Newman: holding up Christ

Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Meditation:
    Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
    —Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    The fashion of the day has been ... to attempt to convert by insisting on conversion; to exhort men to be converted; to tell them to be sure they look at Christ, instead of simply holding up Christ to them; to tell them to have faith, rather than to supply its Object; to lead them to ... work up their minds, instead of impressing upon them the thought of Him who can savingly work in them; to bid them to be sure their faith is justifying, not dead, formal, self-righteous, and merely moral, instead of delineating Him whose image, fully delineated, destroys deadness, formality, self-righteousness; to rely on words, vehemence, eloquence, and the like, rather than to aim at conveying the one great idea, whether in words or not.
    ... John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892, p. 325-326 (see the book)
    See also Heb. 12:1-2; John 6:40; 9:32-38; Rom. 10:9-11; 1 Cor. 12:3; Heb. 4:14; 1 John 1:1-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, the sight of You cures all my infirmities. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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