John Calvin Quotes

You can't resist the will of God and receive the grace of God at the same time.

Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.

If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said 'No.'

Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our 'accepting' and 'willing' are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God.

Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can't give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines.

Let it be a settled principle ...that men's salvation, if saved, is wholly of God; and that man's ruin, if lost, is wholly of himself.

If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.

God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people - either Christians or non Christians, it makes no difference - that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans.

Free-will doctrine-what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God's purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God's will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners.

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God's 'free grace' but on Man's 'free will.'

There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.

This is the doctrine that we preach; if a man be saved, all the honor is to be given to Christ; but if a man be lost, all the blame is to be laid upon himself. You will find all true theology summed up in these two short sentences, salvation is all of the grace of God, damnation is all of the will of man.

God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his work.

Man's will and God's grace rise and fall together

If we grant freedom to man, there is an end to the omniscience of God.

The doctrine of free will is always in danger of robbing God of his honor

Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ's rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives.

God just has his own agenda, and he does what he wants to do with stuff.

they go and set up free-will with the heathen philosophers and say that a man's free will is the cause why God chooseth and not another, contrary to all scriptures.

The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.

To say that God's sovereignty is limited by man's freedom is to make man sovereign.

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

We have an extraordinary God. God is a mighty God, but this God needs you. When someone is hungry, bread doesn't come down from heaven. When God wants to feed the hungry, you and I must feed the hungry. And now God wants peace in the world.

Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God but believe in the sovereignty of man.