J. C. Ryle Quotes

Pastoral ministry is about an ongoing confrontation with the god of this world, with blindness, hardness of heart, remaining sin.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

Not in purity or in holiness merely, for in Paradise man was holy, and he shall be holy when redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ and made an heir of heaven.

I do believe in Christ, but I would not hold myself up as any paragon of virtue at all - far from it, really.

The floor of Christendom and elsewhere is littered with wrecks made by old prophets. God won't stand nonsense from any man. Every man has to choose between Christ and Barabbas, and every Christian between God and some old prophet.

Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.

We are not called upon to enter into controversy with those who hold false theories. Controversy is unprofitable. Christ never entered into it. 'It is written' is the weapon used by the world's Redeemer. Let us keep close to the Word. Let us allow the Lord Jesus and His messengers to testify. We know that their testimony is true.

I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort.

I'm at least smart enough to know I could never fill Billy Graham's shoes, but I'm grateful he gave me an opportunity to help him finish his race on earth well and to continue his life's work.

The existing governments of the world are the consequence of disobedience to the commands of God. But Christ came to bring men back to obedience by a new and living way.

In Ezekiel, chapter 33, verse 11, it says, that 'God has no pleasure in the person that's living in sin.' He's a loving God and he wants people to turn away from what they're living in and he'll give them life. That's the message I'm trying to share, even though it comes across as harsh.

When we hear that Christ was made a curse for us, let us believe it with joy and assurance. By faith Christ changes places with us. He gets our sins, we get His holiness.

Christ will be master of the heart, and sin must be mortified. If your life is unholy, then your heart is unchanged, and you are an unsaved person. The Savior will sanctify His people, renew them, give them a hatred of sin, and a love of holiness. The grace that does not make a man better than others is a worthless counterfeit. Christ saves His people, not IN their sins, but FROM their sins. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.

You cannot be in Christ and be indifferent to the sin in your life.

Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.

Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.

Never was sin seen to be more abominably sinful and full of provocation than when the burden of it was upon the shoulders of the Son of God...Would you, then, see the true demerit of sin?-take the measure of it from the mediation of Christ, especially his cross.

Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.

Christians are not patched-up sinners, they are new creations.

God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, ... are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.

My friends, look to Christ, and not to yourselves. That is what is the matter with a great many sinners; instead of looking to Christ, they are looking at the bite of sin.

This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners; for by a wonderful exchange our sins are now not ours but Christ's, and Christ's righteousness is not Christ's but ours.

It was nothing less than a stretch of divine love for Jesus to give himself for our sins. It was gracious for the Infinite to conceive of such a thing; but for him to carry it out was glorious beyond all.

Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: 'Forgive us our debts,' because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.