Month: June 2012

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Advice for those who would do well.

“J C Ryle offers excellent advice: ‘Those who try to do good must look forward to the Day of Judgement with patience. They must be content in this present world to be misunderstood, misrepresented, vilified, slandered and abused. They must not cease to work because their motives are mistaken and their characters are fiercely assailed. They must remember that all will be set right at the last day. The secrets of all hearts will then be revealed. The purity of their intentions, the wisdom of their labours and the rightfulness of their cause shall at length be manifest to all the world.’ “

John Blanchard, The Beatitudes for Today (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 1996), 235-36.

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"My Religion is the Sermon on the Mount" = nonsense.

“All of this points us back to something we discovered at the very beginning of our studies, and which has become increasingly obvious as we have gone along, namely, that the Beatitudes are not directions on how to become a Christian but a multi-faceted description of what a Christian is and how a Christian behaves when the Holy Spirit governs his thoughts, words and actions. The unbeliever who says ‘My religion is the Sermon on the Mount’ is talking nonsense, because he is condemned by the very words to which he looks for salvation. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly says, ‘There is nothing more fatal than for the natural man to think that he can take the Beatitudes and put them into practice.’ The Beatitudes are not a programme but a portrait, not a directive but a description.”

John Blanchard, The Beatitudes for Today (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 1996), 216-17.