thursday, september 20, 12 - thevillagechapel.com · become whole.Ó --john stott thursday,...

Thursday, September 20, 12

1 Corinthians 1:10-2:16


"Our world is like a convoy lost in darkness on an unknown rocky coast,

with quarreling pirates in the chart room and savages climbing up the

sides of the ship to plunder and do evil as the whim may take them. Where is

the Captain? The ship is driving for the rocks, and man cannot stop it."

-H. G. Wells



Our unity in Christ depends on:

1. Our commitment to the Lordship of Christ


“There is no more integrating Christian principle than the affirmation ‘Jesus Christ is Lord'. It is of the essence of integrated discipleship that we both confess his lordship with our lips and enthrone him as Lord in our hearts. We assume the easy yoke of his teaching authority. We seek to ‘take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ'. And when Jesus is Lord of our beliefs, opinions, ambitions, standards, values and lifestyle, then we are integrated Christians, since then ‘integrity' marks our life. Only when he is Lord do we become whole.” --John Stott


“If the world around us saw the problems of its own animosities,

divisions and deprivations solved in the microcosm of the local church, we

would need no more special evangelistic efforts, for the life of the church would

be like the light of a city set on a hill which cannot be hidden.”

-- J. A. Motyer




2. The centrality of the cross of Christ in our theology


“When we look at the cross we see the justice, love, wisdom and power of God. It is not easy to

decide which is the most luminously revealed, whether the justice of God in judging sin, or the

love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, or the wisdom of God in perfectly

combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is

equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God's justice, love, wisdom and power. The cross

assures us that this God is the reality within, behind and beyond the universe.” --John Stott


“The cross is the place where, and the means by which,

God loved us to the uttermost.” --N.T. Wright


“The measure of all love is its giving. The measure of the love of God is

the cross of Christ, where the Father gave the Son to die so that the

spiritually dead might have life.” --J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness


“Just as the only basis for the removal of our guilt is the finished

work of Christ upon the cross in history, plus nothing, so the only

instrument for accepting that finished work of Christ upon

the cross is faith." --Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality




3. Faith in the “fool’s wisdom” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ


“All the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set

sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation

upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.”

--Socrates


“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be

wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it.

There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

--Charles H. Spurgeon


"Historians will conclude that we of the 20th century had the

genius to create a great civilization, But we lacked the moral wisdom to preserve it"

-- A.W. Tozer


“The essential condition of receiving light from heaven is not

sophistication, however, but simplicity. For the Lord of the

universe has ‘hidden these things from the wise and learned', Jesus said, ‘and revealed them to little

children' (Mt. 11:25).” --John Stott


thursday, september 20, 12 - thevillagechapel.com · become whole.Ó --john stott thursday,...

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