John Owen Quotes

No man can put on the robes of Christ’s righteousness till he has taken off his own.

It is a good thing to be a great sinner. Or should human beings allow Christ to have died on the Cross for the sake of our petty lies and our paltry whorings

Be ashamed when you sin, don't be ashamed when you repent [To repent means to have a change of heart and mind. It is not simply a feeling of sorrow ,but a psycho/spiritual growth away from evil/death and a turning to God/life]. Sin is the wound, repentance is the medicine. Sin is followed by shame; repentance is followed by boldness [ Boldness means to beg God for undeserved mercy]. Satan has overturned this order and given boldness to sin and shame to repentance.

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.

In order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through.

I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.

You will never see the preciousness of a Savior, if you do not see the reality of your sin.

People will not receive the balm of the gospel unless they know something of the wounds that sin has made.

He is ready to cleanse you, It is sin, after all, that lies at the door and blocks you way to the Savior.

Though the cross of Christ has been beautified by the poet and the artist, the avid seeker after God is likely to find it the same savage implement of destruction it was in the days of old. The way of the cross is still the pain-wracked path to spiritual power and fruitfulness.

Look to the cross, and hate your sin, for sin nailed your Well Beloved to the tree.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins: it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed.

Faith does not proceed from ourselves, but is the fruit of spiritual regeneration.

Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.

The stool of repentance and the foot of the cross are the favorite positions of instructed Christians.

Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.

Making conclusions about life is a sure way to deny yourself the possibility of a human being transforming himself into the Divine.

Sin is no little thing. It girded the Redeemer’s head with thorns, and pierced his heart . . . Look upon all sin as that which crucified the Saviour, and you will see it to be ‘exceeding sinful’.

Repentance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it.

I do not know when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross.

Authentic spirituality... does not render the self content, it renders it undone.

Confess yourself to heaven, Repent what's past, avoid what is to come, And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker.