GRACE
NOT TO BE ABUSED
God forgives sins merely out of grace for Christ’s sake; but we must not abuse the grace of God. God has given signs and tokens enough, that our sins shall be forgiven; namely, the preaching of the gospel, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Holy Ghost in our hearts.
Martin Luther
If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly.
Martin Luther
Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes.
Martin Luther
The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.
Martin Luther
Grace keeps us from worrying because worry deals with the past, while grace deals with the present and future.
Joyce Meyer
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
John Milton
I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I wish to be; I am not what I hope to be; but by the grace of God I am what I am.
John Newton
“Where is boasting then? It is excluded.” As the Apostle speaks in another place, “If Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory:” so if men were saved either in whole or in part, by their own wisdom and prudence, they might, in the same degree, ascribe the glory and praise to themselves. They might say, My own power and wisdom gave me this; and thus God would be robbed of the honor due to his name. But now this is prevented.
John Newton
If grace doth not change human nature, I do not know what grace doth.
John Owen
Grace is young glory.
Alexander Peden
None but the Lord himself can afford us any help from the awful workings of unbelief, doubtings, carnal fears, murmurings. Thank God one day we will be done forever with unbelief.
Arthur W. Pink
Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon. Therefore the effort we make to obey God is not an effort done in our own strength, but in the strength which God supplies.
John Piper
Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.
S. Rutherford
Well can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of grace in a single instant.
Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did not see the grace of God.
I remember sitting one day in the house of God and hearing a sermon as dry as possible, and as worthless as all such sermons are, when a thought struck my mind – how did I come to be converted? I prayed, thought I. Then I thought how did I come to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How did I come to read the Scriptures? Why, I did read them, and what led me to that?
And then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of all, and that he was the author of faith; and then the whole doctrine opened up to me, from which I have not departed.
C.H. Spurgeon
Grace sends all its roots upwards, none downwards; it draws no support from poverty, and none from riches.
C.H. Spurgeon
If grace does not make us differ from other men, it is not the grace which God gives his elect.
C.H. Spurgeon
If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it.
C.H. Spurgeon
Should any here, supposing themselves to be the children of God, imagine that there is some reason in them why they should have been chosen, let them know that as yet they are in the dark concerning the first principles of grace, and have not yet learned the gospel.
C.H. Spurgeon
Ah! the bridge of grace will bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have gone across that bridge, yea, tens of thousands have gone over it. I can hear their trampings now as they traverse the great arches of the bridge of salvation. They come by their thousands, by their myriads; e’er since the day when Christ first entered into His glory, they come, and yet never a stone has sprung in that mighty bridge. Some have been the chief of sinners, and some have come at the very last of their days, but the arch has never yielded beneath their weight. I will go with them trusting to the same support; it will bear me over as it has borne them.
C.H. Spurgeon
Free grace can go into the gutter, and bring up a jewel!
C.H. Spurgeon
It is not true gold if it will not stand the fire, and it is not true grace if it will not bear affliction.
C.H. Spurgeon
Between here and heaven, every minute that the Christian lives will be a minute of grace.
C.H. Spurgeon
There is nothing but God’s grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.
John Stott
Grace will teach a Christian contentedly to take those potions that are wholesome, though they are not toothsome.
George Swinnock
The way that a man shall walk in this world is found not in himself, but in the grace of God.
Thomas à Kempis
Grace is always given to those ready to give thanks for it, and therefore it is wont to be given to the humble man, and to be taken from the proud man.
Thomas à Kempis
He rides pleasantly enough whom the grace of God carries.
Thomas à Kempis
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain
None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full.
Thomas Watson
I take it for granted you believe religion to be an inward thing; you believe it to be a work in the heart, a work wrought in the soul by the power of the Spirit of God. If you do not believe this, you do not believe your Bibles. If you do not believe this, though you have got your Bibles in your hand, you hate the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart; for religion is everywhere represented in Scripture as the work of God in the heart … If any of you place religion in outward things, I shall not perhaps please you this morning; you will understand me no more when I speak of the work of God upon a poor sinner’s heart, than if I were talking in an unknown tongue.
George Whitefield