Sin - christiansquoting.org.uk

After the pastor's scathing sermon on the congregation's myriad sins, one member said,'At least I haven't made any graven images'.

It is unlikely there'll be a reduction in the wages of sin.

If there is no sorrow for sin, there will be no joy in salvation.

Mind polluted? Get led free with Jesus.

Forbidden fruit causes many jams.

The follies of youth become the vices of manhood and the disgrace of old age.

To err is human, but to blame it on someone else is even more human

There are only two kinds of people: sinners who think they are saints, and saints, who know they are sinners. I will never cease to teach this embarrassing truth because without it, I am convinced, there simply is no knowledge and no morality, only the deceptive appearances of them.

Missing the mark - the reason we are so threatened by the holiness of God is that we are sinful. After a muddy game of football, a player may not feel out of place alongside all the other muddy players, but take him immdeiately from the field of play and present him at the head table of a formal banquet, then he will feel conspicuous in the extreme. Similarly, one man judged along another may feel perfectly content but in the presence of God...he only wants to get away as soon as possible. And when there is no place to run, then all he can do is hide his face.

God is not against us because of our sin. He is with us against our sin.

Sin fascinates you, then it assassinates you.

Sense of sin may be often great, and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace. A man feels the ache of his finger more sensibly than the health of his whole body; yet he knows that the ache of a finger is nothing so much as the health of the whole body. THOMAS ADAMS

Sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins as well as adultery and murder. And, in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom -- unaccompanied by any vicious act -- are serious sins. They are expressions of man's separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence. Mortimer J. Adler (1902- 2001)

It is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it crucified by converting grace. Many, because they have been troubled in conscience for their sins, think well of their case, miserably mistaking conviction for conversion.--JOSEPH ALLIENE

O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you "little lower than the angels"; sin has made you little better than the devils. -- Joseph Alleine

The flesh is a worse enemy than the devil himself.-- Isaac Ambrose

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
With love for mankind and hatred of sins. Often quoted as "Love the sinner but hate the sin."
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) e Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (4th ed.)

My will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust, habit was born; and when I did not resist the habit, it became a necessity. These were the links which together formed what I have called my chain, and it held me fast in the duress of servitude. -- Augustine (354-430) _Confessions_ [397-401], Part VIII, Section 5

This is the glory of the Biblical view of sin: it is not inherent and will not last forever - a very optimistic view. And, on a personal level, it can be forgiven and even woven into God's plan.Those who deny the reality of sin, have a very pessimistic view: that evil is with us forever because it is in inherent in reality.- Andrew Basden, post on Thinknet

Never does sin so reign in the Church or State, as when it has gained reputation,or, at least, is no disgrace to the sinner,nor is a matter od offence to we who behold it. - Richard Baxter

I hate the sin, but I love the sinner. --Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) _What a Word May Do_

And the longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?
Richard Baxter

Not only the worst of my sins, but the best of my duties speak me a child of Adam. --WILLIAM BEVERIDGE

If the guilt of sin is so great that nothing can satisfy it but the blood of Jesus; and the filth of sin is so great that nothing can fetch out the stain thereof but the blood of Jesus, how great, how heinous, how sinful must the evil of sin be.--WILLIAM BRIDGE

An implicit confession is almost as bad as an implicit faith; wicked men commonly confess their sins by wholesale, We are all sinners; but the true penitent confesses his sins by retail -- Thomas Brooks A Cabinet of Jewels: Works, vol. 3, pp. 405-406.

God promises to deliver us from the penalty of sin (justification), the power of sin (sanctification) and the presence of sin (glorification). --DAVE BROWN

As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that's euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that's avoidance. My students don't know the word "fornication" at all: that's forgetfulness. -- J. Budziszewski, "The Revenge of Conscience", _First Things_, June 1998,

If you saw the knife that cut the throat of your dearest child, would not your heart rise against that knife? Suppose you came to a table and there is a knife laid at your plate, and it was told to you that this is the knife that cut the throat of your child. Fathers, if you could still use that knife like any other knife, would not someone say, 'There was but little love to your child?' So when there is a temptation come to any sin, this is the knife that cut the throat of Christ, that pierced his sides, that was the cause of all his suffering, that made Christ to be a curse. Now will you not look upon that as a cursed thing that made Christ to be a curse? Oh, with what detestation would a man or woman fling away such a knife! And with the like detestation it is required that you should renounce sin, for that was the cause of the death of Christ. --Jeremiah Burroughs

Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.-- John Bunyan

Though Satan instils his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us,we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements. -- Calvin on Gen 22:1

Take heed of secret sins. They will undo thee if loved and maintained: one moth may spoil the garment; one leak drown the ship; a penknife stab and kill a man as well as a sword; so one sin may damn the soul; nay, there is more danger of a secret sin causing the miscarrying of the soul than open profaneness, because not so obvious to the reproofs of the world; therefore take heed that secret sinnings eat not out good beginnings. Jeremiah BurroughsEvery one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. John Calvin

The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin. --Thomas Carlyle

Unbelief was the first sin, and pride was the first-born of it. STEPHEN CHARNOCK

MODERN masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equallyi mpressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin -- a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere Materialists, have begun in our day notto deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions he must either deny the existence of God, as all Atheists do, or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.-- G K Chesterton 'Orthodoxy.'

The London Times once asked a number prominent people to write essays on the topic, What s Wrong with the World. G. K. Chesterton reply is the shortest and most to the point in history:
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON

The gospel of Jesus Christ must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the Good News of redemption. The truth is revealed in God's Holy Word; life can be lived only in absolute and disciplined submission to its authority.-- Charles Colson

I am having more trouble with myself than any other man I have ever met. --Raymond Dale

Politics without principles
Pleasures without conscience
Wealth without work
Knowledge without character
Industry without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
Frederic Donaldson, The 7 Modern Sins

Men perish with whispering sins -- nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.... John Donne (1573-1631)

Any sin is more or less heinous depending upon the honor and majesty of the one whom we had offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infiniteconsequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned. JONATHAN EDWARDS, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners

Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves.- John Flavel

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.-- Anatole France, _The Garden of Epicurus_, 1894

Once upon a time there were seven deadly sins. They were called deadly because they led to spiritual death and therefore to damnation. The seven sins were (and are): lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.Now all of them, with the exception of pride, have become medical conditions. Pride has become a virtue.
A secular society always feels uncomfortable with the moral imagination associated with the seven deadly sins. The Enlightenment replaced the idea of sin, which is deemed to be an offence against God, with the idea of crime, which is an offence against other people. But the rationalists still shared with religion the belief that individuals are responsible for their wrongdoing. However, these days we do not simply feel estranged from a religious universe; we also find it difficult to attribute the act of sinning to human behaviour. Today, the notion of personal guilt, which underpins the concept of the seven deadly sins, exists only in caricature. That is why Western culture can only make sense of the act of sinning as a symptom of a regrettable psychological disease. Actions that were once denounced as a sin are no longer interpreted through the vocabulary of morality but are diagnosed through the language of therapy. The deadly sins have become behavioural problems that require treatment rather than punishment.
There are no longer sinners, only addictive personalities. - Frank Furedi, "Making a virtue of vice" The Spectator 12 Jan 2002

Mercy should make us ashamed, wrath afraid to sin.-- William Gurnall

Sin disabled man to keep God's law, but it doth not enfranchise or disoblige him that he need not keep it.--William Gurnall

God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.-- William Gurnall

Men love everything but righteousness and fear everything but God.-- Vance Havner HEARTS AFIRE (Westwood, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1952) (p. 134)

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!---Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The House of the Seven Gables_, Chap. 11

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. -- Robert Heinlein

Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off.-- Philip Henry

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. -Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)_Pillars of Society_

To argue from mercy to sin is the devil's logic.-- JAMES JANEWAY

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.-- Immanuel Kant

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either.-- Garrison Keillor

Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons. --Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad

We are free to sin, but not to control sin's consequences. -- J. Kenneth Kimberlin

The good news makes no sense unless you believe the bad news first. A free operation is not good news if you don t think you have a mortal disease. Once the main obstacle to believe in Christianity was the good news. It seemed like a fairy tale; too good to be true. Today, the main obstacle is the bad news; people just don t believe in sin even though that is the only Christian doctrine that can be proven by reading daily newspapers. Calling a person sinful is not to deny that his being remains good, any more than calling the statute of Venus de Milo a damaged work of art means denying that its sculptor created a masterpiece. Humanity is a good thing gone bad, the image of God in rebellion against God, God 's beloved in a state of rebellion. -- PETER KREEFT

Sin lives solely by plagiarising the ideas of God-Abraham Kuyper, Uniformity:The Curse of Modern Life

It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.~C.S. Lewis 1898-1963, The Screwtape Letters (1941)

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without. MARTIN LUTHER

In ourselves, we are sinners, and yet through faith we are righteous by the imputation of God. For we trust him who promises to deliver us, and in the meantime struggle so that sin may not overwhelm us, but that we may stand up to it until he finally take it away from us. MARTIN LUTHER

First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it. --THOMAS MANTON

Religion would not have many enemies, if it were not an enemy to their vices. - Massillon

The idea that Christianity is basically a religion of moral improvement... has its roots in the liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century... It is this stereotype which continues to have influence today... But then came the First World War... What had gone wrong was that the idea of sin had been abandoned by liberal Christianity as some kind of unnecessary hangover from an earlier and less enlightened period in Christian history. -- Alister McGrath, _Bridge-Building: Effective Christian Apologetics_, 1992,

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.-- H.L. Mencken

Man's disobedience] brought into this World a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,
Death's Harbinger.
John Milton. 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. Book IX, 11 - 13
The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.-- Hannah More

You'll never be able to speak against sin if you're entertained by it. --John Muncee

There must be a constant and increasing appreciation that though sin still remains it does not have the mastery. There is a total difference between surviving sin and reigning sin, the regenerate in conflict with sin and the unregenerate complacent to sin. It is one thing for sin to live in us: it is another for us to live in sin. It is of paramount concern for the Christian and for the interests of his sanctification that he should know that sin does not have the dominion over him, that the forces of redeeming, regenerative, and sanctifying grace have been brought to bear upon him in that which is central in his moral and spiritual being, that he is the habitation of God through the Spirit, and that Christ has been formed in him the hope of glory.... John Murray, Redemption - Accomplished and Applied

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.-- Reinhold Niebuhr

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. -- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), _The Open Mind_

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it. -- John Owen

The vigour and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh. -- J Owen

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion. --John Owen

Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. John Owen

The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted. --JOHN OWEN

Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death. --JOHN OWEN

Thus, for instance, some will assure us that it is a waste of time preaching to modern hearers about the law and sin, for (it is said) such things mean nothing to them. Instead (it is suggested) we should just appeal to the needs which they feel already, and present Christ to them simply as One who gives peace, power and purpose to the neurotic and frustrated-a super-psychiatrist, in fact. Now this suggestion excellently illustrates the danger of the minimising approach. If we do not preach about sin and God's judgement on it, we cannot present Christ as Saviour from sin and the wrath of God. And if we are silent about these things, and preach a Christ who saves only from self and sorrows of this world, we are not preaching the Christ of the Bible. We are, in effect bearing false withness and preaching a false Christ. Our message is "another gospel, which is not another.-- J I Packer, A Quest for Godliness, PG 164-165

Pleasure is the bait of sin. --Plato (B.C. 427?-347?)

