Inspirational Quotes by Sinclair B. Ferguson
“To run, to work, the law commands, The gospel gives me feet and hands. The one requires that I obey, The other does the power convey.”
“To become a Christian believer is to be brought into a reality far grander than anything we could ever have imagined. It means communion with the triune God.”
“Pharisees lived “according to the strictest party of . . . religion.”3 The name itself is probably derived from the root “to separate.” Pharisaism was essentially a conservative “holiness movement.” So”
“By way of contrast he wanted to stress that the gospel’s center is found in Jesus Christ himself, who has been crucified for sin and raised for justification, with the inbuilt implication that Christ himself thus defined and described should be proclaimed as able to save all who come to him.”
“Faith and repentance are not static, the decision of a moment; they are the lifelong realities of a new heart (8:10; 10:16).”
“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.”
“Only God-the One through whom "all things were made" (1:3, cf. v. 10), in whom "was life" and "light" (v. 4)-can reverse creation's death and dissipate the darkness caused by sin. 2. But since that death and darkness are within creation, within man, the Word must become flesh in order to restore it from within. The Creator must enter His own creation, groaning as it is under the burden of alienation from Him.”
“The invisible is more substantial than the visible; ?he future shapes the past; The new is more fundamental than the old.”
“God possesses personal being in a unified, uncreated, eternal, tri-personal manner.”
“There had been occasions when David could have seized position and power by means that would have compromised his commitment to the Lord.”
“One day Christ will return in the full glory of His resurrection power. The light will be switched on permanently. The Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world will be present in the new heavens and earth as their lamp. Neither sun nor moon will be needed (Rev. 21:23). As He will be the Life, so He will be the Light of the new world. "Jesus said to her, `I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.... Do you believe this?"' (John 11:25-26). Well, do you?”
“What the prophets of God did spiritually, the Prophet of God did quite literally and physically.”
“True Christian liberty, unlike the various "freedom" or "liberation" movements of the secular world, is not a matter of demanding the "rights" we have.”
“The Father of Glory does not lurk behind His Son with sinister intent to do us ill, restrained only by the cruel and bloody sacrifice His Son has made! No, a thousand times no! The Father loves us in the love of the Son and the love of the Spirit (John 16:27).”
“If I insist on knowing exactly what God is doing and what He plans to do with my future, if I demand to understand His ways with me in the past, I can never be content until I am equal with God.”
“The message of the incarnate Christ is glorious indeed, but it must never be severed from the message of the indwelling Christ. He who came for us as a baby now dwells in us as the Lord of glory through His Spirit. That is His gift to us. The indwelling Christ seeks one gift from you in return. You.”
“Jesus did not come to add to our comforts. He did not come to help those who were already helping themselves or to fill life with more pleasant experiences. He came on a deliverance mission, to save sinners, and to do so He had to destroy the works of the Devil (Matt. 1:21; 1 John 3:8b).”
“An inability to encourage someone else is usually rooted in an absorption with self that is blind to the needs or gifts of others, or a pride that cannot bring itself to praise God's grace in them.”
“Such experiences can make us bewail how the Western world gives itself over annually to its Claus-mass or commerce-mass. We celebrate a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions, one in which the only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshiped, not the Savior; pilgrims go to the stores with credit cards, not to the manger with gifts. It is the feast of indulgence, not of the incarnation.”
“This same distortion appears when the gospel is preached to the natural man. Boston was all too familiar with the instinct of the awakened individual to say, “I will now try much harder, and I will do better.” It seems logical: I realize I have failed. I must reverse this failure by doing better. But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit.”
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Sinclair Ferguson is a Scottish theologian known in Reformed Christian circles for his teaching, writing, and editorial work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen and was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1971 to 2005, when he transferred to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, serving as the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina. He has served as an editor with the Banner of Truth Trust, worked as a minister at St George's-Tron Church, Glasgow, and a Council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson is the Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. He is also a Professor of Systematic Theology at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, prior to which he held the Charles Krahe Chair for Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is also a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson speaks at numerous conferences worldwide, and has written many books.