Exhortations found on Facebook

Old friends Dennis Laing and Garet Pahl have been having a bit of a “quote fest” the past few days on Facebook.  Here are a few that I found intriguing and challenging:

“As heretical as it sounds today, it is probably worth telling Americans that you don’t need Jesus to have better families, finances, health, or even morality. Coming to the cross means repentance–not adding Jesus as a supporting character for an otherwise decent script, but throwing away the script in order to be writ…ten into God’s drama. It is death and resurrection, not coaching and makeovers.” -Michael Horton

The religious person may say, “I am doing the right things that God commands” and the irreligious person may say, “I decide what is right and wrong for myself.” But both ways reject Jesus as Savior (though they may revere Him as ‘Example’ or ‘Helper’). Both ways are strategies for self-salvation– both actually keep control of their own lives.” – Tim Keller

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect…. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect… on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.” T. Keller

“The astonishing thing is that people can become religious without being converted. That is, they join churches and start reading the Bible and doing religious things with no change in the foundation of their happiness: It is still themselves. They are the ground of their joy.” -John Piper

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