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.
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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?
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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
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