Sinclair B. Ferguson > Quotes

“Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.”
― Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

“We best defend the Lord's glory by speaking first TO Him about unbelieving men rather than speaking first ABOUT Him to unbelieving men.”
― Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

“Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“You cannot open the pages of the New Testament without realizing that one of the things that makes it so 'new,' in every way, is that here men and women call God 'Father.' This conviction, that we can speak of the Master of the universe in such intimate terms, lies at the heart of the Christian faith.”
― Sinclair Ferguson

“Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian.”
― Sinclair Ferguson

“The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional...it is theological.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson

“True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction

“As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you.”
― Sinclair Ferguson

“Yes, people will tell us they believe in a “God of love.” But they are self-deceived, and their lives reveal it. They neither love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength in return, nor do they worship Him with zeal and energy. The truth is that their mantra “My God is a God of love” is a smokescreen, a phantasm of their imagination. Underneath it all is a deep mistrust of God—otherwise, why not yield the whole of life in joyful abandon to whatever He says or asks?”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Trinitarian Devotion of John Owen

“Man's insulting God is not reversed by our insulting man.”
― Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

“Here are wonders upon wonders: the Strong One is weak; the Infinite One lies in a manger; the Prince of Life dies; the Crucified One lives; the Humiliated One is glorified.
Meekness and majesty, indeed!
Behold, then, your newborn King! Come and worship Him!”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“The benefits of the gospel are in Christ. They do not exist apart from him. They are ours only in him. They cannot be abstracted from him as if we ourselves could possess them independently of him.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“The work of atonement took place in the presence of the God of heaven. Indeed, it involved a transaction within the fellowship of the persons of the eternal Trinity in their love for us: the Son was willing, with the aid of the Spirit, to experience the hiding of the Father's face. The shedding of the blood of God's Son opened the way to God for us (Acts 20:28). That is both the horror and the glory of our Great High Priest's ministry.
Terrible”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“Karl Barth once wittily remarked, “One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Trinitarian Devotion of John Owen

“God protects us from Satan even at times when we are not aware of His protection. But how can we develop Jesus-like discernment? By Spirit-aided digestion of the solid food of God's wisdom.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“So long as Jesus Christ is there, in heaven before God for us, our salvation will last.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“When I am tempted and feel the power of sin and its tug on my affections, the gospel gives me something to say: 'Christ bled and died for this sin—I will therefore have nothing to do with it. I am now united to Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit—how can I drag him into my sin?”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification

“When we see salvation whole—its every single part is found in Christ, we must beware lest we derive the smallest drop from somewhere else.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“Thus the essence of legalism is rooted not merely in our view of law as such but in a distorted view of God as the giver of his law.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“Confessional orthodoxy coupled with a view of a heavenly Father whose love is conditioned on his Son’s suffering, and further conditioned by our repentance, leads inevitably to a restriction in the preaching of the gospel. Why? Because it leads to a restriction in the heart of the preacher that matches the restriction he sees in the heart of God!”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“The human heart” wrote Calvin, “has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“The knowledge of our union with Christ...gives us confidence in prayer. It was when Jesus had begun to expound the closeness of this union that he also began to introduce the disciples to the true heart of prayer. If Christ abides in us and we abide in him, as his word dwells in us, and we pray in his name, that God hears us (Jn 15:4-7). But all of these expressions are simply extensions of the one fundamental idea: If I am united to Christ, then all that is his is mine. So long as my heart, will and mind are one with Christ's in his word, I can approach God with the humble confidence that my prayers will be heard and answered.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction

“The subtle danger here should be obvious: if we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be “paid” a ransom price in order to love us.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“What was injected into Eve’s mind and affections during the conversation with the Serpent was a deep-seated suspicion of God that was soon further twisted into rebellion against him. The root of her antinomianism (opposition to and breach of the law) was actually the legalism that was darkening her understanding, dulling her senses, and destroying her affection for her heavenly Father. Now, like a pouting child of the most generous father, she acted as though she wanted to say to God, “You never give me anything. You insist on me earning everything I am ever going to have.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“The fallacy here? The subtle movement from seeing forsaking sin as the fruit of grace that is rooted in election, to making the forsaking of sin the necessary precursor for experiencing that grace. Repentance, which is the fruit of grace, thus becomes a qualification for grace. This”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“Fast-forward to Calvary and the coming of the Spirit. As Moses ascended Mount Sinai and brought down the Law on tablets of stone, now Christ has ascended into the heavenly Mount, but in contrast to Moses, he has sent down the Spirit who rewrites the law not now merely on tablets of stone but in our hearts.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“Go back to the school in which you will make progress in being a Christian. Study your lessons, settle the issue of ambition, make Christ your preoccupation-and you will learn to enjoy the privileges of being truly content.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life

“The gospel is designed to deliver us from this lie. For it reveals that behind and manifested in the coming of Christ and his death for us is the love of a Father who gives us everything he has: first his Son to die for us and then his Spirit to live within us.27”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters

“The genius of the divine way of salvation by faith is that in it we are personally, actively united to Jesus Christ, but in a way that contributes nothing to His work. Faith is by definition noncontributory; it is the reception of Christ, not an addition to His finished work.
B. B. Warfield finely puts it this way:
It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ.... It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith.14
In this sense, even though we are actively involved in faith, we are passive with respect to the accomplishing of justification. In the deepest sense, then, it is by grace that we are saved through faith, and that (whether the grace, the faith, or the union of the two in justification) is the gift of God; it is not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8-9; notice the reiteration of the theme of non-boasting of Rom. 3:27).”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life