Inspirational Quotes by Sinclair B. Ferguson
“Sanctification in any area of our lives always expresses this double dimension—a putting off and a putting on, as it were. Speech and silence, appropriately expressed, are together the mark of the mature.3”
“A fool’s tongue,” Bruce Waltke wryly notes, “is long enough to cut his own throat.”4”
“When the Bible uses the term heart, it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situations and relationships outside of you. This passage teaches that your experiences influence, but do not determine, your behavior. Your behavior is shaped and caused by how your heart reacts to and interacts with the situations and relationships that are outside of you.”
“Lorenzo [de’ Medici] sent him [Savonarola] personal gifts and financial help for the monastery, which merely stimulated Savonarola to respond from the pulpit that a faithful dog does not stop barking in his“master’s defense simply because someone throws a bone to him. From the same pulpit, indifferent to threats of banishment, he urged some of Lorenzo’s friends: “Bid him to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is not a respecter of persons. He does not spare the princes of the world!”
“But it is serpentine logic, for it simply compounds the old legal spirit. It is the natural instinct of the once-antinomian prodigal who, when awakened, thinks in terms of working his way back into the favor of his father.38”
“This is the key to the enjoyment of assurance precisely because assurance is our assurance that he is a great Savior and that he is ours.”
“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.”
“And, with a disregard for other things, he cherished and experienced That blessed communion with God about which he wrote.”
“Repentance then is not the punctiliar decision of a moment but a radical heart transformation that reverses the whole direction of life.”
“This might be illustrated by the way in which, for example, John Owen’s work Of the Mortification of Sin has undoubtedly been read by many more younger ministers than either his Glory of Christ or Communion with God. That may be understandable because of the deep pastoral insight in Owen’s short work; but it may also put the practical cart before the theological horse. Owen himself would not have been satisfied with hearers who learned mortification without learning Christ. A larger paradigmatic shift needs to take place than only exchanging a superficial subjectivism for Owen’s rigorous subjectivism. What is required is a radical recentering in a richer and deeper knowledge of Christ, understood in terms of his person and work. There can be little doubt that Owen himself viewed things this way.”
“When the benefits are seen as abstractable from the Benefactor the issue becomes: 1) For the preacher: “How can I offer these benefits?” and 2) For the hearer: “How can I get these benefits into my life?” But when it is seen that Christ and his benefits are inseparable and that the latter are not abstractable commodities, the primary question becomes: 1) For the preacher: “How do I preach Christ himself?” and 2) For the hearer: “How do I get into Christ?”
“The Church’s Confession of Faith remained unaltered. But it would be naïve scholarship that extrapolated from what was professed to what was preached and indeed from what was preached to what was possessed. Every pastor should know this and therefore should never assume that everyone listening to him has been gripped by the wonder of God’s grace—even if they have confessed the church’s creed.”
“But, as Paul is at pains to stress, the law is good, and just, and holy.50 And we need to understand, sense, feel, and then delight in the grace of law.51 For unless we are persuaded that God has shown his grace in his law as well as in his Son, all we will hear and see at Sinai is thunder and lightning.”
“There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power.”
“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.”
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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.