When we realize what we were before Christ and what we deserved in that state, it further magnifies the enormity of the gospel for us.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the transformative power of understanding one's past and the grace offered by the gospel in contrast.
In this quote, Paul Washer emphasizes the importance of recognizing one's former state before accepting Christ and the grace provided through the gospel. By acknowledging the disparity between where one was and the redemption offered, individuals can gain a deeper appreciation for the enormity and significance of the gospel message, leading to a more profound faith experience and appreciation for divine grace.
In practice
In a sermon about the transformative power of faith, you might quote this to illustrate the importance of recognizing one's past.
We deal five minutes with a person and their conversion and then we spend the next fifty years trying to disciple a goat into a sheep. I'm not saying this because I'm angry. I'm saying this because countless people are being deceived.
Pray for the field. If God calls, then prepare for the field. When it is time, go to the field. A life lost for Christ is a life well spent.
There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.
Those who would send out thousands of questionnaires asking the unconverted what they would desire most in a worship service should realize that ten thousand unanimous opinions of carnal men do not carry the authority of one jot or tittle of God's Word.
The evidence of conversion is not a decision card filled out, it's a life being lived out.
Repentance is simply giving up to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works; to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation.
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
Crime is a product of social excess.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.
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