As those who read this blog regularly know, I really enjoy writing verse-by-verse studies, and that is usually what I post here. But I will also occasionally post something that I have read (usually written by a Puritan author) when I have found something that has convicted and challenged me in my walk with Christ, and I share these things with the readers of The Christian Journey with the hope that they will challenge you in your walk as well.
Over the past few weeks I have been finding more and more things that fit this description and my collection of these articles, sermons, and book excerpts has grown considerably. So over the next few weeks in addition to continuing the study of 1 John, and anything else that God lays on my heart to write about, I hope to do several postings of the things I have been collecting lately. It is my prayer that you will find something helpful or challenging in each of these and that your walk with Christ will be strengthened by what you read here.
Today I am posting an excerpt from the 1895 sermon What Is Needed by Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle. In this excerpt Bishop Ryle describes what true Christianity looks like - something that is very confused in our world today. We would do well as a church to get back to what is outlined below and stop trying to please the world and attract them; if we lift up Jesus, He will draw all men to Himself (John 12:32)
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Over the past few weeks I have been finding more and more things that fit this description and my collection of these articles, sermons, and book excerpts has grown considerably. So over the next few weeks in addition to continuing the study of 1 John, and anything else that God lays on my heart to write about, I hope to do several postings of the things I have been collecting lately. It is my prayer that you will find something helpful or challenging in each of these and that your walk with Christ will be strengthened by what you read here.
Today I am posting an excerpt from the 1895 sermon What Is Needed by Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle. In this excerpt Bishop Ryle describes what true Christianity looks like - something that is very confused in our world today. We would do well as a church to get back to what is outlined below and stop trying to please the world and attract them; if we lift up Jesus, He will draw all men to Himself (John 12:32)
True Christianity
(1) True Christianity has always taught the inspiration, sufficiency, and supremacy of Holy Scripture. It has told men that "God's written Word" is the only trustworthy rule of faith and practice in religion; that God requires nothing to be believed that is not in this Word; and that nothing is right which contradicts it. It has never allowed reason, or the voice of the Church, to be placed above, or on a level with Scripture. It has steadily maintained that, however imperfectly we may understand it, the Old Book is meant to be the only standard of life and doctrine.
(2) True Christianity has always taught fully the sinfulness, guilt and corruption of human nature. It has told men, that they are born in sin, deserve God's wrath and condemnation, and are naturally inclined to do evil. It has never allowed that men and women are only weak and pitiable creatures, who can become good when they please, and make their own peace with God. On the contrary, it has steadily declared man's danger and vileness, and his pressing need of a Divine forgiveness and atonement for his sins, a new birth or conversion, and an entire change of heart.
(3) True Christianity has always set before men, the Lord Jesus Christ as the chief object of faith and hope in religion--as the Divine Mediator between God and men, the only source of peace of conscience, and the root of all spiritual life. The main things it has ever insisted on about Christ, are--the atonement for sin He made by His death, His sacrifice on the cross, the complete redemption from guilt and condemnation by His blood, His victory over the grave by His resurrection, His active life of intercession at God's right hand, and the absolute necessity of simple faith in Him. In short, it has made Christ the Alpha and the Omega in Christian theology.
(4) True Christianity has always honored the Person of God the Holy Spirit, and magnified His work. It has never taught that all professing Christians have the grace of the Spirit in their hearts, as a matter of course--because they are baptized, or because they belong to a Church. It has steadily maintained that the fruits of the Spirit are the only evidence of having the Spirit, and that those fruits must be seen! It has always taught, that we must be born of the Spirit, led by the Spirit, sanctified by the Spirit, and feel the operations of the Spirit--and that a close walk with God in the path of His commandments, a life of holiness, love, self-denial, purity, and zeal to do good--are the only satisfactory marks of the Holy Spirit.
Such is true Christianity. Well would it have been for the world, if there had been more of it during the last nineteen centuries! Too often, and in too many parts of Christendom, there has been so little of it--that Christ's religion has seemed extinct, and has fallen into utter contempt!
This is the Christianity which, in the days of the Apostles, "turned the world upside down!" It was this which emptied the idol temples of their worshipers, routed the Greek and Roman philosophers, and obliged even heathen writers to confess that the followers of the "new superstition," as they called it, were people who loved one another, and lived very pure and holy lives!
Let it never be forgotten, that its leading principles are those which are least likely to please the natural man. On the contrary, they are precisely those which are calculated to be unpopular and to give offense. Proud man does not like to be told that he is a weak, guilty sinner--that he cannot save his own soul, and must trust in the work of another--that he must be converted and have a new heart--that he must live a holy, self-denying life, and come out from the world.
Yet, this is the Christianity which is doing good at this day, wherever real good is done. The only religious teaching which can show solid, positive results--is that which gives prominence to the doctrines which I have endeavored to describe. Wherever they are rightly taught, Christianity can point to fruits which are an unanswerable proof of its Divine origin. There are myriads of professing Christians who have no life or reality in their religion--and are only nominal members of Christ's Church. Except for going to church on Sundays, they give no evidence of true Christianity. If you mark their daily life--they seem neither to think, nor feel, nor care for their souls, or God, or eternity. Men and women who crowd churches on Sundays--and then live worldly selfish lives all the week--are the best and most efficient allies of the devil.
True faith is not a mere "mental assent" to certain theological propositions--but a living, burning, active principle--which works by love, purifies the heart, overcomes the world, and brings forth much fruit of holiness and good works. Let us live as if we really believed every jot and tittle of Scripture--and as if a dying, risen, interceding, and coming Christ, were continually before our eyes!J.C. Ryle (1885)
How does this compare to your view of Christianity?
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