Still “Ryled” Up!
More from my J.C. Ryle devotional (see previous post). This is the entry for January 24 titled Most Important Doctrine:
For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. -1 Corinthians 2:2
There is no doctrine in Christianity so important as the doctrine of Christ crucified.
There is none which the devil tries so hard to destroy. There is none which is so needful for our own peace to understand. By “Christ crucified,” I mean the doctrine that Christ suffered death on the cross to make atonement for our sins, that by His death He made a full, perfect, and complete satisfaction to God for the ungodly, and that through the merits of that death all who believe in Him are forgiven all their sins, however many and great, entirely, and forever.
The doctrine of Christ crucified is the grand peculiarity of the Christian religion. Other religions have laws and moral precepts, forms and ceremonies, rewards and punishments. But other religions cannot tell us of a dying Savior; they cannot show us the cross. This is the crown and glory of the gospel; this is that special comfort which belongs to it alone. Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian and yet contains nothing of the cross. A man who teaches in this way might as well profess to explain the solar system and yet tell his hearers nothing about the sun. Christ crucified is God’s grand ordinance for doing good to men. Wherever a church keeps back Christ crucified or puts anything whatever in that foremost place which Christ crucified should always have, from that moment a church ceases to be useful.
Reader, if you have never heard of Christ crucified before this day, I can wish you nothing better than that you may know Him by faith and rest on Him for salvation. If you do know Him, may you know Him better every year you live, till you see Him face to face.
-Excerpt from Our Great Redeemer: 365 Days with J.C. Ryle, compiled by Bryan Schrank (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024).
Do yourself a favor this year and start reading some Ryle!
by Keith McWhorter