R. C. Sproul Quotes

God just doesn't throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive.

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

A god who is all love, all grace, all mercy, no sovereignty, no justice, no holiness, and no wrath is an idol.

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.

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

When there’s something in the Word of God that I don’t like, the problem is not with the Word of God, it’s with me.

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.

It is one thing to believe in God; it is quite another to believe God.

God is not going to negotiate His holiness... in order to accommodate us.

Sin is not simply making bad choices or mistakes. Sin is having the desire in our hearts to do the will of the enemy of God.

The pursuit of God is not a part-time, weekend exercise. If it is, chances are you will experience a part-time, weekend freedom. Abiding requires a kind of staying power. The pursuit is relentless. It hungers and thirsts. It pants as the deer after the mountain brook. It takes the kingdom by storm...The pursuit of God is a pursuit of passion. Indifference will not do. To abide in the Word is to hang on tenaciously. A weak grip will soon slip away. Discipleship requires staying power. We sign up for duration. We do not graduate until heaven.

We have to determine our theology from the Word of God, not from what we feel.

We are secure, not because we hold tightly to Jesus, but because He holds tightly to us.

If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is the Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. That means that no part of my life must be outside of His lordship.

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.

We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him... To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

When God says something, the argument is over.

The most violent expression of God's wrath and justice is seen in the Cross. If ever a person had room to complain for injustice, it was Jesus. He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the Cross. Here is where our astonishment should be focused.

The gospel is only good news when we understand the bad news.

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

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.

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.

The greatest weakness in the church today is that the servants of God keep looking over their shoulder for the approval of men.

Our prayers cannot force God to do anything, but He uses them as His own instruments to bring about His will.

If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.

God doesn't need our consent in order to govern us; He made us.

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.

The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.

Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.

At the moment I sin, I desire the sin more than I desire to please God.

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

Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.

We may live in a culture that believes everyone will be saved, that we are 'justified by death' and all you need to do to go to heaven is die, but God’s Word certainly doesn’t give us the luxury of believing that.

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.

Right now counts forever.

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

Disciples of Christ abide in His Word. Those who abide in His Word know the truth and are free.

He is intangible and invisible. But His work is more powerful than the most ferocious wind. The Spirit brings order out of chaos and beauty out of ugliness. He can transform a sin-blistered man into a paragon of virtue. The Spirit changes people. The Author of life is also the Transformer of life.

There is not one piece of cosmic dust that is outside the scope of God's sovereign providence.

The irony of New Testament lordship is that only in slavery to Christ can a man discover authentic freedom.

Mindless Christianity is no Christianity at all. You can't love what you don't know.

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

In Christian marriage, love is not an option. It is a duty.

At its root, this is what faith is. It is not believing in God. It's believing God.

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.

We need the church as urgently as a starving baby needs his mother’s milk.

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.

No unborn baby has ever had the right to choose or deny its own destruction.

You have to stop thinking logically to argue that the universe came into being by itself, out of nothing.