Consider the possibility that you may be wrong as to what the Christian message really is —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“So that raises for us the question of what exactly repentance is. How do I know whether I have repented? The details given to us here about what happened in this city of Samaria tell us exactly what repentance means (Acts 8:1-25)…

So let us look at this passage. First, the people "gave heed" (Acts 8:6). This means they gave earnest heed. They not only heard, they listened. Now this must be examined because it is a vital term. What does it imply? Obviously it implies in the first place a readiness to hear. It is an astounding fact that many people are not Christians because they have refused to hear, and this is because they have been blinded by their prejudices…

It is possible for you to refuse to hear. You can stop yourself from hearing, from listening. God knows, many people have done that, and a large number of people are still refusing to hear the Gospel. They sometimes take this stance because they feel they know all about it and think it is a lot of nonsense…

Take the man who says, "I'm not a Christian." So you say, "Why not?" And he pours out a whole lot of cliches: "There's nothing in it. Tommyrot. Science has disproved it." Then you begin to ask him about the contents of the Bible, and you find out at once that he does not know anything about it. He has never read the Bible, and he has not the slightest idea as to what the Christian message really is. He may think it is a lot of sob stuff and that Christian people just spend their time singing hymns and choruses and complimenting one another…

My dear friend, do you have an open mind? Are you really ready to listen to this message? Have you ever given it a fair hearing? Is it not wrong from every standpoint to dismiss a message, a teaching, before you have ever listened to it, when you know nothing about it? But that is the tragedy of the times.

Oh, people may attack the church or a preacher or Christian people whom they happen to know, but that is not attacking Christianity; that is attacking the failure of particular Christians, which is very different. It is quite impossible for anybody to become a Christian without listening to the message. Of necessity the first thing we must do is listen to it, and listen to it fairly, listen to it honestly.

Now let us be frank: you do not like a prejudiced person, do you? What do you think of a man who will not listen to what you happen to believe, your hobby or your pet theory? Perhaps you are a politician, and you hold particular political views. What would you think if, when you went to address a meeting, the people just began singing the moment you began speaking and did not allow you to utter a single word? But perhaps you have been behaving just like that with regard to the Gospel.”

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Compelling Christianity (Studies in the Book of Acts)

now I can worship God better — Francis A. Schaeffer

"A number of years ago I was at a discussion group in Detroit.  An older black pastor was there.  We discussed many intellectual and cultural problems and the answers given by Christianity.  One would have called the discussion “intellectual” rather than devotional.  As he was leaving, the black pastor shook my hand and thanked me.  If he had said, “Thank you for helping me to defend my people better,” or “Thank you for helping me to be a better evangelist,” I would have been very glad that what I had said had been helpful, and then possibly I would not have given it another thought.  But what he actually said was, “Thank you for opening these doors to me; now I can worship God better.”  I will never forget him because he was a man who really understood.  If this is not our own response first of all, and then the response of those whom we try to help, we have made a mistake somewhere."

— Francis A. Schaeffer (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books.

no one has ever thought of a way of deriving personality from nonpersonal sources — Francis Schaeffer

"The Bible states that this God who is personal created man in His own image.… God is personal, & man is also personal.

It might be helpful to illustrate the situation in this way.
Imagine you are in the Alps, and from a high vantage point you can see three parallel ranges of mountains with two valleys in between.  In one valley there is a lake, but the other is dry.  Suddenly you begin to witness what sometimes happens in the Alps; a lake forming in the second valley where there was none before.  As you see the water rising, you may wonder what its source is.  If it stops at the same level as the lake in the neighboring valley, you may, after careful measurements, conclude that there is a possibility that the water has come from the first valley.  But if your measurement shows that the level of the second lake is twenty feet higher than the first, then you can no longer consider that its source may be from the neighboring valley and you would have to seek another explanation.  Personality is like that; no one has ever thought of a way of deriving personality from nonpersonal sources.

Therefore, biblical Christianity has an adequate and reasonable explanation for the source and meaning of human personality.  Its source is sufficient — the personal God on the high order of Trinity.  Without such a source men are left with personality coming from the impersonal (plus time, plus chance).

The two alternatives are very clearcut.  Either there is a personal beginning to everything, or one has what the impersonal throws up by chance out of the time sequence.  The fact that the second alternative may be veiled by connotation words makes no difference.  The words used by Eastern pantheism; the theological words such as Tillich’s “Ground of Being”; the secular shift from mass to energy or motion — all eventually come back to the impersonal, plus time, plus chance.  If this is really the only answer to man’s personality, then personality is no more than an illusion, a kind of sick joke which no amount of semantic juggling will alter.  Only some form of mystical jump will allow us to accept that personality comes from impersonality.  This was the position into which Teilhard de Chardin was forced. His answer is only a mystical answer of words.

