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The following 10 quotes are from A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Crossway, 2016) [review].


“Trusting God’s Word glorifies God. Why is that true? It is true because trusting a person calls attention to the person’s trustworthiness. . . . [And] only warranted trust glorifies the one trusted.” (14) 

“God magnifies his greatness by making himself the supreme treasure of our hearts, even at great cost to himself (Rom. 8:32), and so serving us in the very act of exalting his glory.” (17) 

“For me, the glory of God and the Word of God are inseparable. I have no sure sight of God’s glory except through his Word. The Word mediates the glory, and the glory confirms the Word.” (36)

“Jesus helps us see here why the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture matters. It’s not merely because we want to assert that documents don’t err but, more importantly, so that we don’t err. In preserving the Bible from error, God is loving us. The Scriptures are meant to protect people. Truth leads to freedom (John 8:32), and error leads to bondage (2 Tim. 2:25–26). Truth saves (2 Thess. 2:10); error destroys (2 Thess. 2:11). Truth enlightens (Ps. 43:3; Eph. 5:9); error deceives (Prov. 12:17; 2 Cor. 11:13). Truth gives life (1 John 5:20); error brings death (2 Sam. 6:7). Therefore, God is concerned not only for his own glory in being a God of truth (Rom. 3:7); he is concerned also for us when he guards his word from error.” (104)

“The Devil knows that the Bible is God’s Word. He saw him do it. But this knowledge does him no good. Why? Because it is a knowledge based on external awareness of God’s involvement (like reading a signature), not on the internal sight of the self-authenticating beauty of God in the meaning of the Scriptures. The glory of God is not like a signature on the painting of Scripture. It is not like a lantern hung in the window of the right house telling us where to enter. The glory of God is not an add-on to the meaning of Scripture. It is in the meaning.” (157)

“Two things came together for Calvin to give him a saving knowledge of God: Scripture itself and the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Neither alone suffices to save. But how does this actually work? What does the Spirit do? The answer is not that the Spirit gives us added revelation to what is in Scripture, but that he awakens us, as from the dead, to see and taste the divine reality of God in Scripture, which authenticates it as God’s own Word. [Calvin] says, ‘Our heavenly Father, revealing his majesty [in Scripture], lifts reverence for Scripture beyond the realm of controversy.’ There’s the key for Calvin: the witness of God to Scripture is the immediate, unassailable, life-giving revelation to the mind of the majesty of God manifest in the Scriptures themselves.” (186)

“I am created to magnify the glory of God—not the way a microscope magnifies (making small things look bigger than they are), but the way a telescope magnifies (making things that appear small to the world look as gigantic as they really are).” (203) 

“More specifically, [the Scriptures] uniformly reveal a God who aims at the praise of his glory in all that he does. In nature, history, and Scripture, God magnifies the supremacy of his glory. This is not the work of an egomaniac, because the human soul is created to find its deepest pleasures by seeing and savoring the God of glory as the soul’s highest treasure. God’s self-exaltation is an act of love for people whose joy is in God’s greatness. We were created for this.” (229) 

“Where the human will enjoys and pursues self-exaltation rather than God-exaltation, the true Jesus will not be attractive or recognized for who he really is. The glory will be invisible. And his miracles will, therefore, be misunderstood. The human heart must be brought into harmony with the will of God in order for God’s design for Jesus’s miracles to be seen. Their peculiar glory was not power in the service of self-exaltation but power in the service of God-exaltation and self-denying service of human liberation. Jesus would use this power to relieve the suffering of others, but not his own. Anyone who did not share this disposition would not see the glory. And therefore, their excitement about his miracles was not saving belief.” (243)

“The whole Bible, properly understood, has this divine purpose and effect: to communicate or display the glory of God. And this pervasive aim of the Scriptures to glorify God, in what they teach and how they teach it, reveals the handiwork of God in the writing of the Bible.” (284)


Previously in the “20 Quotes” series: Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ (Crossway, 2016); Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop’s The Compelling Community (Crossway, 2015); Russell Moore’s Onward (B&H, 2015); Rosaria Butterfield’s Openness Unhindered (Crown & Covenant, 2015); Tim Keller’s Preaching (Viking, 2015); Tim Keller’s Prayer (Dutton, 2014); Kevin DeYoung’s Taking God at His Word (Crossway, 2014).

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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