Quotes about Salvation
The jubilation of God's salvation corresponds to man's very real condition of lostness ... In Scripture, there is never any mention of a relativizing of sin since any such relativizing of sin would also automatically relativize the unspeakably wonderful nature of salvation.
- GC Berkouwer
Salvation ... has its eternal foundation in the love of God.
- GC Berkouwer
In the Gospels, being a sinner means being lost ... There is no way for man to escape the condition of being lost ... The lost can only be sought and found.
- GC Berkouwer
In the New Testament, the concept of myth is not simply a harmless feature of a primitive world-view, requiring only to be reinterpreted for modern man ... Myth is that which "diminishes the truth of salvation."
- GC Berkouwer
Man, in and by the salvation of God, is delivered from the tenacity of the egocentric and commences to sing of the glory of God. It is this salvation that opens doors and windows toward God's handiwork.
- GC Berkouwer
The sanctification ... demanded is always an implicate of the sanctification that originates in God's mercy. Hence the sanctification of believers is never an independent area of human activity ... we can speak truly of sanctification only when we have understood the exceptionally great significance of the bond between Sola-fide and sanctification ... the Sola-fide ... a confession of 'By grace alone we are saved' ... is the only sound foundation for sanctification.
- GC Berkouwer
Everything is really said in an unobtrusive phrase, in Christ ...Faith is not added as a second, independent ingredient which makes its own contribution to justification in Christ... faith does nothing but accept, or come to rest in the sovereignty of His benefit ... we are not acceptable to God because of the worthiness of our faith. Grace is exclusively and totally God's.
- GC Berkouwer
The object of Christology is not a purely theoretical knowledge but a profitable, wholesome knowledge of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ.
- GC Berkouwer
The "Nature Psalms" ... This understanding, and seeing, and hearing, is possible only ... in the enlightening of the eyes by the salvation of God ... But this seeing and hearing is not a projection of the believing subject, but an actual finding and seeing, and hearing! Here nothing is 'read into', but is only an understanding of the reality of revelation.
- GC Berkouwer
Worthy partakers are those who confess their sins in self-abhorrence, humiliation, faith in God's promises, and gratefulness of heart. This is the 'worthiness' that belongs to the Lord's Supper. It is not at all meritorious in nature, but is in complete harmony with what is signified and sealed in the Lord's Supper. It is a worthiness that coincides with a confession of 'unworthiness' and with trust in the salvation of God.
- GC Berkouwer
Lord, will those who are saved be few?" ... Jesus' answer seems so noncommittal, so evasive ... Strive to enter by the narrow door (Luke 13:23f.) ... this evasiveness is only apparent ... This is the answer to this question ... this question has been answered, once for all time.
- GC Berkouwer
Grace is at work even in fallen man ... to bend partially back in the right direction those human powers and endowments which were man left to himself would be wholly perverted.
- GC Berkouwer