Because these men will not accept the only explanation which can fit the facts of their own experience, they have become metaphysical magicians.  No one has presented an idea, let alone demonstrated it to be feasible, to explain how the impersonal beginning, plus time, plus chance, can give personality.  We are distracted by a flourish of endless words, and lo, personality has appeared out of the hat!  This is the water rising above its source.  No one in all the history of humanistic, rationalistic thought has found a solution.  As a result, either the thinker must say man is dead, because personality is a mirage; or else he must hang his reason on a hook outside the door and cross the threshold into the leap of faith which is the new level of despair.

A man like Sir Julian Huxley has clarified the dilemma by acknowledging, though he is an atheist, that somehow or other, against all that one might expect, man functions better if he acts as though God is there.  This sounds like a feasible solution for a moment, the kind of answer a computer might give if you fed the sociological data into it.  God is dead, but act as if He were alive.  However, a moment’s reflection will show what a terrible solution this is.  Ibsen, the Norwegian, put it like this: if you take away a man’s lie, you take away his hope. These thinkers are saying in effect that man can only function as man for an extended period of time if he acts on the assumption that a lie (that the personal God of Christianity is there) is true.  You cannot find any deeper despair than this for a sensitive person.  This is not an optimistic, happy, reasonable or brilliant answer.  It is darkness and death.

Imagine that a universe existed which was made up only of liquids and solids, and no free gases.  A fish was swimming in this universe.  This fish, quite naturally, was conformed to its environment, so that it was able to go on living.  But let us suppose that by blind chance, as the evolutionists would have us believe, this fish developed lungs as it continued swimming in this universe without any gases.  Now this fish would no longer be able to function and fulfill its position as a fish.  Would it then be higher or lower in its new state with lungs?  It would be lower, for it would drown.  In the same way, if man has been kicked up by chance out of what is only impersonal, then those things that make him man — hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication — are ultimately unfulfillable and are thus meaningless.  In such a situation, is man higher or lower?  He would then be the lowest creature on the scale.  The green moss on the rock is higher than he, for it can be fulfilled in the universe which exists.  But if the world is what these men say it is, then man (not only individually but as a race), being unfulfillable, is dead.  In this situation man should not walk on the grass, but respect it — for it is higher than he!"

— Francis A. Schaeffer (1982). The complete works of Francis A. Schaeffer: a Christian worldview. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books.

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"There are only two ultimate possibilities in life. We are, all of us, either for God or else we are against Him, and nothing else matters. The color of your skin does not matter at all; you may be very clever, you may be very learned, or you may be ignorant and illiterate—it does not matter. The one question is: Are you one of God’s people, or are you one of the people who are against Him?

There is no other possibility. There is no such thing as neutrality in the realm of the spirit.

To make no decision is always to make a decision against God, for we are all by nature against Him.

“The carnal [natural] mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). We are all born God-haters; we are all against God. Some people, I know, say, “I’ve always believed in God.” But that means that they have never believed in Him. What they have believed in is some figment of their own imagination. If you confront such people with the God of the Bible, they will soon begin to show their hatred of Him. They have a God whom they can manipulate and handle, a God made after their own image and likeness, and they hate the living God who is revealed in the Bible.

So there is no such thing as neutrality. I repeat that we are either for God or we are against Him. There is no no-man’s-land in this matter. We all of us are inevitably in one of two camps. Our Lord Himself said it: “He that is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30)."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2004). Vol. 4: Glorious Christianity (1st U.S. ed.). Studies in the Book of Acts (252–253). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

apostolic doctrine ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“There is such a thing as apostolic doctrine. I am a preacher for one reason only, and it is that I have believed the apostolic doctrine and teaching. I have no other teaching. I do not stand here to say what I think. I am simply repeating what I find in the Gospel. I am expounding the Scriptures, the apostolic doctrine. But the importance of doing this is seriously questioned today. Indeed, it is not only controverted but ridiculed and dismissed, and I must of necessity deal with this criticism…

My dear friend, have you believed? Have you received this apostolic doctrine? I can test you simply. If you have believed this and received it, you have new life, spiritual life, and that will show itself in this way: You will be hungering and thirsting for more. It will become the greatest interest of your life. You will still be interested in other books, but you will find, as I find and I say this to the glory of God that there are many books I would like to read, but I just do not have the time. I am too busy reading the Bible and books that help me understand it.

Now I am not criticizing the others. I like to read books on history. I like reading biographies. I like reading about music. I like reading about medicine, aspects of science, psychology, philosophy, and so on. But my problem is to find the time. I find life here in this Book. It moves my heart. It melts me. It fills me with righteousness. It strengthens my feeble will. I want this. And men and women who have spiritual life in them, the life of God in their souls, will be like newborn babes, desiring ― the sincere milk of the word‖ that they might grow (1 Pet. 2:2). If you do not have that desire, you are dead. Whether you are a church member or not, if the Bible is still boring, if you find prayer difficult and a task, you are dead, and therefore you have one thing to do: Go to God, repent, confess your sin, tell Him you realize you are dead, and ask Him to give you life anew, to breathe His Spirit upon you and give you new life from among the dead.”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity

kerygma, that is, basic gospel facts — James Montgomery Boice

"Peter had a chance to give a brief sermon in his defense before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:29-32). The sermon contains what in formal New Testament studies has come to be called the kerygma, the fixed structure to almost all New Testament presentations of the gospel message.

C. H. Dodd distinguished kerygma from didachē, which means “teaching.” 

The latter word refers mostly to ethical instruction, the kind of thing we find in the Sermon on the Mount and large portions of the New Testament letters. 

Kerygma, by contrast, refers to the basic gospel facts. These facts include: Christ’s death for sins, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension to heaven, and his appearance in his resurrected form to chosen witnesses. We find perhaps the clearest example of this proclamation pattern in 1 Corinthians 15. But it is also found elsewhere and is the basic structure for the four Gospels. It is precisely what we find in Peter’s short sermon to the Sanhedrin:

  •      The crucifixion: “whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30)
  •      The resurrection: “God … raised Jesus from the dead” (v. 30)
  •      The ascension: “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior” (v. 31)
  •      The witnesses: “We are witnesses of these things” (v. 32)

Where is the ethical teaching of the New Testament? It is not present. Most of what Jesus taught in the Gospels was ethical teaching—sometimes in the form of parables, sometimes in more formal discourses. But when we come to this early Christian preaching we find that the apostles did not do as he did. Why not? Did they consider Jesus’ ethical teaching unimportant?

Obviously, the reason the disciples began with the kerygma is that they knew, as we should also know, that a person must first come to Jesus Christ as Savior before he or she can take on the burden of his teachings. It is true that we cannot have one without the other. But unless a person first believes on Jesus as his or her Savior and thus has the new life of Christ within, that person cannot even begin to live the life Christ commanded. As a matter of fact, unless you first confess your sin and find forgiveness, you only go on into increasing sin, which is what these leaders did.

The apostles did not tell the Sadducees to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Instead they told them to repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ for cleansing from it. That is the message we have been given for a perishing world today."

— James Montgomery Boice, Acts: An expositional commentary (108–109). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Paul’s order of salvation — B.B. Warfield

Ephesians 3:14-19 — “We note the significant order of the requests. First, the work of the Spirit in the heart; second, the realizing knowledge of the Gospel; third, the Christian life. Men sometimes seek other orders. We hear the cry around us daily of first the life, then doctrine. Paul’s order is, first the doctrine, then the life. We hear the cry around us of first know, then believe. Paul’s order is, first believe, then know…
What in detail is his [Paul’s] order of salvation? Just this: first, the Gospel is proclaimed; secondly, there is the preparation of the heart by the Spirit; thirdly, then faith and Christ’s indwelling through faith; fourthly, through this indwelling we grow strong to apprehend the truth of Christ’s love; fifthly, by this apprehended knowledge we are enabled to live a Christian life. Search and look: and you will find the same order everywhere in Paul and in the New Testament…
It issues hence into all Christian sentiments and activities. First the Apostle mentions love; “being rooted and grounded in love” (Eph 3:17) is the intermediate step to the apprehension of Christ’s love. Love apprehends love. Out of this Christ-filled and Christ-led heart, we are able to see His love and to appreciate it. Hence, next, knowledge. And then, out of this knowledge, life.
Now, observe as to Christ’s indwelling: (1) Christ may dwell in us; (2) He dwells in us through faith; (3) His dwelling in us is the source of all our knowledge of the Gospel and of all our Christian walk.”

— B.B. Warfield, Faith and Life, (“the fullness of God” sermon)

Men's Inhumanity To God — Jonathan Edwards

"Men will not bear that others should behave themselves with such pride and arrogance towards them as they do towards God… Men will not bear to be treated by their neighbors with that disregard and contempt with which they treat the Most High… Men will not bear such disobedience in those that are under [their] authority as they are commonly guilty of towards God. When men are vested with authority and command over others, they expect to be obeyed… Men will not endure to be treated by men with such injustice—in withholding and abusing what is committed to their trust—[as] they are guilty of towards God. Men received from God all the faculties of their minds, [their] senses, members, [and] all their worldly possessions: committed to them by God to be improved for him. Lent things require that they be returned, but how is God robbed!… Men commonly treat the Most High with such unfaithfulness as they will not bear one from another… Men will not bear such ingratitude one from another as they are guilty of towards God. Ingratitude is a thing that is in a peculiar manner resented amongst men… Men would exceedingly resent such obstinacy in injuriousness and ill treatment from their fellow creatures as they are guilty of towards God… So that this is really the case, owing to two things: first, a low thought of [God and Jesus Christ]; second, a magnifying [of] themselves. Were it not for these things, men would not object against the justice of that eternal punishment that God threatens… I would hence exhort to praise to God for his patience, forgiveness, and grace to us who have treated him so ill. 'Tis because the Lord is God and not man (Hosea 11:9). Such as are the subject of the saving mercy of God in Christ, you have reason to confess that God's ways of dealing with you are not as your ways, nor his thoughts [as your thoughts] (Isaiah 55:7–9)…"

— Jonathan Edwards, Men's Inhumanity To God

http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHUvY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9nZXRvYmplY3QucGw/Yy4yNDoyNC53amVv