Quotes by Michael Lawrence
Michael Lawrence (b. 1966) — Pastor, Theologe und Autor · reformiert-baptistisch · USA
Michael Lawrence (* 1966) ist ein US-amerikanischer reformiert-baptistischer Theologe und Pastor, der nach langjährigem Dienst in Washington, D.C., seit 2010 die Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, leitet. Er steht in Verbindung mit Netzwerken wie The Gospel Coalition und 9Marks für das Anliegen, akademisch fundierte biblische Theologie für die praktische Gemeindearbeit und Seelsorge nutzbar zu machen. Für Bibelleser bietet er Orientierung darin, die gesamte Heilige Schrift als zusammenhängende, auf Jesus Christus ausgerichtete Heilsgeschichte zu verstehen.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Grace & Redemption, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Love, Guilt & Forgiveness, Meaning & Identity, Growth & Character, Humility & Pride, The Bible & the Word of God
Quotes by Michael Lawrence
There was never a time when God was not expressing love toward another and receiving love from another. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father. Love is bound up in the very nature of the Trinity. God cannot be God without love, because God is love.
Michael Lawrence
God’s love in Christ is wider than the breach your sin has made with God; it is long enough to reach back into your past and forward into an eternal future; it is high enough to bring you to God; and it is so deep, it will never run dry (see Eph. 3:18). In Christ, God loves sinners.
Michael Lawrence
Do I love the world the way God loves the world, or do I love the world the way the world wants to be loved?
Michael Lawrence
The perfection of God’s love for us isn’t measured by how well He’s managing our agenda for life. No, the perfection of God’s love for us is seen in the goal He’s set for our life, and that goal is nothing less than likeness to the Son He loves.
Michael Lawrence
Though it was His human nature that suffered the pains of physical death, it was His divine nature that gave His suffering its infinite value and dignity, so making it effective as a ransom for many.
Michael Lawrence
God’s saving electing love is not only not merited, we’ve earned just the opposite – God’s wrath.
Michael Lawrence
As readers of words, and particularly as readers of God’s Word, our obligation – and privilege – is to read in such a way as to recover and understand the meaning the Author wanted to communicate.
Michael Lawrence
Marriage matters…because God created it, not society, and therefore God as God alone defines it. It matters because it’s a picture of God’s gospel love, hard-wired into creation. Change or redefine marriage, and you’ve gone a long way toward defacing and obscuring one of the most significant common-grace pointers to the love of God in Christ.
Michael Lawrence
God is wrathful toward sin, but Scripture never says God is wrath, because His wrath has reference to something outside of Him – our sin. There was a time in eternity past when God’s wrath had no expression. But there has never been a time when God was not love.
Michael Lawrence
God’s people across the covenants are to be known by their holiness, being set apart for God. In the Old Testament this was particularly marked by their distinct ethnicity, their distinct dress, and their distinct food. Under the covenant of the New Testament, however, holiness is not marked off by the food we eat, but by the lives we live in distinction from the world around us.
Michael Lawrence
One of the lessons I’ve learned and re-learned in more than one church is the danger of selecting a man to serve as elder who has a history of protracted, repeated, and/or unresolved conflict. On more than one occasion I have overlooked conflict in a man’s life, reasoning either that it was justified by the circumstances, a function of immaturity that has been outgrown, or foisted upon him as the innocent party. The fact is, however, that even when circumstances or theology vindicate his side of the conflict, a man can still be a quarrelsome man. This may demonstrate itself in a lack of gentleness, a propensity to taking rigid positions when none are required, an inability to lose graciously, or simply an over-love of debate. Whatever the form it takes, quarrelsomeness is a serious impediment to effective service as an elder; unchecked it is a clear disqualification (1 Tim. 3:3).
Michael Lawrence
Penal substitution does not turn God into a cosmic child abuser. It does not reduce Christ to the passive victim of some divine injustice. It does not pit the Trinity against itself. No, in the God-forsakenness of Christ on the cross, the love of God and the justice of God are revealed on our behalf. United in purpose, Father and Son act in concert to save God’s people. The sinless Son of God bears our sin, and then God pours out the wrath that our sin deserves, and Jesus the Son endures it so that we, who deserve that wrath, might never encounter it. This is the gospel, the good news of the cross, and it calls us to forsake our sin, to turn away from it and embrace Christ, the forsaken one, so that we may not be forsaken.
Michael Lawrence
Covenants are not merely contracts or promises. Rather, covenants are relationships under authority, with both obligations and rewards. The terms and benefits of the relationship are spelled out, and so are the consequences if the relationship is broken. But what is perhaps most significant about biblical covenants is that when God enters into a covenant, He must condescend to initiate it, He sets the terms, He provides the benefits, and He executes the judgment when the covenant is broken.
Michael Lawrence
Even when circumstances or theology vindicate [one’s] side of the conflict, a man can still be a quarrelsome man. This may demonstrate itself in a lack of gentleness, a propensity to taking rigid positions when none are required, an inability to lose graciously, or simply an over-love of debate. Whatever the form it takes, quarrelsomeness is a serious impediment to effective service.
Michael Lawrence
The Bible is not just a collection of inspired books written by various prophets and apostles, but that it’s a single story, a coherent narrative of the redemptive acts of God. The single story has God as its author, its primary actor, and its center, and the climax of this story is the glory of God in salvation through judgment.
Michael Lawrence
This is what sin is all about. Sin is all about promising us satisfaction, but it never keeps its promises. It can’t, because we weren’t made to satisfy ourselves. No, all sin does is blind us to the truth… We were made to find our satisfaction in a loving relationship with God, but sin convinces us to spend our lives in a self-loving relationship with ourselves. The tragedy is that in the end it doesn’t even work. Sin leaves us bitter, empty, and filled with regret. Worst of all, it leaves us outside the love of God, the one thing that could have satisfied us. It leaves us exposed to His righteous anger that was provoked by our decision to love anything and everything except Him, the one and only who was worthy of our love.
Michael Lawrence
[Hell] is described as a second death, an unending death, a death of eternal conscious torment as finite creatures attempt for all eternity to pay an infinite debt against an infinite and holy God (Rev. 20:11-15).
Michael Lawrence
Suffering in this life is at least partly a warning to us, a foretaste of the eternal suffering we deserve outside of Christ.
Michael Lawrence
Sources: boundless.org, thegospelcoalition.org, scribd.com, inquirer.com
All quotes · lumen.bible