R.C. Sproul > Quotes

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is The Holy Spirit?

“They are seeking the benefits of God. Natural humanity’s sin is precisely this: wanting the benefits of God without God Himself.”
― R.C. Sproul, Pleasing God: Discovering the Meaning and Importance of Sanctification

“The mind of God does not change for God does not change. Things change, and they change according to His sovereign will, which He exercises through secondary means and secondary activities. The prayer of His people is one of the means He uses to bring things to pass in this world. So if you ask me whether prayer changes things, I answer with an unhesitating “Yes!”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“He is the author of more than sixty books, including The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, The Invisible Hand, Faith Alone, A Taste of Heaven, Truths We Confess, The Truth of the Cross, and The Prayer of the Lord. He also served as general editor”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust The Bible?

“preceptive will. They express and reveal to us what is right and proper for us to do. The preceptive will is God's rule of righteousness for our lives. By this rule we are governed.
It is the will of God that we not sin. It is the will of God that we have no other gods before Him; that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves; that we refrain from stealing, coveting, and committing adultery. Yet the world is filled with idolatry, hatred, thievery, covetousness, and adultery. The will of God is violated whenever His law is broken.
One of the great tragedies of contemporary Christendom is the preoccupation of so many Christians with the secret decretive will of God to the”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Know God's Will?

“of Ligonier Ministries,”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Exist?

“La idea es esta: yo no sé qué traerá el mañana, pero sé que Dios sabe qué traerá el mañana. Así que si Dios promete que el mañana traerá algo, y si confío en Dios para el mañana, tengo fe en algo que aún no he visto. Esa fe actúa como prueba porque su objeto es Dios. Yo lo conozco; él tiene un historial: es infalible y nunca miente. Dios lo sabe todo y es perfecto en todo lo que comunica.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Qué es la fe?

“But no one has the right to do what is wrong, even if they are appealing to a greater good.”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is the Relationship between Church and State?

“In the Old Testament, worship centered on the altar with the presentations of sacrifices offered to God. For the most part, these sacrifices of animals and various grains were made as sin offerings. In themselves the animal sacrifices had no power to atone for sins. They were symbols that pointed forward to the one great sa.crifice that would be made on the cross. After the perfect Lamb was slain,
the altar sacrifices ceased. The Christian church has no provision for animal sacrifices anymore because it has no need for such sacrifices. To offer them now would be to insult the perfection of Christ's sacrifice.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“When we sin, we want to describe our sinful activity in terms of a mistake, as if that softens or mitigates the guilt involved.”
― R.C. Sproul, Are People Basically Good?

“God's honor must become the obsession of the Christian community today. Honor must go not to our organizations, our denominations, our individual modes of worship, or even our particular churches, but to God alone.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“Man was created with an aspiration for significance, which is a virtue. Man can pervert that drive into a lust for power, which is a vice.”
― R.C. Sproul, How Should I Live In This World?

“The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today but, oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.2”
― R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology?: Understanding the Basics

“infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy.
It was this same desire to stand against the persistent questioning of the Bible's integrity that brought together more than 250 evangelical leaders in Chicago, Illinois, in October 1978. That summit meeting, convened”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust The Bible?

“La sainteté provoque la haine.”
― R.C. Sproul, La sainteté de Dieu

“Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns?" (Rom. 8:33-34a).”
― R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord

“the Holy Spirit is a person, not a thing.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is The Holy Spirit?

“God is inseparably linked to the coming of Pentecost. In a certain sense, Jesus lacked the authority to dispatch the Spirit prior to His ascension.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“teología reformada habla del ordo salutis o el “orden de la salvación”, que es un análisis de orden lógico de los sucesos que deben ocurrir para que una persona sea redimida. Por ejemplo, decimos que somos justificados por la fe. Eso significa que un prerrequisito lógico para la justificación es la fe. Por lo tanto, en el orden de la salvación, la fe viene antes que la justificación. La fe no es el fruto de la justificación; la justificación es el fruto de la fe. ¿Pero qué viene antes de la fe? En el orden de la salvación, el suceso que precede a la fe es la regeneración.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Qué es la fe?

“Providence is not the same thing as God’s foreknowledge or prescience. Foreknowledge is His ability to look down the corridors of time and know the outcome of an activity before it even begins.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“In cross-cultural communication a further step must be taken, the Christian teacher must re-apply revealed absolutes to persons living in a culture that is not the teacher’s own. The demands of this task highlight the importance of his being clear on what is absolute in the biblical presentation of the will and work of God and what is a culturally-relative application of it. Engaging in the task may help him toward clarity at this point by making him more alert than before to the presence in Scripture of culturally-conditioned applications of truth, which have to be adjusted according to the cultural variable.”
― R.C. Sproul, Explaining Biblical Inerrancy: The Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy, Hermeneutics, and Application with Official ICBI Commentary

“La clave del gozo cristiano es su fuente, que es el Señor. Si Cristo está en mí y yo en él, esa relación no es una experiencia esporádica. El cristiano está siempre en el Señor y el Señor está siempre en el cristiano, y eso siempre será motivo de gozo. Aunque el cristiano no pueda regocijarse en sus circunstancias, si se encuentra en medio del dolor, angustia o tristeza, aun así puede regocijarse en Cristo.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Puedo tener gozo en mi vida?

“Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“Such a Jesus has no need of a church. Worship is at best a hollow service and at worst an act of blasphemy if it is directed toward a dead teacher of morality. We have no church for Socrates. We sing no hymns to Cicero. We say no prayers to Aristotle. If Jesus is a mere human teacher, neither should we worship Him.”
― R.C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in The Christian Life

“THE WAY TO RECOVER JOY Paul’s admonition to believers to be joyful presupposes that believers can do something if they find themselves lacking in joy. He is right, of course, and the New Testament is filled with teaching on how to be joyful. The most basic method is to focus our attention on the ground of our joy, the source of our joy. Paul gives one of the most practical of these teachings in Philippians: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (4:8). This is a call to meditate upon the things of the Lord, to turn our attention to the things of God. When we find ourselves depressed, down, irritated, annoyed, or otherwise unhappy, we need to return to the source of our joy, and then we will see those circumstances that are sapping our joy in perspective. The circumstances of this life will pale into insignificance when compared to that which we have received from God. Sometimes our joy is determined by the intensity of the latest blessing we experienced at the hands of God. We’re always looking for the mountaintop experience, for a spiritual high that will excite us and fill us with joy, but these intense feelings wear off. When I have things in perspective, I know that if I never experienced another blessing in my entire life other than the blessings I already have received from the hand of God, I would have no possible reason to be anything but overflowing with joy until the day I die. God has already given me so much to be thankful for, so much to provoke my soul to delight, gladness, and joy, that I should be able to live on the basis of that surplus of blessedness and remain joyful all of my days.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Have Joy In My Life?

“You are responsible to believe and to teach what the Bible teaches, not what you would like for it to teach.”
― R.C. Sproul, John

“Lamentablemente, muchos cristianos envuelven sus decisiones éticas en un manto de espiritualidad a fin de acallar efectivamente las voces críticas aun antes de que estas se pronuncien.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Cómo puedo desarrollar una conciencia cristiana?

“Tabletalk”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“One of the chief functions of miracles in the New Testament, according to the apostolic testimony, was to authenticate agents of revelation, such as the apostles. God attested that these people were speaking His Word by the wonders and the miracles they performed. Such authenticating miracles would have been completely useless if non-agents of revelation could have performed such works. If Satan had the ability to perform true miracles,
Nicodenius only could have said, "We know you are sent either from God or from the Devil."
It is true that the Bible warns us about "false christs and false prophets" who will perform "signs and wonders" (Mark 13:22). But Satan's so-called miracles are "lying wonders" (2 Thess. 2:9). Satan can perform incredibly clever tricks, but they are not true miracles; they are phony signs because Satan is not God. Satan cannot create something out of nothing; he cannot bring life out of death; he cannot do the things that only God can do.”
― R.C. Sproul, John

“Any law that God instilled in the covenant of creation extends as far as the creation extends. So, since God sanctified marriage in creation, the sanctity of marriage applies to all generations.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Promises of God: Discovering the One Who Keeps His Word