Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. > Quotes

“Here then are the choices we all face moment by moment: Will we aim to be impressive? Will we expect to be in complete control? Will we ensure that we always come out on top as winners? Or will we be happy for the power of Christ to rest upon us in our endless weakness? 'No man can give at once the impressions that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.' Neither can any church.”
― Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“In his powerful essay 2 Contents, 2 Realities, Francis Schaeffer proposes four things that should mark a gospel-created church: sound doctrine, honest answers to honest questions, true spirituality, and the beauty of human relationships.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“The Lord’s second insight goes deeper than the obvious. Indeed, it is amazing. Jesus read the perhaps ambiguous word “become” in “they shall become one flesh,” and he saw something there that we might never have thought of. Behind the word “become” Jesus sees a personal power at work. He sees no one less than God: “What therefore God has joined together . . .” (v. 6). A husband and wife, when they marry, do not become one flesh by their own wills or by the pastor’s pronouncement or by some mysterious process. God joins them together (Mal. 2:14–15).”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“In response to the good news of all that Jesus has done, I hurl myself at him as my only hope.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“It is not as though marriage is just one theme among others in the Bible. Instead, marriage is the wraparound concept for the entire Bible, within which the other themes find their places. And if the Bible is telling a story of married”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The need of our times is nothing less than the re-Christianization of our churches, according to the gospel alone, in both doctrine and culture, by Christ himself”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“So when a woman is married to a lovingly Christlike man who cherishes her, she feels warmth in her heart at being valued by her husband and held dear above all others, second only to Christ himself. Her husband doesn’t compare her with others or find fault with her or treat her as a loser he is stuck with. That would break her heart. Instead, her husband delights in her and prizes her, and she feels it deep inside with a heartwarming glow. That is cherishing one’s wife.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“But no one is static. No one is not responding to the gospel. Everyone is moving further along one path or the other.”
― Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“A church can offer living and palpable proof that the gospel makes a real difference for real people living in the real world.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“Human marriage has always been intended by God to serve as a prophetic whisper of the eternal marriage. Every real marriage in the world today manages that statement to some degree, however weakly, because that is what marriage is. Very few realities in our lives bear such a sacred meaning and deserve such special consideration.”
― Ray Ortlund

“But if we humbly bend to the sorrows and buffetings of this life, trusting God, we will be surprised to discover beauty where God has hidden it—not in our fantasies but in his realities. God’s”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“When the doctrine is clear and the culture is beautiful, that church will be powerful. But there are no shortcuts to getting there. Without the doctrine, the culture will be weak. Without the culture, the doctrine will seem pointless.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“Authentic Christianity is not increasing levels of commitment grudgingly given to God; it is surrender to Jesus out of a sense of privilege in having him.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Supernatural Living for Natural People

“Therefore, a loving Christian husband cares so deeply about his wife that he makes sure that her life is moving in a desirable direction, even as Christ nourishes us all.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Churches don’t make the gospel true. It is true even when the household of God behaves badly. But people can see that it is true, and doubters are converted when “the sweetness of the Lord” is upon us (Ps. 90:17, JB).”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“Even so, a man’s wife will not be ideal in every way. But she is still his wife, one flesh with him, wonderfully bound to him as a dear part of his very self. How could he neglect or despise her, even in her imperfections? No, he will care for her all the more, nourishing and cherishing her toward her destined glory. After all, every one of us gives the Lord plenty of reasons to give up and walk away. But his heart finds in our very offenses only more reasons to stay tenderly involved with us, all the way to our eternal magnificence.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“If God has drawn you to himself, then he has put you ‘in Christ Jesus’.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Supernatural Living for Natural People

“Reformation is the recovery of biblical truth in its redemptive claim on the whole of life. Revival is the renewal of human flourishing by the Holy Spirit according to the gospel. Marriage is one of the primary flashpoints of controversy where we most need both reformation and revival in our times.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The first claim of the Bible, then, setting the stage for marriage, is that manhood and womanhood are not our own cultural constructs. Human concepts are too small and artificial a context for the glory of our sexuality. Manhood and womanhood find their true meaning in the context of nothing less than the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, the universe, the entire creation. That is the first claim of the biblical love story.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.” But she is not using her strengths and abilities to compete with her husband. She is not driven by an identity crisis or treating her marriage as a matter of sexual politics. She is too mature for that. She is giving herself away to her husband, her family, and her community with wholehearted selflessness. A woman of this quality is rare: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“We do not need more frightening punishments and more withering scoldings. We need the all-sufficiency of Jesus applied in rich measure to our deepest points of personal need.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Supernatural Living for Natural People

“One way to neutralize the impact of a faithful church is to allow a spirit of improper self-doubt. Charles Haddon Spurgeon says: 'Oh, 'tis terribly and solemnly true, that of all sinners, some sanctuary sinners are the worst. Those who can dive deepest into sin, and have the most quiet consciences and hardest hearts, are some who are to be found in God's house.' When such people stir up controversy within a church, some well-meaning person often complicates the difficulty by saying, 'But in every conflict, there is always wrong on both sides.' Really? In many conflicts, yes. But in every conflict? That is not what the Bible says.”
― Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

“But it can be extremely painful to learn the fear of the Lord. It is death to our narcissistic egos and self-assured opinions and superior neutrality. But we do not change for the better by turning inward. We change as we turn outward and upward to the Lord with an awakened sense of his sheer reality, his moral beauty, his eternal grandeur, infinitely above us but relevant to us.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Proverbs: Wisdom That Works

“Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation. Its design never was our own made-up arrangement of infinite malleability. It was given to us, at the beginning of all things, as a brightly shining fixity of eternal significance. We might not always live up to its true grandeur. None of us does so perfectly. But we have no right to redefine it, and we have every reason to revere it.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The confinement she feels is spreading, becoming intolerable, because in a hostile mind limitations grow to a maddening degree. Moreover, God had strongly warned, “You shall surely die.” But the woman now softens it to “. . . lest you die.” Now that her view of the consequences is less alarming, Satan springs on that very point:”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The only arrangement for sex and marriage that has any chance of working today is that which moves toward restoring our Edenic origins. If we modern Western egalitarians can hold our emotional horses long enough to imagine how a woman might be dignified by helping a worthy man who loves her sacrificially, as both the man and the woman humbly pursue the glory of God together, the profile of man and woman that blessed us in Eden will start looking more plausible as an approach to human happiness today. On”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“(Prov. 31:10–11) This woman is a role model. She is a high-capacity woman, very capable as “a helper fit for him.” In fact, the phrase “an excellent wife” in verse 10 can be translated more literally “a woman of strength.” The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, even renders the phrase as “a manly woman.” This iconic woman is strong. How so? This poem goes on to say that she works hard, she makes money, she is kind to the poor, she is fearless about the future, she enhances her husband’s reputation, she speaks with wisdom, plus more. Verse 17 sums it up: “She”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“if we strive to re-create reality more to our liking, we will trend not toward freedom and hope but toward disgusting and impious degradations, and there is no depth to which we will not fall even further. But”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“In this letter, I want to paint the picture of that new brotherhood. I’m not talking about “accountability,” as some men practice it. Accountability can be coercive, bossy, impatient, shaming, and clumsy. I hate that. Neither am I talking about any formulaic method for improving ourselves and saving the world. Real progress is not simple or automatic. What helps one guy might not help another guy. But Jesus offers wisdom from God to empower all men, whoever they are. In other words, “Help and change follow a path, not a script.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility

“If you are married, even if your marriage in some ways disappoints you, still, God was the one who joined you two together. Your imperfect marriage in the world of today is as sacred in the sight of God as was the perfect marriage between Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Your marriage is a grace from above. Your marriage is a miracle. Your marriage came to you with the touch of God upon it, and it remains dear to him. Your marriage has the potential, by his grace, to bring redemption into the broken world we all live in now. Your imperfect marriage is, therefore, worth celebrating. Jesus thought so.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel