R. C. Sproul Quotes

What higher approval could a person enjoy than to know that what he or she has done is pleasing to God?

What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.

As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.

God wants your life. Not one hour a week, not 10% of your income, He wants you.

Repentance is something that is brought about in the human heart by the work of God the Holy Spirit.

The more seriously we understand the radical nature of sin, the more it exercises a restraint upon us.

It is one thing to fall victim to the flood or to fall prey to cancer; it is another thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.

The only thing that we have earned at the hands of perfect justice is perfect punishment.

God is not blind; neither is He capricious. For Him there are no accidents. With God there are no cases of chance events.

To be a Christian is to be a theologian-a student of God and his will. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church.

The only works of righteousness that serve to justify a sinner are the works of Christ.

For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member. The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgement of sin as a condition for membership.

The more sanctified a person is the more heavily weighted his prayer time is in adoration.

I cannot have God in my heart if he is not in my head. Before I can believe in, I must believe that.

There are many today who believe that there are people running around this world right now who are performing greater miracles, performing miracles in greater abundance, and actually doing more incredible acts of divine healing than Jesus himself did. I can't think of any more serious delusion than that.

All that God had to do to harden Pharaoh's heart, or to harden your heart, is to withhold His own grace.

The truth of Scripture is meant not only to be studied-it’s meant also to be sung.

To be conformed to this world is to risk the loss of one’s eternal soul.

The great triad of enemies for Christian growth contain the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The more faithful preachers are to the Word of God in their preaching, the more liable they are to the charge of hypocrisy. Why? Because the more faithful people are to the Word of God the higher the message is that they will preach. The higher the message, the further they will be from obeying themselves.

We are cosmic traitors. We must recognize this problem within ourselves if we are to grasp the necessity of the cross.

God Himself supplies the necessary condition to come to Jesus, that's why it is 'sola gratia,' by grace alone, that we are saved.

A married person does not live in isolation. He or she has made a promise, a pledge, a vow, to another person. Until that vow is fulfilled and the promise is kept, the individual is in debt to his marriage partner. That is what he owes. 'You owe it to yourself' is not a valid excuse for breaking a marriage vow but a creed of selfishness.

Preachers must always fight the temptation to preach anything but Christ and Him crucified.

We are able to persevere only because God works within us, within our free wills. And because God is at work in us, we are certain to persevere. The decrees of God concerning election are immutable. They do not change, because He does not change. All whom He justifies He glorifies. None of the elect has ever been lost.

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.

God did not die. The God who took on Himself a human nature died in His humanity, but the deity did not perish on the cross.

For the soul of a person to be inflamed with passion for the living God, that person's mind must first be informed about the character and will of God. There can be nothing in the heart that is not first in the mind. Though it is possible to have theology on the head without its piercing the soul, it cannot pierce the soul without first being grasped by the mind.

No one was ever called by God to greater suffering than God's only begotten Son.

Truth is too important to kill it in the streets for the sake of peace.

It's a sin to bore people.

We live in a time of crisis in the secular culture and in the church with regard to the beautiful.

We have to find in Christ, not a mask that conceals our face, but an entire wardrobe of clothing, which is His righteousness.

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.

The glory of the gospel is this: The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us.

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful

We are puzzled and bewildered whenever we see suffering in this world because we have become accustomed to the mercy and the long-suffering of God. Amazing grace is no longer amazing to us.

It's easy to be an educated fool.

Prayer is to the Christian what breath is to life, yet no duty of the Christian is so neglected.

Holiness provokes hatred. The greater the holiness, the greater the human hostility toward it. It seems insane. No man was ever more loving than Jesus Christ. Yet even His love made people angry. His love was a perfect love, a transcendent and holy love, but HIs very love brought trauma to people. This kind of love is so majestic we can't stand it.

The only freedom that man ever has is when he becomes a slave to Jesus Christ.

The Christian life is to live all of your life in the presence of God.

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.

The complaint that church is boring is never made by people in awe.

Scripture does not say that God is 'love, love, love' or that He is 'wrath, wrath, wrath,' but that He is 'holy, holy, holy.'

Look to the Bible and not your feelings as the basis of the Christian life.