R. C. Sproul Quotes

In the psalms, we have a collection of 150 prayers that were inspired originally by the Holy Ghost. If you want to know how God is pleased and honored in prayer, why not immerse yourself in the prayers that he himself has inspired?

Prayer is not optional for the Christian; it is required.

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

Unbelief is judged by Jesus not as an intellectual error but as a hostile act of prejudice against God himself.

Though sin often brings immediate pleasure, it gives no lasting joy.

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

I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.

It has been said by church historians that in those periods of Christian history where renewal, revival, and awakening took place and the church was at its strongest, that coincidental with those periods in church history, there was a strong focus on the psalms in the life of God's people-particularly in the worship of God's people.

The holiness of God is traumatic to unholy people.

Wealth is not wisdom's goal, but is often wisdom's reward.

If ever there were a time there was nothing, there would be nothing now.

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.

It is superstitious to equate our feelings and inclinations with the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We break our promises to one another. We break our promises to God. But God never breaks His promises to us.

The God of popular religion is not holy.

We do not determine right or wrong based on what everybody else is doing.

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

Sin can bring pleasure, but never happiness.

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.

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.

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

If you are of the truth, if you have learned the truth, if you see the sanctity of the truth, then speak truth. We are not called to be deceivers or liars. God is a God of truth, and His people are called to have an enormously high standard of truth.

Natural man’s sin is precisely this: He wants the benefits of God without God Himself.

If grace is obligated it is no longer grace. The very essence of grace is that it is undeserved.

I think Arminianism is death to Christianity!

It's because Jesus spoke so frequently about hell that the church should take the concept seriously.

One does not structure the church to meet the felt needs and desires of the tares. The purpose of corporate assembly, which has its roots in the Old Testament, is for the people of God to come together corporately to offer their sacrifices of praise and worship to God. So the first rule of worship is that it be designed for believers to worship God in a way that pleases God.

If you don't know you're in a state of grace, then you're vulnerable to the paralysis of the accusations of the enemy.

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.

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

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

Evil may mar the divine image and cloud its brilliance, but it cannot destroy it.

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

What about putting Christ back into Christmas? It is simply not necessary. Christ has never left Christmas.

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.

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.

The only cure for anxiety is to get down on our knees.

Grace and mercy are never deserved.

The house that is built upon the sand will crumble at the first sign of a windstorm.

To be known by God is the highest goal of human existence.

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.

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, dowe want to have a theology? That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology.? Do we embrace true or false doctrine?

If I know anything about the character of God after fifty years of ministry, I know that God hates abortion.

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

Without God man has no reference point to define himself.

Fallen man is free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. His fall is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.

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 truly have it, you never lose it; and if you lose it, you never truly had it.