“Regardless of how old your children are or how mature they appear to be, you must model for them a life of deep convictions. If our children see that we take biblical truths lightly, that will influence them to take our teaching lightly. You can’t teach your children what you yourself don’t value.”

Joel R. Beeke, How Do We Plant Godly Convictions in Our Children, 24.

“We need to warn our children of the danger of living to please themselves and failing to discipline themselves. We must teach them the deeper pleasures of hard work and service to others. Work is not just something that we have to do, although the principle still holds “that if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). Rather, we should teach them that work is a calling from God and a delight for those created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–28).”

Joel R. Beeke, How Do We Plant Godly Convictions in Our Children, 22.

“So much of the Christian life is about learning to do the right things, at the right times, and in the right way. There is a time to play as well as a time to work. The real difficulty of the Christian life is learning to take hold of every facet of life and to channel it self-consciously to God’s glory in light of Scripture.”

Joel R. Beeke, How Do We Plant Godly Convictions in Our Children, 22.

“Without faith we have no business with Christ, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). We are still in our sins, under the wrath of God, the curse of the law, eternal condemnation (Acts 26:18); without faith we are shut out of every hope of salvation (John 3:16, 18, 36).”

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 73.

“The smallest faith acknowledges its own infirmity, experiences it, and laments it (Mark 9:24), whereas unbelief is free from care (Rev. 3:17; Luke 18:11–12). (4) The smallest faith pants after remedies (Mark 9:24; 1 Peter 2:2); conversely, unbelief, as it is dead, is therefore without sense and without desire (John 5:40; Matt. 23:37).”

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 69.

“For one or the other is unavoidable: either we examine ourselves, or God, the searcher of hearts and the just judge, will examine us.”

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 66

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“Scripture teaches that faith does not consist in the observance of the commands of Christ. It does so in more than one way, when: (1) in its definitions it distinguishes faith and works, saying that the former is receiving Christ (John 1:12) and “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1), and that the latter on the contrary is the “fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:10). (2) It distinguishes faith and obedience as cause and effect (Gal. 5:6; 1 Tim. 1:5). (3) It assigns different effects to each: it assigns to faith justification (Rom. 3–4; Gal. 2–3; Eph. 2:8), adoption (John 1:12), and union with Christ (Eph. 3:17), and takes these things away from obedience or good works (Gal. 3:2, 5). (4) It also asserts a different norm for each: for faith, the gospel (Mark 1:15); for obedience, the law (Matt. 22:37; Rom. 13:8–10). In fact, (5) at least in the matter of justification, it opposes faith and obedience or good works (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16).”

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 54.

Faith is an act of the regenerated soul, and, as we have seen (WCF 10.1, 2, & 4), the Spirit uses the revealed truth of God as his instrument in regeneration and sanctification, and sane adult men never come to the experience of the benefits of Christ’s salvation who are destitute of some knowledge of his person and work.

A. A. Hodge, Confession of Faith, 204.

The principal cause of the faith that we have delineated thus far is God, the Father of lights, from whom comes every saving good (James 1:17); and the Spirit of faith (2 Cor. 4:13), among whose fruits is numbered faith (Gal. 5:22). Nor can that faith come to us from any other place, because we are blind in mind (Eph. 4:18), stony in heart (Ezek. 11:19), and dead in sins (Eph. 2:1–2). Moreover, God works faith, first, in regeneration, whereby he confers the seed of faith, that by it we may be able to believe at the proper time, once all things needed are supplied. Before this regeneration, as we said, a person is dead to every spiritual good. Second, God works faith in conversion, whereby the seed of faith sends forth shoots, such that we actually believe, take hold of Christ as our one and only Mediator, and having been drawn to him, come (John 6:44), run (Song 1:4), and lean on Christ (Song 8:5). Third, God works faith in sanctification, whereby faith puts out flower and fruit, and is at work through love (Gal. 5:6).

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 48.

As often as I hear the name of Jesus, therefore, I ought to remember the promise of the gospel latent within in.

Caspar Olevianus, An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, 54.