Sinclair Ferguson Quotes

Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.

We best defend the Lord's glory by speaking first TO Him about unbelieving men rather than speaking first ABOUT Him to unbelieving men.

Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian.

The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional...it is theological.

Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ

True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

You cannot open the pages of the New Testament without realizing that one of the things that makes it so 'new,' in every way, is that here men and women call God 'Father.' This conviction, that we can speak of the Master of the universe in such intimate terms, lies at the heart of the Christian faith.

As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His.

Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you.

Man's insulting God is not reversed by our insulting man.

The benefits of the gospel are in Christ. They do not exist apart from him. They are ours only in him. They cannot be abstracted from him as if we ourselves could possess them independently of him.

When we see salvation whole—its every single part is found in Christ, we must beware lest we derive the smallest drop from somewhere else.

Thus the essence of legalism is rooted not merely in our view of law as such but in a distorted view of God as the giver of his law.

Karl Barth once wittily remarked, “One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.

So long as Jesus Christ is there, in heaven before God for us, our salvation will last.

Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel. —SINCLAIR FERGUSON

God protects us from Satan even at times when we are not aware of His protection. But how can we develop Jesus-like discernment? By Spirit-aided digestion of the solid food of God's wisdom.

Here are wonders upon wonders: the Strong One is weak; the Infinite One lies in a manger; the Prince of Life dies; the Crucified One lives; the Humiliated One is glorified. Meekness and majesty, indeed! Behold, then, your newborn King! Come and worship Him!

The human heart” wrote Calvin, “has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

God's wisdom is like the rainbow, in symmetry, beauty, and variety. He does not paint scenes merely in black and white, but uses a riot of colour from the heavenly palette in order to show the wonder of His wise dealings with His people. - Sinclair Ferguson

The subtle danger here should be obvious: if we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be “paid” a ransom price in order to love us.

When I am tempted and feel the power of sin and its tug on my affections, the gospel gives me something to say: 'Christ bled and died for this sin—I will therefore have nothing to do with it. I am now united to Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit—how can I drag him into my sin?

Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a “working God.” Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence. —Sinclair Ferguson

Yes, people will tell us they believe in a “God of love.” But they are self-deceived, and their lives reveal it. They neither love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength in return, nor do they worship Him with zeal and energy. The truth is that their mantra “My God is a God of love” is a smokescreen, a phantasm of their imagination. Underneath it all is a deep mistrust of God—otherwise, why not yield the whole of life in joyful abandon to whatever He says or asks?

The work of atonement took place in the presence of the God of heaven. Indeed, it involved a transaction within the fellowship of the persons of the eternal Trinity in their love for us: the Son was willing, with the aid of the Spirit, to experience the hiding of the Father's face. The shedding of the blood of God's Son opened the way to God for us (Acts 20:28). That is both the horror and the glory of our Great High Priest's ministry. Terrible

Seeing human need with perfect clarity, Jesus felt it with unparalleled intensity.

That life begins with God's working, not with our "doing.

Living in the Spirit means a daily commitment to please Christ and not to please self.

God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that He loves us.” —Sinclair Ferguson

Repentance, turning from sin, and degrees of conviction of sin do not constitute the grounds on which Christ is offered to us. They may constitute ways in which the Spirit works as the gospel makes its impact on us. But they never form the warrant for repentance and faith.

When we behold the glory of Christ in the gospel, it reorders the loves of our hearts, so we delight in him supremely, and the other things that have ruled our lives lose their enslaving power over us.

Faith is not the ground or basis upon which we are justified, but the means, the "instrument," by which we are united to Christ, in whom our justification, our "right-wising" with God, has been accomplished.

Go back to the school in which you will make progress in being a Christian. Study your lessons, settle the issue of ambition, make Christ your preoccupation-and you will learn to enjoy the privileges of being truly content.

