The Far Green Country

“The law is something like chemotherapy. When chemotherapy is used to treat cancer, it does not give life. Actually, it is an instrument of death. The chemicals that are poured into the body destroy healthy tissue as well as cancer cells. During the course of treatment, chemotherapy actually makes the patient feel much worse. But [...]

“This brings us back to the point Paul has been trying to make all through this letter, the point recovering Pharisees keep needing to hear: God deals with us according to his promise, and not according to our performance… remember how promises work. It is impossible to earn a promise.  The only way to receive [...]

“Traditionally, this process of ‘gospel-realizing,’ especially when done corporately, is called ‘revival.’  Religion operates on the principle: I obey; therefore I am accepted (by God).  The gospel operates on the principle: I am accepted through the costly grace of God; therefore I obey.  Two people operating on these two principles can sit beside each other [...]

“The core problem is that we are inviting men and women to come under the power of the gospel without having first come under it ourselves. Frankly, I know of very few confessing Christians who have ever shed tears over their sins. Or if once they wept over their sins, they are careful never to [...]

“So in your confession to God you fight to name your sin - and to give your sin its right name. Then you hand it over to Christ by faith and taste the happiness of guilt forgiven (Ps. 32:1) and find the deliverance from hypocrisy which comes through honest confession (Ps. 32:2-5).
What you now know [...]

“Since saving power comes from Christ alone, it has seemed increasingly important to me of late to emphasize to those under conviction of sin that they retire and pray privately in coming to Christ. My reasons for this are twofold: First, prayer in private makes it more difficult for people to use the counselor as [...]

“In another instance a woman was plunged into depression for over two years, apparently with no hope of relief. More than once she had a complete nervous collapse. She had attempted suicide. The psychiatrist and his tools - tranquilizers and shock treatments - had not helped. But the gospel did.
At first she refused to pray [...]

“It is important to recognize that the search for priests has been greatly intensified in modern society by the breakdown of the family and of the churches. Modern education and psychology have also played a very important role. They have put the human ego under the microscope, thus making modern people intensely aware of themselves. [...]