Overcoming Sin and Temptation Quotes

“When we realize a constant enemy of the soul abides within us, what diligence and watchfulness we should have! How woeful is the sloth and negligence then of so many who live blind and asleep to this reality of sin. There is an exceeding efficacy nad power in the indwelling sin of believers, for it constantly inclines itself towards evil. We need to be awake, then, if our hearts would know the ways of God. Our enemy is not only upon us, as it was with Samson, but it is also in us.”
― John Owen, Sin and Temptation:The Challenge to Personal Goodness (Regent College Reprint)

“Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Do not seek to empty your cup as a way to avoid sin, but rather seek to fill it up with the Spirit of life, so there is no longer room for sin.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Sin also carries on its war by entangling the affections and drawing them into an alliance against the mind. Grace may be enthroned in the mind, but if sin controls the affections, it has seized a fort from which it will continually assault the soul. Hence, as we shall see, mortification is chiefly directed to take place upon the affections.”
― John Owen, Sin and Temptation:The Challenge to Personal Goodness (Regent College Reprint)

“Christians can be confident about their growth in sanctification and eternal security because they are confident in the God who promises it.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“sin is always acting, always conceiving, always seducing and tempting.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“[A believer] is oftentimes at the very brink, at the very door of some folly or iniquity, when God puts in by the efficacy of actually assisting grace, and recovers them to an obediential frame of heart again. And this is a peculiar work of Christ, wherein he manifests and exerts his faithfulness toward his own: 'He is able to succor them that are tempted' (Heb. 2:18)....Here lies a great part of the care and faithfulness of Christ toward his poor saints.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation

“The goal of the Christian life is not external conformity or mindless action, but a passionate love for God informed by the mind and embraced by the will.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Let a soul exercise itself to a communion with Christ in the good things of the gospel—pardon of sin, fruits of holiness, hope of glory, peace with God, joy in the Holy Ghost, dominion over sin—and he shall have a mighty preservative against all temptations.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“the depth and complexity and ugliness and danger of sin in professing Christians is either minimized—since we are already justified—or psychologized as a symptom of woundedness rather than corruption.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things . . . what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls?”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“for Owen, circumstances—whether amiable or painful—were not an excuse to stop resisting sin.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lies at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Tell your conscience that it cannot manage any evidence to the purpose that you are free from the condemning power of sin, while your unmortified lust lies in your heart;”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lies at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Christians are called to wage war against this enemy, knowing that there are only two options: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”25”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“... тот, кто смеет проявлять вольность в обстоятельствах, способствующих греху, посмеет согрешить. Тот, кто не побоится искушения к нечестию, не побоится самого нечестия.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation

“Тот, кто внимательно не наблюдает за своим внутренним складом (внутренним человеком), кто в совершенстве не овладел искусством самопознания, никогда не выпутается из искушений во все дни жизни своей ".”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation

“Цель христианской жизни не внешняя покорность или бессмысленная деятельность, но страстная любовь к Богу , просвещенная светом разума и воспринятая волей. Таким образом, путь вперед заключается не в угашении чувств ,но, напротив, в усилении их и наполнении их "небесным". При этом мы не пытаемся закрыть глаза на болезненные реалии этой жизни; скорее мы пытаемся воссоздать видение жизни, которое охватывает всю полноту действительности. Для того, чтобы правильно реагировать на противоестественность греха, ваши чувства должны быть пленены красотой и славой Бога, совершенством Христа и дивом Евангелия: "Если бы наши чувства были исполнены, захвачены и пленены всем этим... какой бы доступ мог иметь к нашим душам грех со своими пестрыми удовольствиями, со своими подслащенными ядами, со своими отравленными приманками? Борьба с грехом приходит не с умерщвлением наших чувств, а с пробуждением их в Боге. Не стремитесь освободить свою чашу в надежде избежать греха, напротив, -стремитесь наполнить ее Духом жизни, дабы больше не оставалось места для греха ".”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation

“[Christ] is the head from whence the new man must have influences of life and strength, or it will decay every day” (chapter 14). Oh, that our people would feel the urgency of daily supplies of grace because “grace decays.” Do they know this? Is it a category in their mind—that grace decays? How many try to live their lives on automatic pilot with no sense of urgency that means of grace are given so that the riches of Christ may daily be obtained with fresh supplies of grace?”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“God says, ‘Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost’” (chapter 8). Astonishing! God ordains to leave a lust with me till I become the sort of warrior who will still seek his aid when this victory is won. God knows when we can bear the triumphs of his grace.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live” (chapter 7). Oh, the pastoral insights that emerge from Owen! As here: If you are fighting sin, you are alive. Take heart.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John 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, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Thoughts are the great purveyors of the soul to bring in provision to satisfy its affections; and if sin remain unmortified in the heart, they must ever and anon53 be making provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. They must glaze, adorn, and dress the objects of the flesh, and bring them home to give satisfaction; and this they are able to do, in the service of a defiled imagination, beyond all expression.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“In truth, the Christian hope rests not ultimately upon our own diligence, but on God’s faithfulness.30 It is God, not us, who will ultimately persevere, and that is why he is able to promise us eternal life: “where the promise is, there is all this assistance. The faithfulness of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the power of the Spirit, all are engaged in our preservation.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“Temptation, then, in general, is any thing, state, way, or condition that, upon any account whatsoever, has a force or efficacy to seduce, to draw the mind and heart of a man from its obedience, which God requires of him, into any sin, in any degree of it whatsoever.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“It will take away a man’s usefulness in his generation.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: Three Classic Works by John Owen

“The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh, is the constant duty of believers.”
― John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation