The Justice of God

"I greatly longed to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, "the justice of God," because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust.
My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him.
Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the "justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven....

If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face."

--MARTIN LUTHER--

"Symptoms"

When considering the lack of evangelical zeal in our day I would have to confess that the following quote, in large part, captures the heart of the problem.

"Nothing shuts the mouth, seals the lips, ties the tongue, like the poverty of our own spiritual experience."
(John R. Stott)

"...and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." (Acts 4:13)

Stand Fast

"It is today as it was in the time of the Reformation: decision is needed. Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day? We who have had the gospel passed to us by martyr's hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it, but inwardly abhor every line of it. The faith I hold bears upon it the marks of the blood of my ancestors. Shall I deny their faith, for which they left their native land to sojourn here? Shall we cast away the treasure which was handed to us through the bars of prisons, or came to us charred with the flames of those burned at Smithfield? Personally, when my bones have been tortured with rheumatism, I have remembered Job Spurgeon, doubtless of my own stock, who in Chelmsford Jail was allowed a chair, because he could not lie down by reason of rheumatic pain. That Quaker's broad-brim over shadows my brow. Perhaps I inherited his rheumatism; but that I do not regret if I have his stubborn faith, which will not let me yield a syllable of the truth of God. When I think of how others have suffered for the faith, a little scorn or unkindness seems a mere trifle not worthy of mention. Having so many ancestors who were lovers of the faith before us, ought to be a great plea with us to ourselves abide by the Lord God of our Fathers, and the faith in, which they lived. As for me, I must hold the old gospel: I can do no other. God helping me, I will endure the consequences of what men think in obstinacy. Look you, sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not speedily appear, there will come another generation, and another, and all these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to God and to His truth today. We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right, perhaps our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His word. I charge you, not only by your ancestry, but by your posterity (on behalf of your children...and your children's children), that you seek to win the commendation of your master, that though you dwell where Satan's seat is, you yet hold fast His name, and do not deny His faith. God grant us faithfulness, for the sake of the souls around us! How is the world to be saved if the church is false to her Lord? How are we to lift the masses if our fulcrum is removed? If our gospel is uncertain, what remains but increasing misery and despair? Stand fast, my beloved, in the name of God! I, your brother in Christ, entreat you to abide in the truth. Handle yourselves like men! Be strong! And may the Lord sustain you....Amen"
(C.H.Spurgeon)

Book Quotes

"Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spingtime."
(Martin Luther)

"By reading the Scriptures, I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet."
(Thomas Merton)

"No book is worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."
(C.S.Lewis)

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if there is any left, I buy food and clothes."
(Desiderius Erasmus)

(The last quote is especially aimed toward Mr. David Smithey!)

Times of Refreshing

My heart is always blessed and stirred whenever I read the accounts of past Spiritual Awakenings and revivings of God's work on the earth.
Many times throughout human history God has been pleased to "make bare His arm" and to send forth in extraordinary measure His grace and power.
I was reminded again of this "special" and "mysterious" work of God as I read the observation of J.Fordyce in regards to the character of the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.

Fordyce writes,

"These preachers did not care much to argue much about the existence of God, the probabilities connected with a future life, or the reasonableness of Christianity.
To them Christ was a real Being, and His Gospel a real salvation; to them this salvation was not a future prospect, but a present and conscious possession; to them the Bible did not merely contain things of high value - it was the word of the living God, the full and final word on all matters connected with man's highest life here and hereafter.
Believing all this with intensity of faith, they spoke out of full hearts, and their word was with power; their gospel became the 'power of God unto salvation' to many thousands.
Hence the new life and quickening experienced far and wide; hence the crowds that gathered round these new preachers, wherever they stood up to speak.
Men who could see nothing in the logic of Berkeley or the ethics of Butler, for whom Paley's twelve men had no message, saw before them, felt within them, new manifestations of Divine power.
God not only lived somewhere and somehow: He was actually present among them.
The triumphs of Christianity and the living power of Christ were not merely found in the records of early history, in the thousands of Pentecost, or the heroes and martyrs of a later age; they were to be seen and felt in every city, town, and village of old England.
Thus without any reasoning, with but little argument, the Deistic position was completely undermined, and the walls of the proud Jericho of eighteenth-century unbelief fell flat before the blasts of the new evangel."

May the Lord of the Harvest stir our hearts afresh to the present reality of our Savior and our salvation!

"......and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." (Mat.28:20b)