Dynamics of Spiritual Life Quotes

“Live orthodoxy is found, not among those who wave the flag of commitment to biblicism, but among those who live in this focused spotlight of applied biblical truth. “I have no greater joy than this,” says John, “to hear of my children walking in the truth” (3 Jn. 4 NASB).”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Dogmatic orthodoxy and heterodoxy, on the other hand, are generally proud of their inflexibility, mistaking it for conviction.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“New Christians may envy the spiritual gifts of others and covet them. They may become preoccupied with the emotional side effects of Christian experience and lapse into spiritual gluttony, lusting after joy and ignoring its giver and the responsibility of an obedient walk of faith.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“When they commence a venture, it is with hours of prayer, while with ordinary Evangelicals it is with hours of talk and organization. The result is often that the Charismatics achieve supernatural results, while the rest of us obtain what is organizable.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“There seemed to be a sanctification gap among Evangelicals, a peculiar conspiracy somehow to mislay the Protestant tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate instead on frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16 and theological arguments over eschatological subtleties.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“This approach to counseling is fully consistent with the legal approach to sin in Scripture which points out sin and calls for a change in behavior, but it is not sufficiently evangelical because it fails to see that progress must be grounded in the appropriation by faith of the benefits of union with Christ.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Such counseling simply operates with the Pelagian model of the Christian life common in modern Evangelicalism, assuming that sin problems are only habit patterns of disobedience which can be broken down by the application of will power in a process of dehabituation.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own, they do not use a peculiar form of speech, they do not follow an eccentric manner of life.”28 A distinctively intellectual brand”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Paul could even live comfortably with Jewish Christians still being circumcised and observing their traditions so long as their soteriology was straight. Just as the gospel was to set free an infinite variety of individuals, developing their distinctive gifts and kinds of beauty rather than stamping them into a mold of conformity, so it was to come to whole cultures, with their dance patterns of folkways and institutions, and to lift these to the highest level of individual expression, erasing or cleansing only those with idolatrous implications.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“What a flood of spiritual life would be released in the body of Christ if these blockages were removed and the undifferentiated heaps of Christians in churches all over the world were gathered into cells linked together in the great arterial system of grace! The power released could only be compared to the outrush of energy produced in molecular fusion.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“What is involved in the church’s periods of recession is something deeper, however, than simple refusal to follow or obey its divine leader. The redemptive work of Christ did not consist in a magnified regent issuing a clearer set of laws to follow. Redemption is participatory, not imitative. It is grounded on grace appropriated through faith, not merely on obedience. Spiritual life flows out of union with Christ, not merely imitation of Christ. When the full dimensions of God’s gracious provision in Christ are not clearly articulated in the church, faith cannot apprehend them, and the life of the church will suffer distortion and attenuation. The individual Christian and the church as a whole are alive in Christ, and when any essential dimensions of what it means to be in Christ are obscured in the church’s understanding, there is no guarantee that the people of God will strive toward and experience fullness of life.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“But even under the New Covenant, with an eternal and infinitely perfect leader, the people of God cannot expect to prevail unless they follow that leader.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“the expanding of God’s kingdom in a liberating warfare against the forces of darkness in which the most important battleground is the hearts of men.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“The earth is blinded by an occupying army of fallen angelic powers, and the kingdom of God is a liberation army advancing the frontiers of light until all the earth is full of the knowledge of God.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“This suggests that God has chosen to bless his church with the fullness of the Holy Spirit on the condition of its moving toward certain vital norms of health and witness.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“In contrast to this, experiences of renewal which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character, based on worship, an appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from self-interest. Such experiences create humility in the convert rather than pride and issue in the creation of a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness and mercy.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Edwards was especially concerned to make clear that fallen human nature is fertile ground for a fleshly religiosity which is impressively “spiritual” but ultimately rooted in self-love. High emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity released from bondage to sin and renewed by the Holy Spirit.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“It is the love of God which “has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5 NASB). This kind of love, as Augustine never tired of insisting, is the pivotal factor in the church’s life.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Agape is not a mere emotional by-product of action but a supernatural outpouring of the grace of God infusing all our behavior with the life of Christ.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Redemption is participatory, not imitative. It is grounded on grace appropriated through faith, not merely on obedience. Spiritual life flows out of union with Christ, not merely imitation of Christ.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“become increasingly apparent as the book goes on. Individual and corporate spiritual vitality are coinherent; it is impossible to grow to full stature as an individual while separated from smaller and larger groups in the church, nor can the body grow without the renewing of its members.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Nonetheless, the different groups enjoying this life are readily offended by one another’s packages. One man’s piety is often another man’s poison.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“True Christianity, according to its intrinsick Constitution, is an active, lively, strong, vigorous Principle, seated in the inmost Center of the Soul,”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“Much of the church rapidly lost the Reformers’ consciousness of the noetic effects of sin, the impact of fallen human nature in darkening the unregenerate mind. Later theologians readily forgot that sin generates an unconscious drive to construct systems of understanding the world which suppress the knowledge of the real God, systems which deform and distort the facts and theories they incorporate.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“The spiritual, political and economic situation in Europe was like a carefully built bonfire waiting to be lit, but the torch that set it burning was the spiritual crisis of Martin Luther. His struggle led eventually to the rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith. ... But what made the Reformation catch fire as an international movement of new life within the church was the reduplication of Luther's experience and insight among a number of Christian humanists who found this doctrine the key to their spiritual release and to their conceptual understanding of the needs in Western Christendom.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“One man's piety is often another man's poison.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

“There is particular hope that the Jewish community may be drawn to receive its Messiah once it clearly sees that this will not mean cultural suicide but rather the completed blooming of the vine God planted.”
― Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal