Just as the normative standard for the good and for the true is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God.

The moment we think we deserve mercy a little alarm bell should go off in our head because we are not talking about mercy anymore but justice.

It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man—a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.

Here then is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.

Natural man’s sin is precisely this: He wants the benefits of God without God Himself.

The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.

God is the foundation of all authority, He exercises that foundation because He is the author and the owner of His creation. He is the foundation upon which all other authority stands or falls.