Hardin

“In Christ, God declares me to be ‘righteous, washed, pure and set apart for him’. And yet there is nothing in my experience to suggest that these things could be so in and of myself. If I live by my own estimate of my life, I act accordingly. Alternatively, I can surrender my life to the lordship of Jesus and live by God’s assessment of my life. So whose word will I live by? I am glad to live by God’s word and the blessed release that it brings, looking by faith to him for who I am, looking in love to my brothers for what I do. By his word, I am directed outward, never inward.”
― Eerdmans Pub Co, Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness

“Christ died as a public man, not a private man. That is, Christ died as King for his people, as Husband for his bride, as Head for his body, as Shepherd for his sheep, as Master for his friends, as Firstborn for his brothers and sisters, as the Second and Last Adam for a new humanity.”
― David Gibson, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective

“In God’s providence he has given us passages that highlight different features of his kingship in Isaiah, which are all part of different rhetorical arguments. This diversity points to the greatness of God, the king, as well as to the many ways his kingship can relate to us today. As we have seen, God is the holy king (6:1–3; 57:15), a warrior king (59:15b–20; 63:1–6), a shepherd king (40:11), the unseeable king (6:2), the king we will see (33:17; 40:5; 52:10), the royal judge (33:22), the saviour and redeemer king (33:22; 44:6; 52:7; 59:20), the king of glory (6:3; 24:23; 40:5; 60:1–2), the king of Israel (44:6) and Jacob (41:21), the king of the nations (2:2–4; 25:6–8; 60:1–3; 66:18–24), the king of heavenly forces (24:21–23), the wise king (2:2–4), the king who inhabits the cosmos (57:15; 66:1), the king of the downtrodden (57:15; 66:1–2), the king in history (6; 36 – 37), the king at the eschaton (24:21–24; 52:7; 60), and more. The book of Isaiah does not want us to condense God, the king, into one simple idea; instead, the book invites us to allow its collage of portraits of God as king to elicit a range of responses.”
― Andrew Abernethy, The Book of Isaiah and God's Kingdom: A Thematic-Theological Approach (New Studies in Biblical Theology 40)

“the church is not an accidental and arbitrary aggregate of individuals that can just as easily be smaller or larger, but forms with him an organic whole that is included in him as the second Adam, just as the whole of humankind arises from the first Adam. The application of salvation must therefore extend just as far as its acquisition.130 All those connected to him are part of a new humanity, they belong to a new age, they have been saved for a new world: “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). How true. In saving people, Christ came to save humankind—Jew and Gentile united to form one new man (Eph. 2:15). As B. B. Warfield writes, Thus the human race of man attains the goal for which it was created, and sin does not snatch it out of God’s hands: the primal purpose of God with it is fulfilled; and through Christ the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny.”
― David Gibson, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective