Inspirational Quotes by J. Gresham Machen

“Every historian, whether he is a Christian or not, ought to take account of this strange fact—that a certain Jesus, a man who lived in the first century in Palestine, was actually convinced, as He looked out upon the men who thronged about Him, that He would one day sit on the judgment-seat of God and be their judge and the judge and ruler of all the world.”

“At that point the enemies saw clear. You may accept the lofty claims of Jesus. You may take Him as very God. Or else you must reject Him as a miserable, deluded enthusiast. There is really no middle ground. Jesus refuses to be pressed into the mould of a mere religious teacher.”

“The world is lying in misery, we ourselves are sinners, men are perishing in sin every day. The gospel is the sole means of escape; let us preach it to the world while yet we may. So desperate is the need that we have no time to engage in vain babblings or old wives’ fables. While we are discussing the exact location of the churches of Galatia, men are perishing under the curse of the law; while we are settling the date of Jesus’ birth, the world is doing without its Christmas message.”

“The Christian religion is no mere form of mysticism, but is founded upon a body of facts; the facts are recorded in the Bible; and if the supposed facts were not facts at all, then Christianity and the Bible would certainly sink into a common ruin.”

“But underlying that sweet and blessed communion of the Christian with his God there is a true knowledge of God. A communion with God which is independent of that knowledge of God is communion with some other god and not with the living and true God whom the Bible reveals.”

“The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God—the grace of God which depends not one whit upon anything that is in man, but is absolutely undeserved, resistless and sovereign. The theologians of the Church can be placed in an ascending scale according as they have grasped that one great central doctrine, that doctrine that gives consistency to all the rest; and Christian experience also depends for its depth and for its power upon the way in which that blessed doctrine is cherished in the depths of the heart. The center of the Bible, and the center of Christianity, is found in the grace of God; and the necessary corollary of the grace of God is salvation through faith alone.” J. Gresham Machen, quoted in Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids, 1955), page 396.”

“I cannot tell you that the sacrifice will be light: it is a serious thing to stand against the whole current of an age; it is a serious thing to be despised and hated by the generality of one's fellow men. Yet that is increasingly the lot of the true Christian today. He will not, indeed, be inclined to complain; for he has something with which all that he has lost is not worthy to be compared; and he knows that despite temporary opposition the ultimate future belongs to him and to His Lord. But for the present he is called upon to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It can hardly be said that unworthy motives of self-interest can lead a man to enter into a calling in which he will win nothing but reproach.”

“We may imagine a dialogue between the law of God and a sinful man. ‘Man,’ says the law of God, ‘have you obeyed my commands?’ ‘No,’ says the sinner, ‘I have transgressed them in thought, word, and deed.’ ‘Well, then, sinner,’ says the law, ‘have you paid the penalty which I have pronounced upon those who have disobeyed? Have you died in the sense that I meant when I said, “The soul that sinneth it shall die”?’ ‘Yes,’ says the sinner, ‘I have died. That penalty that you pronounced upon my sin has been paid.’ ‘What do you mean,’ says the law, ‘by saying that you have died? You do not look as though you had died. You look as though you were very much alive.’ ‘Yes,’ says the sinner, ‘I have died. I died there on the cross outside the walls of Jerusalem; for Jesus died there as my representative and my substitute. I died there so far as the penalty of the law was concerned.’ ‘You say Christ is your representative and substitute,’ says the law. ‘Then I have indeed no further claim of penalty against you. The curse which I pronounced against your sin has indeed been fulfilled. My threatenings are very terrible, but I have nothing to say against those for whom Christ died.”

“It is quite useless to ask a man to adopt the Christian view of the gospel unless he first has the Christian view of sin.”

“The Bible is perfectly plain in the things that are necessary for your souls. God will make other things in it clearer to you as the years go by. Read it, my friends. It is God’s Book, not man’s book. It is a message from the King. Read it, study it, trust it, live by it. Other books will deceive you, but not this book. This book is the Word of God.”

“According to all the four Gospels, and according to all the supposed sources which modern criticism has tried to detect back of the four Gospels, Jesus put himself into his gospel; the gospel of Jesus was also a gospel about Jesus; the gospel that he preached was also a gospel that offered him as Savior. He did not say merely: “Have faith in God like the faith that I have in God,” but he said: “Have faith in me.”

“It is a pitiable cowardice to try to overcome fear by ignoring the facts. We do not become masters of our fate by saying that we are. And such blatancy of pride, futile as it is, is not even noble in its futility. It would be noble to rebel against a capricious tyrant, but it is not noble to rebel against the moral law of God.”

“When will men see that nothing but the truth can satisfy the longing of the human soul? Religious conceptions which are merely useful and not eternally true are not useful at all. But as it is, a deadly blight of pragmatism has fallen upon the world. The intellect is dethroned and intellectual decadence is rapidly setting in. Men are following the will-o'-the-wisp of a practical religion which shall somehow be independent of facts; they are trying to produce a decent, moral life in this world while denying the basis of morality in the being of God. They have embarked on a vain search for an authority which is merely man-made and can therefore never command the reverence of man.”

“The modern liberals, on the other hand, say that Jesus is God not because they think high of Jesus, but because they think desperately low of God.”

“The world is restless today. There are many voices but there is no peace. Men are feverishly saying to a god manufactured to serve the social needs of man: 'Deliver me; for thou art my god.' They are trying to produce decency without principle; they are trying to keep back the raging sea of passion with flimsy mud embankment of self-interest; they are trying to do without the stern, solid masonry of the will of God. When will the vain effort cease? Shall we continue on our wanderings? Shall we continue to stagger like drunken men? Shall we still fashion a divinity that shall serve our utilitarian ends? Shall we amuse ourselves with idols? Or shall we return unto God?”

“The church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.”

“The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God.”

“In the second place, will not culture destroy Christianity? Is it not far easier to be an earnest Christian if you confine your attention to the Bible and do not risk being led astray by the thought of the world? We answer, of course it is easier. Shut yourself up in an intellectual monastery, do not disturb yourself with the thoughts of unregenerate men, and of course you will find it easier to be a Christian, just as it is easier to be a good soldier in comfortable winter quarters than it is on the field of battle. You save your own soul—but the Lord’s enemies remain in possession of the field.”

“People sometimes say, indeed, that it makes little difference what theory of the atonement we may hold. Ah, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world. When you contemplate the cross of Christ, do you say merely, with modern theorists, ‘What a noble example of self-sacrifice; I am going to attain favour with God by sacrificing myself as well as He.’ Or do you say with the Bible, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me; He took my place; He bore my curse; He bought me with His own most precious blood.’ That is the most momentous question that can come to any human soul.”

“At the very root of the modern liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin.”