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HOLINESS QUOTES PAST AND PRESENT "Why are we not more holy?" asked John Wesley, addressing his preachers. "Chiefly because we are enthusiasts, looking for the end without the means."
"An unholy church! It is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell’s laughter, heaven’s abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church."
"In the New Testament church it says they were all amazed - and now in our churches everybody wants to be amused." "The men that have been the most heroic for God have had the greatest devotional lives." "Would we send our daughters off to have sex if it would benefit our country? Yet, we send our sons off to kill when we think it would benefit our country! "
"God's purpose, then, is to create a holy people in Christ.This he has done in principle, by dealing with sin on the cross and thus already achieving reconciliation. This he is doing in practice, by refashioning their lives according to the pattern of the perfect life, that of Christ (see 3:10). This he will do in the future, when that work is complete and the church enjoys fully that which at present it awaits in hope. The present process, which begins with the patient Christian living and ends with the resurrection itself, will result in Christians being presented without shame or fear before God, as glad subjects before their king."
- N.T. Wright Colossians and Philemon Commentary--page 83"
"Lastly - are not the Church in their present state, a standing, public, perpetual denial of the gospel? Do they not stand out before the world, as a living, unanswerable contradiction of the gospel; and do more to harden sinners and lead them into a spirit of caviling and infidelity, than all the efforts of professed infidels from the beginning of the world to the present day?" "First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it." "God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him." "The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Saviour from Hell rather than a Saviour from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness." "Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us." "An idle life and a holy heart is a contradiction." "There’s only one proof of the Holy Ghost in your life and that’s a holy life" "The question isn't were you challenged. The question is were you changed" "A servant of God has but one Master" "Anything that is not settled while you are on earth will have to be settled at the Judgement Seat of Christ." "Do you realize this? That if you were to somehow purpose to, from this day on, perfectly please God and succeed in doing it, that that perfect obedience, from this moment, would not acquire in the remainder of your life, enough merit to atone for one past sin, because God exacts and God demands perfect obedience and there's no merit for giving him the minimal requirement." "Get rid of this bunkum about the 'carnal Christian'. Forget it! If you're carnal, you're not saved." "A person repents when he comes to the place where he discovers that the will of God is the government of his life and the glory of God is the reason for his life. He only has repented who has changed his mind about his reason for being." "The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights." "If Jesus ever commanded us to do something that He was unable to equip us to accomplish, He would be a liar. And if we make our own inability a stumbling block or an excuse not to be obedient, it means that we are telling God that there is something which He has not yet taken into account." "It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God." "It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should." "Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them" "Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable sinning is not biblical grace. God's grace never encourages us to live in sin, on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth." "It is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God's truth and remain in sin." "The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions." "Christian men and women, self-renunciation is the cardinal ethic of the Christian Church." "Tell me in the light of the cross, isn't it a scandal that you and I live today as we do." "There is nothing destroyed by sanctification but that which would destroy us." "Christ will be master of the heart, and sin must be mortified. If your life is unholy, then your heart is unchanged, and you are an unsaved person. The Saviour will sanctify His people, renew them, give them a hatred of sin, and a love of holiness. The grace that does not make a man better than others is a worthless counterfeit. Christ saves His people, not IN their sins, but FROM their sins. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord." "We are not to be isolated but insulated, moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it." "Jesus Christ has undertaken by His redemption to put in me a heart so pure that God can see nothing to censure." "There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives." "It is not great talents or great learning or great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness." "Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." "If the presence of God is in the church, the church will draw the world in. "The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity." "Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and conduct." "Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it." "Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things then it is sin for you, however, innocent it may be in itself." "Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim that you are begotten of God and have His royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils." "Sin is never an accident. It's always intentional." "Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sins. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin." "The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness." "God has one destined end for mankind - holiness! His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing- machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity. He came to save men because He had created them to be holy." "No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be." "You knew one thing about a man who was carrying a cross out of the city... you knew he wasn't coming back." "Don't presume upon the mercy of God and so encourage yourself in sin." "Entertainment is the devils substitute for joy, and when you get satisfaction out of that dumb thing, your joy will diminish." "The pure, mere love of God is that alone from which sinners are justly to expect that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments till every sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right band, which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation." "Whatever call a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry." "Many Christians have what we might call a "cultural holiness". They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God." "Introspection can easily become the tool of Satan, who is called the accuser. One of his chief weapons is discouragement. He knows that if he can make us discouraged and dispirited we will not fight the battle for holiness." "The breaking of a man in the hand of God is the making of a man of God" "Every man is as holy as he really wants to be." "Any objection to the carryings on of our present gold-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But we are winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world’s treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no." (Acknowledgments and thanks to Greg Gordon at SermonIndex for providing these quotes). |