That is why the unregenerate person cannot understand the urgency of the gospel message: until they see the depth of their sin and the holiness of God, they find no reason to seek remedy for their condition.
Consider for a moment how precious it is that the Christian can say, "I have been crucified with Christ." This is a personal atonement, personal substitution. We revel in the awesome love of our Savior who loved us as individuals and gave Himself up for us. For me! Me, the hate-filled sinner who spurned Him and His love! How much less glorious is the idea, "Christ loved a generic group and died so as to give them the opportunity to possibly join the group and hence receive certain benefits.The Potter's Freedom (248)
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
Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group's view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God's truth.Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 43). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rome demands men and women to believe things the Apostles never taught as part of the gospel today, and she does so because she rejects sola scriptura.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cl9n5tqFcc&t=230s
Tradition is normally used negatively by the Apostles, and when it is used positively it is referring to the singular message of the Gospel, not to a secret, hidden, or unwritten and undefined body of "non-public" revelation.(10:03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cl9n5tqFcc
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.
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.
The hand that holds onto its own alleged goodness, or attempts to sneak in a merit here, a good work there, will not find the open hand of God's grace. Only the empty hand fits into the powerful hand of grace. Only the person who finds in Christ his all-in-all will, in so finding, be made right with God. This is why the Scriptures say it is by faith so that it might be in accordance with grace: in God's wisdom, he excludes man's boasting by making salvation all of grace.http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/1993/04/29/the-empty-hand-of-faith/
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.
Christian scholarship that lacks passion about the truth is not worthy of the name Christian to begin with. If dispassion and detachment are necessary attributes of scholarship, then I do not seek the appellation. Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible\'s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity (p. 10). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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
either no human writings at all must be considered as true, or everyone must acknowledge that the sacred accounts are true and reliable -and hence, also divine.Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 2