Self-righteousness....is the largest idol of the human heart - the idol which man loves most and God hates most. Dearly beloved, you will always be going back to this idol. You are always trying to be something in yourself, to gain God's favour by thinking little of your sin, or by looking to your repentance, tears, prayers ; or by looking to your religious exercises, your frames, etc; or by looking to your graces, the Spirit's work in your heart. Beware of false Christs. Study sanctification to the utmost, but make not a Christ of it.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Online Information
God shows us His love for mankind not only when we do good, but also when we offend and displease Him. How patiently he endures our transgressions; and when He chastises, how mercifully He chastises!
Seraphim of Sarov
Informational Snippet
The devil's snare does not catch you, unless you are first caught by the devil's bait.
Ambrose
Biography
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things then it is sin for you, however, innocent it may be in itself.
Susanna Wesley
Biography
Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, if it has its own way it will go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could, every thought of unbelief would be atheism if allowed to develop. Every rise of lust, if it has its way reaches the height of villainy; it is like the grave that is never satisfied. The deceitfulness of sin is seen in that it is modest in its first proposals but when it prevails it hardens mens' hearts, and brings them to ruin.
John Owen
Biography-Website
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Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin By Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Sin. Christians used to hate it, fear it, flee from it, grieve over it . . . but not anymore. In his bestseller, Plantinga gives you a fresh look at the ancient doctrine of sin to help you better recognize and deal with it. Discover how sin corrupts what is good, the relationship to folly and addiction --- and the beauty of God's grace. 216 pages, softcover from Eerdmans. |
Why is it that we, in the very kingdom of grace, surrounded by angels,....nevertheless, can do so little, and, instead of mounting with wings like eagles, grovel in the dust, and do but sin, and confess sin alternately? Is it that the power of God is not within us? Is it literally that we are not able to perform God's commandments? God forbid. We are able. We have that given us which makes us able. We do have a power within us to do what we are commanded to do. What is it we lack? The power? No; the will. What we lack is the simple, earnest, sincere inclination and aim to use what God has given us, and what we have in us.
John Henry Newman
Biography
I've discovered I cannot fight the demons of busyness directly. I cannot continuously say "No" to this or "No" to that, unless there is something ten times more attractive to choose. Saying "No" to my lust, my greed, my needs, and the world's powers takes an enormous amount of energy. The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive that I can devote all my energies to saying "Yes." In effect, I don't have time to pay any attention to the distractions.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
Mere knowledge is not enough to undercut the evil in the human heart. Simply knowing what is right doesn't enable us to do right.
Charles (Chuck) Colson
Breakpoint
The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it.
Leonard Ravenhill
Archives and Articles
Grace burst forth spontaneously from the bosom of eternal love and rested not until it had removed every impediment and found its way to the sinner's side, swelling round him in full flow. Grace does away the distance between the sinner and God, which sin had created. Grace meets the sinner on the spot where he stands; grace approaches him just as he is. Grace does not wait till there is something to attract it nor till a good reason is found in the sinner for its flowing to him.... It was free, sovereign grace when it first thought of the sinner; it was free grace when it found and laid hold of him; and it is free grace when it hands him up into glory.
Horatius Bonar
Website
It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.
Jerome
Biography
Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs. And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted to obtain something we didn't have, or we feared losing something we had.
Augustine
Works And Biography
Men do not differ much about what things they call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
Gilbert Keith G. K. Chesterton
American Chesterton Society
Such is man's nature, that he is very inactive and lazy unless he is influenced by some affection, either love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, or some other. These affections we see to be the springs that set men agoing, in all the affairs of life, and engage them in all their pursuits: these are the things that put men forward, and carry them along.
Jonathan Edwards
The Works of Jonathan Edwards
No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ.
Richard Sibbes
Brief Biography and Article
Sometimes it is easier to hide behind self rejection and loathing rather than deal with specific areas of sin that the Lord points out to us. But what is easier often becomes a snare, never allowing us to truly take personal responsibility for our actions. For example, it can be easier to say, "I am a horrible person and utterly hopeless, so why even try?" than to say. "I repent of my selfish anger and with God's grace, choose to work with Him so I no longer live in this anger any longer"
Katherine Walden
I Lift My Eyes Web Ministries
It is a fact that the Lord Jesus has already died for you. It is also a fact that you have already died with the Lord Jesus...If you do not believe in your death with Christ, you will not be able to receive the effectiveness of death with Him - freedom from sin.
Watchman Nee
Website
Never... think we have a due knowledge of ourselves till we have been exposed to various kinds of temptations, and tried on every side. Integrity on one side of our character is no voucher for integrity on another. We cannot tell how we should act if brought under temptations different from those we have hitherto experienced. This thought should keep us humble. We are sinners, but we do not know how great. He alone knows who died for our sins.
