Voddie Baucham

“Folks, if we could lose our salvation, we would.”

“Sometimes God is glorified when sick saints get well. But more often than not, God is glorified when sick saints die well.”

“In the work of regeneration, we play no role at all. It is instead totally a work of God.”

“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”

“Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object.”

“Gentleness is not a lack of strength; gentleness is strength under control.”

“The deed is just the consummation of the desire, and it's the desire that is sinful.”

“The law is a mirror. God gives us His perfect law so that we can look at His law and see into our souls, so we can see the sinners that we are.”

“The gospel is the glorious, Christ-centered, cross-centered, grace-centered news of what God has done in Jesus Christ (the last Adam) to redeem man from the fall of his federal head (the first Adam) and to give man an eschatological hope that all things will eventually be redeemed in Christ.”

“I do not mean that we must accept the world’s faulty, emasculated, unbiblical version of love—the version that sees any disagreement or confrontation as inherently unloving. No, we must love each other with a tenacious, biblical, Christlike love.”

“Our problem is a lack of clarity and charity in our debate over the place, priority, practice, and definition of justice.”

“We mustn’t live like those with “little faith” who compromise for the sake of food and clothing. What we do matters. And not every job is a good job.”

“If Psalm 1 is to be believed, we must not allow our children to stand, sit or walk with those who deny biblical truth and morality. Instead, we must place them in situations that will aid them in meditating on the law of the Lord 'day and night.' Surely this involves how and where they are to be educated.”

“The key is to understand that our children don't belong to us—they belong to God. Our goal as parents must not be limited by our own vision. I am a finite, sinful, selfish man. Why would I want to plan out my children's future when I can entrust them to the infinite, omnipotent, immutable, sovereign Lord of the universe? I don't want to tell God what to do with my children—I want Him to tell me!”

“If we refuse to forgive, we have stepped into dangerous waters. First, refusing to forgive is to put ourselves in the place of God, as though vengeance were our prerogative, not his. Second, unforgiveness says God’s wrath is insufficient. For the unbeliever, we are saying that an eternity in hell is not enough; they need our slap in the face or cold shoulder to “even the scales” of justice. For the believer, we are saying that Christ’s humiliation and death are not enough. In other words, we shake our fists at God and say, “Your standards may have been satisfied, but my standard is higher!” Finally, refusing to forgive is the highest form of arrogance. Here we stand forgiven. And as we bask in the forgiveness of a perfectly holy and righteous God, we turn to our brother and say, “My sins are forgivable, but yours are not.” In other words, we act as though the sins of others are too significant to forgive while simultaneously believing that ours are not significant enough to matter.”

“Discipling our children is not about teaching them to behave in a way that won’t embarrass us. We’re working toward something much more important than that. We’re actually raising our children with a view toward leading them to trust and to follow Christ.”

“The greatest source of security our children have in this world is a God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage between their parents.”

“Another reason it’s wise for a man to view his marriage and not his job as foundational to his life is the biblical idea of union with his wife. We’re called to work, but we’re never called to be in union with our jobs. However, a man is most assuredly called to be in union with his wife.”

“Forgiveness does not mean one forgets (as in, has the ability to remember no more) the offense, but that in spite of the memory, one erases the debt.”

“Forgiveness also frees you from the unbearable weight of holding on to an offense. It has been said that holding on to unforgiveness is like drinking poison while hoping the other person dies. When we refuse to forgive others, we give them a level of control over us. Some of us are being controlled by a person who is no longer alive as a direct result of our unwillingness to forgive. We hold the debt close to us like a cherished possession, not realizing that we are in fact the one being possessed. Let it go, friend.”

“Our Heavenly Father doesn’t count to three when He gives us a command. It is not a sin to disobey God when He counts to three; it is simply a sin not to obey God. And delayed obedience is disobedience.”

“It is one thing for me to claim that God has changed me; it is quite another for those around me to acknowledge that I have truly changed.”

“No matter how good things get in this world, it’s all Egypt! There will never be enough gold chains, fine linen, praise, adoration, or anything else to satisfy the yearning that God has placed in us. Only his presence in the Land of Promise will satisfy his people.”

“I understand that there are different expressions of Christianity in different cultures. Contextualization is essential for the growth and expansion of the church. But there is a difference between contextualization and compromise. Using goat's milk for communion in a culture that has never heard of wine or grapes is contextualization; sacrificing the goat is compromise. Having a Saturday night service because we have run out of room in all four Sunday services is contextualization; having a Saturday night service to accommodate and/or appease people who are “too busy” on Sunday is compromise.”

“What if there were no nurseries, or youth groups, or Sunday schools? How, then, would we propose a plan for one generation to “tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done” (Ps. 78:4)?”

“You and I cannot comprehend God’s works, or his ways. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9). How, then, can we expect him to fulfill his promises through predictable means? If our time in Genesis teaches us anything, it is that God’s providence is unpredictable.”

“We don’t have time to share the gospel with people around us. We do, however, have time to say, “That’s wrong.”

“When most Christians think apologetics training, they think philosophy, logic, and debate. However, the key tools for training the expository apologist are creeds, confessions and catechisms.”

“The question is not whether or not our children sin later in life. The question is, do we have a biblical obligation to train them before they leave home?”

“I have heard a mantra lately that rings hollow in my ears: “There can be no reconciliation without justice.” When I hear that, I want to scream, “YES! AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT JUSTICE!” All other justice is proximate and insufficient. It is because of Christ’s work on the cross that that we can heed the apostle’s admonition: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31–32). Who am I to tell a white brother that he cannot be reconciled to me until he has drudged up all of the racial sins of his and his ancestors’ past and made proper restitution? Christ has atoned for sin!”

“If all religions are the same, then no religion is true. Moreover, if we believe there are no absolute truths, and all truths are equally valid, this will ultimately lead us to nihilism wherein all ideas lose their value. Ultimately, the only thing that will matter is who has sufficient power to exercise his or her will.”

“Our support for our children is not a matter of limiting their number in order to have the things that we desire. On the contrary, supporting our children means we are willing to do without for their benefit.”

“Who a man is as a husband and father to a large degree shapes who he is as a minister of the gospel. In fact, his calling is evaluated at least in part by how well he performs his duties in the home. I do not believe it is necessary to rank marriage and ministry any more than I would rank eating and drinking. Both are essential. My point is simply this: it is wrong to argue that marriage is somehow less important than ministry. Marriage is ministry.”

“The church is instructed to look for its leaders in the first institution, the family.”

“God gave marriage as a living illustration of the relationship between Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:32).
If you want to teach the world the love of God, become husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25). If you want to teach the world how the church submits to the Lord, become a wife who submits to her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24).”

“We may define God’s providence as follows: God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he (1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; (2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and (3) directs them to fulfill his purposes.”

“Today churches look at resumés and never examine the home. In the New Testament church, a man’s home was his resumé.”

“Modern American dating is no more than glorified divorce practice.”

“I believe the current concept of social justice is incompatible with biblical Christianity.”

“God is not after a people who will tie themselves up in legalistic knots, so that they merely are unable to carry out on the outside what they really are on the inside. That is not what the law of God is about.”

“Kids, you must seek to become the kind of people who plant shade trees for others to sit under.”

“Jonathan Edwards was not the product of a great revival; he was one of its catalysts.”

“Revival changes the affections, but reformation changes our course.”