John Bunyan Quotes

If God did not act first, no one would be saved.

You can't resist the will of God and receive the grace of God at the same time.

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

In the exercise of God's efficiency, the decree of God comes first. This manner of working is the most perfect of all and notably agrees with the divine nature.

Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our 'accepting' and 'willing' are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God.

I am one imperfect man saved by God's grace.

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God

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.

Our very worst days are never beyond the reach of God's grace.

Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God's 'free grace' but on Man's 'free will.'

God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.

The glory of the salvation of souls belongs to God, and to Him alone.

We never know who they are that God will draw, and have nothing to do with it. Our duty is to invite all, and leave it to God to choose the vessels of mercy.

Those who are in a state of salvation are to attribute it to sovereign grace alone, and to give all the praise to Him who maketh them to differ from others.

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

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.

God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another -- God alone.

It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.

My brethren, when God first began to love you, He gave you all that He ever meant to give you in the lump, and eternity of time is that in which He is retailing of it out.

I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.

The good pleasure of God is an act of the divine will freely and effectively determining all things.

God wills in man only that which is good, in the kingdom of his grace; where the free will yields itself up into the grace, there God wills that which is good in the will, through the grace.

No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.

Getting into Heaven is not something you can earn or deserve. God makes that really clear in the scriptures.

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. That's not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people.