Reading “dead men,” especially when it comes to trends, and error can lead a person to some very valuable lessons. One of the greatest being what Solomon understood;
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 (ESV) 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. 11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
So, read on, you will no doubt pick up some wisdom and avoid pit-falls and mistakes that have already been made in the past.
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“Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheap jacks’ wares…
Cheap grace is no the kind of forgiveness that frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”[1]
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You cannot receive Christ as your justification only, and then, later, decide to refuse or not accept Him as your sanctification. He is one and indivisible, and if you receive him at all, at once He is made unto you ‘wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” You cannot receive Him as your Saviour only, and later decide to accept or refuse Him as your Lord; for the Savior is the Lord who by His death has [bought] us and therefore owns us. Sanctification is nowhere taught and offered in the New Testament as some additional experience possible to the believer. It is represented rather as something which is already within the believer, something which he must realize more and more and in which he must grow increasingly.”[2]
– Martin Lloyd Jones
“In the Scriptures be the fat pastures of the soul; therein is no venomous meat, no unwholesome thing; they be the very dainty and pure feeding. He that is ignorant, shall find there what he should learn.”
– Thomas Cranmer
“The difference between true and false repentance lies in this: the man who truly repents cries out against his heart; but the other, as Eve, against the serpent, or something else.”
– John Bunyan
[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Cost of Discipleship,” New York: Collier, 1959, pp. 54-47
[2] Cited in Iain H. Murray, “D. Martin Lloyd Jones: The First Forty Years,” Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982, pg.375