“For the gracious heart, the law is no more constraining that wings are to a bird. But for someone who has no experience of grace, these standards bite and pinch, and some accommodation must be made for both morality and sin. Anne [Bradstreet] noted this problem clearly. ‘Some Christians do by their lusts and corruptions …
Tight Connection
“A person who is out of fellowship with God could not be holy, and someone in fellowship with God cannot be anything else” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p. 197).
The Hollow Consumer
“The external world is not the problem, but because of sin, the external world does present a problem . . . The more a man sees, the more he wants. The more he throws things into his soul, the emptier it gets . . . The nature of lust is to demand more and more …
A Bunch of Little Sneaks, In Fact
“Internal lusts are traitors, and must be guarded against diligently. Moreover, they present much more of a threat than any open adversaries outside. Thousands of the enemy outside may assial the walls in vain, while one treacherous citizen inside can secretly open a door, and all is undone” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p. 193).
Discipline and Punishment
“Some children, like certain patches of ground, are rockier than others. Such children require parents who are willing to take more pains over them. IF a farmer has two patches of ground, one of rich topsoil and the other filled with rocks, he cannot treat the two patches of ground the same way. Discipline is …
Just Sit There
“A man who desires a garden full of weeds does not need to do anything” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p.189).
Dirty Pearls
“It is the part of wisdom to refuse to go pearl diving in a cesspool, but only folly, only a beetlewit, would walk by a pile of pearls because a few of them were dirty” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p. 187).
Always More Room at the Bottom
“There is no situation so bad that we, through a bad attitude, cannot make . . . worse” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p. 179).
Wanting to be Whole Grain
“The flour has to be ground fine if the bread is to be fine. As the old blues song put it, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. It would be lovely, we think, to be the finest bread that heaven holds, but we do not want to be ground to …
The Problem of the Boring Testimony
Far from being a degradation of standards of covenant purity, [the Half-way Covenant] was the direct result of having artificially high standards. The Bible requires a confession that Jesus is Lord, and the absence of a scandalous lifestyle. It does not require a convulsive Damascus road experience on the part of every convert, especially those …