quotations about sin
Past sins, if you repent of them, whiten you. They made a great psalmist out of David, a faithful believer out of the prostitute Rahab, a zealous apostle out of the persecutor Saul. I have been a loved preacher and writer with a particular vocation. My sermons and books would not have had the same quality without my past of anarchy, vice, and violent atheism.
RICHARD WURMBRAND
If Prison Walls Could Speak
Remorse withers the succulent fruits of sin.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
One carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO & CHUCK HOGAN
The Fall
A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man's greatest tragedy and God's heaviest grief.
A. W. TOZER
And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings From the Gospel of John
God is the creditor of that punishment which is due upon Sin; and He has the right of abating, as well as the right of exacting.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present.
ANNIE BESANT
The Immediate Future: Lectures Delivered in Queen's Hall
Sin first is pleasing, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he is resolved never to repent, and then he is ruined.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
It appears, therefore, that every man lies under a twofold condemnation for his sins: he is sentenced to various temporal sufferings, to be terminated by death; and to eternal misery in another world. And if any one should object to this, on the supposition that his sins do not merit so tremendous a punishment, I would inquire whether human legislators and judges ever think the criminals themselves competent to decide on the equity of their statutes and decisions? and whether we are capable of determining the degree of evil contained in rebellion against the authority of the infinite Creator, and what punishment the glory of his name, and the everlasting advantage of the whole creation, may require him to inflict upon transgressors? In respect of the former part of this sentence, alleviations and respites alone can be expected; but we may hope for the entire abolition of the latter, as we live under a dispensation of mercy, through the great Mediator of the new covenant. Of this salvation we may hereafter enlarge; at present it suffices to say, with the Psalmist, "If thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared."
THOMAS SCOTT
"On Man's Situation as a Sinner in this Present World", Essays on the Most Important Subjects in Religion
Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.
PHILIP YANCEY
attributed, Jesus Now: Unveiling the Present-Day Ministry of Christ
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.
THOMAS MOORE
Lalla Rookh
God planteth in mortal men the cause of sin whensoever he wills utterly to destroy a house.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Niobe
He that hath sinned
In body, word, or thought,
Or in anything
That is called sinful,
Doing not that which is righteous,
But doing much that is unrighteous--
This fool after the dissolution of the body,
Shall go to perdition.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
JOHN OWEN
The Mortification of Sin
So sin is a theological concept -- it is fundamentally about our relationship with God. Sin distances us from God and the life God intends for us.
JEFFREY HEYDEN-KAYE
"Let's talk about sin, shall we?", Bashaw Star, August 10, 2017
The damage a man does to another, he may make amends for by restitution or recompense, but sin cannot be taken away by recompense, for that were to make the liberty to sin a thing vendible. But sins may be pardoned to the repentent either gratis or upon such penalty as God is pleased to accept.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
I ought to have a number of scriptures marked to bring sin to remembrance. I ought to make use of all bodily affliction, domestic trial, frowns of Providence on myself, house, parish, church, or country, as calls from God to confess sin.
ROBERT MURRAY M'CHEYNE
The Life and Remains, Letters, Lectures, and Poems of the Rev Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Sin in its ordinary progress first deceives, next hardens, and then destroys.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
MARK TWAIN
Pudd'nhead Wilson
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
HYMAN G. RICKOVER
The New York Times, November 3, 1986
To make it evident that Sin is a great evil, we need but reflect a little on the nature and effects of it. If we inquire into the nature of Sin, we shall find that it is founded in the subversion of the dignity, and defacing the beauty of human nature: And that it consists in the darkness of our understanding, the depravity of our affections, and the feebleness and impotence of the will.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine