Quotes of Note

Each Monday, we share quotes we found encouraging, convicting, thought-provoking, or all of the above.

Kim:

In her book Advent, Fleming Rutledge talks about the significance of the combination of royalty stooping down to meet with her people.

Elizabeth I was a great monarch in part because the people knew that she loved them, and her processions through the countryside were specifically designed to allow them to love her in return. . . If it is true that there is unique power in the combination of royalty and stooping, then there has never been anything comparable to the errand of the Son of God. In Jesus Christ we see the One "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be clutched at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave' (Phi. 2:6-7). The problem with much of our Christology nowadays, it seems to me, is that we have concentrated so much on the stooping that we have lost sight of the royalty. More than half of the biblical message is thereby eliminated, for it is the combination that counts. Thus we read in Exodus 3, "Moses his his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, 'I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.'"  

The God who is so terrifying that we must hide our faces from his resplendence is the same God who has come down to deliver his people in their extremity.

Persis:

My pastor started a sermon series on Leviticus, so I picked up From Paradise to the Promised Land by T.D. Alexander off the shelf. It's hard to comprehend how much blood had to be shed day after day, year after year at the Tabernacle and the Temple. I also wonder what it was like for the early believers to realize that Jesus Christ's sacrifice was once and for all.

By emphasizing that Jesus Christ as God's unique son, provided the sacrifice necessary to atone completely for human sin, the New Testament highlights two important aspects of God's character: his justice and his love. Motivated by love, God provides the sacrifice necessary to meet the demands of his own justice. It is God, in the person of his own son, who pays the price of forgiveness for human sin. (pg. 226)

Rebecca:

Graeme Goldworthy on why the Old Testament is relevant Christian scripture:

Jesus claimed that the whole of the Old Testament was about him. It has been estimated that the New Testament contains some sixteen hundred direct quotes from, or recognizable allusions to, the Old Testament. If we are interested in the New Testament's testimony to Jesus, we cannot avoid the implications of its preoccupation with the link between Jesus and the Old Testament Scriptures. The idea that the Old Testament deals with the rather irrelevant Jewish background to the Christian gospel is detrimental to the New Testament's exposition of the gospel. Jesus is declared to be the fulfiller, but we won't understand what this means if we don't understand what it is that he is said to fulfill. 

[The Son of God and the New Creation, page 37.]