Inspirational Quotes by Sinclair B. Ferguson
“Give yourself-not just your time-to prayer. Remember that prayer is not an appendix to your life and your work, it is your life your real, spiritual life-and your work. Prayer is the thermometer of your soul.”
“So the question we need to ask today is this: if the teaching in our church was limited to the songs that we sing, how well taught would we be? How well would we know God? We should make it our aim not only to preach the whole counsel of God but to sing it, as well.”
“The question isn’t, Do you have a voice? The question is, Do you have a song? If you’ve turned from your sins and trusted in the finished work of Christ, if you’re forgiven and reconciled to God, then you have a song. It’s a song of the redeemed, of those who have been rescued from the righteous wrath of God through the cross of Jesus Christ and are now called his friends. Once we were not a people, but now we are the people of God, and our singing together, every voice contributing, is one way we express that truth.”
“(2) Singing can help us engage emotionally with words, which means that we need a broader emotional range in the songs we sing, and that singing them should be an emotional event.”
“By nature, since the entrance of sin, no man has any communion with God. He is light, we darkness; and what communion has light with darkness? He is life, we are dead—he is love, and we are enmity; and what agreement can there be between us?”
“The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the Word. From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride; with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died. Samuel J. Stone (1839–1900)”
“the church is not an accidental and arbitrary aggregate of individuals that can just as easily be smaller or larger, but forms with him an organic whole that is included in him as the second Adam, just as the whole of humankind arises from the first Adam. The application of salvation must therefore extend just as far as its acquisition.130 All those connected to him are part of a new humanity, they belong to a new age, they have been saved for a new world: “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). How true. In saving people, Christ came to save humankind—Jew and Gentile united to form one new man (Eph. 2:15). As B. B. Warfield writes, Thus the human race of man attains the goal for which it was created, and sin does not snatch it out of God’s hands: the primal purpose of God with it is fulfilled; and through Christ the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny.”
“But since our sluggish minds rest far beneath the height of divine providence, we must have recourse to a distinction which may assist them in rising. I say then, that though all things are ordered by the counsel and certain arrangement of God, to us, however, they are fortuitous,—not because we imagine that fortune rules the world and mankind, and turns all things upside down at random, (far be such a heartless thought from every Christian breast); but as the order, method, end, and necessity of events, are, for the most part, hidden in the counsel of God, though it is certain that they are produced by the will of God, they have the appearance of being fortuitous, such being the form under which they present themselves to us, whether considered in their own nature, or estimated according to our knowledge and judgment.”
“While he, the immortal One, would not be overcome by death, he would die for the eternal life of us mortals.”
“in the meantime praying the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has, of the riches of his grace, recovered us from a state of enmity into a condition of communion and fellowship with himself, that both he that writes, and they that read the words of his mercy, may have such a taste of his sweetness and excellencies therein, as to be stirred up to a farther longing after the fulness of his salvation, and the eternal fruition of him in glory.”
“And truly, for sinners to have fellowship with God, the infinitely holy God, is an astonishing dispensation.9”
“Herein he gives us holy communion with himself. The soul knows his voice when he speaks, Nec hominem sonat.4 There is something too great in it to be the effect of a created power. When the Lord Jesus Christ at one word stilled the raging of the sea and wind, all that were with him knew there was divine power at hand (Matt. 8:25–27). And when the Holy Ghost by one word stills the tumults and storms that are raised in the soul, giving it an immediate calm and security, it knows his divine power, and rejoices in his presence.”
“As a means of retaining communion with God, whereby we sweetly ease our hearts in the bosom of the Father, and receive in refreshing tastes of his love. The soul is never more raised with the love of God than when by the Spirit taken into intimate communion with him in the discharge of this duty; and therein it belongs to the Spirit of consolation, to the Spirit promised as a comforter.”
“What is essential for a valid offer of salvation? Here is the answer of Roger Nicole: “Simply this: that if the terms of the offer be observed, that which is offered be actually granted. In connection with the gospel offer, the terms are that a person should repent and believe. Whenever that occurs, salvation is actually conferred.”27 An offer is valid if the one who offers always and without fail gives what is offered to everyone who meets the terms of the offer. This God does without fail. No one ever believed on Jesus and then perished (John 3:16).”
“Hence as to future time, because the issue of all things is hidden from us, each ought so to apply himself to his office, as though nothing were determined about any part. Or, to speak more properly, he ought so to hope for the success that issues from the command of God in all things, as to reconcile in himself the contingency of unknown things and the certain providence of God.19”
“Christ, as the Great Priest, acts as Representative, Substitute, Instructor, Guardian, and Intercessor of his people, not only paying for their sins but securing everything necessary, including the work of the Spirit, to apply his work to them and to bring them to their eternal rest. Ultimately what is at stake in the debate over the extent of the atonement is a Savior who saves, a cross that effectively accomplishes and secures all the gracious promises of the new covenant, and a redemption that does not fail.”
“Sanctification in any area of our lives always expresses this double dimension—a putting off and a putting on, as it were. Speech and silence, appropriately expressed, are together the mark of the mature.3”
“A fool’s tongue,” Bruce Waltke wryly notes, “is long enough to cut his own throat.”4”
“When the Bible uses the term heart, it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situations and relationships outside of you. This passage teaches that your experiences influence, but do not determine, your behavior. Your behavior is shaped and caused by how your heart reacts to and interacts with the situations and relationships that are outside of you.”
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Sinclair Ferguson is a Scottish theologian known in Reformed Christian circles for his teaching, writing, and editorial work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen and was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1971 to 2005, when he transferred to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, serving as the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina. He has served as an editor with the Banner of Truth Trust, worked as a minister at St George's-Tron Church, Glasgow, and a Council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson is the Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. He is also a Professor of Systematic Theology at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, prior to which he held the Charles Krahe Chair for Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is also a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson speaks at numerous conferences worldwide, and has written many books.