Salvation in Enemy Territory

“Sinners hate the idea of a clearly identifiable authority over them. They do not want to meet God. They would gladly make themselves believe that there is no clearly discernible, identifiable revelation of their Creator and Judge anywhere to be found in the universe. God’s work of redemption through Christ, therefore, comes into enemy territory. It comes to save from themselves those who do not want to be saved, because they think that they don not need to be saved.”

~ Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1969), 27.

Created to be Dependent

“The doctrine of creation confronts us with the reality that we are neither physically or spiritually self-sustaining. We were created to be dependent. Dependency is not therefore a sign a weakness. Rather it is a universal indicator of our humanity. Humans are dependent beings. Yet we do not like to be dependent. It is the legacy of our fallenness to do everything we can to conceptually and functionally repudiate the doctrine of human dependency.”

~ Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 23.

The Essence of Sin & the Essence of Salvation

“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties whcih belong to man alone.”

~ John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press, 1986), 160.

The Essence of the Fall & the Ancient Origins of Modern Secularism

“The essence of the fall of Eve and Adam—and all of us in Adam—is the supreme pleasure we have in being independent, and deciding for ourselves what is true and right and beautiful, rather than finding supreme pleasure in God as the fountain of all that is true and right and beautiful. The essence of the fall is preferring to be god rather than enjoy God.

So the modern secular world is very old. It puts on new clothes from century to century, and we call it by different names. Recently: modernism, existentialism, secular humanism, postmodernism. But there is a common root they all share: God is dethroned, and the next highest court of appeal for truth and right and beauty is man—little, finite, fallible, mortal man.”

~ John Piper, “Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil“