R. C. Sproul Quotes
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There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.
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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.
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Regeneration is a work of the omnipotent power of God, power that nothing can overcome or resist.
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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.
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No sinner has the right to say with impunity, 'God you owe me grace.' If grace is owed, it is not grace. The very essence of grace is its voluntary character. God reserves to himself the sovereign, absolute right to give grace to some and withhold that grace from others.
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The supreme form of cursedness is for the Lord to turn His back on you and bring judgment on you.
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The moment we think we deserve mercy a little alarm bell should go off in our head because we are not talking about mercy anymore but justice.
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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.
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I'll retire when they pry my cold, dead fingers off of my Bible.
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To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider.
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The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.
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The higher purpose of the cross was that the Father would be glorified by the satisfaction of His justice.
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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.
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I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
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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.
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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.
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Prayer does change things, all kinds of things. But the most important thing it changes is us.
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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.
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God is not going to negotiate His holiness... in order to accommodate us.
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It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man—a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.
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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.
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The promises of God for tomorrow are the anchor for believers today.
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We live in a time of crisis in the secular culture and in the church with regard to the beautiful.
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Repentance is something that is brought about in the human heart by the work of God the Holy Spirit.
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We fall privately before we ever fall publicly.
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We tend to have mixed feelings about the holy. There is a sense in which we are at the same time attracted to it and repulsed by it. Something draws us toward it, while at the same time we want to run away from it. We can’t seem to decide which way we want it. Part of us yearns for the holy, while part of us despises it. We can’t live with it, and we can’t live without it.
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God doesn't need our consent in order to govern us; He made us.
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No one was ever called by God to greater suffering than God's only begotten Son.
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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.
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I’ve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
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