Salvation

Fruits of New Obedience – Martin Luther

There is no justification without sanctification, no forgiveness without renewal of life, no real faith from which the fruits of new obedience do not grow.

– Martin Luther –

Speak of Christ But Do Not Trust Him – Leonard Ravenhill

Men build our churches but do not enter them, print our Bibles but do not read them, talk about God but do not believe Him, speak of Christ but do not trust Him for salvation, sing our hymns and then forget them.

– Leonard Ravenhill –

Ministerial Minded – Art Katz

We are so ministerial-minded, and we want so to come into our ministries, and a lot of souls are made shipwreck by a premature coming into ministry when there had been no attention to the foundation of relationship with God and men.

– Art Katz –

What We Need is a Sound Conversion – AW Tozer

I am convinced that many evangelicals are not truly and soundly converted. Among the evangelicals it is entirely possible to come into membership, to ooze in by osmosis, to leak through the cells of the church and never know what it means to be born of the Spirit and washed in the blood. A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity. There is nothing deeper about it, and it is where we should have been from the start. We should have been happy, joyous, victorious Christians walking in the Holy Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. Instead we have been chasing each other around the perpetual mountain.

What we need is what the old Methodists called a sound conversion. There is a difference between conversion and a sound conversion. People who have never been soundly converted do not have the Spirit to enlighten them. When they read the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching passages of the epistles that tell them how to live or the doctrinal passages that tell how they can live, they are unaffected. The Spirit who wrote them is not witnessing in their hearts because they have not been born of the Spirit.

– AW Tozer –

Don’t Refine But Save – Charles Spurgeon

Paul saw people sinking toward hell and did not talk of refining them, but of saving them from the wrath to come. He laid aside his preferences to prevent prejudice; He submitted his will in things indifferent, and if humankind would but receive the Gospel, he raised no questions about forms or ceremonies. Are we possessed with the same all-absorbing desire? Jesus died for sinners, can’t we live for them?

– Charles Spurgeon –

Thomas Brooks on the Conquest of Sin

In conquering of those enemies that be within, you make a conquest over the devil and hell itself. … And as this is the most noble conquest, so it is the most necessary conquest. You must be the death of your sins, or they will be the death of your souls. Sin is a viper, that does always kill where it is not killed.

– Thomas Brooks –

Eternity Meant Everything – Oswald J. Smith

In the Irish Revival of 1859, people became so weak that they could not get back to their homes. Men and women would fall by the wayside and would be found hours later pleading with God to save their souls. They felt that they were slipping into hell and that nothing else in life mattered but to get right with God. … To them eternity meant everything. Nothing else was of any consequence. They felt that if God did not have mercy on them and save them, they were doomed for all time to come.

– Oswald J. Smith –