John Nelson Darby (1800-1882)
"We shall see Him face to face whose visage was more marred than any man's. He washed me from my sins the first time He came, and He is only waiting to come and take me to Himself. Have you seen Christ in glory in this way? God Himself has interfered and made me as white as snow. Christ took the fruit of what I did, and I get the fruit of what He did. I am the fruit of the travail of Christ's soul. He is my everything, and I must seek to please Him in everything I do. The more we look at Him, the more we shall see what poor weak creatures we are; but let those of us who are Christians make it our business to glorify Him in everything, remembering how He has loved us and given Himself for us." -John Nelson Darby
"I am sure I do not love the Lord enough, but I am sure it is the Lord I love. I have no confidence in my own heart, but all confidence in Him. He has died for me; that is what I count on: He has put away my sins; that is what I need: He is coming again; that is what I am longing for." -John Nelson Darby
"People talk of whether future sins are forgiven. All my sins were future when Christ died for them." -John Nelson Darby
"No trial can touch a person who has Christ for his all. He may have lost this or lost that; but if he has Christ he has that which he cannot lose." -John Nelson Darby
"There is one Man who knows the truth, because He is the truth, who is satisfied with the written word, and that is the Lord. There is no craft of Satan that the word of God is not sufficient to meet." -John Nelson Darby
"The more you nourish your soul by feeding on the word of God, the more likely He is to use you in blessing to others." -John Nelson Darby
"Love likes to be a servant, and selfishness likes to be served." -John Nelson Darby
"What I get by the Holy Ghost, is a child worshipping the Father. I am standing with the Holy Ghost dwelling in me, between the first and second coming of Christ - a worshipper waiting for His coming." -John Nelson Darby
"The more we know of Him, the more we know He is everything." -John Nelson Darby
"Faith makes me see that God is greater than my sin, and not that my sin is greater than God." -John Nelson Darby
"Sorrow is a good thing, and makes God a more abundant source of joy." -John Nelson Darby
"If Christ is not God, then I do not know Him, have not met Him, nor know what He is." -John Nelson Darby
"The more you nourish your soul by feeding on the word of God, the more likely He is to use you in blessing to others." -John Nelson Darby
"Are there any of you who are thus halting between two opinions, and afraid to confess your obligations to the Lord? Oh! I once more entreat you to be candid. Be open, be decided, confess Christ's name on earth, and He will not be ashamed to confess your name before the whole assembled universe." -John Nelson Darby
"I fear much human language on this. But I affirm that the only full revelation of the one true God is the revelation of Him in the Trinity. Our prayers rise up the same. Through Him (Christ the Son) we have access by one Spirit unto the Father." -John Nelson Darby
"The expectation of the Lord's return would not prevent me going on with the ordinary business of life. If I am really expecting my Lord, I shall earnestly desire to be found doing my duty at the moment of His return." -John Nelson Darby
"All that we can do is to walk with vigilance, but peacefully, thinking of the interests of the Lord Jesus; as to ourselves having nothing to gain and nothing to lose. The path of peace, the place of testimony, is to seek to please God." -John Nelson Darby
"No trial can touch a person who has Christ for his all. He may have lost this or lost that; but if he has Christ he has that which he cannot lose." -John Nelson Darby
"It was purely grace shewn to us in the cross. We were just sinners and nothing but sinners when Christ died to save us. And I can never understand what God's love really is, until I can say I am merely a sinner. If you do not know what God's love is, it is because you have not learnt that great truth, that you are but a sinner." -John Nelson Darby
"If all the sins that ever were committed in the world were congregated in your persons and were your own act, this need not prevent your believing in Christ and coming unto God through Him." -John Nelson Darby
"The Lamb is nearer to my heart than any. He has known me better than any, better than I know myself; and this Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith is the One we shall meet there. I shall find One in heaven nearer and dearer to my heart, than any one I know on earth. Nothing is so near to us as the Christ that is in us, and nothing is so near to God as Christ. Yet the world is in a man's heart." -John Nelson Darby
"The effectual presence of the Spirit crucifies egotism, and gives freedom of thought about ourselves while on the way; it occupies us with one object — Jesus." -John Nelson Darby
"But will fruits of grace give you forgiveness, righteousness? They are not the blood of Christ; they are not Christ. How can they cleanse from sin? God delights in the fruits of grace, but they cannot put away sin. It is the work of Christ on the cross which alone does that God has set Him at His own right hand; and when I believe it, I see how God has loved me. May you be in yourself so broken down, that you may find One who never breaks down!" -John Nelson Darby
"Lord let me wait for thee alone. My life be only this. To serve thee here on earth unknown, then share thy heavenly bliss." -John Nelson Darby
