Top 352 Quotes & Sayings by R. C. Sproul - Page 2

Scratching people where they itch and addressing their 'felt needs' is a stratagem of the poor steward of the oracles of God. This was the recipe for success for the false prophets of the Old Testament.

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.

If God is not sovereign, God is not God.

The sweetest fragrance, the most beautiful aroma that God has ever detected emanating from this planet, was the aroma of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus that was offered once and for all on the cross.

Right now counts forever.

Christ told his disciples not to be anxious about tomorrow, but he never said not to consider tomorrow. Intelligent problem solving demands careful consideration of the future effects of present solutions.

Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.

We may live in a culture that believes everyone will be saved, that we are 'justified by death' and all you need to do to go to heaven is die, but God’s Word certainly doesn’t give us the luxury of believing that.

What is the difference between the Christian God, and the gods of the other religions?" He simply, yet profoundly answered, "The main difference is this: The God of Christianity exists.

Worship is not simply a feeling that is experienced; it must also involve understanding and the mind.

The human dilemma is this: God is Holy and we are not. God is Righteous and we are not.

At its root, this is what faith is. It is not believing in God. It's believing God.

Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us.

The more I learn about God, the more aware I become of what I don’t know about him.

You have to stop thinking logically to argue that the universe came into being by itself, out of nothing.

The only freedom that man ever has is when he becomes a slave to Jesus Christ.

We have to find in Christ, not a mask that conceals our face, but an entire wardrobe of clothing, which is His righteousness.

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him... To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

We need the church as urgently as a starving baby needs his mother’s milk.

Scripture does not say that God is 'love, love, love' or that He is 'wrath, wrath, wrath,' but that He is 'holy, holy, holy.'

God's grace is so powerful that it has the capacity to overcome our natural resistance to it.

God doesn't need our consent in order to govern us; He made us.

There are many today who believe that there are people running around this world right now who are performing greater miracles, performing miracles in greater abundance, and actually doing more incredible acts of divine healing than Jesus himself did. I can't think of any more serious delusion than that.

Sometimes we emulate the Pharisees more than we imitate Christ.

The principle rule of interpreting Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture.

The most violent expression of God's wrath and justice is seen in the Cross. If ever a person had room to complain for injustice, it was Jesus. He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the Cross. Here is where our astonishment should be focused.

If you truly have it, you never lose it; and if you lose it, you never truly had it.

No one was ever called by God to greater suffering than God's only begotten Son.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. He is the Seeker; we are the ones who are running.

God is serious about how we worship Him, and we must be serious about it, too.

We have a tendency to think of GOD being glorified only in the manifestation of his mercy----- He is just as glorified by His justice.

The Bible never tells us to take a blind leap of faith into the darkness and hope that there's somebody out there. The Bible calls us to jump out of the darkness and into the light. That is not a blind leap. The faith that the New Testament calls us to is a faith rooted and grounded in something that God makes clear is the truth.

Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.

The Christian life is to live all of your life in the presence of God.

The only reason why I'm a Christian is because I'm a gift of the Father to the Son, not because of anything I've ever done.

The world is filled with God's glory. You can't turn without bumping into it.

Grace and mercy are never deserved.

When God writes our names in the 'Lamb's Book of Life' He doesn't do it with an eraser handy. He does it for eternity.

God did not die. The God who took on Himself a human nature died in His humanity, but the deity did not perish on the cross.

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.

We have no right to come before God at all, apart from the finished work of Christ.

Without God man has no reference point to define himself.

The irony of New Testament lordship is that only in slavery to Christ can a man discover authentic freedom.

At the moment I sin, I desire the sin more than I desire to please God.

Sometimes we behave and perform with our lives, not for God, but for an audience.

The complaint that church is boring is never made by people in awe.

Natural man’s sin is precisely this: He wants the benefits of God without God Himself.

The grounds of your justification are the perfect works of Jesus Christ. We're saved by works, but they're not our own.

If you don’t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don’t know God. You don’t love God. You’re out of touch with God. You’re asleep to his character.

I rest solely in His righteousness and in His atonement because I know there is nothing I can do to make up for my own iniquity.

The more I expose myself to the Word of God, the greater my faith will be.

Jesus' life was a storm of controversy. The apostles, like the prophets before them, could hardly go a day without controversy. Paul said that he debated daily in the marketplace. To avoid controversy is to avoid Christ. We can have peace, but it is a servile and carnal peace where truth is slain in the streets.

Reformed theology does NOT teach that God brings the ELECT kicking and screaming, against their will, into His kingdom. It teaches that God so-works in the hearts of the Elect as to make them willing and pleased to come to Christ. They come to Christ because they want to. They want to because God has created in their hearts a desire for Christ.

Prayer is to the Christian what breath is to life, yet no duty of the Christian is so neglected.

We live in a culture where the truth claims of Christianity are not only rejected, they are ridiculed.

Heaven is a place where God will personally wipe away our tears.

Mindless Christianity is no Christianity at all. You can't love what you don't know.

Holiness provokes hatred. The greater the holiness, the greater the human hostility toward it. It seems insane. No man was ever more loving than Jesus Christ. Yet even His love made people angry. His love was a perfect love, a transcendent and holy love, but HIs very love brought trauma to people. This kind of love is so majestic we can't stand it.

Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.

God not only initiated my salvation, He not only sowed the seed, but He made sure that that seed germinated in my heart by regenerating me by the power of the Holy Ghost.