The Quotable Christian: Sin

Godly parents have often been afflicted with wicked children; grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does.

Matthew Henry

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume 2 (McLean, Mac Donald Publishing Company) 507

...God sent Nathan to David. Note, Though God may suffer his people to fall into sin, he will not suffer them to lie still in it.

Matthew Henry

We have substituted relativity for reality, psychology for prayer, an inferiority complex for sin, social control for family worship, autosuggestion for conversion, reflex action for revelation, the spirit of the wheels for the power of the Spirit.

Hugh Thomson Kerr

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

C.S. Lewis

It is not sinning that ruins men, but sinning and not repenting, falling and not getting up again.

Matthew Henry

Those that eat forbidden fruit, how tempting soever it looks, will find it a sour grape, and it will set their teeth on edge; sooner or later they will feel from it and reflect upon it with bitterness. There is a direct tendency in sin to make a man uneasy as there is in sour grapes to set the teeth on edge.

Matthew Henry

I believe that much of our evangelistic and personal work today is not clear simply because we are too anxious to get to the answer without having a man realize the real cause of his sickness, which is true moral guilt (and not just psychological guilt feelings) in the presence of God.

Francis Schaeffer

Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 71

Sin to a believer is horrible, because it crucified the Saviour; he sees in every iniquity the nails and spear.

Charles Spurgeon

Sin comes to us, like Judas, with a kiss, and like Joab, with an outstretched hand and flattering words.

J.C. Ryle

Sin is not an unfortunate slip or a regrettable act; it is a posture of defiance against a holy God.

Max Lucado

A number of homosexuals and lesbians have come to L'Abri where they hope they can get help. You must first of all show compassion and not act as thought this sin were greater than other sins, or as though you are superior since you are not caught up in it. But at the same time you must point out that the practice of homosexuality is wrong. It is not wrong in away that removes them from the human race or wrong in a way that makes them worse than other sins would do. But its practice is wrong under the absolutes of God.

Francis Schaeffer

Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 105-6

Sinners, like those that are mad, destroy themselves with foolish lusts, and yet at the same time decieve themselves with foolish hopes; and they are, of all diseased persons, most enemies to their own cure.

Matthew Henry

The best way to fight against sin is to fight it on our knees.

Philip Henry

The chuurch that does not speak of the sins of the last generation is in no position to speak against the sins of this generation.

Francis Schaeffer

Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 40

God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He's even put a "no fishing" sign over the spot.

Dwight L. Moody

When you have been sitting in a well-lighted room and are suddenly called into the outer darkness, how black it seems. And thus when a man has dwelt in communion with God, sin becomes exceedingly sinful, and the darkness in which the world lies appears like tenfold night.

Charles Spurgeon

The true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.

C.S. Lewis

We often do a bad act, and make a worse excuse.

Thomas a Kempis

It is not our circumstances on the outside which are our real problem. It is the circumstances on the inside of us, the unbelief in our hearts, which is the cause of our problems.

J. Vernon McGee

Sin is spiritual cancer. A man who tries only to live with cancer, dies with it.

Vance Havner

What were once vices are now the manners of the day..

Seneca

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved.

Martin Luther

The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.

A.W. Pink

Let us, then, have it fixed down in our minds that the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within. It is not the result of bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions and bad examples, as some weak Christians are too fond of saying. No! It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and with which we are born.

J.C. Ryle

Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A little child is easily quieted and amused with gaudy toys and dolls and rattles, so long as it is not hungry; but once let it feel the cravings of nature within, and we know that nothing will satisfy it but food. So it is with man in the matter of his soul. Music and flowers and candles and incense and banners and processions and beautiful vestments and confessionals and man-made ceremonies of a semi-Romish character may do well enough for him under certain conditions. But once let him 'awake and arise from the dead', and he will not rest content with these things. They will seem to him mere solemn triflings and a waste of time. Once let him see his sin, and he must see his Saviour.

J.C. Ryle

Christ took our sins and the sins of the whole world as well as the Father's wrath on his shoulders, and he has drowned them both in himself so that we are thereby reconciled to God and become completely righteous.

Martin Luther