Nick Roark's Blog, page 18

“A believer’s treasure is always safe in the hands of Christ” by Thomas Brooks

“The treasures of a saint are the presence of God, the favor of God, union and communion with God, the pardon of sin, the joy of the Spirit, the peace of conscience, which are jewels that none can give but Christ, nor none can take away but Christ.

Now why should a gracious soul keep off from a way of holiness because of afflictions, when no afflictions can strip a man of his heavenly jewels, which are his ornaments and his safety here, and will be his happiness and glory hereafter?

Why should that man be afraid, or troubled for storms at sea, whose treasures are sure in a friend’s hand upon land?

A believer’s treasure is always safe in the hands of Christ.

His life is safe, his soul is safe, his grace is safe, his comfort is safe, and his crown is safe in the hand of Christ.

‘I know Him in whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day,’ saith the Apostle (2 Tim. 1:12).

The child’s most precious things are most secure in his father’s hands; so are our souls, our graces, and our comforts in the hand of Christ.”

–Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, Volume 1, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1866/1980), 1: 71.

“Nature and grace have been the same in every age” by John Newton

“Next to the Word of God, I like those books best which give an account of the lives and experiences of His people.

Some of the letters and lives in Fox’s Acts and Monuments, in the third volume, have been very useful to me. But no book of this kind has been more welcome to me than the Life of Mr. Brainerd, of New England, re-published a few years since at Edinburgh, and I believe sold by Dilly, in London.

If you have not seen it, I will venture to recommend it, (though I am not fond of recommending books,) I think it will please you.

I suppose you have read Augustine’s Confessions. In that book I think there is a lively description of the workings of the heart, and of the Lord’s methods in drawing him to himself.

It has given me satisfaction to meet with experiences very much like my own, in a book written so long ago. But nature and grace have been the same in every age.”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 6, Ed. Richard Cecil (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 6: 211-212.

“See here the love of Christ” by Thomas Boston

“See here the love of Christ in its most distinguishing glory. For the deeper He debased and the lower He humbled Himself, the higher did He raise, and the more clearly did He manifest His love.

What heart can conceive, what tongue can express, the greatness of this love! It is love without a precedent or parallel. It passeth knowledge.

Accept of Jesus Christ as He offers Himself in the gospel. He is willing to receive sinners, nay, the very worst and most abandoned of them, or He would not have swam through a sea of blood to catch them.

O! be not despisers, but cheerful and willing receivers, of Him who has written His love and good will to you in characters of blood.”

–Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Part 1, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1848), 1: 502, 504

“The Puritans offer real help” by Matthew Bingham

“The Puritans offer real help.

Where we doubt and lack confidence in the authority and relevance of Scripture across all areas of life, they speak with vigor and conviction.

Where we feel tempted to water down the biblical worldview to bring it more in step with the spirit of the age, they double down.

Where we seek refuge in a therapeutic Christianity that appeals to our wounded pride but is ultimately foreign to a scriptural worldview, the Puritans remind us afresh that sin before a holy God is our most serious problem and that Christ and His gospel are our only solution.

In a word, the Puritans speak with a freshness and fire that can correct some of the characteristic weaknesses of our present cultural moment, and this makes them most excellent conversation partners as we look to retrieve a Reformed approach to spiritual formation.”

–Matthew Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025), 15-16.

“The ultimate end and design of Christ’s sacrifice” by Thomas Boston

“The sacrifice of Christ was fragrant and efficacious, because of the great glory and honour which He thereby brought unto God.

The glory of His Father was what He had in view, as His main scope and aim in all His actions and sufferings, and that which He also actually perfected.

The glory of all the divine attributes appeared in Him in its highest lustre (2 Cor. 4:6).

They all centered in Him, and shone forth in their greatest splendor, not only in His incarnation, but also and chiefly in His sacrifice.

The mercy and justice of God appear in combination here, and set off one another’s lustre.

Mercy could not be glorified, unless justice had been satisfied; and justice had not been evidently discovered, if the tokens of divine wrath had not been seen upon Christ.

Grace had never sailed to us, but in the streams of the Mediator’s blood. ‘Without the shedding of blood (says the apostle) there is no remission.’

Divine justice had not been so fully known in the eternal groans and shrieks of a world of guilty creatures, nor could sin have appeared so odious to the holiness of God by eternal scars upon devils and men, as by a deluge of blood from the heart of this sacrifice.

Without the sufferings of Christ, the glory of the divine perfections had lain in the cabinet of the divine nature without the discovery of their full beams.

And though they were active in the designing of it, yet they had not been declared to men or angels, without the bringing of Christ to the altar.

By the stroke upon His soul, all the glories of God flashed out to the view of the creature.

All the divine perfections were glorified in the sufferings of Christ; His mercy, justice, power, and wisdom. Here the unsearchable depths of manifold wisdom were unfolded.

Such a wisdom of God shined in the cross, as the angels never beheld in His face upon His throne; wisdom to cure a desperate disease, by the death of the physician; to turn the greatest evil to the greatest good; to bring forth mercy by the execution of justice, and the shedding of blood: how surprising and astonishing is this!

The ultimate end and design of Christ’s sacrifice was the honour of God in our redemption. Christ sought not His own glory, but the glory of him that sent Him (John 8:50).

He sought the glory of His Father in the salvation of men. Now, that must needs be fragrant and acceptable to God which accomplished the triumph of all His attributes.”

–Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Part 1, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1848), 1: 453-454.

“Once in Christ, ever in Him” by Thomas Boston

“Once in Christ, ever in Him (John 10:28-29).”

–Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, Part 1, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1848), 549.

“Heart-work is hard work” by John Flavel

“Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)

“Heart-work is hard work indeed.

To shuffle over religious duties with a loose and heedless spirit, will cost no great pains.

But to set thyself before the Lord, and tie up thy loose and vain thoughts to a constant and serious attendance upon Him: this will cost thee something.

To attain a facility and dexterity of language in prayer, and put thy meaning into apt and decent expressions, is easy.

But to get thy heart broken for sin whilst thou art confessing it, melted with free grace whilst thou art blessing God for it, to be really ashamed and humbled through the apprehensions of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep thy heart in this frame, not only in, but after duty, will surely cost thee some groans and travailing pain of soul.

To repress the outward acts of sin, and compose the external part of thy life in a laudable and comely manner, is no great matter.

Even carnal persons by the force of common principles can do this.

But to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up an holy government over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.”

–John Flavel, The Works of the John Flavel, Volume 5 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1820/1997), 5: 428.

“If we venture beyond the pale of Scripture, we are upon enchanted ground” by John Newton

“Unless our dependence upon divine teaching bears some proportion to our diligence, we may take much pains to little purpose.

On the other hand, we are directed to expect the teaching and assistance of the Holy Spirit only within the limits, and by the medium of the written Word.

For he has not promised to reveal new truths, but to enable us to understand what we read in the Bible.

And if we venture beyond the pale of Scripture, we are upon enchanted ground, and exposed to all the illusions of imagination and enthusiasm.

But an attention to the Word of God, joined to humble supplications for His Spirit, will lead us to new advances in true knowledge.

The exercises of our minds, and the observations we shall make upon the conduct of others, and the dispensations of God’s providence, will all concur to throw light upon the Scripture, and to confirm to us what we there read concerning ourselves, the world, and the true happiness revealed to sinners in and through Jesus Christ.

The more sensible we are of the disease, the more we shall admire the great Physician; the more we are convinced that the creature is vanity, the more we shall be stirred up to seek our rest in God.

And this will endear the gospel to us; as in Christ, and in Him only, we can hope to find that righteousness and strength, of which we are utterly destitute ourselves.

I observe in many newspapers, the attestations of persons who have been relieved in diseases by the medicines which they have tried, and therefore recommend to others from their experience.

Innumerable cases might be published to the honour of the great Physician. None more memorable perhaps than my own.

I was labouring under a complication of disorders: fired with raging madness, possessed with many devils, (I doubt it not,) bent upon my own destruction.

But He interposed, unsought, undesired.

He opened my eyes, and He pardoned my sins.

He broke my fetters, and He taught my once blasphemous lips to praise His name.

Oh, I can, I do, I must commend it as a faithful saying, ‘That Christ Jesus is come into the world to save sinners.’

There is forgiveness with Him. He does all things well.

He makes both the dumb to speak, and the deaf to hear.

I remain, with due respect,

Dear Sir, your most obedient servant,

John Newton”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Volume 6 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 6: 203-204.

“There is forgiveness with Christ” by John Newton

“The more sensible we are of the disease, the more we shall admire the great Physician.

The more we are convinced that the creature is vanity, the more we shall be stirred up to seek our rest in God.

And this will endear the gospel to us; as in Christ, and in Him only, we can hope to find that righteousness and strength, of which we are utterly destitute ourselves.

I observe in many newspapers, the attestations of persons who have been relieved in diseases by the medicines which they have tried, and therefore recommend to others from their experience.

Innumerable cases might be published to the honour of the great Physician. None more memorable perhaps than my own.

I was labouring under a complication of disorders: fired with raging madness, possessed with many devils, (I doubt it not,) bent upon my own destruction.

But He interposed, unsought, undesired.

He opened my eyes, and He pardoned my sins.

He broke my fetters, and He taught my once blasphemous lips to praise His name.

Oh, I can, I do, I must commend it as a faithful saying, ‘That Christ Jesus is come into the world to save sinners.’ (1 Timothy 1:15)

There is forgiveness with Him.

He does all things well.

He makes both the dumb to speak, and the deaf to hear.

I remain, with due respect,

Dear Sir, your most obedient servant,

John Newton”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Volume 6 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 6: 203-204.

“Kill the dragon and marry the girl” by C.S. Lewis

“In sum, then, evil is solemn, good is gay.

Evil means starvation, good glows with what Blake calls ‘the lineaments of gratified desire.’

Evil imprisons, good sets free.

Evil is tired, good is full of vigour.

The one says, Let go, lie down, sleep, die; the other, All aboard! Kill the dragon, marry the girl, blow the pipes and beat the drum, let the dance begin.”

–C.S. Lewis, “The Images of Good,” Spenser’s Images of Life, Ed. Alastair Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 95.