John Owen
The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.Collection: World
Believers obey Christ as the one whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God's presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.Collection: Weed
The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.Collection: Rocks
As rivers, the nearer they come to the ocean whither they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more fully and freely in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.Collection: Christian
When we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for-then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.Collection: Men
All spiritual acts well-pleasing unto God, as faith, repentance, obedience, are supernatural; flesh and blood revealeth not these things.Collection: Spiritual
As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace.Collection: Powerful
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.Collection: Done
Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.Collection: Religious
Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?Collection: Christian
It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.Collection: Grace
Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it.Collection: Sin
The stronghold of the contemplation of Christ's glory affords the soul rest, for it will be made evident that our troubles grow on the root of an over-valuation of temporal things. The mind is its own greatest troubler.Collection: Roots
He that loves works out good to those that he loves, as he is able. God's power and will are equal; what He wills He works.Collection: Work Out
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.Collection: Spiritual
Assurance encourateth us in our combat; it delivers us not from it. We may have peace with God when we have done from the assaults of Satan.Collection: Peace With God
When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone.Collection: May
It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.Collection: Lying
He that stands still and suffers his enemies to double blows upon him without resistance, will undoubtedly be conquered in the issue.Collection: Blow
The love of God is like himself – equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminution; our love is like ourselves – unequal, increasing, waning, growing, declining. His, like the sun, always the same in its light, though a cloud may sometimes interpose; ours, as the moon, has its enlargements and straightenings.Collection: Moon
He who finds not opposition from sin, and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it.Collection: Dying
Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps toward his journey's end.Collection: Journey
Christ by his death destroying the works of the devil, procuring the Spirit for us, hath so killed sin, as to its reign in believers, that it shall not obtain its end and dominion.Collection: Devil
You have your season, and you have but your season; neither can you lie down in peace, until you have some persuasion that your work as well as your life is at an end.Collection: Life
Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.Collection: Self
No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter who does not in some measure behold it here by faith.Collection: Men
the whole Pelagian poison of free-will ... a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God ... That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented.Collection: Idols
Only what God has commanded in His word should be regarded as binding; in all else there may be liberty of actions.Collection: Liberty
...but let it suffice us to know that it became God, who is the supreme Ruler, Governor and Judge of all that sin should be punished with death in the sinner or his surety; and therefore if God would bring many sons to glory, the Captain of their salvation must undergo sufferings and death, to make satisfaction for them.Collection: Son
Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.Collection: Believe
Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"Collection: Self
There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men, and they are, first, a due consideration of God, and then of themselves - of God, in His greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty, and authority; of ourselves, in our mean, abject, and sinful condition.Collection: Humble
I did not hear what I should have listened to.Collection: Should Have
A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.Collection: Eye
It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.Collection: Bears
God hath work to do in this world; and to desert it because of its difficulties and entanglements, is to cast off His authority. It is not enough that we be just, that we be righteous, and walk with God in holiness; but we must also serve our generation, as David did before he fell asleep. God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him.Collection: Our Generation
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.Collection: Blow
Whatever vices and corruptions men see in the lives of their ministers will not be attributed to the depravity of their old nature which still abides in them, but to the gospel.Collection: Men
Never was sin seen to be more abominably sinful and full of provocation than when the burden of it was upon the shoulders of the Son of God...Would you, then, see the true demerit of sin?-take the measure of it from the mediation of Christ, especially his cross.Collection: Son
The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh is the constant duty of believers.Collection: Body
The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart.Collection: Heart
That wisdom which cannot teach me that God is love, shall ever pass for folly.Collection: God Is Love
Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, if it has its own way it will go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could, every thought of unbelief would be atheism if allowed to develop. Every rise of lust, if it has its way reaches the height of villainy; it is like the grave that is never satisfied. The deceitfulness of sin is seen in that it is modest in its first proposals but when it prevails it hardens men’s hearts, and brings them to ruin.Collection: Heart
Temptation gains power by persistent solicitations that beget thoughts that make evil less seriousCollection: Evil
All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.Collection: Lust
Spiritual wisdom consists in finding out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin... to trace this serpent in all its turnings and windings; be able to say, at its most secret actings, 'This is your old way and course; I know what you aim at.'Collection: Spiritual
Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.Collection: Men
Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after...unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.Collection: Breathing
In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.Collection: Elephants