Archibald Alexander, Thoughts On Religious Experience (1844), pages 165–166:
Until religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the Gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians.
1 Corinthians 2:2:
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (NIV)
Anthony C. Thiselton (First Corinthians, NIGTC, p. 211):
Did Paul steadily resolve to empty his mind of everything except the message of the cross? …
As the Greek stands, the act of resolution or of firm, considered decision is qualified by the negative. Paul’s firm, considered policy on which he committed himself was only that which concerned Christ crucified. Whether or not he spoke of anything else would be incidental; to proclaim the crucified Christ, and Christ alone, remains his settled policy. He did not take a vow of excluding everything else, whatever might happen, but he did make a commitment that nothing would compromise the central place of Christ crucified.
David E. Garland (First Corinthians, BECNT, p. 84):
Paul is not anti-intellectual, but he does oppose intellectual vanity. He did not come to them as a know-it-all or compose speeches fishing for admiration. On the contrary, he was content to be identified as a know-nothing who preached foolishness: Jesus Christ crucified. But announcing the gospel was his sole focus, and the cross molded his entire message and his whole approach. … Jesus Christ can only be preached as the crucified one, and no one can preach Christ crucified to win personal renown.
May each of us resolve to center our lives upon Jesus Christ and him crucified in 2011.
Happy New Year!
In 1670 Puritan William Greenhill (1591–1671) published his long sermon: “Being against the Love of the World.” Our friends at Reformation Heritage Books will reprint the sermon next year under the title Stop Loving the World. This excerpt is pulled from the forthcoming title, pages 71–72 (posted with permission):
If you would have your heart removed from the things of the word, behold the crucified and glorified Lord Jesus Christ.
Set Christ crucified often before your eyes, and look on Him with the eye of faith. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). That is, “I look on Christ crucified, and by the eye of faith I can see Him hanging there, and all the glory of the world stained there. Is all the world comparable to Christ? There is the King, the High Priest, the Mediator, the great Prophet. There is the Heir of the world crucified. There is His blood running down. He has laid down His life for sinners, and to take my heart off from the world.” If you look on a dead man, it deadens your spirit. What will looking on Christ do then? It will deaden your heart toward the world if you look on Jesus Christ crucified. “I am crucified to the world,” said Paul.
Then look on Christ glorified, and your heart will be raised above the world. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1–2). Christ has died, risen, and gone to glory. If now you are risen out of the state of sin, transferred from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, you will have your heart where Christ is. Consider Christ in this way: “There is my Head, my King, my Husband. There is my Redeemer, the one who is a thousand times better than the world. Therefore, I will not set my heart on things of the earth, but on things above. How glorious it is to see the King in His glory!”
Look much, and consider much of Christ crucified and glorified.
John Bunyan, The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded (London, 1708), 183:
Sometimes when my heart has been hard, dead, slothful, blind, and senseless, which indeed are sad frames for a poor Christian to be in, yet at such a time, when I have been in such a case, then has the blood of Christ, the precious blood of Christ, the admirable blood of the God of Heaven, that run out of His body when it did hang on the Cross, so softened, livened, quickened, and enlightened my soul, that truly, reader, I can say, O it makes me wonder!
Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon dated November 2, 1884:
The best preaching is, “We preach Christ crucified.”
The best living is, “We are crucified with Christ.”
The best man is a crucified man.
The more we live beholding our Lord’s unutterable griefs, and understanding how he has fully put away our sin, the more holiness shall we produce.
The more we dwell where the cries of Calvary can be heard, where we can view heaven, and earth, and hell, all moved by his wondrous passion—the more noble will our lives become.
Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.
Get close to Christ, and carry the remembrance of him about you from day to day, and you will do right royal deeds.
Come, let us slay sin, for Christ was slain.
Come, let us bury all our pride, for Christ was buried.
Come, let us rise to newness of life, for Christ has risen.
Let us be united with our crucified Lord in his one great object—let us live and die with him, and then every action of our lives will be very beautiful.
P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921), The Cruciality of the Cross, page 38:
“…the person of Christ would be dumb and inert for us in the world’s last crisis, apart from its active assertion and cosmic triumph on the cross. The cross was no martyr passivity of the finest prophet, led like a lamb to the slaughter; it was the work of a Messiah king with power over Himself. Christ never merely accepted His fate; He willed it. He went to death as a king. It was the supreme exercise of His royal self-disposal. The same great picture which presents the sheep before the shearers dumb deepens before its close to one who poured out His soul unto death. And when we obscure that, when we pity where we should worship, melt where we should kneel, or kneel where we should rise to newness of life, it is no wonder if faith become a mere affection, or a mere ethical ritual of conduct, and cease to be the absolute committal of ourselves to communion with Him for ever.”
Tony Reinke 