R.C. Sproul > Quotes

“Regeneration is the beginning of a journey. It is a journey with successes and failures, with growth amid stumbling. At times, the progress seems painfully slow, but progress is there.”
― R.C. Sproul, Pleasing God: Discovering the Meaning and Importance of Sanctification

“The more I expose myself to the Word of God, the greater my faith will be. By the same token, if I am negligent in reading the Scriptures, I open myself to ideas pouring into my head from the secular world, which may lessen the ardor of my faith.”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is Faith?

“If you told me that my salvation depends on my faith and my works, God’s grace and my merit, Jesus’ help and my response, I would not count that as good news. If you told me that if I die with the slightest blemish of sin on my soul, I would go not to heaven but rather to the place of purging, that the fires of purgatory would cleanse me until I have enough merit and righteousness to enter the kingdom of God, I would not receive that as good news. It would not be good news because I know how much sin there is in my life, and if I have to go to purgatory and become perfect before I can enter the kingdom of God, I will be in purgatory for a very long time. No, the gospel is the good news that the basis of my salvation is not my merit and is not my righteousness; rather, it is the righteousness of Christ freely imputed to all who put their trust in Him. This was the issue in the sixteenth century during the Reformation. This was the issue in the first century. This has been the issue in every generation of people who think that they can add something of value and merit to effect their salvation. The only righteousness by which we can ever possibly be saved is an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness, a righteousness that is apart from us. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Paul says the Galatians are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one (vv. 6–7). Did you get that? There is no other gospel. There’s only one gospel. This statement defies political correctness. As soon as you affirm exclusivity, saying there’s only one way to God, only one Savior, only one gospel, you fly in the face of political correctness and risk your reputation in the process. Paul doesn’t hesitate. There is no other gospel.”
― R.C. Sproul, Galatians: An Expositional Commentary

“Several recent books would have us believe that all we have to do is follow certain steps and God will give us whatever we ask. The authors say, in effect, "Follow this procedure or use these specific words and know for certain that God will give in to your requests." That's not prayer; that's magic. That's not faith but superstition. These are gimmicks intended to manipulate the sovereign God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“It is our privilege to bring the whole of our finite existence into the glory of His infinite presence.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“found a “liberal” Jesus; the existentialists found an existential hero; and the Marxists discovered a political revolutionary. Idealists found an idealistic Jesus and pragmatists discovered a pragmatic Christ. To search behind or beyond the New Testament is to go on a snipe hunt equipped with”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“we can never replace the message of Christ with a human enterprise of social concern. Our social concern flows out of the gospel—it does not replace the gospel.”
― R.C. Sproul, What is the Great Commission?

“Jesús reconoce que uno se perdió, pero”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Se puede perder la salvación?

“Cuando pecamos, la conciencia se inquieta. Nos acusa. La conciencia es la herramienta que Dios el Espíritu Santo usa para inculparnos, llevarnos al arrepentimiento”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Cómo puedo desarrollar una conciencia cristiana?

“there must be something that has the power of being; otherwise, nothing would be. It’s that simple.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“k I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love l with which you have loved me may be in them, and m I in them.”
― R.C. Sproul, ESV Reformation Study Bible

“goal of the Christian life? It is godliness born of”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“with an analysis of the chaotic situation of modern culture. Even secular writers and thinkers are calling for some sort of basic agreement”
― R.C. Sproul, How Should I Live In This World?

“When the Jews wanted to make something emphatic, instead of adding an exclamation point or using italics, they would simply repeat it.”
― R.C. Sproul, What Does It Mean To Be Born Again?

“If God knows what I’m going to say before I say it, His knowledge, rather than limiting my prayer, enhances the beauty of my praise.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“There is but one who qualifies as Savior. He alone has the ability to solve our most abysmal dilemma. He alone has the power of life and death.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“At the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, the Christian church sought to find a formula that would call attention both to the full humanity of Jesus and to His full deity. The words the church settled on in A.D. 451 were “vere homo, vere Deus.” The formula meant that Jesus was truly man and truly God, calling attention to His two natures.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“God is a covenant-keeper and we are covenant-breakers. No one, apart from Jesus, has ever kept the covenant that God made with His people. One reason we lack faith, have crises of faith, and are assailed by doubts about our future is that we project on God our own cavalier attitude toward vows, oaths, and promises. We forget that God has never once broken a promise. When He swears a covenant, He keeps it forever. His promise will not fail.”
― R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith

“galleries of this world. These images are often so conflicting that they offer little help in achieving an accurate picture of what Christ looked like during the period of His incarnation. This multiplicity”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“If you don’t believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass, you don’t believe in God.” I”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“Protestants are particularly vulnerable to this distortion. We seek refuge in our precious doctrine of justification by faith alone, forgetting that the very doctrine is to be a catalyst for the pursuit of righteousness and obedience to the preceptive will of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Know God's Will?

“this plan, who received the physical blessing of healing, apparently never went past the physical to saving faith.
How easy it is for us to be faithful to Christ when we receive some benefit from His hand. Likewise, how difficult it can be for us to remain faithful when we do not receive what we want.”
― R.C. Sproul, John

“Thomas Watson gets at the divine quality of the Bible in His Body of Divinity, where he writes: The Scripture appears to be the Word of God, by the matter contained in it. The mystery of Scripture is so abstruse and profound that no man or angel could have known it, had it not been divinely revealed. That eternity should be born; that He who thunders in the heavens should cry in the cradle; that He who rules the stars should suck the breasts; that the Prince of Life should die; that the Lord of Glory should be put to shame; that sin should be punished to the full, yet pardoned to the full; who could ever have conceived of such a mystery, had not the Scripture revealed it to us? So, for the doctrine of the resurrection; that the same body which is crumbled into a thousand pieces, should rise idem numero, the same individual body, else it were a creation, not a resurrection. How could such a sacred riddle, above all human disquisition, be known, had not the Scripture made a discovery of it? As the matter of Scripture is so full of goodness, justice and sanctity, that it could be breathed from none but God; so the holiness of it shows it to be of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith

“At the heart of Anselm’s answer to that question was his understanding of the character of God. Anselm saw that the chief reason a God-man was necessary was the justice of God. That may seem to be a strange answer. Thinking of the cross and of Christ’s atonement, we assume that the thing that most strenuously motivated God to send Christ into the world was His love or His mercy. As a result, we tend to overlook the characteristic of God’s nature that makes the atonement absolutely necessary—His justice.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross

“Ahora bien, la fe es la garantía de lo que se espera, la certeza de lo que no se ve. Gracias a ella fueron aprobados los antiguos”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Qué es la fe?

“people gather for worship and religious activities. For that reason (among others), many people think they can do without the church. “I don’t have to gather with other people in order to be a Christian,”
― R.C. Sproul, Why Should I Join a Church?

“If the Bible were the most boring book in the world--dull, uninteresting and seemingly irrelevant--it would still be our duty to study it. If its literary style were awkward and confusing, the duty would remain. We live as human beings under an obligation by divine mandate to study diligently God's Word. He is our Sovereign, it is his Word, and he commands that we study it. A duty is not an option. If you have not yet begun to respond to that duty, then you need to ask God to forgive you and to resolve to do your duty from this day forth.”
― R.C. Sproul

“Jesus was different. He possessed an awesome otherness. Lle was the supreme mysterious stranger. He made people uncomfortable.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“Suffering”
― R.C. Sproul, Renewing Your Mind: Basic Christian Beliefs You Need to Know

“Las personas no regeneradas son, en el mejor de los casos, indiferentes a las cosas de Dios. Más a menudo son abiertamente hostiles hacia él. Ah, sí, puede parecer que algunos están buscando a Dios, pero Romanos 3:11 nos dice que no es así. La persona no regenerada jamás busca a Dios; es un fugitivo de Dios. Jesús vino a buscar y salvar al perdido (Lucas 19:10). Él es el Buscador; nosotros somos los que huimos. Los no regenerados están buscando felicidad, paz mental, alivio de la culpa, una vida con sentido, y un sinnúmero de otras cosas que nosotros sabemos que solo Dios puede darles. Pero no están buscando a Dios. Están buscando los beneficios de Dios. El pecado del hombre natural es eso precisamente: quiere los beneficios de Dios pero sin Dios.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Qué significa nacer de nuevo? (Preguntas Cruciales)