Sin has not only put a film on the eye, but destroyed the capacity to see. It has ruined the faculty of spiritual insight, and struck the soul with blindness. The only perfect cure is the salve of experimental grace. A man may have all the learning in the world, and all the culture the schools can afford, and yet be a mere novice in spiritual understanding.
– Asbury Lowrey –
Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. These are words by which the slanderers of the nature, of the body, the impeachers of our flesh, are completely overthrown … We do not wish to cast aside the body, but corruption: not the flesh, but death. The body is one thing, corruption another; the body is one thing, death another… What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility.
– John Chrysostom –
We religious leaders need to look very much more deeply. We can so easily have talks with people, and they can say we have helped, write us grateful letters, even stand steady for a time till the juice we have put into them runs out; but, we may have brought them no hunger for God—because that hunger is no ache in our own heart—nor brought them anywhere near to the end of self.
– Florence Allshorn –
The invasion of the Church by the world is a menace to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom. In all ages conformity to the world by Christians has resulted in lack of spiritual life and a consequent lack of spiritual vision and enterprise. A secularized or self-centered Church can never evangelize the world.
– John R. Mott –
Bring thy lust to the gospel, not for relief, but for further conviction of its guilt: look on him whom thou hast pierced, and be in bitterness. Say to thy soul, What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace, have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace? Do I thus requite the Lord? Have I defiled the heart that Christ died to wash, which the blesses Spirit hath chosen to dwell in? And can I keep myself out of the dust? What can I say to the dear Lord Jesus? How shall I hold up my head with any boldness before him? Do I account communion with him of so little value that for this vile lust’s sake I have scarce left him any room in my heart? How shall I escape, if I neglect so great salvation? In the mean time, what shall I say to the Lord? Love, mercy, grace, goodness, peace, joy, consolation; I have despised them all, and esteemed them as a thing of naught, that I might harbour a lust in my heart.
– John Owen –
from The Mortification of Sin
The man who remains in his sin will be damned just as surely as the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west.
– AW Tozer –
You may say, “God doesn’t hate anybody. God is love.” No, my friend. You need to understand something. Jesus Christ taught, the prophets taught, the apostles taught this: that apart from the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord the only thing left for you is the wrath, the fierce anger of God because of your rebellion and your sin.
– Paul Washer –
Anything that cools my love for Christ is “the world.”
– John Wesley –
Whenever we have to confront somebody about sin, there ought to be a little bit of a tear in our heart, if not in our eyes. We need to be reminded that but for the grace of God, the capacity for sin in us could break out.
– Crawford Loritts –