R.C. Sproul > Quotes

“Death often frightens us. When we see another person die, we are reminded that we are also mortal, that someday death will come to us. It is a thought we try to push from our minds. We are uncomfortable when another’s death rudely intrudes into our lives and reminds us of what we will face at some unknown future date. Death reminds us that we are creatures. Yet as fearsome as death is, it is nothing compared with meeting a holy God. When we encounter Him, the totality of our creatureliness breaks upon us and shatters the myth that we have believed about ourselves, the myth that we are demigods, junior-grade deities who will try to live forever.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“YOU ARE REQUIRED TO BELIEVE, TO PREACH, AND TO TEACH WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS IS TRUE, NOT WHAT YOU WANT THE BIBLE TO SAY IS TRUE.”
― R.C. Sproul, Chosen by God

“Jacob’s Ladder represents a bridge between Jacob’s secular mindset to make it in this world and the reality of Heavenly things.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“Our marks of piety can actually be evidences of impiety. When we major in minors and blow insignificant trifles out of proportion, we imitate the Pharisees. When we make dancing and movies the test of spirituality, we are guilty of substituting a cheap morality for a genuine one. We do these things to obscure the deeper issues of righteousness. Anyone can avoid dancing or going to movies. These requ ire no great effort of moral courage. What is difficult is to control the tongue, to act with integrity, to reveal the fruit of the Spirit.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“To my great distress, I sometimes hear people say, in their zeal for fervency and efficacy in prayer, that we should never qualify our
prayer requests with the words "if it be Your will." Some will even say that to attach those words, those conditional terms, to our prayers is an act of unbelief. We are told today that in the boldness of faith we are to "name it and claim it." I suppose I should be more measured in my response to this trend, but I can't think of anything more foreign to the teaching of Christ. We come to the presence of God in boldness, but never in arrogance. Yes, we can name and claim those things God has clearly promised in Scripture. For instance, we can claim the certainty of forgiveness if we confess our sins before Him, because He promises that. But when it comes to getting a raise, purchasing a home, or finding healing from a disease, God hasn't made those kind of specific promises anywhere in Scripture, so we are not free to name and claim those things.
As I mentioned earlier, when we come before God, we must remember two simple facts-who He is and who we are. We must remember that we're talking to the King, the Sovereign One, the Creator, but we are only creatures. If we will keep those facts in mind, we will pray politely. We will say, "By Your leave," "As You wish," "If You please," and so on. That's the way we go before God. To say that it is a manifestation of unbelief or a weakness of faith to say to God "if it be Your will" is to slander the very Lord of the Lord's Prayer.
It was Jesus, after all, who, in His moment of greatest passion, prayed regarding the will of God. In his Gospel, Luke tells us that immediately following the Last Supper:
Coming out, He went to the Mount of Olives, as He was accustomed, and His disciples also followed Him. When
He came to the place, He said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:39-44)
It is important to see what Jesus prays here. He says, "Not My will, but Yours, be done." Jesus was not saying, "I don't want to be obedient" or "I refuse to submit." Jesus was saying: "Father, if there's any other way, all things being equal, I would rather not have to do it this way. What You have set before Me is more ghastly than I can contemplate. I'm entering into My grand passion and I'm terrified, but if this is what You want, this is what I'll do. Not My will, but Your will, be done, because My will is to do Your will."
I also want you to notice what happened after Jesus prayed. Luke tells us that an angel came to Him and strengthened Him. The angel was the messenger of God. He came from heaven with the Father's answer to Jesus' prayer. That answer was this: "You must drink the cup."
This is what it means to pray that the will of God would be done. It is the highest expression of faith to submit to the sovereignty of God. The real prayer of faith is the prayer that trusts God no matter whether the answer is yes or no. It takes
no faith to "claim," like a robber, something that is not ours to claim. We are to come to God and tell Him what we want, but we must trust Him to give the answer that is best for us. That is what Jesus did.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord

“If there is a secret, a carefully guarded secret, to human happiness, it is that one expressed in a seventeenth-century catechism that says, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." The secret to happiness is found in obedience to God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture

“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.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless. In securing any kind ofpeace, the first essential is to guarantee to every man the most elementary of rights: the right to his own life. Murder is not debatable.
-Theodore Roosevelt”
― R.C. Sproul, Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue

“If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace.”
― R.C. Sproul

“But we still must tremble before our God. He is still holy. Our trembling is the tremor of awe and veneration, not the trembling of the coward or the pagan frightened by the rustling of a leaf. Luther explained it this way: We are to fear God not with a servile fear like that of a prisoner before his tormentor but as children who do not wish to displease their beloved Father.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“To live in coram Deo is to live in the presence of God, being ruled by His authority for the glory of His name.”
― R.C. Sproul

“It distresses me somewhat to hear a person say, “I am a born-again Christian.” What’s wrong with such a statement? Well, what other kind of Christian is there? If rebirth is absolutely essential in order to get into the kingdom of God, as Jesus said it is, there cannot be such a thing as a non-born-again Christian. To say “born-again Christian” is like saying “Christian Christian.” It’s a redundancy, a kind of theological stuttering.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is The Holy Spirit?

“Prayer is one of the most important means of grace that we have to strengthen our faith. Prayer is not for God's benefit. We don't pray to give Him information that otherwise He would not have. We don't pray to give God our counsel so as to improve His administration
of the universe. Rather, prayer is for our benefit. It is a God-given way for us to spend time with Him, to praise and thank Him, and to make our requests known to Him. Afterward, when we get up from our knees, we watch the providence of God work in our lives.”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is Faith?

“To be spiritually dead is to be worldly. It is to buy into and follow slavishly the values and customs of the secular culture. Not only do the spiritually dead follow the course of this world, they follow “the prince of the power of the air”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is The Holy Spirit?

“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.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Know God's Will?

“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.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Have Joy In My Life?

“En términos de su propósito eterno, Dios ha estimado que es bueno permitir que el mal ocurra en este mundo.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Controla Dios todas Las Cosas?

“Our thinking goes like this: If there is a God at all, He is certainly not holy. If He is perchance holy, He is not just. Even if He is both holy and just, we need not fear because His love and mercy override His holy justice. If we can stomach His holy and just character, we can rest in one thing: He cannot possess wrath.
If we think soberly for five seconds, we must see our error. If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in His character, indeed if God exists as God, how could He possibly be anything else but angry with us? We violate His holiness; we insult His justice; we make light of His grace. These things can hardly please Him.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“God is working in us for his good pleasure. Paul does not say that God is working in us for our good pleasure.”
― R.C. Sproul, Chosen by God

“When we call things holy when they are not holy, we commit the sin of idolatry. We give to common things the respect, awe, worship, and adoration that belong only to God. To worship the creature instead of the Creator is the essence of idolatry.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“If I think of the ballot as a potential bullet, I will be more careful when I vote. The word vote comes from the Latin word votum, which means "will." When I cast my vote, I express my will. Indeed, if my vote is decisive or a part of the winning majority, then I am not merely expressing my will but imposing my will on others.
Many people think that the vote is merely a means to express personal desires or to seek personal gain, usually at the expense of others. On the contrary, to be ethically scrupulous in the casting of votes, we must vote only for what is just. To vote for a vested interest without just cause is to exercise tyranny.”
― R.C. Sproul, Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue

“It was St. Augustine who once prayed, "Thou halt made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it finds its rest in Thee.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“what better evidence could there be of a man's salvation than that he offers to others the grace he himself has received?”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“If God ceased to exist, the universe would perish with Him, because God not only has created everything, He sustains everything. We are dependent on Him, not only for our origin, but also for our continuing existence.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“My purposes do not always include God’s good. I am a sinner.”
― R.C. Sproul, Chosen by God

“The Christian formula for the Trinity—God is one essence in three persons—may seem to be contradictory because we are accustomed to seeing one being as one person. We cannot conceive of how one being could be contained in three persons and still be only one being. To that extent, the doctrine of the Trinity in this formulation is mysterious; it boggles the mind to think of a being who is absolutely one in His essence yet three in person.”
― R.C. Sproul, Everyone's a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology

“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”
― R.C. Sproul, Romans

“All virtue that is saving, or distinguishing of true Christians, is summed up in Christian love. It is love that disposes us to honor God as God, to adore and worship Him. Love recognizes God's right to govern us and His worthiness to be the object of our obedience. At the same time, love disposes us to treat our neighbors with honor and respect.”
― R.C. Sproul, Loved by God

“a knowledge of the invisible God is revealed to us through that which is visible. The creation itself screams out the reality of the Creator.”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is Faith?

“Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God