I hate the sin, but I love the sinner. --Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) _What a Word May Do_

When we grieve Him, we push aside the One who is the agent to us of the work of Christ for our present life. On the basis of the finished, passive work of Christ (that is, His suffering on the cross), and on the basis of the active obedience of Christ (that is, His keeping the law perfectly through His life), the fruits are there. They are there to flow out through the agency of the Holy Spirit through us into the external world. The fruits are normal; not to have them is not to have the Christian life which should be considered usual. There are oceans of grace which wait. Orchard upon orchard waits; vineyard upon vineyard of fruit waits. There is only one reason why they do not flow out through the Christian‚s life, and that is that the instrumentality of faith is not being used. This is to quench the Holy Spirit. When we sin in this sense, we sin twice: we sin in the sin, and this is serious, as it is against the law and the character of God Himself, our Father; but at the same time we sin by omission, because we have not raised the empty hands of faith for the gift that is there.
In the light of the structure. of the total universe; in the light of our calling to exhibit the existence and character of God between the ascension and the second coming; in the light of the terrible price of the cross, whereby all the present and future benefits of salvation were purchased on our behalf ˜ in the light of all this, the real sin of the Christian is not to possess his possessions, by faith. This is the real sin.
But whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23b). The sin here is in not raising the empty hands of faith. - Francis Schaeffer

The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.-- Francis Schaeffer

With the Fall all became abnormal. It is not just that the individual is separated from God by his true moral guilt, but each of us is not what God made us to be. Beyond each of us as individuals, human relationships are not what God meant them to be. And beyond that, nature is abnormal -- the whole cause-and-effect significant history is now abnormal. To say it another way: there is much in history now which should not be. -- Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1

I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.
Francis Schaeffer letter: 14 Jan 1972

All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.-- Seneca

No man is free who is a slave to the flesh. Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

We are all sinful. Therefore whatever we blame in another we shall find in our own bosoms. ~Seneca: De Ira, Bk.III, sec.26

In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes. --RICHARD SIBBES

Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else!-- Chuck Smith

Any cloth may cover our sores, but the finest silk will not cover our sins. --HENRY SMITH

Suffering is better than sinning. There is more evil in a drop of sin than in an ocean of affliction. Better, burn for Christ, than turn from Christ. -Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

It is a grievous token of hardness of heart when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Saviour's face.-
Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART" No. 620 Hebrews 3:13

I daily feel that the atmosphere of earth has as much a tendency to harden my heart, as to harden plaster which is newly spread upon the wall; and unless I am baptized anew with the Spirit of God, and constantly stand at the foot of the cross, reading the curse of sin in the crimson hieroglyphics of my Savior‚Äôs dying agonies, I shall become as steeled and insensible as the mass of professors already are.-Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART" No. 620 Hebrews 3:13

Shame on us, that any of us should be guilty of such tampering with that accursed thing which slew the Lord of glory.-Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART" No. 620 Hebrews 3:13

Man loves his own ruin. The cup is so sweet that though he knows it will poison him, yet he must drink it. And the harlot is so fair, that though he understands that her ways lead down to hell, yet like a bullock he follows to the slaughter till the dart goes through his liver. Man is fascinated and bewitched by sin. -Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)_Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit_ Vol. 13 [1867]

Sin goes in a disguise, and thence is welcome; like Judas, it kisses and kills; like Joab, it salutes and slays.- George Swinnock

No sin is small. It is against an infinite God, and may have consequences ummeasurable. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.-Jeremy Taylor

As long as we want to be different from what God wants us to be at the time, we are only tormenting ourselves to no purpose. - Gerhart Tersteegen

Tell me your doctrine of the Fall and I will tell you the state of your theology.- RA Torrey

Pollution is the forerunner of perdition. - John Trapp

Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. - Mark Twain, _Pudd'nhead Wilson_

The picture of fallen man as given in Scripture is that he knows God but does not want to recognize Him as God.- CORNELIUS VAN TIL

When sin is your burden, Christ will be your delight. -THOMAS WATSON

Let them fear death who do not fear sin.-THOMAS WATSON

Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages. -THOMAS WATSON

The scriptures tell us that all men have been gripped by powers that they cannot break away from. What are these powers? Let me list them: 1) Men are slaves to sin. 2) Men are slaves to Satan. 3) Men are held for punishment in God's justice system.-Tom Wells, A Price for A People, PG 13

The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities.-John Wesley(1703-1791)