"Is the thought of the Lord's coming your daily delight? Does it influence you in the ten thousand details of your everyday life? Or are you so walking hand in hand with the world that the very thought of His coming fills you with shame?" -John Nelson Darby
"If we take Scripture, we find there the attributes of God - the one true and only God - shine out, and in every page, with unclouded lustre. He is one, supreme, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things; knows all things. If we go to heaven, He is there; to hell, He is there (Jer. 23:24); can do all things. His eye and presence are everywhere; He is the eternal God; He is righteous and holy ; His goodness is over all His works." -John Nelson Darby
"God loves me as He loves Christ. I dare to say that. He has glorified God by taking my place. It was a true transfer. He has suffered, and we are saved - not by our responsibilities, but by His work. He has taken us out of the ditch. We have done with judgment. Who is to judge us? Can Christ judge Himself? Will He judge those that are His, or condemn His own work? When He sits in judgment, we shall be seated on thrones around Him. When He takes up Israel, we shall reign with Him." -John Nelson Darby
"While He was God in everything, He was the humblest, most affable man that ever walked this earth. In death only is He alone. He looked for compassion and found none. "Tarry ye here, and watch with me." In His sore trial He looked in Gethsemane for them to watch with Him; they could not, and an angel from heaven comes to strengthen Him. Will He ever give up being a servant? Never? That form of servant He will never give up. Selfishness likes to be served. Love likes to serve. That is just what I find in Christ." -John Nelson Darby
"Christ is God come down to sinners in their sins. The law could only say, If you do not do this, you are cursed. Christ comes to these sinners, and He shews us what we are; but He shews us also what He is: love, that brought Him down to us as we are, the vilest, the most wilful, sinners." -John Nelson Darby
"The Lord give us only to remember that the fashion of this world passeth away; but there is one thing that abides for ever, and that is the word of God - that through His grace, we may follow hard after Him. Oh, it is a wonderful thing that the Son of God became a man, on purpose to win us back to God." -John Nelson Darby
"God gives a power apart from man. He gives a new life - a life in His Son. In virtue of Him, it cannot fail. It is eternal life - life in Christ. God was perfectly manifested in the Son, when He came down from heaven to give life. But this is not enough. What about my sins? Where are my sins? To have life without the question of sin being settled will not do. Christ had them on the cross. Christ came down from heaven to put my sin away, and He did put it away and can say, "at that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Christ's life is in me - "eternal life, and this life is in his Son." I have His life, not His Godhead, of course. As surely as I have partaken of the life and nature of the first Adam, so have I life in the second Adam. "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation." The divine nature is there. It is in a poor earthen vessel, it is true; but the nature is divine, and I should be shewing it out in my life and character." -John Nelson Darby
"We love His appearing, but we love Himself better. Therefore we wait for Him to take us to Himself. If our hearts have known what Himself is, we cannot confound His taking us to Himself, with His appearing. We are "members of his body." "Our life is hid with Christ." He is to take us up to the Father's house, the fulness of His own blessedness - with Christ; the blessed outshining of His Father's love connects itself with the church's position. All through there is an identity of blessedness with Christ in life, hope, object, all. If this hope is let into the heart, there must be a break with the world. I cannot be waiting for God's Son from heaven if I am expecting wrath; and I cannot be waiting for God's Son from heaven if I am linked up with the world. If this world is the scene where my heart is building itself up, if I have an object in this world, Christ will spoil it all." -John Nelson Darby
"Grace is to the sinner, and to none other. If I can stand before God in my own righteousness, grace is not needed. He will bring down your hearts to your real contrition. There He can act in the fulness of His grace, according to the need of the heart that has discovered its need in His presence. He is manifesting that grace according to the value of the sacrifice, now that He is at the right hand of God. Not merely now that God can come to the sinner, but the cleansed sinner stands accepted in the presence of God - accepted in the Person of Jesus; and that nothing stands between us and God. The Lord give us only to own the fulness of His grace, and see the way in which we are debtors to Him, who was willing to suffer all things that He might present us spotless to God. Amen." -John Nelson Darby
"He is our present and eternal joy. The time will come when all our sorrow will be over, but our Friend will remain. He is our tried and true Friend. He has entered into the deepest woes of our heart, and will make us the sharers of His joy for ever. Our blessing, our safety, our hope are all grounded on the atonement. Is there a soul reading this who cannot rejoice in Christ, who knows Him not as his portion? Is there one who is saying, My sin is too great to be pardoned? To feel about your sin is right, but to be in despair about it is quite wrong. You are virtually saying, My sin is greater than the grace of God. You will not dare to say so if you are looking at Christ. Is Christ come short? Is grace beneath your need or above it? Christ is the portion of every poor soul who believes on Him. The atoning work is done. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin." -John Nelson Darby