John Henry Newman
Biography
Sin forsaken is the best evidence of sin forgiven.
Anonymous
No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
Original sin is in us, like the beard. We are shaved today and look clean, and have a smooth chin; tomorrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth.
Martin Luther
Biography and Information
God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything, but by removing him from the scene of action.
Watchman Nee
Website
Find More Watchman Nee Resources
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
John Owen
Biography-Website
Just when the truth about life sinks in, his truth starts to surface. He takes us by the hand and dares us not to sweep the facts under the rug but to confront them with him at our side.
Max Lucado
Upwords
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Hazards of Being a Man By Jeffrey E. Miller * Insensitivity, manipulation, lust, unresolved anger---the problems confronting today's men are not new. They've been around since Bible times. Focusing on a different Old Testament personality in each chapter, Miller tackles tough issues to help you recognize---and overcome---the sin and weaknesses all men face. Great for individuals or small groups! 208 pages, softcover from Baker. |
Sin is like a sugar coated pill. We loved those pills at first as a child - they were so sweet- but when we had sucked the sugar off, they were so bitter that we wanted to spit them out. Sin's pleasures first, then the remorse and pain.
Anonymous
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savour to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
Frederick Buechner
Unofficial Website
More Frederick Buechner Materials
In reference to handing God kingship over a besetting sin in his own life. "The Lord never took that key; He took the door off, and in place of the door, He put a window and ever since that day the light of the knowledge of the glory of God has shone into my heart in the face of Jesus Christ.
Frederick Brotherton ( F. B. ) Meyer
Online Works
Without the concept of sin, there is no point to being a Christian. It's because humanity is defined as sinful, that Christian theology from the earliest times proposed the remedy of Jesus of Nazareth.
Anonymous
Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else!
Chuck Smith
Satan has access to the domain of darkness, but he can only occupy those areas where mankind, through sin, has allowed him.
Francis Frangipane
Ministries of Francis Frangipane
A sinful act involves worship of the wrong kind, submitting ourselves at that moment to serve the appetites of our pride or lust, and so repentance is literally a transfer of our worship back to the One who rightfully owns it..... Worship has been misunderstood as something that arises from a feeling which "comes upon you," but it is vital that we understand that it is rooted in a conscious act of the will, to serve and obey the Lord Jesus Christ. The feelings, the joy of having been forgiven, follow on as a consequence of our reunion with him.
Graham Kendrick
Website
God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.
William Gurnall
Online Works
There must be a constant and increasing appreciation that though sin still remains it does not have the mastery. There is a total difference between surviving sin and reigning sin, the regenerate in conflict with sin and the unregenerate complacent to sin. It is one thing for sin to live in us: it is another for us to live in sin. It is of paramount concern for the Christian and for the interests of his sanctification that he should know that sin does not have the dominion over him, that the forces of redeeming, regenerative, and sanctifying grace have been brought to bear upon him in that which is central in his moral and spiritual being, that he is the habitation of God through the Spirit, and that Christ has been formed in him the hope of glory.
Eric Liddell
Eric Liddell Centre
If you would judge of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of pleasure, then take this simple rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things - that to you is sin.
Susannah Wesley
I am tempted to think that I am now an established Christian, - that I have overcome this or that lust so long, - that I have got into the habit of the opposite grace, - so that there is no fear; I may venture very near the temptation - nearer than other men. This is a lie of Satan. One might as well speak of gunpowder getting by habit of resisting fire, so as not to catch spark. As long as powder is wet, it resists the spark; but when it becomes dry, it is ready to explode at the first touch. As long as the Spirit dwells in my heart, He deadens me to sin, so that, if lawfully called through temptation, I may reckon upon God carrying me through. But when the Spirit leaves me, I am like dry gunpowder. Oh for a sense of this!
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Online Information
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
John Owen
Biography-Website
Your worthiness gives you no help, and your unworthiness does not harm you. As one drop of water is as compared to the great ocean, so are my sins as compared with God's incomprehensible grace in Christ.
Johann Arndt
Brief Biography
Only he who flings himself upward when the pull comes to drag him down, can hope to break the force of temptation. Temptation may be an invitation to hell, but much more is it an opportunity to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation, sin and righteousness are both very near the Christian; but, of the two, the latter is the nearer.
Charles H. Brent
Brief Biography
Is it unfair to suggest that, in some of us at least, [christianity] hasn't fully worked so far simply because, at the pinch, at the decisive moment, we don't want it to work or ourselves to be lifted up above the failings and disloyalties we find so alluring, but rather to be enabled to continue them without the ugly consequences of so doing, to have the inexorable laws of life bent aside in our favour, so that we can squeeze through and escape, without reaping what we have sown; because, as we misunderstand it, the whole point of the good news our Lord brings is the (to us) gladsome announcement that God is happily much more morally indifferent than our consciences had thought, and is not going to make a fuss about our sins and such-like trivial peccadilloes, but will surely let us off - because, in fact, we have not grasped that the core and essence of the Gospel...is its tremendous and glorious revelation of how deadly is God's hatred of sin, so that He cannot stand having it in the same universe as Himself, and will go any length, and will pay any price, and will make any sacrifice, to master and abolish it, is set upon so doing in our hearts, thank God, as elsewhere.
