To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the challenge of accepting God's grace without pride or the need to earn it.
R. C. Sproul's quote explores the struggle many experience in fully accepting God's grace as the sole means of salvation and celebration. It highlights the tension between human pride, which often desires to earn merit or justify oneself, and the divine gift of grace that requires humility and recognition of our inherent need for forgiveness, challenging the notion that we deserve a place in heaven based on our actions alone.
Themes
GracePrideForgivenessSalvationHumility
In practice
Example use cases
During a sermon discussing the nature of grace and its significance in our lives.
More from R. C. Sproul
All quotes →I’ve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
R. C. SproulRead
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
R. C. SproulRead
We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.
R. C. SproulRead
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
R. C. SproulRead
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
R. C. SproulRead
Similar quotes
The way up and the way down are one and the same.
HeraclitusRead
There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
Frank HerbertRead
If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.
Johann Kaspar LavaterRead
True karate is this: that in daily life one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.
Gichin FunakoshiRead
Faith means wanting God and wanting to want nothing else.
Brennan ManningRead
This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.
Kurt VonnegutRead