John Murray > Quotes

“With all these considerations in view, the order in the application of redemption is found to be, calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. When this order is carefully weighed we find that there is a logic which evinces and brings into clear focus the governing principle of salvation in all of its aspects, the grace of God in its sovereignty and efficacy. Salvation is of the Lord in its application as well as in its conception and accomplishment.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“The glory of the cross is bound up with the effectiveness of its accomplishment.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“The foundations of all equity are destroyed when truth has fallen.”
― John Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics

“It has been charged that this doctrine represents the Son as winning over the incensed Father to clemency and love, a supposition wholly inconsistent with the fact that the love of God is the very fount from which the atonement springs.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose. The scripture doctrine of perseverance has no affinity with the quietism and antinomianism which are so prevalent in evangelical circles.”
― John Murray

“It is one thing to say that the wrathful God is made loving. That would be entirely false. It is another thing to say the wrathful God is loving. That is profoundly true. But it is also true that the wrath by which he is wrathful is propitiated through the cross. This propitiation is the fruit of the divine love that provided it.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Savior, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin which remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Regeneration is at the basis of all change in heart and life. It is a stupendous change because it is God’s recreative act. A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“What is offered to men in the gospel? It is not the possibility of salvation, not simply the opportunity of salvation. What is offered is salvation. To be more specific, it is Christ himself in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work who is offered. And he is offered as the one who made expiation for sin and wrought redemption. But he could not be offered in this capacity or character if he had not secured salvation and accomplished redemption.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“According to Romish theology, all past sins both as respects their eternal and temporal punishment are blotted out in baptism and also the eternal punishment of the future sins of the faithful. But for the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or in purgatory. In opposition to every such notion of human satisfaction Protestants rightly contend that the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Sacrifice views the atonement from the perspective of guilt, propitiation from that of wrath, reconciliation from that of alienation. Redemption has in view the bondage to which sin has consigned us, and it views the work of Christ not simply as deliverance from bondage but in terms of ransom.”
― John Murray, The Atonement

“The cause neither of truth nor of love is promoted by suppressing warranted criticism.”
― John Murray

“Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to reedem to himself a people. We have the same result when we properly analyse the meaning of expiation, propitiation, and reconciliation. Christ did not come to make sins expiable. He came to expiate sins — “when he made purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). Christ did not come to make God reconcilable. He reconciled us to God by his own blood.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“The Finality. In historical polemics this feature of the atonement has been urged against the Romish doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. This polemic against Romish blasphemy is just as necessary today as it was in the Reformation period. The atonement is a completed work, never repeated and unrepeatable. In our modern context, however, it is necessary to insist upon this tenet not only in opposition to Rome but also in opposition to a viewpoint prevalent within Protestant circles.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“A. Salvation requires not only the forgiveness of sin but also justification. And justification, adequate to the situation in which lost mankind is, demands a righteousness such as belongs to no other than the incarnate Son of God, a righteousness undefiled and undefilable, a righteousness with divine property and quality (cf. Rom 1:17; 3:21-22; 10:3; 2Co 5:21; Phi 3:9). It is the righteousness of the obedience of Christ (Rom 5:19).”
― John Murray, The Atonement

“Just as sacrifice is directed to the need created by our guilt, propitiation to the need that arises from the wrath of God, and reconciliation to the need arising from our alienation from God, so redemption is directed to the bondage to which our sin has consigned us.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“But to approximate chastisement to satisfaction for sin is to impinge not only on the perfection of Christ’s work but also upon the nature of Christ’s satisfaction. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). There must not be any abatement of the Protestant polemic against this perversion of the gospel of Christ. If we once allow the notion of human satisfaction to intrude itself in our construction of justification or sanctification then we have polluted the river the streams whereof make glad the city of God. And the gravest perversion that it entails is that it robs the Redeemer of the glory of his once-for-all accomplishment. He by himself purged our sins and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high (cf. Heb. 1:3).”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“God’s grace reaches down to the lowest depths of our need and meets all the exigencies of the moral and spiritual impossiblity which inheres in our depravity and inability. And that grace is the grace of regeneration.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“As one has aptly and truly stated the case, it is not faith that saves but faith in Jesus Christ; strictly speaking, it is not even faith in Christ that saves but Christ that saves through faith. Faith unites us to Christ in the bonds of abiding attachment and entrustment and it is this union which insures that the saving power, grace, and virtue of the Savior become operative in the believer. The specific character of faith is that it looks away from itself and finds its whole interest and object in Christ. He is the absorbing preoccupation of faith.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Those who will be saved were not even contemplated by the Father in the ultimate counsel of his predestinating love apart from union with Christ–they were chosen in Christ.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“Apart from regeneration our thought of God, of ourselves, of sin, and of righteousness is radically perverted. Regeneration changes our hearts and minds; it radically renews them. Hence there is a radical change in our thinking and feeling. Old things have passed away and all things have become new. It is very important to observe that the faith which is unto salvation is the faith which is accompanied by that change of thought and attitude.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“If we are to appreciate that which is central in the gospel, if the jubilee trumpet is to find its echo again in our hearts, our thinking must be revolutionized by the realism of the wrath of God, of the reality and gravity of our guilt, and of the divine condemnation. It is then and only then that our thinking and feeling will be rehabilitated to an understanding of God’s grace in the justification of the ungodly.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“The love of God from which the atonement springs is not a distinctionless love; it is a love that elects and predestinates.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“The simple truth is that if law is conceived of as contributing in the least degree towards our acceptance with God and our justification by him, then the gospel of grace is a nullity.”
― John Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics

“The very nature of Christ’s mission and accomplishment is involved in this question. Did Christ come to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people? Did he come to put all men in a salvable state? Or did he come to secure the salvation of all those who are ordained to eternal life? Did he come to make men redeemable? Or did he come effectually and infallibly to redeem? The doctrine of the atonement must be radically revised if, as atonement, it applies to those who finally perish as well as to those who are the heirs of eternal life. In that event we should have to dilute the grand categories in terms of which the Scripture defines the atonement and deprive them of their most precious import and glory.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

“It has often been stated, therefore, that the Cross of Christ, insofar as it contemplated reconciliation, did not terminate upon God to the removal of His alienation from us but simply and solely upon us to the removal of our alienation from Him. In other words, it is not that which God has against us that is dealt with in the reconciliation but only our enmity against Him.”
― John Murray, The Atonement

“It should be understood that it was not necessary for God to redeem men. The purpose to redeem is of the free and sovereign exercise of His love.”
― John Murray, The Atonement

“Our definition of atonement must be derived from the atonement of which Scripture speaks. And the atonement of which Scripture speaks is the vicarious obedience, expiation, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption performed by the Lord of glory when, once for all, he purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.”
― John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied