Top 381 Quotes & Sayings by J. C. Ryle - Page 3

People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.

The love of our Lord Jesus Christ towards sinners is strikingly shown in His steady purpose of heart to die for them.

However corrupt our hearts, and however wicked our past lives, there is hope for us in the Gospel.

Nothing is so offensive to Christ as lukewarmness in religion.

Sicknesses, losses, crosses, anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful to keep us humble, watchful and spiritual-minde d. They are as needful as the pruning knife to the vine and the refiner’s furnace to the gold.

Your trials, crosses, and conflicts are all temporary.

No salvation without regeneration - no spiritual life without a new birth - no heaven without a new heart.

To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.

True repentance is no light matter. It is a thorough change of heart about sin, a change showing itself in godly sorrow and humiliation - in heartfelt confession before the throne of grace - in a complete breaking off from sinful habits, and an abiding hatred of all sin. Such repentance is the inseparable companion of saving faith in Christ.

Until we give God our heart, we give Him nothing at all.

Tomorrow is the devil's day, but today is God's. Satan does not care how spiritual your intentions are, or how holy your resolutions, if only they are determined to be done tomorrow.

I fear it is sometimes forgotten that God has married together justification and sanctification. They are distinct and different things, beyond question, but one is never found without the other. All justified people are sanctified, and all sanctified people are justified. ... Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ's work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit's work in you.

How is it that many who profess and call themselves Christians, do so little for the Savior whose name they bear?

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down.

Imagination is the hotbed where this sin is too often hatched. Guard your thoughts, and there will be little fear about your actions.

Examine your own hearts. Do you see there any habit or custom which you know is wrong in the sight of God? If you do, don't delay for a moment in attacking it. Resolve at once to lay it aside. Nothing darkens the eyes of the mind so much, and deadens the conscience so surely, as an allowed sin. It may be a little one, but it is not any less dangerous.

HATE SIN! Instead of loving it, cleaving to it, excusing it, playing with it, we ought to hate it with a deadly hatred.

A converted man will not wish to go to heaven alone

Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book.

If men come among you who do NOT preach all the counsel of God, who do NOT preach of Christ, sin, holiness, of ruin, redemption, and regeneration, and do NOT preach of these things in a Scriptural way, you ought to cease to hear them.

Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless; it does positive harm. Something of 'the image of Christ' must be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings.

Conduct is the grand test of character. Words are one great evidence of the condition of the heart.

Look to the cross, think of the cross, meditate on the cross, and then go and set your affections on the world if you can.

Do you wish to grow in grace and be a holy Christian? Then never forget the value of prayer.

That preaching is sadly defective which dwells exclusively on the mercies of God and the joys of heaven, yet never sets forth the terrors of the Lord and the miseries of hell.

Obedience is the only reality. It is faith visible, faith acting, and faith manifest. It is the test of real discipleship among the Lord's people.

The Lord Jesus is "a friend who never changes." There is no fickleness about Him: those whom He loves, He loves to the end.

The temple in which the Lord Jesus delights most, is a broken and contrite heart, renewed by the Holy Spirit.

My chief desire in all my writings, is to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and make Him beautiful and glorious in the eyes of people; and to promote the increase of repentance, faith, and holiness upon earth.

Oh, dear friend, if you love your children, I charge you, do not let the early impression of a habit of prayer slip by. If you train your children to do anything, train them, at least, to have a habit of prayer.

Go to the cross of Christ, all you that want to be delivered from the power of selfishness.

If God has given His Son to die for us, let us beware of doubting His kindness and love in any painful providence of our daily life.

Do something, by God’s help, to make heaven more full and hell more empty.

One single soul saved shall outlive and outweigh all the kingdoms of the world.

Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying.

It is not always those who have the most eminent gifts who are the most successful laborers for God. It is generally those who keep up closest communion with Christ and are most constant in prayer.

Let us be very careful that we never exalt any minister, or sermon, or book, or friend above the Word of God.

If you and sin are friends, you and God are not yet reconciled.

The heart that has really tasted the grace of Christ, will instinctively hate sin.

It may well be feared, that there is not enough Biblereading among us. It is not sufficient to have the Book. We must actually read it, and pray over it ourselves. It will do us no good, if it only lies still in our houses. We must be actually familiar with its contents, and have its texts stored in our memories and minds. Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition. It can only be obtained by diligent, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.

The love of the Bible will show itself in a believer's actions.

Let us remember, there is One who daily records all we do for Him, and sees more beauty in His servants' work than His servants do themselves... And then shall His faithful witnesses discover, to their wonder and surprise, that there never was a word spoken on their Master's behalf, which does not receive a reward.

A crucified Savior will never be content to have a self-pleasing, self-indulging, worldly-minded people.

Be very sure of this,-people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it only too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.

Laughter, ridicule, opposition, persecution, are often the only reward which Christ's followers get from the world.

I declare I know no state of soul more dangerous than to imagine we are born again and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, because we have picked up a few religious feelings.

How can we love sin, when we remember that because of our sins Jesus died?

Sunday morning, before we go to hear the Word of God preached...let us not rush into God’s presence careless, reckless, and unprepared, as if it mattered not in what way such work was done. Let us carry with us faith, reverence, and prayer. If these three are our companions, we will hear with profit, and return with praise.

There are no lessons so useful as those learned in the school of affliction.

There is more to be learned at the foot of the Cross than anywhere else in the world.

Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible-reading.

We may love money without having it, just as we may have money without loving it.

The fear of punishment, the desire of reward, the sense of duty, are all useful arguments, in their way, to persuade people to holiness. But they are all weak and powerless, until a person loves Christ.

I maintain that to tell a person they are born again, while they are living in carelessness or sin, is a dangerous delusion.

What you think now about the cross of Christ, I cannot tell; but I can wish you nothing better than this - that you may be able to say with the apostle Paul, before you die or meet the Lord, 'God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Every fresh act of sin lessens fear and remorse, hardens our hearts, blunts the edge of our conscience, and increases our evil inclination.

Beware of letting small faults pass unnoticed under the idea it is a little one. There are no little things in training children; all are important. Little weeds need plucking up as much as any. Leave them alone and they will soon be great.

Better to confess Christ 1000 times now and be despised by men, than be disowned by Christ before God on the day of Judgment.

The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight against spiritual apathy in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a brief round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But of the great spiritual warfare - its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests - of all things they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own.

Nothing perhaps affects man's character more than the company he keeps