The Christian message is for those who have done their best and failed!
The Law gives menaces. the gospel gives promises. Thomas Adams
If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself. Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Christ's riches are unsearchable, and this doctrine of the gospel is the field this treasure is hidden in.
THOMAS GOODWIN
The Gospel is not something we come to church to hear; it is something we go from church to tell. ~ Vance Havner
Over the centuries, Calvin has been accused of having intellectualized, legalized and doctrinalized the Gospel to the point that the salvation of Christ became a formula, something held in the head rather than in the heart. This charge represents not only a gross oversimplification, but also a diversion from the real issue. The issue, certainly in North America, is not whether the Gospel is perceived by the head or the heart, but whether the Gospel, however perceived, is an objective cosmic reality or a subjective knowledge (emotion) of the individual soul. On this question, Calvin is not in the least ambiguous. Everything for him rests on what God has accomplished in history. As to the individual's mode of grasping the event, Calvin is indifferent. Nowhere does he indicate that an experience of conversion is necessary for salvation. The marks of salvation are the same as the marks defining the Church itself: doctrine sacrament and discipline. -- Philip Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics, p. 102.
The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a person who is the Truth. Alexander Maclaren
This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.- Stephen Neill
The Gospel is not presented to mankind as an argument about religious principles. Nor is it offered as a philosophy of life. Christianity is a witness to certain facts -- to events that have happened, to hopes that have been fulfilled, to realities that have been experienced, to a Person who has lived and died and been raised from the dead to reign for ever. ... Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. (1913- ), Far and Near
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