"How blessed it is to look at the Lord in this way! He is our present and eternal joy. The time will come when all our sorrow will be over, but our Friend will remain. He is our tried and true Friend. He has entered into the deepest woes of our heart, and will make us the sharers of His joy for ever. Our blessing, our safety, our hope are all grounded on the atonement. Is there a soul reading this who cannot rejoice in Christ, who knows Him not as his portion? Is there one who is saying, My sin is too great to be pardoned? To feel about your sin is right, but to be in despair about it is quite wrong. You are virtually saying, My sin is greater than the grace of God. You will not dare to say so if you are looking at Christ. Is Christ come short? Is grace beneath your need or above it? Christ is the portion of every poor soul who believes on Him. The atoning work is done. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin." -John Nelson Darby
"The law cannot give life; it can only convince of sin. The work was done between God and Christ; the whole question of sin was settled and done with, and He is my righteousness before God. God's righteousness has been displayed in putting the Man who bore my sins at God's right hand in glory. The Holy Ghost comes and says to me, You have no righteousness for God. Then I try to grow more holy. Quite right in itself that I should long after holiness; but as a means to peace it will not do. But here in Christ I have a divine righteousness that is fit to put me into glory. They that are led of the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. In the cross of Christ it is not merely that my debt is paid, for that might be, and yet I might have nothing as it were to live upon; but God has made me a joint-heir with Christ; and now down here I live looking for Him to come to take me to Himself, to be for ever with Him in the glory where He is." -John Nelson Darby
"But be of good cheer if your hearts are set on Christ: there is your stay, the anchor of your soul. If He is such, dear friends, stand forward for Him; be not ashamed to own your relationship to Him, your dependence on Him: be decided, cut short all expedients for deferring the bold acknowledgment of your being His; confess Him before men, and act for Him, and live for Him in an ungodly world. He is not ashamed to call you brethren; and will you be ashamed to confess Him as your Lord and Master in the face of all the world?" -John Nelson Darby
"The word of God presents to us this very precious fact, that we do not only find there certain truths and doctrines, but also every relation between God and man fully developed on earth, and each day we can clearly see all these things in the Person of Jesus. It is a great mercy of God to have brought Him so near to us, as so to make known to us those relationships in the circumstances in which we are ourselves found. At bottom the life of Jesus was like ours. He was in all things tempted in like manner as ourselves. It was indeed God manifested in flesh; but it was also life, and the expression of a life; perfectly acceptable to God.
In order to make progress in spiritual life we must study the Lord Jesus; whether in the grace of His Person or in the circumstances of His life; or, lastly, in the glorious position He has near the Father, and which we shall by-and-by share with Him." -John Nelson Darby
"The careless heart of man cannot bear to look at the cross except he be at the foot of it, acknowledging his need of it; for he has to measure himself by the wrath poured out on Jesus. But if your back is turned on the cross, there is none to give peace. The cross may cause us shame when it leads us to see what sin is; but itself, it is the power of God unto salvation. Haste then to God who beseeches you to be reconciled. And may the Lord, in the riches of His grace shew you the vileness of sin, and that Jesus has drunk the bitter cup of wrath but is now the risen Saviour; that you may enter thus life of peace through Him who, in that He died, died unto sin once, that he who lives might live unto God." -John Nelson Darby
"Nothing is more prominently brought forward in the New Testament than the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ." -John Nelson Darby
"The Lord is coming, dear brother; the time for the world is departing. What a blessing! May God find us watching and thinking only of one thing - the One of whom He thinks - Jesus our precious Saviour." -John Nelson Darby
"In my retreat, the 32nd chapter of Isaiah taught me clearly, on God's behalf, that there was still an economy to come, of His ordering; a state of things in no way established as yet. The consciousness of my union with Christ had given me the present heavenly portion of the glory, whereas this chapter clearly sets forth the corresponding earthly part. I was not able to put these things in their respective places or arrange them in order, as I can now; but the truths themselves were then revealed of God, through the action of His Spirit, by reading His word." -John Nelson Darby (Letters of Darby, Vol. 3)
"Nothing cannot become, because there is nothing to become, but that does not say God could not speak and it be made." -John Nelson Darby
"A most extraordinary thing to do! Waiting for God's Son! that is, all our hopes are clean out of this world. Do not expect anything from earth, but look for something from heaven, and this God's Son Himself, "even Jesus which delivered us from the wrath to come."..Those who were looking for Christ were entirely delivered "from the wrath to come." This gives a very distinct position to the Christian." -John Nelson Darby
"If I hesitate to stand in His presence, I am putting in question the value of Christ's precious blood. You may say, I hope to be saved. You cannot hope that Christ will die for you! .It cannot be a matter of hope whether Christ is to die! The way the heart reasons is, I am not hoping Christ will die for me, but I hope to get an interest in Him; I want a proof of His love. When you question this, you question whether Christ has become the friend of publicans and sinners; and, further, you question the power of His blood." -John Nelson Darby
"The pope cannot be the head of the Church, because if Christ is the Head, one body cannot have two heads." -John Nelson Darby
"Judgment was born by Christ that grace might flow out to the sinner." -John Nelson Darby
"The rapture of the church is in this age. The new age will not begin till after this is done." -John Nelson Darby
"Do you really believe in the Third Person of the Trinity is actually here on the earth? If you do, you will walk carefully, and look to hear Him speak in your midst (1 Cor. 12, 14; 1 Peter 4:11)." -John Nelson Darby
"I adore the love that led Him to be made sin for me." -John Nelson Darby
"Is there any good in myself? No, I have no good in me - I was totally lost, I had no hope, but God has redeemed me out of that place; Christ is my life and righteousness, and the Holy Ghost in me makes me know it, so that I enjoy it; well, as Christ is so am I." -John Nelson Darby
"The gospel of the kingdom is not the proclamation of the union of the church with Christ, nor redemption in its fullness, as preached and taught by the apostles after the ascension, but the kingdom which was to be established on the earth." -John Nelson Darby
"When I see Him in that glory, instead of seeing my sins, I see that they are gone. I have seen my sins laid on the Mediator. I have seen my sins confessed on the head of the scapegoat, and they have been borne away; Leviticus 16. So much has God been glorified about my sins (that is, in respect of what Christ has done on account of my sins), that this is the title of Christ to be there, at the right hand of God. I am not afraid to look at Christ there. Where are my sins now? where are they to be found in heaven or on earth? I see Christ in the glory. Once they were found upon the head of that blessed One; but they are gone, never more to be found. Were it a dead Christ, so to speak, that I saw, I might fear that my sins would be found again; but with Christ alive in the glory the search is in vain. He who bore them all has been received up to the throne of God, and no sin can be there." -John Nelson Darby
"For Christ died for sinners; and those who believe stand before God in all the infinite value of that precious blood which He shed for them as their substitute. God therefore righteously pardons, accepts, justifies every believer: that righteousness which flowed out to Christ, raised Him from the dead, and glorified Him at His right hand, meets also and embraces every one who believes in Jesus, and brings him where Christ is in the presence of God. It could not be otherwise; for since the blood has met all God's claims, and even glorified Him, every sinner, the moment he believes, stands invested with all its infinite value. It is, therefore, in response to the value of the blood, that God's righteousness — for it is due to Christ — flows out rejoicingly, and invests the sinner with its own perfection, so that in Christ he is justified for ever before God. Yea, he is accepted in the Beloved." -John Nelson Darby
“We have first to find out that we are weak, and cannot help ourselves; then we turn, and look to God.” -John Nelson Darby
“…complete pardon [of sin] did not exist under the first covenant…”
(John Nelson Darby, “Hebrews Chapter 10”, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible)
“But when sacrifices were legally instituted and the law given, hopes of forgiveness and restoration in peace in a coming age, but no purged conscience, save occasional at the present time, marked the condition of the worshipper…Under the prescription of the law the conscience was more brought under the yoke, present occasional forgiveness by a sin-offering more definite, but it was narrowed into present occasional clearing, and the hope of deliverance put into the age to come and connected with Messiah, as we know also it will be.”
(John Nelson Darby, “53258E”, STEM Publishing, Volume 3, Number 258, (1862))
"Christ has come, and He has glorified God, and has shown what God is at all cost; it cost Him His life, and drinking that dreadful cup, He has shown what God is, and perfectly glorified Him, and that in the place of sin. When He was made sin, that was the very time when obedience was perfect, and love was perfect, and all that God was in His righteousness and hatred against sin and love for the sinner." -John Nelson Darby
"If I say I am in Christ, I say Christ is in me, and my business is to show out Christ, and nothing else." -John Nelson Darby
"The testimony of Scripture is the only secure resting-place for man amid the darkness of this world." -John Nelson Darby
"You see, the more Scripture is gone through, the more comes to light that He is the true God and Eternal Life." -John Nelson Darby
"Death is written upon our fairest hopes and our fondest joy; but where sin and death have come in, grace and the Son of God have come in after them to more than make up what was done." -John Nelson Darby
