“The free gift of God is an absolutely unaccountable event in the life of every man who accepts it. It is not the natural working out of a principle, but it is a thing that happens. But that happening in the soul is the result of a happening in the sphere of external history. The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. There we have the central characteristic of our religion; the central characteristic of Christianity is that it is not founded merely upon what always was true but primarily upon something that happened — something that took place near Jerusalem at a definite time in the world’s history. In other words, it is founded not merely upon permanent truths of religion but upon a ‘gospel,’ a piece of news.”- J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent (Edinburgh, 1982), page 39.
(HT: Ray Ortlund)
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