A Quote by John Stott

No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.
It is only against the pitch blackness of the night that we see the glory of the stars. And it is only against the pitch blackness of man's radical depravity that we can begin to see the glories of the gospel.
The power of the gospel is the word of God . . . nobody needs a gospel if there’s no judgment, or law, if God is not a God of judgment. If there is no such thing as hell, what good is the gospel?
The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
How often have I been guilty of being the Holy Spirit in their lives? It is my job along with my husbands to impart truth but I can’t reveal truth only the Holy Spirit can. It is my job to point out sin and require obedience but I can’t bring conviction of sin – only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin. It is my job to share the gospel – but I can’t reveal the gospel to my children only the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth of the gospel.
There is nothing attractive about the gospel to the natural man; the only man who finds the gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin.
Many will be affected with some gross sins of theirs against the law, who never see the venom of their unbelief of the gospel. But this is the sin that draws deepest; and therefore that is the sin which the Spirit is in a special manner to convince of.
I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law. The Law is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a man’s heart unless you first send the needle of the Law to make way for it.
Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason.
Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.
I am discontented because I have not these things which God never yet promised me, and therefore I sin much against the Gospel, and against the grace of faith.
The first task of the doctor is ... political: the struggle against disease must begin with a war against bad government." Man will be totally and definitively cured only if he is first liberated.
I think, that a man never passes the verge of moral humility, till self-righteousness be dethroned, till the high and towering imaginations of the man's own righteousness by the law be levelled by the mighty weapons of the gospel, and he brought to submit to the righteousness of God for justification, which is, in the gospel revealed 'from faith to faith.'
The Gospel that worked in the 20th Century may not work in the 21st Century. The reason is because it is truncated. It only speaks of "Sin and Salvation" and not of the COSMIC GOSPEL that transforms all things.
For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.
We must begin to understand that the gospel deconstructs a man before it reconstructs him. First it teaches him he is entitled to nothing, and then it give him everything.
The call of God is to preach the gospel--namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. The one passion of Paul's life was to proclaim the gospel of God. He welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment , and tribulation for only one reason--these things kept him unmovable in his devotion to the gospel of God.
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