“It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.”
… St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, vol. ii, Marcus Dods, ed., as vol. xi of The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Edinbugh: T & T Clark, 1884, lxxxii.3, p. 308

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“Men today do not, perhaps, burn the Bible, nor does the Roman Catholic Church any longer put it on the index, as it once did. But men destroy it in the form of exegesis: they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal literary form, by ignoring historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible’s own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history, by saying that only the “spiritual” portions of the Bible have authority for us.”

… Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), Death in the City, London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1969, Good News Publishers, 2002, p. 77-78

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“Man cannot make a redemptive art, but he can make an art that communicates what he experiences of redemption as a man and what he knows of it as an artist. God in his infinite wisdom may use an art work as an instrument of redemption, but what serves or can serve that purpose is beyond the knowledge of man.”
… John W. Dixon, Jr., in Christian Faith and the Contemporary Arts, ed. Finley Eversole, New York: Abingdon Press, 1962, p. 6

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Masolino 1338 – 1447
Peter Heals the Crippled

fresco (255 cm tall) — 1425

[Acts 11:15-18]

“The whole point of the story of Cornelius and of the admission of the Gentiles lies in the fact that these people had not accepted what up to that moment had been considered a necessary part of the Christian teaching. The question was whether they could be admitted without accepting the teaching and undergoing the rite. It was that question which was settled by the acknowledgement that they had received the Holy Spirit… The difficulty today is that Christians acknowledge that others have the Spirit, and yet do not recognize that they ought to be, and must be—because spiritually they are—in communion with one another. Men who hold a theory of the Church which excludes from communion those whom they admit to have the Spirit of Christ simply proclaim that their theory is in flat contradiction to the spiritual fact.”

… Roland Allen (1869-1947), Pentecost and the World, London: Oxford University Press, 1917

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Rembrandt 1606-1669

Apostle Peter Kneeling
1631
oil on canvas 59x49cm
Private Collection

[a meditation on 2 Peter 1;10,11]

“Some men, not content with [Christ] alone, are borne hither and thither from one hope to another; even if they concern themselves chiefly with him, they nevertheless stray from the right way in turning some part of their thinking in another direction. Yet such distrust cannot creep in where men have once for all truly known the abundance of his blessings.”
… John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. I [1559],

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– Raphael 1483 – 1520

Christ’s Charge to Peter

bodycolour on paper on canvas (340 × 530 cm) — 1515-1516

[John 21:15-17]

“Good Friday in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, “Lov’st thou me?”
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee.
And night and day, since thou dost rise, are one.”

… Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907), Poems, London: Elkin Mathews, 1908, p. 148-149

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“God who is Almighty, Alpha and Omega, First and Last, that God is also love itself; and therefore this love is Alpha and Omega, first and last too. Consider Christ’s proceeding with Peter in the ship, in the storm; first he suffered him to be in some danger in the storm, but then he visits him with that strong assurance, “Be not afraid, It is I”, any testimony of his presence rectifies all. This puts Peter into that spiritual confidence and courage, “Lord bid me come to thee;” he hath a desire to be with Christ, but yet stays his bidding: he puts not himself into an unnecessary danger, without commandment: Christ bids him, and Peter comes: but yet, though Christ were in his sight, and even in the actual exercise of his love to him, so soon as he saw a gust, a storm, “He was afraid,” and Christ lets him fear, and lets him sink, and lets him cry, but he directs his fear and his cry to the right end, “Lord, save me;” and thereupon he stretched forth his hand and saved him…
God puts his children into good ways, and he directs and protects them in those ways; for this is the constancy and perseverance of the love of Jesus Christ to us, as he is called in this text (Matt. 21:44), a stone.
… John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. V, London: John W. Parker, 1839, “Sermon preached to the nobility” [1619], p. 31-32 “

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In gratitude for the Gospel unpacked and preached this morning at Blackhawk Ministries by my friend Josh Rang…

INSCRIPTION FOR A PULPIT

“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.”
The hungry sheep that crave the living Bread
Grow few, and lean, and feeble as can be,
When fed not Gospel, but philosophy;
Not Love’s eternal story, no, not this,
But apt allusion, keen analysis.
Discourse well framed—forgot as soon as heard—
Man’s thin dilution of the living Word.

O Preacher, leave the rhetorician’s arts;
Preach Christ, the Food of hungry human hearts;
Hold fast to science, history, or creed,
But preach the Answer to our human need,
That in this place, at least, it may be said
No hungry sheep looks up and is not fed.
… Robert Hammond Adams (1883-1975)

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A meditation on Acts 9:16:

“When Christ was in the world, He was despised by men; in the hour of need He was forsaken by acquaintances and left by friends to the depths of scorn. He was willing to suffer and to be despised; do you dare to complain of anything? He had enemies and defamers; do you want everyone to be your friend, your benefactor? How can your patience be rewarded if no adversity tests it? How can you be a friend of Christ if you are not willing to suffer any hardship? Suffer with Christ and for Christ if you wish to reign with Him.
Had you but once entered into perfect communion with Jesus or tasted a little of His ardent love, you would care nothing at all for your own comfort or discomfort but would rejoice in the reproach you suffer; for love of Him makes a man despise himself.”
… Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), Of the Imitation of Christ [1418], Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1877, II.i..5, p. 85

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“Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins—the way to madness of the brain and despair of the heart…

Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it, or once abstained because He said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.”

… George MacDonald (1824-1905), “The Truth in Jesus”, in Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, London: Longmans, Green, 1886, p. 244-245

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