“I hold that if any of my good works attempted to contribute to my justification before God, then they should be slathered with bacon grease and thrown into hell.”
Or Even Thicker
“I hold that the covenant of grace can only be broken by those members of it who were not determined by God before the foundation of the world to inherit eternal life. For those who were so determined to that eternal salvation, the covenant of grace is a slab of titanium fifty feet thick.”
The Grace of Covenant Keeping
“The grace of covenant-keeping is not to be confounded with the terms or stipulations of the covenant. A man whose wife dies is free to marry another, and he is to exhibit the same fidelity to each wife. That doesn’t make the two women into one woman.”
Faith Heeds
“I hold that faith was required, and it has always been the characteristic of true faith that it obeys. The only route to the work of obedience required in the garden (staying away from the tree) was to trust God, believing Him. True faith and works of obedience are never in opposition.”
God Gracious, All the Time
“Obedience was required of Adam, but it was required in the context of grace. For a groom to turn to his bride right after the ‘you may kiss the bride’ part, jab. his palm with his forefinger and demand fidelity from her now would be grotesque. But to say this, as I do, doesn’t mean that I believe that her fidelity is somehow optional.”
WIde of the Mark
[Response to Mid-America Reformed Seminary’s “Doctrinal Testimony Regarding Recent Errors”]
“The others on the list participate in overt misrepresentation, with varying degrees of high-handedness. The degrees of misrepresentation range from mild to jaw-dripping. This was an unbelievably shoddy bit of scholarship. This was atrocious. This was violation of the ninth commandment with a chainsaw.”
The Ground of My Reluctance to Denounce Others
“In this controversy, multiple accusations have been entirely unreliable. I know this to be the case with regard to many aspects of my own teaching. Why should I drop everything and condemn my friends simply because they have been accused by the same unreliable people?”
All of Grace
“I believe that the law is not found in one part of the Bible and the gospel in another. The whole thing is law and the whole thing is gospel. So I reject a law/gospel hermeneutic, but I do not reject a law/gospel application in the lives of men by the Holy Spirit. For a man in rebellion, everything about the Bible convicts, including the gospel. The message of the cross is the stench of death to those who are perishing. For a man forgiven, the whole thing is good news—even the preamble of the Ten Commandments is a promise of gospel. God is the one who brought us up out of the land of bondage.”
A Seven-Point Calvinist
“Some have interpreted the FV as thought it were some form of Arminianism or semi-Pelagianism. So early in the book [RINE], I set aside a chapter to demonstrate that I wish that the Synod of Dort had promulgated a couple extra points so I could believe them too.”
Red and Blue
“If I say that I believe in the Westminster Confession’s red use of the word election, but that I also believe that the Bible in various places uses election in the blue sense, I am not maintaining that blue is red. This is not redefinition; it is an additional definition.”