Arthur John (A. J.) Gossip
Online Article.
Sin is its own punishment.
Augustine
Works And Biography
Pride is the swelling of the soul, lust is the fever, error the gangrene, unbelief the plague of the heart, hypocrisy the scurvy, hardness of heart the stone, anger the frenzy, malice the wolf in the breast, covetousness the dropsy, spiritual sloth the green sickness, apostasy the epilepsy; here are eleven soul diseases and when they come to the full height they are dangerous, and most frequently prove mortal.
Thomas Watson
Online Works And Biography
Refusing to accept God's love because we're unworthy - of course we're unworthy! - is another golden calf.
Madeleine L'Engle
Bonasta
More Madeleine L'Engle Materials
Silence is golden but more often it is guilty. The normal thing for Christians is to speak of what they know, to deal frankly against error, and to maintain freedom of discussion whenever challenged by an honest appeal of plain facts. But to shut up like a clam is sin by omission - failure to study God's word or the fear of cost of unvoicing unpopular testimony.
Anonymous
Love every man in spite of his falling into sin. Never mind the sins, but remember that the foundation of the man is the same - the image of God.
John of Kronstadt
Brief Biography
What if thou hadst committed the sins of a thousand? What if thou hadst committed the sins of a million worlds? Christ's righteousness will cover, Christ's blood will cleanse thee from the guilt of all.
George Whitefield
The Essential George Whitefield
Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, `Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.' We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.
A. W. Tozer
The Works Of A. W. Tozer
Sin is a clenched fist and its object is the face of God.
Anonymous
To win the war against fear, we must know the true God as He is revealed in the Bible. He works to give us lasting peace. He receives joy, not from condemning us but in rescuing us from the devil. Yes, the Lord will bring conviction to our hearts concerning sin, but it is so He can deliver us from sin's power and consequences. In its place, the Lord works to establish healing, forgiveness and peace.
Francis Frangipane
Ministries of Francis Frangipane
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Restoring Relationships: The Importance of Forgiving and Being Forgiven By Ralph A. Gwinn In the process of becoming like Christ, there is one essential element that is often overlooked. Because we never get to the place where we no longer sin against God and against one another, forgiveness is essential to maintaining forward motions. In a very real sense, each of us is God's "great work," and He continues to work to make us better likenesses of Christ, both as individuals and together as the Body of Christ. But God's "problem" is that we aren't always as eager for that likeness as He is, and so we drag our feet. Some people even refuse to let Him start the process with them. This book is an attempt to help us understand what is involved in forgiveness, with a view to enriching our lives with God and with one another. |
May God's grace give you the necessary humility. Try not to think - much less speak - of *their* sins. One's own are a much more profitable theme! And if on consideration, one can find no faults on one's own side, then cry for mercy: for this *must* be a most dangerous delusion.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
Cease to pray and thou will begin to sin. Prayer is not only a means to prevail for mercy but also to prevent sin.
William Gurnall
Online Works
If I disobey the inner voice of His Spirit, I will lose the fullness. I can never lose the relationship, but I will lose the fullness. When there's disobedience in the Christian life the fullness ceases. He is there but He is grieved. And you soon know when you've lost the fullness, because the joy is gone. The fellowship is gone. The reality of the presence of Christ is gone. It's Satan's delight to tell me that once he's got me, he will keep me. But at that moment I can go back to Him. And I know that if I confess my sins, God is faithful and just to forgive me.
Alan Redpath
Brief Biography And List Of Works
Who can estimate the value of God's gift, when He gave to the world His only begotten Son! It is something unspeakable and incomprehensible. It passes man's understanding. Two things there are which man has no arithmetic to reckon, and no line to measure. One of these things is the extent of that man's loss who loses his own soul. The other is the extent of God's gift when he gave Christ to sinners...Sin must indeed be exceeding sinful, when the Father must needs give His only Son to be the sinner's Friend!
James Charles J. C. Ryle
Biography And Works
We are half-hearted creatures like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
Our Saviour kneels down and gazes upon the darkest acts of our lives. But rather than recoil in horror, he reaches out in kindness and says, 'I can clean that if you want.' And from the basin of his grace, he scoops a palm full of mercy and washes our sin.
Max Lucado
Upwords
Adultery isn't something that happens with the act - it happens months beforehand. It's an attitude. You disconnect yourself from the person you've said you're spending the rest of your life with.
Anonymous Minister - who committed adultery
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