R. C. Sproul quotes:

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  • Economics for Everybody' begins with understanding God's principles for organizing His creation and what that means for us as creatures and stewards.

  • To be a Christian is to be a theologian-a student of God and his will. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church.

  • Reformed theology so far transcends the mere five points of Calvinism that it is an entire worldview.

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

  • 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 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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • In Reformed theology, if God is not sovereign over the entire created order, then he is not sovereign at all. The term sovereignty too easily becomes a chimera. If God is not sovereign, then he is not God.

  • 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.

  • Whenever I read the psalms, I feel like I am eavesdropping on a saint having a personal conversation with God.

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

  • Obedience unlocks the riches of the Christian experience. Prayer prompts and nurtures obedience, putting the heart into the proper "frame of mind" to desire obedience.Of

  • It is important that when we are engaged in admonition or exhortation or confrontation with a brother who is overcome in sin, we call attention to the truth in an extraordinarily compassionate and tender and loving spirit.

  • The Advent season is that time when we seek to, in a manner of speaking, mute our memory of what has already happened, that we might brighten our joy that it happened. We leave the already of His advent to taste the bitter of the not yet. We, in short, go back, that we might look forward to His coming.

  • We are not doomed to an ultimate conflict with no hope of resolution. The message of the Scripture is one of victory - full, final and ultimate victory. It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan's. His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • God is not blind; neither is He capricious. For Him there are no accidents. With God there are no cases of chance events.

  • 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.

  • I had actually gone to a church-related college, but I went on a football scholarship, not because of any interest in the church.

  • 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 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.

  • 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?"

  • Touching His human nature, Jesus is no longer present with us. Touching his Divine nature, He is never absent from us.

  • 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.

  • It's easy to be an educated fool.

  • Once we are reconciled to God, the estrangement is over, the hostilities have ended, and the peace is sealed for eternity.

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • God's graciousness is not totally removed from any individual during this lifetime. In hell, it is.

  • 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.

  • Modern man has lost any sense of God's nearness, but Christianity teaches that God reveals himself through every single thing he has ever brought into being, whether a created object or historical event.

  • The failure of modern evangelicalism is the failure to understand the holiness of God.

  • It's dangerous to assume that because a man is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. I am sure that the reason that I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy.

  • The holiness of God is traumatic to unholy people.

  • The modern movement of worship is designed to break down barriers between man and God, to remove the veil, as it were, from the fearsome holiness of God, which might cause us to tremble. It is designed to make us feel comfortable.

  • When people ask me to name the Ligonier teaching material they should use to help them grow; I tell them, 'You should start with The Holiness of God.'

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

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

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

  • If God says, 'I forgive you,' you are forgiven no matter how you feel, and to refuse that forgiveness is an act of arrogance.

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • The most obscene symbol in human history is the Cross; yet in its ugliness it remains the most eloquent testimony to human dignity.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • When you enter the voting booth, don't leave your Christianity in the parking lot.

  • All that God had to do to harden Pharaoh's heart, or to harden your heart, is to withhold His own grace.

  • In the culture of pluralism...the only thing that cannot be tolerated is a claim to exclusivity.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • The only righteousness that meets the requirements of the Law is the righteousness of Christ.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Thus, John is saying that Jesus did His miracles not for their own sake but to point the observer and the reader beyond them to something that was significant to Himself as the One who spoke

  • The suffering of the Christian or anyone else in this world is never ultimately an accident. All suffering is within the pale of divine sovereignty. All suffering comes within the broader context of the sovereignty of God.

  • It is easy to get faith into our heads. It is hard to get faith into our bloodstream.

  • 'Economics for Everybody' begins with understanding God's principles for organizing His creation and what that means for us as creatures and stewards.

  • If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace.

  • We can no more assist the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to spiritual life than Lazarus could help Jesus raise him from the dead.

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

  • Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God but believe in the sovereignty of man.

  • Seeking God? We have totally revised corporate worship services to be sensitive to "seekers." If worship were to be tailored for seekers, it would be directed exclusively to believers, for no one except believers ever seeks God (Rom. 3:9-12).

  • For a work to be considered good it must not only conform outwardly to the law of God, but it must be motivated inwardly by a sincere love for God.

  • If God is not sovereign, God is not God.

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

  • Just as the normative standard for the good and for the true is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God.

  • The worst sin against stewardship is to waste your life.

  • To focus our mind on the task at hand-with fierce concentration-m akes for a productive use of time.

  • 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.

  • In His tender mercies, God has an incredible capacity to love the unlovely.

  • To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider.

  • The great triad of enemies for Christian growth contain the world, the flesh, and the devil.

  • No unborn baby has ever had the right to choose or deny its own destruction.

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

  • There's probably no concept in theology more repugnant to modern America than the idea of divine wrath.

  • A Christian is not a skeptic. A Christian is a person with a burning heart, a heart set aflame with certainty of the resurrection.

  • 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.

  • A holy God is both just and merciful. He is never unjust.

  • A loving God who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our own making as much as if we carved Him out of stone.

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

  • Any conception of a god that is less than sovereign is an idol and no god at all.

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

  • Apostasy occurs when a church leaves its historic moorings, abandons its historic confessional position, and degenerates into a state where either essential Christian truths are blatantly denied or the denial of such truths is widely tolerated.

  • As soon as a baby enters the world, the baby is immediately introduced to pain. It is somewhat symbolic that life begins with a cry.

  • At the final judgment, everyone will stand before God alone.

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

  • Before I can call upon Christ as my Savior, I have to understand that I need a savior. I have to understand that I am a sinner. I have to have some understanding of what sin is.I have to understand that God exists. I have to understand that I am estranged from that God, and that I am exposed to that God's judgment. I don't reach out for a savior unless I am first convinced that I need a savior. All of that is pre-evangelism. It is involved in the data or the information that a person has to process with his mind before he can either respond to it in faith or reject it in unbelief.

  • Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads

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

  • Change marriage and you change the world. Convince people that government, not God, lays down the rules for marriage, and they will believe more strongly that they determine right and wrong, that not even the world's rulers are subject to a higher authority.

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

  • Cynicism and skepticism are the crudest form of quasi-intellectualism... Let the cynic become cynical of his cynicism and the skeptic skeptical of his skepticism and join the battle.

  • Dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes place first, there is no possibility of faith.

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