Christianity Quotes

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one--that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

~ Alain De Botton

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

~ C.s. Lewis

Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?

~ Augustine Of Hippo

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?

~ W. Somerset Maugham

The vulgar modern argument used against religion, and lately against common decency, would be absolutely fatal to any idea of liberty. It is perpetually said that because there are a hundred religions claiming to be true, it is therefore impossible that one of them should really be true. The argument would appear on the face of it to be illogical, if anyone nowadays troubled about logic. It would be as reasonable to say that because some people thought the earth was flat, and others (rather less incorrectly) imagined it was round, and because anybody is free to say that it is triangular or hexagonal, or a rhomboid, therefore it has no shape at all; or its shape can never be discovered; and, anyhow, modern science must be wrong in saying it is an oblate spheroid. The world must be some shape, and it must be that shape and no other; and it is not self-evident that nobody can possibly hit on the right one. What so obviously applies to the material shape of the world equally applies to the moral shape of the universe. The man who describes it may not be right, but it is no argument against his rightness that a number of other people must be wrong.

~ G.k. Chesterton

If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you.

~ H.g. Wells

In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when the nations went a whoring they invariably ended by denying God, I think, and until all sexual irregularities and not some of them are penal the Church will never reconquer England.

~ E.m. Forster

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.

~ Jürgen Habermas

A woman who walks with God honors Him in the way she manages her home.

~ Elizabeth George

Also, always encourage 'being good' over 'doing good.' Acts of goodness are the difficulty for us and should, of course, be avoided. 'Being good' is far less problematic, largely because it lacks definition and can be solely a state of mind completely unattached to reality.

~ Geoffrey Wood

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

~ C.s. Lewis

For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force.

~ John Chrysostom

God gave Adam and Eve that free will and choice. He gave them one warning: eat of any tree that is here, including the wonderful tree of life, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…I wish Adam and Eve had thought more about what knowledge meant. Eve saw it as a good thing, to know more. But how do you really know something? You experience it

~ Dee Henderson

The moment of confession is not merely when one hears another pronounce the words: God forgives you, or 'in God's name I absolve you.' Rather it is that point at which the sinner unfeignedly experiences himself as truly judged and pardoned by God.

~ Thomas C. Oden

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.

~ Thomas C. Oden

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no need for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer for our sins and redeem us from guilt.

~ Thomas C. Oden

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God.

~ Johann Arndt

I don’t even like the phrase ‘opportunity to sin’ because it implies the opportunity to obey.

~ Geoffrey Wood

Sin/ alienation is psychological disease which if unhealed can lead to the living hell of lost hopes and blighted lives.

~ Susan Howatch

Sin is when you turn away from God—or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that’s authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive.

~ Susan Howatch

The proper biblical understanding of sin is much more radical and far-reaching. It can never be used as a weapon, because it will recoil on anyone who tries to deploy it that way.

~ Timothy J. Keller

To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.

~ Frederick Buechner

Whether or not I protect the weeds isn't a matter of just recognizing the weed for what it is, but possessing the conviction to grab hold of the roots and yank like my life depends on it.

~ Angie Smith

She understood she was far from perfect, but to even imagine that Jesus could step off the throne of heaven to die for someone so small and full of sin, it was hard to understand

~ Philip Cook

Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin is to neglect that excellent succor which God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we neglect to make use of what we have received, God may justly hold his hand from giving us more. His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it.

~ John Owen

I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.

~ Anna White

I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful 'others'. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone's eyes.

~ Anna White

Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked Where are you wanted by the law? Barrow replied, Wherever I've been. What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our sinfulness because it follows us everywhere. Neither can we escape the mercy of God that is always there.

~ William Branks

Pride becomes the blanket transgression that conceals the rest of our sins, allowing us to remain blind to them.

~ Alisa Hope Wagner

Repentance is a result of God's kindness, not a prerequisite to it.

~ D.r. Silva

I can never endorse sin any more than when I tell people it's their nature to do it.

~ D.r. Silva

Strange, though I am saved from sin, I am not saved from sinning.

~ Martin Luther

The strange thing about adulthood, when you're single, is that it's possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent consequence - it was easy to self-congratulate on how much our relationship owed to my 'righteousness,' generosity, and enlightened theological views. Though for the past twenty months or so I'd been hearing a pastor who's constant theme was grace, it didn't hit home until I faced this proof of what the Bible says God considers depravity.

~ Anna Broadway

Sin is too great an evil for man to meddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt.

~ Horatius Bonar

Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.

~ James K.a. Smith

If one evil thought, if one evil word, if one evil action, deserves eternal damnation, how many hells, my friends, do every one of us deserve, whose whole lives have been one continued rebellion against God!

~ George Whitefield

The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing.

~ Shannon L. Alder

He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.

~ J.i. Packer

A question for Christians who accept evolution: When did we gain a soul? Did Homo habilis have a soul? Homo ergaster? Did God only spontaneously add a soul when we evolved into Homo sapiens?

~ David G. Mcafee