Mark Jones > Quotes

“Christ did not commit any sin during the whole course of his earthly life, though he faced many types of temptations (Heb. 4:15). He persevered sinlessly to the end and for that reason felt the full force of temptations—in a way which we who resist only for a time cannot feel them. The realities of Christ’s temptations are heightened because he never gave in to them during his whole life.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“We are living in an age, I believe, where preaching has fallen on hard times. There are many reasons for this, but one reason is that pastors have a limited vocabulary and ability to express God’s attributes to his people. As a result, they do not paint vivid pictures of God’s goodness, love, patience, wrath, and so forth, in order to move congregants to respond to these glorious truths. God is good. Fine! But how is God good? The preacher must creatively and convincingly unfold these perfections so Christians can understand, love, and believe God’s goodness to them.”
― Mark Jones, God Is: A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God

“Discussions and writings on holiness often lack a strong Christological basis and center. Without a robust affirmation of the holiness of Christ, and all that that means, calls to holiness, however stirring they may be, will inevitably devolve into a form of man-centered pietism.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“Romans 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“Antinomianism was the lifelong bogeyman of Richard Baxter (1615–91). He believed that he was called by God to deliver the Reformed world, not only from the practical antinomianism (i.e., “loose living”) that he witnessed in different contexts, but also from the theological antinomianism that was finding its way into pulpits and books. While I have great admiration and respect for Baxter’s ministry, his case is somewhat ironic. His view of justification slipped in a “neonomian” direction.2 It is useless to combat one error with another; the example of Baxter shows that critiquing a system of theology exposes the polemicist to the real temptation of going too far in the opposite direction.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“imputation”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“entrance”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“those who belong to Christ are as dependent upon the Spirit for their holiness as they are dependent upon air to breathe.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“But often there is such an overreaction to “moralizing sermons” that preachers fail to give appropriate, soul-searching application in the form of commands. Direct and specific application is something that Paul does not omit in his letters. For example, he reminds the Thessalonians to love one another and then urges them “to do this more and more” (1 Thess. 4:10). Try harder? Yes. Do more? Yes. For Paul, the law functioned as a means of sanctification. But the antinomians utterly rejected the view that the law could function as an instrument of sanctification.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“THE LAW “THE THIRD, AND PRINCIPAL USE, WHICH PERTAINS MORE CLOSELY TO THE PROPER USE OF THE LAW, FINDS ITS PLACE AMONG BELIEVERS IN WHOSE HEARTS THE SPIRIT OF GOD ALREADY LIVES AND REIGNS.” —JOHN CALVIN78”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“Minimizing this sin (how can eating fruit be wrong?), blaming God (how cruel of God to put temptation before Adam), or renaming this sin as grace (how exciting sin has made life) pervade our age.”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“We have been constituted in such a way that we need to be given specific commands by ministers of God’s Word. To leave off the preaching of commands, as many do today, is to neglect an instrument that God has appointed for the sanctification of his church. We must not be wiser than God!”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“Christ the person atoned for sin because the atonement needed to be infinite in value.”
― Mark Jones, God Is: A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God

“God’s ‘chief end was not to bring Christ into the world for us, but us for Christ…and God contrived all things that do fall out, and even redemption itself, for the setting forth of Christ’s glory, more than our salvation.”
― Mark Jones, A Christian's Pocket Guide to Jesus Christ

“I myself, as old and as learned as I am, recite the commandments daily word for word like a child.”14”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“Charnock warns us, “Pride is a preparation for judgment; the higher the tower aspires, the fitter tinder it is for lightning; the bigger anything swells, the nearer it is to bursting; the prouder any man is, the plainer butt he is for an arrow of God’s wrath.”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.”
― Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans

“Luther’s objection to the antinomian preachers of his day, who were “fine Easter preachers but disgraceful Pentecost preachers, for they taught only redemption through Christ and not the sanctification through the Holy Spirit.”16”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“While the errors of perfectionism have been and always will be a threat to true Christian religion, the opposite error of practical antinomianism, whereby preachers fail to exhort their people to obey God with a pure heart, is equally pernicious because such a view undermines the grace of God in saving sinners from the power of sin.”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?

“A truly Christian life will seek to be thoroughly Trinitarian in its theology and piety.”
― Mark Jones, God Is: A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God

“This is a mistake, and the mistake in this leads you into all the rest; though faith (which we call the condition on our part) be the gift of God, and the power of Believing be derived from God; yet the act of believing is properly our act . . . else it would follow, when we act any grace, as Faith, Repentance, or Obedience, that God believes, repents, and obeys in us, and it is not we, but God that does all of these.74”
― Mark Jones, Antinomianism: Reformed Theology's Unwelcome Guest?