Home > Author > John Murray

John Murray QUOTES

John Murray QUOTES

1 " The glory of the cross is bound up with the effectiveness of its accomplishment. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

2 " Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose. The scripture doctrine of perseverance has no affinity with the quietism and antinomianism which are so prevalent in evangelical circles. "

― John Murray

3 " With all these considerations in view, the order in the application of redemption is found to be, calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. When this order is carefully weighed we find that there is a logic which evinces and brings into clear focus the governing principle of salvation in all of its aspects, the grace of God in its sovereignty and efficacy. Salvation is of the Lord in its application as well as in its conception and accomplishment. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

4 " It has been charged that this doctrine represents the Son as winning over the incensed Father to clemency and love, a supposition wholly inconsistent with the fact that the love of God is the very fount from which the atonement springs. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

5 " The foundations of all equity are destroyed when truth has fallen. "

― John Murray , Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics

6 " Sacrifice views the atonement from the perspective of guilt, propitiation from that of wrath, reconciliation from that of alienation. Redemption has in view the bondage to which sin has consigned us, and it views the work of Christ not simply as deliverance from bondage but in terms of ransom. "

― John Murray , The Atonement

7 " According to Romish theology, all past sins both as respects their eternal and temporal punishment are blotted out in baptism and also the eternal punishment of the future sins of the faithful. But for the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or in purgatory. In opposition to every such notion of human satisfaction Protestants rightly contend that the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

8 " The cause neither of truth nor of love is promoted by suppressing warranted criticism. "

― John Murray

9 " Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to reedem to himself a people. We have the same result when we properly analyse the meaning of expiation, propitiation, and reconciliation. Christ did not come to make sins expiable. He came to expiate sins — “when he made purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). Christ did not come to make God reconcilable. He reconciled us to God by his own blood. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

10 " It should be understood that it was not necessary for God to redeem men. The purpose to redeem is of the free and sovereign exercise of His love. "

― John Murray , The Atonement

11 " When the Scripture relates redemption to the law of God, the terms it uses are to be carefully marked. It does not say we are redeemed from the law. That would not be an accurate description and the Scripture refrains from such an expression. We are not redeemed from the obligation to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves.

The law is comprehended in these two commandments (Matt. 22:40) and love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:10)... It would contradict the very nature of God to think that any person can ever be relieved of the necessity to love God with the whole heart and to obey his commandments.

When Scripture relates redemption to the law of God it uses terms that are more specific. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

12 " Why did God become man? Why, having become man, did he die? Why, having died, did he die the accursed death of the cross? This is the question of the necessity of the atonement. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

13 " A. Salvation requires not only the forgiveness of sin but also justification. And justification, adequate to the situation in which lost mankind is, demands a righteousness such as belongs to no other than the incarnate Son of God, a righteousness undefiled and undefilable, a righteousness with divine property and quality (cf. Rom 1:17; 3:21-22; 10:3; 2Co 5:21; Phi 3:9). It is the righteousness of the obedience of Christ (Rom 5:19). "

― John Murray , The Atonement

14 " Regeneration is at the basis of all change in heart and life. It is a stupendous change because it is God’s recreative act. A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

15 " It has often been stated, therefore, that the Cross of Christ, insofar as it contemplated reconciliation, did not terminate upon God to the removal of His alienation from us but simply and solely upon us to the removal of our alienation from Him. In other words, it is not that which God has against us that is dealt with in the reconciliation but only our enmity against Him. "

― John Murray , The Atonement

16 " But justification does not refer to this renewing and sanctifying grace of God. It is one of the primary errors of the Romish Church that it regards justification as the infusion of grace, as renewal and sanctification whereby we are made holy. And the seriousness of the Romish error is not so much that it has confused justification and renewal but that it has confused these two distinct acts of God’s grace and eliminated from the message of the gospel the great truth of free and full justification by grace. That is why Luther endured such travail of soul as long as he was governed by Romish distortion, and the reason why he came to enjoy such exultant joy and confident assurance was that he had been emancipated from the chains by which Rome had bound him; he found the great truth that justification is something entirely different from what Rome had taught. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

17 " The love of God from which the atonement springs is not a distinctionless love; it is a love that elects and predestinates. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

18 " Just as sacrifice is directed to the need created by our guilt, propitiation to the need that arises from the wrath of God, and reconciliation to the need arising from our alienation from God, so redemption is directed to the bondage to which our sin has consigned us. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

19 " This means that to him, as the great sacrifice offered without spot to God, were transferred the sins and liabilities of those on whose behalf he offered himself as a sacrifice. By reason of this imputation he suffered and died, just for unjust, that he might bring us nigh to God. By one sacrifice he hath perfected forever all them that are sanctified. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied

20 " No treatment of the atonement can be properly oriented that does not trace its source to the free and sovereign love of God. "

― John Murray , Redemption Accomplished and Applied