Inspirational Quotes by R. C. Sproul

“Sin can be pleasurable, but it never brings happiness.”

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15).”

“Jesus suffered so deeply because the extent of evil in the world is so vast. Every consequence of every sin of each one of His people was placed on Him. To carry this dreadful burden was His vocation. To bear this pain and disease was His mission. The magnitude of this horror is beyond our understanding. But He understood it because it was His to bear. Jesus endured His suffering in order to redeem His people. But those He redeemed are not thereby delivered from all pain and misery. Indeed, as we shall see, we His people are called to participate in His suffering.”

“What accounts for Luther's behavior? One things is certain: Whatever defense mechanisms normal people have to mute the accusing voice of conscience, Luther was lacking.”

“Together my wife and I are building the kingdom of God, exercising dominion, beating back the weeds of stinky dippers, tending the garden God has put us in. This is why my dear wife vacuums the floor, for it is part of the garden she has been called to dress and to keep. But she is doing this not as raw duty, but because she understands that she is exercising dominion over the dust, for the glory of Christ.”

“Everything we learn—economics, philosophy, biology, mathematics—has to be understood in light of the overarching reality of the character of God. That is why, in the Middle Ages, theology was called “the queen of the sciences” and philosophy “her handmaiden.” Today the queen has been deposed from her throne and, in many cases, driven into exile, and a supplanter now reigns. We have replaced theology with religion.”

“What we call “the laws of nature” merely reflect the normal way in which God sustains or governs the natural world. Perhaps the most wicked concept that has captured the minds of modern people is the belief that the universe operates by chance. That is the nadir of foolishness. Elsewhere, I have written more extensively on the scientific impossibility of assigning power to chance, because chance is simply a word that describes mathematical possibilities.* Chance is not a thing. It has no power. It cannot do anything, and therefore it cannot influence anything, yet some have taken the word chance, which has no power, and diabolically used it as a replacement for the concept of God. But the truth, as the Bible makes clear, is that nothing happens by chance and that all things are under the sovereign government of God, which is exceedingly comforting to the Christian who understands it.”

“God says it, it is settled, whether we believe it or not. There is no higher court of appeal than the voice of God. So”

“When we engage in the quest to understand God, it is theology. When our quest is limited to understanding how people react to theology, it is religion.”

“Christian pilgrims live in tents. They are seminomads. They are never so at home in this world that they completely settle in. Life is always a frontier for them. The water they drink is never stagnant.”

“Many still look at the kingdom of God as something in the unfulfilled future. But the kingdom has begun. Why? Because the King has been enthroned.”

“Dominion is all about conquest; that's what we're made for. Men live for a cause, and this is the cause-the crusade to which we have been called-to make manifest the reign of Jesus Christ.”

“Sanctification is a process. It is a gradual process. Run for your life from those who promise you instant sanctification.”

“The call to repentance is a call to return, a call to go back home.”

“The journey has but one guarantee: Christ promises to go with us and to bring us out the other side. Our Lord finishes what He starts. He does not abort His handiwork in the middle of its creation. He does not leave us staring at walking trees.”

“Chance is a perfectly good word to describe mathematic possibilities, but it is only a word. It is not an entity. Chance is nothing. It has no power because it has no being; therefore, it can exercise no influence over anything. Yet, we have sophisticated scientists today who make sober statements declaring that the whole universe was created by chance. This is to say that nothing caused something, and there is no statement more anti-scientific than that. Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God.”

“in order to be able to count earthly sorrows and afflictions as matters of joy, we have to cultivate the ability to think in terms of the future.”

“if God is not sovereign, God is not God. If there is even one maverick molecule in the universe—one molecule running loose outside the scope of God’s sovereign ordination—we cannot have the slightest confidence that any promise God has ever made about the future will come to pass.”

“Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”

“God delights to hear the prayers of His people when they individually ask, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" The Christian pursues God, looking for His marching orders, seeking to know what course of action is pleasing to Him. This search for the will of God is a holy quest-a pursuit that is to be undertaken with vigor by the godly person.”