Confessional orthodoxy coupled with a view of a heavenly Father whose love is conditioned on his Son’s suffering, and further conditioned by our repentance, leads inevitably to a restriction in the preaching of the gospel. Why? Because it leads to a restriction in the heart of the preacher that matches the restriction he sees in the heart of God!

the Son of God took our nature and came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3) in order to exchange places with Adam, so that His obedience and righteousness might for our sakes be exchanged for Adam's (and our) disobedience and sin (Rom. 5:12-21). Exchange

The gospel is designed to deliver us from this lie. For it reveals that behind and manifested in the coming of Christ and his death for us is the love of a Father who gives us everything he has: first his Son to die for us and then his Spirit to live within us.27

The fallacy here? The subtle movement from seeing forsaking sin as the fruit of grace that is rooted in election, to making the forsaking of sin the necessary precursor for experiencing that grace. Repentance, which is the fruit of grace, thus becomes a qualification for grace. This

Fast-forward to Calvary and the coming of the Spirit. As Moses ascended Mount Sinai and brought down the Law on tablets of stone, now Christ has ascended into the heavenly Mount, but in contrast to Moses, he has sent down the Spirit who rewrites the law not now merely on tablets of stone but in our hearts.

True, his love for me is not based on my qualification or my preparation. But it is misleading to say that God accepts us the way we are. Rather he accepts us despite the way we are. He receives us only in Christ and for Christ’s sake. Nor does he mean to leave us the way he found us, but to transform us into the likeness of his Son.

Third, hear our loss of focus on the gospel in our songs. This is no comment on musical styles and tastes, but simply an observation about the lyrical content of much that is being sung in churches today. In many cases, congregations unwittingly have begun to sing about themselves and how they are feeling rather than about God and His glory.

We need to be cautious in using language in a pejorative way. Words ending in -ism and -ist seem to lend themselves to emotive rather than descriptive use.

The greatest privilege any of us can have is this: we can know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Repentance then is not the punctiliar decision of a moment but a radical heart transformation that reverses the whole direction of life.

When we see salvation whole, its every single part is found in Christ, And so we must beware lest we derive the smallest drop from somewhere else.

To run, to work, the law commands, The gospel gives me feet and hands. The one requires that I obey, The other does the power convey.

For if we seek salvation, the very name ofJesus teaches us that he possesses it.

Jesus' sinlessness should not be equated with emotionlessness.

In undiluted monergism, He called the galaxies into being, and He gives life to the dead in the same way

If you are going to resist the desires of the flesh (negative), you will need to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and walk according to his disciplines (positive).

I am not asking you to do that because the tree is ugly—actually it is just as attractive as the other trees. I don’t create ugly, ever!11 You won’t be able to look at the fruit and think, That must taste horrible. It is a fine-looking tree. So it’s simple. Trust me, obey me, and love me because of who I am and because you are enjoying what I have given to you. Trust me, obey me, and you will grow.

The knowledge of our union with Christ...gives us confidence in prayer. It was when Jesus had begun to expound the closeness of this union that he also began to introduce the disciples to the true heart of prayer. If Christ abides in us and we abide in him, as his word dwells in us, and we pray in his name, that God hears us (Jn 15:4-7). But all of these expressions are simply extensions of the one fundamental idea: If I am united to Christ, then all that is his is mine. So long as my heart, will and mind are one with Christ's in his word, I can approach God with the humble confidence that my prayers will be heard and answered.

...we are always entertaining the delusion that we will go on forever in this world. The result is that the very things which ought to be of assistance to us in our pilgrimage through life, become chains which bind us.

Such contentment is never the result of the momentary decision of the will. It cannot be produced merely by having a well-ordered and thought-through time- and life-management plan calculated to guard us against unexpected twists of divine providence. No, true contentment means embracing the Lord's will in every aspect of His providence simply because it is His providence. It involves what we are in our very being, not just what we do and can accomplish.

you cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness. The world-centered love of our hearts can be expelled only by a new love and affection-for God and from God. The love of the world and the love of the Father cannot coexist in the same heart

Thus the motivation, energy and drive for holiness are all found in the reality and power of God's grace in Christ. And so if I am to make any progress in sanctification, the place where I must always begin is the gospel of the mercy of God to me in Christ Jesus.

Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love.

What is a godly pastor, after all, but one who is like God, with a heart of grace; someone who sees God bringing prodigals home and runs to embrace them, weeps for joy that they have been brought home, and kisses them—asking no questions—no qualifications or conditions required?

What was injected into Eve’s mind and affections during the conversation with the Serpent was a deep-seated suspicion of God that was soon further twisted into rebellion against him. The root of her antinomianism (opposition to and breach of the law) was actually the legalism that was darkening her understanding, dulling her senses, and destroying her affection for her heavenly Father. Now, like a pouting child of the most generous father, she acted as though she wanted to say to God, “You never give me anything. You insist on me earning everything I am ever going to have.

pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From them the vestiges of a self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them.

True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, and the permanent from the transient. And, yes, it means distinguishing between the good and the better, and even between the better and the best.

The ongoing function of God’s law is not to serve as a standard to be met for justification but as a guide for Christian living. Thus, according to the Confession of Faith: True believers be not under the law as a covenant of works to be thereby justified or condemned yet it is of great use to them as well as to others as a rule of life.34

growing in faith and love for Christ, revealed as He is in Scripture, will be the greatest of all preservatives against being led astray. The person who is saturated in the teaching and spirit of the Gospels will have his or her senses "trained ... to distinguish good from evil" (Heb. 5:14, NIV) and to know what is truly Christ-like and Christ-honoring.

So we are Ephesians 2:15–16 Christians: the ceremonial law is fulfilled. We are Colossians 2:14–17 Christians: the civil law distinguishing Jew and Gentile is fulfilled. And we are Romans 8:3–4 Christians: the moral law has also been fulfilled in Christ. But rather than being abrogated, that fulfillment is now repeated in us as we live in the power of the Spirit.40

Underline this thought: assurance, peace, access to God, knowledge that He is our Father, and strength to overcome temptation all depend on this-the Son of God took our flesh and bore our sins in such a way that further sacrifice for sin is both unnecessary and unintelligible. Christ died our death, and now in His resurrection He continues to wear our nature forever, and in it He lives for us before the face of God. He could not do more for us than He has done; we need no other resources to enable us to walk through this world into the next. You and I need a Savior who is near us, is one with us, understands us. All of this the Lord Jesus is, Hebrews affirms. Fix your gaze on this Christ and your whole Christian life will be transformed.

In the New Testament the basic command of old covenant life, 'Be holy as I am holy', now means, 'Become like Jesus.' God involves himself in this work as the triune Lord: the Father commands it; the Son has died to provide the resources for it; the Spirit indwells us in order to effect it in our lives. As Augustine famously prayed, God commands what he wills and gives what he commands.

The Church’s Confession of Faith remained unaltered. But it would be naïve scholarship that extrapolated from what was professed to what was preached and indeed from what was preached to what was possessed. Every pastor should know this and therefore should never assume that everyone listening to him has been gripped by the wonder of God’s grace—even if they have confessed the church’s creed.

Commandments are the railroad tracks on which the life empowered by the love of God poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit runs. Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love.

Before all time; prior to all worlds; when there was nothing "outside of" God Himself; when the Father, Son, and Spirit found eternal, absolute, and unimaginable blessing, pleasure, and joy in Their holy triunity-it was Their agreed purpose to create a world. That world would fall. But in unison-and at infinitely great cost-this glorious triune God planned to bring you (if you are a believer) grace and salvation.

The genius of the divine way of salvation by faith is that in it we are personally, actively united to Jesus Christ, but in a way that contributes nothing to His work. Faith is by definition noncontributory; it is the reception of Christ, not an addition to His finished work. B. B. Warfield finely puts it this way: It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ.... It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith.14 In this sense, even though we are actively involved in faith, we are passive with respect to the accomplishing of justification. In the deepest sense, then, it is by grace that we are saved through faith, and that (whether the grace, the faith, or the union of the two in justification) is the gift of God; it is not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8-9; notice the reiteration of the theme of non-boasting of Rom. 3:27).

This is thought to be Jesus’s best-loved parable, usually because our eyes are on the prodigal and his father. But as with jokes, so with parables: there is a principle in both of “end stress.” The “punch line” comes at the end. That being the case the alarming message here is that the spirit of the elder brother, the legalist, is more likely to be found near the father’s house than in the pig farm—or in concrete terms, in the congregation and among the faithful. And sometimes (only sometimes?), it appears in the pulpit and in the heart of the pastor.

Biblical repentance, then, is not merely a sense of regret that leaves us where it found us. It is a radical reversal that takes us back along the road of our sinful wanderings, creating in us a completely different mind-set. We come to our senses spiritually (Luke 15:17). Thus the prodigal son’s life was no longer characterized by the demand “give me” (v. 12) but now by the request “make me . . .” (v. 19). This lies on the surface of the New Testament’s teaching. Regret there will be, but the heart of repentance is the lifelong moral and spiritual turnaround of our lives as we submit to the Lord.

