Category Archives: faith

Knowing Christ personally

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You may know a good deal about Christ, by a kind of head knowledge. You may know who He was, and where He was born, and what He did. You may know His miracles, His sayings, His prophecies, and His ordinances. You may know how He lived, and how He suffered, and how He died. But unless you know the power of Christ’s cross by experience — unless you know and feel within that the blood shed on that cross has washed away your own particular sins, unless you are willing to confess that your salvation depends entirely on the work that Christ did upon the cross — unless this be the case, Christ will profit you nothing. The mere knowing Christ’s name will never save you. You must know His cross, and His blood, or else you will die in your sins.

~ J. C. Ryle

from, Practical Religion, Banner of Truth, (19980, pp. 248-9.

Longing for sensible assurance?

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[commenting on the post-resurrection doubts of Thomas]

“There are many, who, like Thomas, are longing for some sensible assurance of the love of Christ, beyond the general declarations of the Bible. They want some inward token that they are born again, some sensible assurance of their acceptance, before they believe and commit their souls wholly to Jesus. They desire to be Christians, but want to know that they have been converted before they trust. This is precisely the error of Thomas. They want the evidence of sense, rather than of faith. They want some inward work in the heart, as a ground of faith, rather than the outward work of Christ, offered in the gospel. Such an assurance will not be given them. Their warrant to believe is in the Word, and to give them any other warrant would be to dishonor that, and to thrust their hands into the Savior’s side before believing. They must go to Jesus, just as they are, cast themselves on his mercy, and believe that he will do as he has promised, pardon, purify, and save, and then the benediction shall descend upon them, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

— T. V. Moore,
THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS, The Forty Days Between the Resurrection and Ascension; Banner of Truth Trust, 1981, pp. 86-87