It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
Interpretation
True zeal requires self-reflection and confrontation of one's own faults rather than solely judging others.
In this quote, D. A. Carson criticizes a superficial form of zeal that focuses only on condemning the flaws and sins of others. He emphasizes the importance of introspection, suggesting that genuine zeal should involve recognizing and battling one's own temptations and shortcomings, rather than merely pointing out those of others. This idea underlines a deeper ethical responsibility to cultivate self-awareness and personal integrity.
In practice
During a church sermon discussing moral accountability.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.
Naturalism says that we were not put here for any purpose. But that doesn't mean there isn't such thing as purpose. It just means that purpose isn't imposed from outside. We human beings have the creative ability to give our lives purposes and meanings.
At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right
But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.
The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.
To survive as a species on this planet, we're going to have to see ourselves as Earthlings.
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so; life's business being just the terrible choice.
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