Do we recoil at the notion of obedience, of law observance, of keeping commandments? Is it alien to our way of thinking? If so, then our Lord’s way is not our way. —John Murray, The Christian Ethic
Category: Heroes
The Exegetical Systematician: Love is Emotive, Motive, Impulsive, and Expulsive
“Love is primary because only by love can the commandments be fulfilled. Love is emotive, motive, impulsive, and expulsive. It is emotive in that it constrains affection for its object, motive because it is the spring of action, impulsive because it impels to action, expulsive in that it expels what is alien to the interests of its object.” —John Murray, The Christian Ethic
The Exegetical Systematician: WWJD Circa 1955
The relevance to us of our Lord’s example has to be strictly guarded just as likeness to God has to be guarded. If this is not done we fall into the same error of failure to distinguish between the respects in which the attempt at likeness would be iniquity and the respects in which likeness is required. There are respects in which we may not and could not make our Lord’s conduct an example for us. His identity as God-man was unique. His offices and prerogatives were unique. His task as Saviour was unique. The faith he demanded in himself, and the obedience he claimed from his disciples, were such as belong to none else. So the application to ourselves requires radical differentiation. In other words, the example that our Lord supplies is severely restricted by reason of the uniqueness that pertained to him in respect of his person, office, commission, prerogative, and task. It is scarcely necessary to observe how glib and superficial is the ethic that is content to say: What would Jesus do? —John Murray, The Christian Ethic
The Exegetical Systematician: Are You an Evangelical?
“An evangelical is committed to certain well-defined positions regarding the Christian Faith. He is a trinitarian and believes there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…
The evangelical also believes that the Scriptures fo the Old and New Testaments are the infallible Word of God written, inerrantly inspired of the Holy Spirit, the only infallible rule of faith and life…
The evangelical believes that the eternal Son of God became man by being supernaturally begotten by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary and was born of her without human fatherhood. The Son of God came into this world by this means in order to save men from sin and for this reason he shed his blood upon the accursed tree as a substitutionary sacrifice. He rose from the dead on the third day in that body that had been crucified and laid in the tomb of Joseph. After forty days he ascended up to heaven and was highly exalted, reigns from heaven as head over all things until he will have subdued all enemies, and will return again personally, visibly, and gloriously to judge living and dead.
The evangelical believes that all men are lost and dead in sin, that there is salvation in none other name but that of Jesus, and that apart from regeneration by the Holy Spirit and faith in Christ Jesus men are irretrievably lost. He believes in heaven and hell as places of eternal bliss and eternal woe respectively and that these are the two final abodes of mankind. Evangelism, therefore, for the evangelical, is the proclamation of the gospel of Christ to lost men in order that they may be saved. He must proclaim this gospel with the urgency which the gravity of the issues of life and death demands. Evangelism is supported by the fact that Christ is offered freely to all without distinction and that God commands men that they should all everywhere repent.
This summary does not cover the whole field of evangelical belief. But it indicates what the identity of an evangelical is. If a professed Christian does not entertain the type of belief which the foregoing summary represents, then he is not an evangelical.” —John Murray, Co-operation in Evangelism
The Exegetical Systematician: The Fuel of Piety
There are true Christians who are so much given to what is called the ‘experimental’ in religion that they feed to a very large extent upon their own experience. This type of piety can become nauseating. When analyzed it is seen to be dishonoring to Christ and detrimental to true religion. It is true that piety produces experience, and the deeper the piety the deeper and richer will be the experience. But the point is to be stressed is that piety does not feed on experience. Piety feeds on Christ, on his truth, on the mysteries of God’s revelation, and on the promises which are all yea and amen in Christ. —John Murray, Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching
The Exegetical Systematician: Incompatible Power Adapters
“Oftentimes as an accompaniment of this [Arminian] conception of the message and of the response to the message there has been fostered a certain type of high-pressure appeal and of emotional excitement that is scarcely compatible with the sobriety and dignity that ought to characterize the preaching of the gospel, and scarcely consistent with the deliberateness and intelligence appropriate to the exercise of faith in Christ as Saviour and Lord.” —John Murray, The Message of Evangelism
The Exegetical Systematician: Worse than Undeserving
We cannot think of sinners as merely undeserving; they are also illdeserving. The grace of God to sinners is, therefore, not simply unmerited favour; it is also favour shown to the ill-deserving, indeed to the hell-deserving. When Paul says, ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 3:24), the grace in view must be understood on the background of the judgment of God referred to in verse 19—’that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God’. It is guilty men, and therefore hell-deserving men, that the justifying grace of God contemplates. —John Murray, The Grace of God
The Exegetical Systematician: Orientating Advents
“In God’s plan all history is oriented to the incarnation of the Son of God and to his manifestation in glory at end of the age. The lessons for us are numerous. But one is of paramount importance. Life here and now that is not conditioned by faith in Jesus’ first coming and oriented to the hope of this second is godless and hopeless.” —John Murray, The Advent of Christ
The Exegetical Systematician: The Free Offer Rides the Wave Divine Soverignty
It must be said without reserve that there is no limitation or qualification to the overture of grace in the gospel proclamation. As there is no restriction to the command that all everywhere should repent (Acts 17:30), so is there none to what is correlative with it. The doctrines of particular election, differentiating love, limited atonement do not erect any fence around the offer in the gospel. No text is more eloquent of the pure sovereignty of both the Father and the Son in the revelation of gospel mystery than the words of our Lord in Matthew 11:25-30: ‘Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.’ Here is the sovereign will and differentiation of the Father. ‘He to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’ This is the witness to Jesus’ own sovereignty in revealing the Father to men. But the immediate sequel is: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.’ The lesson is that it is not merely conjunction of differentiating and sovereign will with free overture, but that the free overture comes out from the differentiating sovereignty of both Father and Son. It is on the crest of the wave of divine sovereignty that the unrestricted summons comes to the labouring and heavy laden. This is Jesus’ own witness, and it provides the direction in which our thinking on the question at issue must proceed. Any inhibition or reserve in presenting the overtures of grace should no more characterize our proclamation than it characterized the Lord’s witness. —John Murray, The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel
The Exegetical Systematician: So Close
“The fact is that the Lord Jesus came not only into the closest relation to sinful humanity that it was possible for him to come without becoming himself sinful, but he also came into the closest relation to sin that it was possible for him to come without thereby becoming himself sinful.” —John Murray, The Death of Christ
No Other Boast 