Top 352 Quotes & Sayings by R. C. Sproul - Page 4

In salvation we are not only saved from sin and damnation; we are saved unto holiness. The goal of redemption is holiness.

The glory of the gospel is this: The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us.

To honor God as God, we must worship Him as He and He alone decrees.

Why do those who keep insisting Jesus hung out with sinners also keep insisting there's no such thing as sin?

In every age the church is threatened by heresy, and heresy is bound up in false doctrine. It is the desire of all heretics to minimize the importance of doctrine. When doctrine is minimized, heresy can exercise itself without restraint.

If grace is obligated it is no longer grace. The very essence of grace is that it is undeserved.

Without God upholding the universe from moment to moment, nothing could continue to be.

A married person does not live in isolation. He or she has made a promise, a pledge, a vow, to another person. Until that vow is fulfilled and the promise is kept, the individual is in debt to his marriage partner. That is what he owes. 'You owe it to yourself' is not a valid excuse for breaking a marriage vow but a creed of selfishness.

We prefer the shadows where we feel safe over the light which exposes us and causes us to say 'woe is me!'

Hope is called the anchor of the soul because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a 'wish' I wish that such-and-such would take place rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.

The great misconception in our day is this: that God isn´t concerned to protect His own integrity. He´s a kind of wishy-washy deity, who just waves a wand of forgiveness over everybody. No. For God to forgive you is a very costly matter.

True faith always produces real conformity to Christ.

If the God you believe in is not a sovereign God, then you really don't believe in God.

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization.

The idea of being the Substitute in offering an atonement to satisfy the demands of God’s law for others was something Christ understood as His mission from the moment He entered this world and took upon Himself a human nature. He came from heaven as the gift of the Father for the express purpose of working out redemption as our Substitute, doing for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves.

Preachers must always fight the temptation to preach anything but Christ and Him crucified.

People only have true understanding when they look at everything from God's perspective. Authentic wisdom begins when we understand that God is to be the object of our devotion, our adoration, and our reverence.

It is by virtue of the atonement that God can maintain His justice and yet demonstrate His mercy.

Like Muslims we assume that God will judge us "on balance." If our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds, we will arrive safely in heaven. But, alas, if our evil deeds outweigh our good ones, we will suffer the wrath of God in hell. We may be "marred" by sin but in no wise devastated by it. We still have the ability to balance our sins with our own righteousness. This is the most monstrous lie of all.

What better evidence could there be of a man's salvation than that he offers to others the grace he himself has received?

When we behold the face of God, all memories of pain and suffering will vanish. Our souls shall be totally healed.

Nothing could be more irrational than the idea that something comes from nothing.

Your personal testimony, however meaningful it is to you, is not the gospel.

People need a consistent explanation of the cross of Christ and what it accomplished. Christ's atoning work is the centerpiece of the gospel and the only solution for humanity's estrangement from our Creator.

The Bible alone is the only authority that can bind the conscience of a person absolutely because it is the only authority that carries with it the intrinsic authority of God Himself.

Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God

The Bible's truth does not depend in any way on whether or not a person believes the truth.

Confession should be a daily activity for the Christian, whose entire pilgrimage is characterized by the spirit of repentance.

In a universe governed by God there are no chance events. Indeed, there is no such thing as chance. Chance does not exist. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. But chance itself has no power because it has no being. Chance is not an entity that can influence reality. Chance is not a thing. It is nothing.

Divorce Myths: 1. When love has gone out of a marriage, it is better to get divorced. 2. It is better for the children for the unhappy couple to divorce than to raise their children in the atmosphere of an unhappy marriage. 3. Divorce is the lesser of two evils. 4. You owe it to yourself. 5. Everyone's entitled to one mistake. 6. God led me to this divorce.

It is superstitious to equate our feelings and inclinations with the leading of the Holy Spirit.

If you care about the slaughter of the innocent, then for God's sake, speak up.

What about putting Christ back into Christmas? It is simply not necessary. Christ has never left Christmas.

One can have knowledge without having wisdom, but one cannot have wisdom without having knowledge.

I cannot have God in my heart if he is not in my head. Before I can believe in, I must believe that.

If you’re not accountable in life that means ultimately that your life doesn’t count.

The rapture will not be secret but open and manifest. Its purpose will not be to whisk the elect away from the earth for a while until Christ returns for a 'second' Second Coming. The purpose of the rapture is to allow the saints to meet Jesus in the air as He returns and be included in His entourage during His triumphal descent from Heaven. His coming in this manner will be attended by the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the end of the world.

Christ is still in Christmas, and for one brief season the secular world broadcasts the message of Christ over every radio station and television channel in the land. Never does the church get as much free air time as during the Christmas season.

For the Christian, every tragedy is ultimately a blessing, or God is a liar.

The wearing of fabric head coverings in worship was universally the practice of Christian women until the twentieth century. What happened? Did we suddenly find some biblical truth to which the saints for thousands of years were blind? Or were our biblical views of women gradually eroded by the modern feminist movement that has infiltrated the Church

The question is not, "Why is there only one way to God?" but "Why is there even one way?"

I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.

But the blessing Christ promised, the blessing of great reward, is a reward of grace. The blessing is promised even though it is not earned. Augustine said it this way: Our rewards in heaven are a result of God's crowning His own gifts.

It is important for us to make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. A Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights and is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all downturns in life.

We've replaced the proclamation of Christ with an easy-listening legalism of do more and try harder.

Every person needs to feel significant. We want our lives to count. We yearn to believe that in some way we are important and that hunger for significance-a drive as intense as our need for oxygen-doesn't come from pride or ego. It comes from God because he wants each of us to understand how important we are. ... We must seek our roots, our origin, and our destiny so that we can know our present value. ..... ...We can help each other realize that we are persons of significance being made in the image of God.

What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself

By definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never ever obligatory.

The more faithful preachers are to the Word of God in their preaching, the more liable they are to the charge of hypocrisy. Why? Because the more faithful people are to the Word of God the higher the message is that they will preach. The higher the message, the further they will be from obeying themselves.

For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member. The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgement of sin as a condition for membership.

Doctrine divides, but doctrine also unites. It binds together the hearts of God's people who celebrate the truth of God together.

The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?

We are puzzled and bewildered whenever we see suffering in this world because we have become accustomed to the mercy and the long-suffering of God. Amazing grace is no longer amazing to us.

God's grace is not infinite. God is infinite, and God is gracious.

If God did not act first, no one would be saved.

Christ exposed Himself not only to the unbridled hostility of angry men, but, more significantly, to the unmitigated wrath of God.

I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.

We do not determine right or wrong based on what everybody else is doing.

It has been said by church historians that in those periods of Christian history where renewal, revival, and awakening took place and the church was at its strongest, that coincidental with those periods in church history, there was a strong focus on the psalms in the life of God's people-particularly in the worship of God's people.

When God's justice falls, we are offended because we think God owes perpetual mercy. We must not take His grace for granted. We must never lose our capacity to be amazed by grace