R. c. sproul quotes

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

I don't always feel His presence. But God's promises do not depend upon my feelings; they rest upon His integrity.

The gospel is only good news when we understand the bad news.

Repentance is something that is brought about in the human heart by the work of God the Holy Spirit.

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.

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

To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation.

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

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

Advice to aspiring ministers: Get in the Word. Stay in the Word. Master the Word. And for heaven's sake, preach the Word!

Not until we take God seriously will we ever take sin seriously.

We cannot change God. God is unchangeable. If changes are to be made, they must be made in us.

Anyone who takes his faith seriously and speaks in behalf of Christ and His kingdom will be accused of fanaticism at some point.

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.

The pursuit of God is not a part-time, weekend exercise. If it is, chances are you will experience a part-time, weekend freedom. Abiding requires a kind of staying power. The pursuit is relentless. It hungers and thirsts. It pants as the deer after the mountain brook. It takes the kingdom by storm...The pursuit of God is a pursuit of passion. Indifference will not do. To abide in the Word is to hang on tenaciously. A weak grip will soon slip away. Discipleship requires staying power. We sign up for duration. We do not graduate until heaven.

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

We break our promises to one another. We break our promises to God. But God never breaks His promises to us.

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

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.

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.

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

If God is not sovereign, God is not God.

Though sin often brings immediate pleasure, it gives no lasting joy.

The worst sin against stewardship is to waste your life.

When God says something, the argument is over.

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

Grace and mercy are never deserved.

In Christian marriage, love is not an option. It is a duty.

Without the gospel, a gathering of people, though they claim otherwise, cannot be an authentic church.

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

Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us. As we engage in this communion with God more deeply and come to know the One with whom we are speaking more intimately, that growing knowledge of God reveals to us all the more brilliantly who we are and our need to change in conformity to Him. Prayer changes us profoundly.

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 are secure, not because we hold tightly to Jesus, but because He holds tightly to us.

We are all servants. The only question is whom we will serve.

God just doesn't throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive.

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.

We fall privately before we ever fall publicly.

God wants your life. Not one hour a week, not 10% of your income, He wants you.

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.

It is one thing to believe in God; it is quite another to believe God.

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.

The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.

The main problem with those who deny the existence of God is not intellectual. It is not because of insufficient information, or that God's manifestation of himself in nature has been obscured. The atheists' problem is not that they cannot know God, rather it is they do not want to know him. Man's problem with the existence of God is not an intellectual problem; it is a moral problem." For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men - Rom. 1:18"

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.

There is not one piece of cosmic dust that is outside the scope of God's sovereign providence.

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

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

It is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit who illumines the Bible.

Isn't is amazing that almost everyone has an opinion to offer about the Bible, and yet so few have studied it?

God does not rule by the consent of His subjects but by His sovereign authority. His reign extends over me whether I vote for Him or not.

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

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.

God is not interested in our public displays of piety. He's not interested in religion in terms of the outward show. He's interested in godliness.

Your task, O preacher, is to make sure that you are faithful to the text, that you are faithful to the proclamation of that gospel, that you are faithful to set forth the whole counsel of God, and then step back and let it happen.

To despise doctrine is to despise the Word of God.

Give me the biblical Christ or give me nothing.

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

Humanism was not invented by man, but by a snake who suggested that the quest for autonomy might be a good idea.

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

The only works of righteousness that serve to justify a sinner are the works of Christ.

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

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.

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.

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

I can’t make the Bible come alive for anyone. The Bible is already alive. It makes me come alive.

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

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.

To be known by God is the highest goal of human existence.

One might pray and not be a Christian, but one cannot be a Christian and not pray.

As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.

We do not segment our lives, giving some time to God, some to our business or schooling, while keeping parts to ourselves. The idea is to live all of our lives in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and for the honor and glory of God. That is what the Christian life is all about.

Sin is not simply making bad choices or mistakes. Sin is having the desire in our hearts to do the will of the enemy of God.

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.

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.

By His life, death, and resurrection, our Savior has conquered our enemies, and by His Spirit He has granted us to share in the victory.

There is nothing in this universe you need more desperately than Christ.

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

It's not the wickedness of the pagan that breaks my heart. It's the compromise of the Christian that grieves my soul.

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

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

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.

If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is the Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. That means that no part of my life must be outside of His lordship.

We have to determine our theology from the Word of God, not from what we feel.

There are only two ways that God’s justice can be satisfied with respect to your sin. Either you satisfy it or Christ satisfies it. You can satisfy it by being banished from God’s presence forever. Or you can accept the satisfaction that Jesus Christ has made.

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

The promises of God for tomorrow are the anchor for believers today.

Look to the Bible and not your feelings as the basis of the Christian life.

Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once and He volunteered.

Genuine love for Jesus manifests itself in obedience to His commandments.

Our prayers cannot force God to do anything, but He uses them as His own instruments to bring about His will.

God is not going to negotiate His holiness... in order to accommodate us.

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.

The Word of God can be in the mind without being in the heart; but it cannot be in the heart without first being in the mind.

When there’s something in the Word of God that I don’t like, the problem is not with the Word of God, it’s with me.

Fallen man is free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. His fall is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.

If you are of the truth, if you have learned the truth, if you see the sanctity of the truth, then speak truth. We are not called to be deceivers or liars. God is a God of truth, and His people are called to have an enormously high standard of truth.

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

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

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 there is one maverick molecule in all the universe, then God is not sovereign. And if God is not sovereign, He is not God.

The greatest weakness in the church today is that the servants of God keep looking over their shoulder for the approval of men.

The fundamental deception of Satan is the lie that obedience can never bring happiness.

We live in age of compromise, but if we stand on the bedrock of God’s truth, we will not bend with the winds of relativism and faithlessness.

A faithful person is revealed by those who hate him or her. Are you hated for your faith or ethics? If nobody hates you, maybe you have not displayed Christ openly enough.

God doesn't want us to just feel gratitude, but for us to show it by giving thanks to God with our lives.

A god who is all love, all grace, all mercy, no sovereignty, no justice, no holiness, and no wrath is an idol.

Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads

We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.

You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true.

Right now counts forever.

Our natural inclination is to hide ourselves from God.

I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.

The only cure for anxiety is to get down on our knees.

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.

Here then is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.

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

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

Disciples of Christ abide in His Word. Those who abide in His Word know the truth and are free.

God’s grace is not infinite. God is infinite, and God is gracious. We experience the grace of an infinite God, but grace is not infinite. God sets limits to His patience and forbearance. He warns us over and over again that someday the ax will fall and His judgment will be poured out.

The grand difference between a human being and a Supreme being is precisely this: Apart from God I cannot exist; apart from me God does exist. God does not need me in order for Him to be. I do need God in order for me to be. We are dependent. We are fragile. This is how we differ from God.

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.

He is intangible and invisible. But His work is more powerful than the most ferocious wind. The Spirit brings order out of chaos and beauty out of ugliness. He can transform a sin-blistered man into a paragon of virtue. The Spirit changes people. The Author of life is also the Transformer of life.