To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
The glory of the gospel is this: The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us.
Interpretation
The essence of the gospel is that salvation comes from the very source of our need for it.
This quote by R. C. Sproul emphasizes the profound paradox at the heart of the gospel: the one who saves humanity is also the one who understands our need for salvation. It highlights the divine nature of redemption, where the Savior is intimately aware of human frailty and sin but offers grace and salvation nonetheless.
In practice
In a sermon about divine grace and mercy.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
Iβve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious.
Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end.
Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.
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