Basil of Caesarea Quotes

Just as a man cannot live in the flesh unless he is born in the flesh, even so a man cannot have the spiritual life of grace unless he is born again spiritually. This regeneration is effected by Baptism: "Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Jn 3:5)

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.

[Christ's] mission and work it is to help against sin and death, to justify and bring life. He has placed his help in baptism and the Sacrament [i.e., communion/Eucharist/Lord's supper], and incorporated it in the Word and preaching. To our eyes Baptism [capitalized in original] appears to be nothing more than ordinary water, and the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood simple bread and wine, like other bread and wine, and the sermon, hot air from a man's mouth. But we must not trust what our eyes see.

It is not in virtue of its liberty that the human will attains to grace, it is much rather by grace that it attains to liberty.

Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.

David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.

It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

God answers our prayers not because we are good, but because He is good.

The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.

I need not torment myself with the fear that my faith may fail; as grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace (Phil 1:29).

Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.

The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it is a grace that is given.

Prayer is God's appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.

Jesus raised the standard high so we would realize we couldn’t possibly do it without a savior.

Saving us is the greatest and most concrete demonstration of God's love, the definitive display of His grace throughout time and eternity.

There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.

If we give God service it must be because He gives us grace. We work for Him because He works in us.

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.

Great sins do draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.

Grace alone brings about every good work in us.

God works with power, and can make the unwilling willing; if He undertakes the conversion of a soul, it will be converted. All the pious workings of our heart towards God are the fruit and consequence of the powerful working of His grace in us.

Grace could not have done it’s curing work if the law had not first done its crushing work.

The harvest here is indeed great, and the laborers are few and imperfectly fitted, without much grace, for such a work. And yet grace can make a few feeble instruments the means of accomplishing great things - things greater even than we can conceive.