Vance Havner Quotes

If we would be angry and not sin, we must be angry at nothing but sin; and we should be more jealous for the glory of God than for any interest or reputation of our own.

It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.

I think people should be angry at things that are worthy of anger. Injustice is outrageous and deserves outrage.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

Indignation must always be the answer to indignity. Reality is not destiny.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

I think that indignation is pleasurable, and it's pleasurable because it's self-righteous.

As God illumines all people equally with the light of the sun, so do those who desire to imitate God let shine an equal ray of love on all people. For wherever love disappears, hatred immediately appears in its place. And if God is love, then hatred is the devil. Therefore as one who has love has God within himself, so he who has hatred within himself nurtures the devil within himself.

HATE SIN! Instead of loving it, cleaving to it, excusing it, playing with it, we ought to hate it with a deadly hatred.

Sin! Sin! Thou art a hateful and horrible thing, that abominable thing which God hates. And what wonder? Thou hast insulted His holy majesty; thou hast bereaved Him of beloved children; thou hast crucified the Son of His infinite love; thou hast vexed His gracious Spirit; thou hast defied His power; thou hast despised His grace; and in the body and blood of Jesus, as if that were a common thing, thou hast trodden under foot His matchless mercy. Surely, brethren, the wonder of wonders is, that sin is not that abominable thing which we also hate.

A good indignation makes an excellent speech.

It was not the volume of sin that sent Christ to the cross; it was the fact of sin.

Christianity teaches that when man sinned, God opted for forgiveness rather than fairness. He opted for grace and mercy rather than justice.

A person who is obsessed is characterized by committed, settled, passionate love for God, above and before every other thing and every other being.

Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation, which is one of the most passionate forms of love.

Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude.

We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is God’s arrival that is the important event.

Some people need a theology of an angry God to justify their anger against sinners.

Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.

A person is great, not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God.

The Lord Jesus died for the ungodly. He was obedient at all costs : He bore everything, and went down into the dust of death, man's hatred, God's desertion, and Satan's power ; we find Him there at the cost of everything. Everything that was against us was done away. By one man's obedience many are made righteous.

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'

A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.

Envy may justly be called "the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;" it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, a fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul.

Righteous indignation: your own wrath as opposed to the shocking bad temper of others