J. C. Ryle Quotes

God has nothing to say to the self-righteous. Unless you humble yourself before Him in the dust, and confess before Him your iniquities and sins, the gate of heaven, which is open only for sinners, saved by grace, must be shut against you forever.

A Christian expects to go to Heaven on the virtue of another.

I am and always will be a sinner. But that's the beautiful thing about Jesus. I'll always try to be a better person in the eyes of God. But I'm not all of a sudden stepping up on a pedestal and saying I'm holier than thou, 'cause I'm not!

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.

Preaching Christian salvation is to preach moral absolutes. Hollywood no likey.

Jesus Christ does not save the worthy, but the unworthy. Your plea must not be righteousness but guilt

I think when you look at every other religion all over the world - its works based - you have to earn your way to the Kingdom. With Jesus, it's so different because we, Christians, didn't do anything to deserve Him. He literally died for us and saved us! There's nothing else like that in the world. There is no other God like that! That's why I believe in Him! And I'm thankful its not up to me, because I fail every single day but He's there to give us grace - and that's an amazing thing!

For the Christian, humility is absolutely indispensable. Without it there can be no self-knowledge, no repentance, no faith and no salvation.

Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.

I [will] not go to heaven because I am a preacher. I am going to heaven entirely on the merit of the work of Christ.

If heaven were by merit, it would never be heaven to me, for if I were in it I should say, "I am sure I am here by mistake; I am sure this is not my place; I have no claim to it." But if it be of grace and not of works, then we may walk into heaven with boldness.

Christianity teaches salvation by grace through faith, every other religion teaches salvation through works and merit.

No man can put on the robes of Christ’s righteousness till he has taken off his own.

It costs something to be a true Christian. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousn ess, our ease and our worldliness.

Grace alone brings about every good work in us.

I’m not a Christian because I’m strong and have it all together. I’m a Christian because I’m weak and admit I need a Savior.

Consider then, O man! whether there can be anything more wretched and poor, more naked and miserable, than man when he dies, if he be not clothed with Christ's righteousness, and enriched in his God.

The presence of any humility in my life is purely and completely an evidence of God's grace. From my perspective, I am not a humble man. I am a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.

We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God's free grace.

The Law of God in the Christian religion is the schoolmaster that leads us to Christ.

What I love to say when people ask me about being a Christian, I always say, 'Christians aren't perfect.' They're probably some of the worst people on the planet. They just know that they need Jesus. That's the only difference.

I think people need to know that there's great peace and joy in knowing the Lord - the Lord Jesus Christ - as your savior.

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification except faith alone.

In such a therapeutic, pragmatic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society as ours, the message of God having to do all the work in saving us comes as an offensive shot at our egos.

Nature, reason, and Christianity recognize no other. Pride may say Nay; but Pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth.