“Sin and Its Remedy” (James S. Stewart)

Men felt like debtors confronting liabilities which it was utterly and forever impossible for them to meet (Matt 18:23; Luke 7:41). Into that feeling of hopelessness Christ broke with the glorious news of full and final restoration. Before ever the prodigal could get out of his suggestion about the “hired servant”, his father's arms were round him (Luke 15:20). The creditor wiped the slate clean (Luke 7:42). There was no long period of probation; in a single moment a man might leap clear from the fearful pit to the very breast of eternal love, and the most wasted, shriveled, burnt-out soul might stand erect and clean and in its right mind before God (Luke 23:43).

… No one who reads the Gospels will ever be led astray by the argument that to pardon freely is simply to condone sin and therefore to make for the demoralization of the sinner. To know oneself forgiven, and forgiven as so great a cost, is always a moral dynamic of the first order. It is a mainspring of the dedicated life. It creates character. It works righteousness. It brings honor back to the throne. It makes the forgiven sinner Christ's man, body and soul, forever.

from, "The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ"

The Fatherhood of God (James S. Stewart)

Now Jesus did not only teach faith. He lived it. He practiced what He preached. Every page of the Gospel's shows you Jesus taking the faith in a Father – God, which He proclaimed to men and putting Himself into it, body and soul. Out of a great mass of instances, take just one (Mark 4:37). There was a night on the Galilean Lake when the sudden whirlwind blew and the waves were lashed to fury, and the frail fishing craft sagged and struggled in the trough of the waves. The fisherman looked into one another's terrified faces and cried that this was the end. But Jesus lay asleep on a pillow. To us, reading the story today, that sleeping Christ in the storm is one of the most compelling arguments for faith in the world. Asleep – why? Because it was God's sea, and the waves and the wind and the dark were in His Father's hand, and underneath were the everlasting arms.

By teaching and life Jesus showed that to know a God who is thus vitally interested in all his children's concerns is to have the secret of a peace, a poise, and a steadiness that nothing in life can disturb. The man who has made that discovery has passed out of the bondage of fear and worry into a glorious liberty and release. He is a man who has achieved absolute independence of circumstances in utter dependence upon God. He has found what Jesus meant by “blessedness” (Matt 5:3). He is doing what the New Testament calls “overcoming the world”. Because God is at his right hand, he shall not be moved”.

From "The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ"

Love’s Power - James S. Stewart

It was Jesus who first proved that love, which in a world given over to force looks the weakest of weapons, is in reality the strongest.  Love gains victories which the hard, critical, censorious attitude never gains. The Pharisaic attitude to shamed and broken sinners never had and never has any redeeming power about it.  Indeed, it works all the other way and serves only to bind on the fetters of bitterness and despair more securely than ever.  “God, I thank you”, said that Pharisee of Jesus’ parable, “that I am not as other men are… even as this publican” (Luke 18:11).  That is loveless religion, entirely powerless to bring any souls into the Kingdom.  But Jesus loved the publican and by loving him gave him back his manhood and his self-respect, brought he cowed, shamed soul onto his feet again, put the light of hope into his eyes, and saved him.  If Peter after his denial had been met with hard censoriousness, in all probability there would never have been a Peter in scripture today.  But the love of Jesus, which even after the most terrible failure went on loving him (Mark 16:7; John 21:15), lifted him right out of the fearful pit of his sin and the miry clay of despair and set his feet on the rock again.  And here Jesus was a pattern for all his followers forever.  Love is not only better than criticism; it is also infinitely more effectual.  It is redeeming power.

The Secret of Preaching - James S. Stewart

You ask me the secret of preaching. I am afraid I cannot sum it all up in a letter! Perhaps it would be best if I just referred you to two books on the subject I have written – “Heralds of God” and “A Faith to Proclaim” (the latter consists of my Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale). I have tried to sum up my thoughts on the preacher's methods and preparation in these two books. But indeed – preaching cannot be taught (though classes in Homiletics are a help): the ultimate secret is to live close to Christ. And far more important than anything about “style” or “delivery” is the preacher's unselfconscious absorption in God during the worship service. In the end, this is what matters – far more than structure or style of all his sermons.

Real Religion - James S. Stewart

But he was more than a man; John the Baptist was a man of God. That, too, drew the crowds flocking out to the desert, that here for the first time in their lives they had come upon a religion utterly and absolutely real, a religion real in every flaming syllable of it, real in every burning word, “To teach religion,” said Thomas Carlyle, “the first thing needful and the last, and indeed the only thing, is to find a man who has religion.” Here was a man who had religion, whose whole life and attitude breathed God!

The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ

In Christ and Borne By Christ - James S. Stewart

Only those who through Christ have entered into a vital relationship to God are really "alive." Existence outside of Christ is not worthy of the name at all; for as compared with a soul that has seen everything in heaven and earth transfigured by a personal experience of redemption and has begun to live daily in the romance and wonder and thrilling stimulus of Jesus' fellowship, the man who lives for the world and the flesh and has no knowledge of God is virtually dead. He does not know it; he thinks he is "seeing life"; he cannot guess the glory he is missing, nor realize the utter bankruptcy and wretchedness of everything in which he has put his trust.  James S. Stewart
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BORNE BY CHRIST
By: James S. Stewart

The evangel of an ethical example is a devastating thing. It makes religion the most grievous of burdens. Perhaps this is the real reason why, even among professing Christians, there are so many strained faces and weary hearts and captive, unreleased spirits. They have listened to Jesus' teaching, they have meditated on Jesus' character; and then they have risen up, and tried to drive their own lives along Jesus' royal way. Disappointment heaped on bitter disappointment has been the result. The great example has been a dead-weight beating them down, bearing them to the ground, bowing their hopeless souls in the dust.

One of the vital distinctions between true religion and false is that, whereas the latter is a dead burden for the soul to carry, the former is a living power to carry the soul. Paul's mysticism grows lyrical with precisely this great discovery. "Christ in me" means something quite different from the weight of an impossible ideal, something far more glorious than the oppression of a pattern for ever beyond all imitation. "Christ in me" means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ the motive-power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift, and turning every burden into wings. All this is in it when the apostle speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

Compared with this, the religion which bases everything on example is pitifully rudimentary. This, and this alone, is the true Christian religion. To be "in Christ," to have Christ within, to realize your creed not as something you have to bear but as something by which you are born, this is Christianity. It is more: it is release and liberty, life with an endless song at its heart. It means feeling within you, as long as life here last, the carrying power of Love Almighty; and underneath you, when you come to die, the touch of everlasting arms.

From: A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of Paul's Religion. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Pgs. 168-170.