Jonathan Edwards Quotes

A true and faithful Christian does not make holy living an accidental thing. It is his great concern. As the business of the soldier is to fight, so the business of the Christian is to be like Christ.

You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.

When God is about to do a mighty new thing He always sets His people praying.

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.

It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith.

How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here?

A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.

Spiritual delight in God arises chiefly from his beauty and perfection, not from the blessings he gives us.

Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls.

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.

Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.

It is God’s will through His wonderful grace, that the prayers of His saints should be one of the great principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for His church, it is His will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of His people; as is manifest by Ezekiel 36:37. and it is revealed that, when God is about to accomplish great things for His church, He will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication (see Zechariah 12:10).

He that lives a prayerless life, lives without God in the world.

Christ is like a river in another respect. A river is continually flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually, so that a man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; he is continually supplying his people, and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ, may have fresh supplies from him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end.

Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it.

God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.

The smallest sin is an act of Cosmic Treason against a Holy God.

Nature is God's greatest evangelist.

True salvation always produces an abiding change of nature in a true convert. Therefore, whenever holiness of life does not accompany a confession of conversion, it must be understood that this individual is not a Christian.

There are people who love those who agree with them and admire them, but have no time for those who oppose and dislike them. A Christian’s love must be universal!

The seeking of the kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life

He, whose heart is fixed, trusting in Christ, need not be afraid.

The foundation of the Christian's peace is everlasting; it is what no time, no change can destroy. It will remain when the body dies; it will remain when the mountains depart and the hills shall be removed, and when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. The fountain of His comfort shall never be diminished, and the stream shall never be dried. His comfort and joy is a living spring in the soul, a well of water springing up to everlasting life.

They who truly come to God for mercy, come as beggars, and not as creditors: they come for mere mercy, for sovereign grace, and not for anything that is due

He who has Christ has all he needs and needs no more.

Of all the knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important.

A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble broken-hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behaviour.

I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.

Christ gives peace to the most sinful and miserable that come to Him. He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds.

He who does not know Him, knows nothing else as it truly is.

Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.

Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility.

True boldness for Christ transcends all, it is indifference to the displeasure of either friends or foes. Boldness enables Christians to forsake all rather than Christ, and to prefer to offend all rather than to offend Him.

Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.

In all your course, walk with God and follow Christ as a little, poor, helpless child, taking hold of Christ's hand, keeping your eye on the mark of the wounds on his hands and side, whence came the blood that cleanses you from sin and hiding your nakedness under the skirt of the white shining robe of his righteousness.

If there be ground for you to trust in your own righteousness, then, all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did to prepare the way for it is in vain.

Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.

If I murmur in the least at affliction, if I am in any way uncharitable, if I revenge my own case, if I do anything purely to please myself or omit anything because it is a great denial, if I trust myself, if I take any praise for any good which Christ does by me, or if I am in any way proud, I shall act as my own and not God’s.

Christ is the true light of the world; it is through him alone that true wisdom is imparted to the mind.

The door of God’s mercy is thrown wide open, and Christ stands in the door and says to sinners ‘Come.’

To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here.

There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness

Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.

There are two sorts of hypocrites: ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external religion; and the others are those that are deceived with false discoveries and elevation; which often cry down works, and men's own righteousness, and tlak much of free grace, but at the same time make a righteousness of their discoveries and of their humiliation, and exalt themselves to heaven with them.

Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.

By the grace of God we will never pluck unripe fruit. We will never press people to decision, because we'll lead them to damnation and not salvation.

Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.

A true love for God must begin with a delight in His holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.