Untitled Sermon (13)

As the soldier follows his general, as the servant follows his master, as the scholar follows his teacher, as the sheep follows its shepherd, just so ought the professing Christian to follow Christ.

J. C. Ryle

The church was founded in blood, and it thrives best when it is moistened with blood; founded in the blood of Christ, and moistened or watered, as it were, with the blood of the martyrs.

J. I. Packer

 5   Such as are not settled in the faith can never suffer for it; skeptics in religion will hardly ever prove martyrs.

Thomas Watson

A Body of Practical Divinity (1838)

Thomas Watson

2 Tim. 3:12.) Mere churchmanship and outward profession are a cheap religion, of course, and cost a man nothing. But real vital Christianity will always bring with it a cross.

J. C. Ryle

Persecution is like the goldsmith’s hallmark on real silver and gold; it is one of the marks of a converted man.

J. C. Ryle

Those who understand God’s sovereignty have joy even in the midst of suffering, a joy reflected on their very faces, for they see that their suffering is not without purpose.

R. C. Sproul

Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from sorrow. Remember that, and expect to suffer.

Charles Spurgeon

Have we ever seen holier man then the martyred John Bradford, or Hooker, or Usher, or Baxter, or Rutherford, or M’Cheyne? Yet no one can read the writings and letters of these men without seeing that they felt themselves “debtors to mercy and grace” every day, and the very last thing they ever laid claim to was perfection!

J. C. Ryle

Jesus is not talking about a general participation in suffering, or in bearing the problems and anxieties of daily experience. Instead he is making a clear reference to martyrdom. Unless people were prepared to become martyrs they couldn’t be his disciples.

R. C. Sproul