Can you take in what you have overheard in the High Priestly Prayer of John 17? It is like a light momentarily switched on in a darkened room and then extinguished. Did you really see such treasures? Has Jesus actually prayed that my faith will not fail (Luke 22:31-32) and that I will be kept by God's power for such glory (1 Peter 1:5-11)? Is even my name engraved on His shoulders and inscribed on His heart? Do you understand how much your High Priest cares for you and loves you? It is almost as though He were saying, "Father, My glory will be incomplete unless You keep this promise-that My beloved disciples can see it and share it.

Matthew 22:4 (“Everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast”), he addresses the issue of “those to whom the offer is made”: It is not one or two, or some few that are called, not the great only, nor the small only, not the holy only, nor the profane only, but ye are all bidden; the call comes to all and every one of you in particular, poor and rich, high and low, holy and profane. Then Durham continues: We make this offer to all of you, to you who are Atheists, to you that are Graceless, to you that are Ignorant, to you that are Hypocrites, to you that are Lazy and Lukewarm, to the civil and to the profane, we pray, we beseech, we obtest you all to come to the wedding; Call (saith the Lord) the blind, the maimed, the halt, &c and bid them all come, yea, compel them to come in. Grace can do more and greater wonders than to call such; it can not only make the offer of marriage to them, but it can make up the match effectually betwixt Christ and them. We will not, we dare not say, that all of you will get Christ for a Husband; but we do most really offer him to you all, and it shall be your own fault if ye want him and go without him. And therefore, before we proceed any further, we do solemnly protest, and before God and his Son Jesus Christ, take instruments this day, that this offer is made to you and that it is told to you in his name, that the Lord Jesus is willing to match with you, even the profanest and most graceless of you, if ye be willing to match with him, and he earnestly invites you to come to the wedding.28

Asombrarse de la gracia de Dios es un signo de vitalidad espiritual. Es una prueba de fuego de cuán firme y real es nuestra comprensión del evangelio cristiano y cuán cerca caminamos de Jesucristo. El cristiano en crecimiento descubre que la gracia de Dios asombra y sorprende.

This might be illustrated by the way in which, for example, John Owen’s work Of the Mortification of Sin has undoubtedly been read by many more younger ministers than either his Glory of Christ or Communion with God. That may be understandable because of the deep pastoral insight in Owen’s short work; but it may also put the practical cart before the theological horse. Owen himself would not have been satisfied with hearers who learned mortification without learning Christ. A larger paradigmatic shift needs to take place than only exchanging a superficial subjectivism for Owen’s rigorous subjectivism. What is required is a radical recentering in a richer and deeper knowledge of Christ, understood in terms of his person and work. There can be little doubt that Owen himself viewed things this way.

Thus it is understanding God’s grace—that is to say, understanding God himself 178—that demolishes legalism. Grace highlights legalism’s bankruptcy and shows that it is not only useless; it is pointless; its life breath is smothered out of it.

It is an inexpressible grief,” Warfield wrote, to see the church “spending its energies in a vain attempt to lower its testimony to suit the ever changing sentiment of the world around it.

We need our faculties trained by Scripture to discern the difference between the apparently spiritual and the truth of the gospel. A regular diet of biblical teaching helps to develop in us an instinctive wisdom.

Alongside a confused approach to reading God's word, our chief weakness with respect to letting Christ's word indwell us is a failure to bow our wills in obedience to it. Too often our minds are the slaves of our feelings. If so our wills will soon be captured by them too.

The Armour of God is no protection against the wiles of the devil if our faith is not real and active in our basic relationships and private life. For what good is armour if the enemy has already found his way behind it? Success in Christian warfare depends on the right preparations being made.

The person whose only focus is 'there is nothing wrong with it’ will remain self-centred, living according to the principles of the flesh. At very best they will be a babe in Christ, dominated by inner needs and desires rather than by the life-giving word of the gospel and the other-directed life of the Spirit of Christ.

Feeding our minds with the word of Christ is essential if our hearts are to be filled with the joy of Christ. Yet, despite this, we are all too slow to read and meditate on the Scriptures, to seek to master them as far as we can, and in the process be mastered by them.

There is nothing wrong with prosperity. It is an excellent servant. But it can become a bad master. And it disguises the fact that it cannot satisfy our deepest needs. It creates a hunger for more of the same when what we need is actually something different. Set our heart on it and it will lead us astray.

Owen argumenta que la raíz de nuestra conducta pecaminosa es nuestra incapacidad para odiar el pecado por sí mismo, y esto nace de una tendencia a ver la obediencia como una mera forma de evitar el peligro y tener una buena vida, no como una forma de amar y conocer a Jesús por quien es Él.

In the coming of the Lord Jesus, God has kept his promise to bless the nations through Abraham’s seed (Genesis 12:1-3). Therefore, we can trust him to keep his promises to us too—promises to work for our good, to be with us by his Spirit, and to bring us home to be with him in glory for ever. For “all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

We sometimes ask, “What’s in a name?” In the case of this name, Jesus, the Christian’s answer is “Everything”. Because “Jesus” is not only a name; it is who he is.

We can’t help admiring Joseph. He heard the word of God; he believed the word of God; and he obeyed the word of God, whatever the cost might be.

But divine wisdom operates with different presuppositions and on different principles. Given humanity’s fallen and sinful condition, God’s work of salvation must descend to the least and lowest in order to restore us to God. As the church’s Early Fathers saw, the Son of God needed to become what he was not in order that we might become what we are not. God’s long-promised King was therefore born into poverty, not into riches; in humility, not pomp; and in an artisan family, not in a king’s palace. Paul understood this wisdom: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9); “Though he was in the form of God … [he] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2: 6-8). The wooden manger, and now whatever humble house Joseph and Mary had found, was just the beginning of things. Divine wisdom dictated that the Saviour-King would be born into poverty and would live in borrowed accommodation with nowhere of his own to lay his head. And at the end of his life, he would be laid again on wood, this time not in a manger but on a cross, and in his death be accommodated in a borrowed tomb.

Isaiah saw that this child would be everything we lack. For our confusion, he is the “Wonderful Counsellor”; for our weakness, he is the “Mighty God”; for spiritual orphans and prodigal sons, he is the “Everlasting Father”; in our distress, he comes to us as the “Prince of Peace.

Another lesson we learn from both Ninian and Columba is that the power of the gospel is best expressed in community life, no matter how small.

The Apostle Paul was rarely alone. He did not travel around the ancient world as an individual but as the leader of a mobile gospel cell group. The gospel message and its manifestation in the life of the church go hand-in-glove in New Testament evangelism. How odd, then, if our churches persist in sending individual church planters instead of a cell group to begin a new work. We surely need to return to the New Testament pattern and to the genius of these monk-evangelists.

We need a different goal: to grow closer, deeper, more local, and more visible in the community, if the gospel is to make its true impact on our Western world.

The only hope we have of standing in God’s presence is if in Jesus Christ He shows us His saving grace and draws us out of our darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

Repentance ... is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit.1

The invisible is more substantial than the visible; The future shapes the past; The new is more fundamental than the old.

At the end of the day we cannot divide faith and repentance chronologically. The true Christian believes penitently, and

This is no surprise to us. The Church was promised ongoing conflict from Genesis 3:15 to the end. We expect to see the kingdoms of men rising and then falling, and the “seed of the serpent” seeking to crush the “seed of the woman.” Christians are committed to “the eternal city.” But it is not Rome. Our commitment is to Jesus Christ and his church. There are always two kingdoms, two cities, and two kings. But only the city of God and of King Jesus will last forever.

Augustine was saying, in essence, “Lord, You are sovereign and You may command anything that pleases You, but we are not able to accomplish what You command. You tell us to obey Your Word and will, but we are sinners and we cannot. So, give us obedience. You tell us to have faith in Jesus Christ. We try to do this, but we can neither obey You as You desire nor trust You as we should. Since we are unable of ourselves to trust in Jesus Christ, by Your sovereign grace help us to trust in and obey Him.

The Princeton theologian Charles Hodge would later say that he was more afraid of the ghost of semi-Pelagius than he was of Pelagius.

Gregory held the view that Christ had made the bishops of Rome archbishops of the whole church. The pope was, therefore, Christ’s own vicar, His representative on earth. In that role, the pope had the task of laying claim to the whole world for Christ, with all secular powers subject to him.