Meister Eckhart Quotes

We have to believe in the mercy and grace of God to trigger conversion rather than the other way around: that you're only going to get the mercy if you have a conversion. The economy of salvation doesn't work that way.

Give me great sinners to make great saints! They are glorious raw material for Grace to work upon and when you do get them saved, they will shake the very gates of Hell!

The evil influence of Satan would destroy any hope we have in overcoming our mistakes. ... In contrast, Jesus reaches down to us to lift us up. Through our repentance and the gift of the Atonement, we can prepare to be worthy to stand in His presence.

It is only the Lord who is able to give [unbelievers] repentance and recover them out of Satan's snare.

The Lord saved my soul.

If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution.

They also have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so obstinate that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from malice, it is possible to make a quite probable judgment that they would never come away from evil.

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.

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

The preacher's work is to throw sinners down into utter helplessness that they may be compelled to look up to Him Who alone can help them.

The law is for the self-righteous, to humble their pride: the gospel is for the lost, to remove their despair

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

Christ's sacrifice stands in glorious proportions with the work to be done. Nothing else or less would suffice. It is a work supernatural, transacted in the plane of nature; and what but such a work could restore the broken order of the soul under evil?

The opening of your hearts to receive the Lord Jesus Christ is not a work done by any power of your own, but the arm of the Lord is revealed therein.

Pardon comes not to the soul alone; or rather, Christ comes not to the soul with pardon only! It is that which He opens the door and enters by, but He comes with a Spirit of life and power.

We are all so sunk in sin, and so wedded to the world, that we would never turn to God and seek salvation, unless He first called us by His grace. Without a divine call, no one can be saved.

Repentance was never yet produced in any man's heart apart from the grace of God. As soon may you expect the leopard to regret the blood with which its fangs are moistened,—as soon might you expect the lion of the wood to abjure his cruel tyranny over the feeble beasts of the plain, as expect the sinner to make any confession, or offer any repentance that shall be accepted of God, unless grace shall first renew the heart.

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.

Every sinner must be quickened by the same life, made obedient to the same gospel, washed in the same blood, clothed in the same righteousness, filled with the same divine energy, and eventually taken up to the same heaven, and yet in the conversion of no two sinners will you find matters precisely the same.

Lord, for the erring thoughtNot into evil wrought:Lord, for the wicked willBetrayed and baffled still:For the heart from itself kept,Our thanksgiving accept.

The Savior can wipe away our tears of regret.

Salvation is an act of God. It is initiated by God, wrought by God, and sustained by God.

I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.

Until we believe that we are as bad as God says we are, we can never believe that He will do for us what He says He will do. Right here is where popular religion breaks down.