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Justification takes place by works and by faith—by the works of Christ and by our faith.
How easy it is to read the Scriptures and give a kind of nominal assent to the truth and yet never to appropriate what it tells us!
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
A Christian without a Bible is a soldier without a weapon.The Christian\'s Reasonable Service 1:76
If hatred of sin is necessary to God, then penal justice is equally necessary because the hatred of sin is the constant will of punishing it.
God will condemn those by his Word, who will not judge themselves by it.
When the apostle says that 'faith is by hearing' (Rom. 10:17), he does indeed give us to understand that the ministry of the church ought to come in as the ordinary means of producing faith in adults. He does not teach, however, that the church is clearer and better known than the Scriptures.
Good works are required as the means and way for possessing salvation. Even though they don't contribute anything to the acquisition of our salvation, they are necessary to the obtainment of it. No one can be saved without them.
We do not deny that the church has many functions in relation to the Scriptures. She is: (1) the keeper of the oracles of God to whom they are committed and who preserves the authentic tables of the covenant of grace with the greatest fidelity, like a notary (Rom. 3:2); (2) the guide, to point out the Scriptures and lead us to them (Is. 30:21); (3) the defender, to vindicate and defend them by separating the genuine books from the spurious, in which sense she may be called the ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15*); (4) the herald who sets forth and promulgates them (2 Cor. 5:19; Rom. 10:16); (5) the interpreter inquiring into the unfolding of the true sense. But all these imply a ministerial only and not a magisterial power.
The body of Scripture is a doctrine sufficient to live well. It comprehends many holy sciences of which one is principal, and the others are handmaids or attendants.https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/perkins/A%20Golden%20Chain%20-%20William%20Perkins.pdf
The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures is enjoined upon men of all languages, therefore the translation of it into the native tongues is necessary. Since men speak different languages and are not all familiar with those two in which it was first written, it cannot be understood by them unless translated; it comes as the same thing to say nothing at all and to say what nobody can understand. But here it happens by the wonderful grace of God that the division of tongues (which formerly was the sign of a curse) becomes now the proof of a heavenly blessing. What was introduced to destroy Babel is now used to build up the mystical Zion.
It was not necessary for the apostles to write a catechism so as to deliver their doctrines professedly. It was enough for them to hand down to us those doctrines in accordance with which all symbolical books and catechisms might be constructed. If they did not formally write a catechism, they did materially leave us either in the gospels or in the epistles those things by which we can be clearly taught the principles of religion (katécheisthai).
If theology takes some things from other systems, it is not as an inferior from superiors, but as an superior from inferiors (as a mistress freely using her handmaids). Theology does not so much take from others, as presupposes certain previously known things upon which it builds revelation.
Institutes of Elenctic Theology
That God is the object of theology is evident both from the very name (theologias and theosebeias), and from Scripture which recognizes no other principal object.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
Thus that all things are discussed in theology either because they deal with God himself or have a relation (schesin) to him as the first principle and ultimate end.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
But the divine dayspring from on high is adored, Christ the Lord, who is our sun and shield; the sun of every blessing, asserting the glory of religion; the shield of the most safe protection, affording an invincible and inexpugnable guard to liberty.
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.
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.
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
The Scriptures of God are written for all believers; all believers have the Spirit of Christ, by whom one understands the Scriptures. https://reformedbooksonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Bucer-Grounds-and-Reasons-from-Scripture-for-the-Changes-about-the-Lords-Supper-called-the-Mass-Baptism-Feast-Days-and-Images.pdf
Although the church is more ancient than the Scriptures formally considered (and as to the mode of writing), yet it cannot be called such with respect to the Scriptures materially considered (and as to the substance of the doctrine) because the Word of God is more ancient than the church itself, being its foundation and seed.
The 'seat of Moses' (Mt. 23:2) is not the succession in the place and office of Moses or the external court of a supreme judge to whom the authority in question belongs (for the seat of Moses was not in existence nor was any such privilege attached to it); rather it is the promulgation of the true doctrine delivered by Moses (as the ordinary gloss on Dt. 17 has it, 'The seat of Moses is wherever his doctrine is'), and the chair of Peter is wherever his doctrine is heard. So those who have been teachers of the law delivered by Moses are considered to have taught in Moses' seat, as Hilary observes (Commentarius in Matthaeum 24.1 [PL 9.1048]). Therefore the Pharisees teaching in Moses' seat were to be heard as far as they faithfully proposed to the people his doctrine, without any admixture of their own.
The knowledge of a thing may be confused or distinct. The church can be known before the Scriptures by a confused knowledge, but a distinct knowledge of the Scriptures ought to precede because the truth of the church can be ascertained only from the Scriptures. The church can be apprehended by us before the Scriptures by a human faith, as an assembly of men using the same sacred things; yet it can be known and believed as an assembly of believers and the communion of saints by a divine faith, only after the marks of the church which Scripture supplies have become known.
To inquire concerning the number, the authors, parts and single words of the sacred books is different from inquiring concerning the fundamental doctrines contained in them. The latter knowledge pertains to every believer, but not the former. Nor will his salvation be in jeopardy who cannot tell who wrote the gospel of Matthew, provided he believes the book to be authentic and divine. The knowledge of the primary author of any book is one thing; that of the amanuensis is another. The latter belongs only to an historical faith, but the former to a divine.
Top Authors
1. Charles Spurgeon (115)
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2. J.C. Ryle (111)
3. Thomas Watson (108)
4. John Calvin (83)
5. John Piper (82)
6. J.I. Packer (76)
7. George Swinnock (69)
8. Louis Berkhof (62)
9. A.W. Pink (60)
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11. Francis Schaeffer (48)
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14. John Owen (44)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (43)
16. Tim Keller (42)
17. Joe Boot (42)
18. Abraham Kuyper (40)
19. John Flavel (38)
20. Thomas Brooks (36)
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