us-through faith. Your faith is a poor and crumbling thing, as is your spiritual service. Jesus Christ alone is qualified and able to save you because of what He has done.

What was injected into Eve's mind and affections during the conversation with the Serpent was a deep-seated suspicion of God that was soon further twisted into rebellion against him. The root of her antinomianism (opposition to and breach of the law) was actually the legalism that was darkening her understanding, dulling her senses, and destroying her affection for her heavenly Father. Now, like a pouting child of the most generous father, she acted as though she wanted to say to God, "You never give me anything. You insist on me earning everything I am ever going to have.

Karl Barth once wittily remarked, One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.

These considerations give us some clues as to why legalism and antinomianism are, in fact, nonidentical twins that emerge from the same womb. Eve

Marriage, and the process of coming to it, is not heaven! It is the bonding together of two needy sinners in order to make a partnership which is substantially greater than either of them alone.

Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian.

Don't tell me that you have a Reformed Church in the tradition of Calvin until you have the preaching of the Word every day of the week, devote Wednesday's to prayer and have the church gather together for prayer.

There had been occasions when David could have seized position and power by means that would have compromised his commitment to the Lord.