Justification By Faith Quotes

The doctrine of justification by faith - a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort - has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little. ~ A.W. Tozer

My friends, I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to give people a batch of philosophy every Sunday morning and evening, and neglect the truths of this Holy Book. I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to leave out the main cardinal doctrines of the Word of God, and preach a religion which is all a mist and a haze, without any definite truths whatever. I take it that man does not preach Christ and him crucified, who can get through a sermon without mentioning Christ's name once; nor does that man preach Christ and him crucified, who leaves out the Holy Spirit's work, who never says a word about the Holy Ghost, so that indeed the hearers might say, "We do not so much as know whether there be a Holy Ghost." And I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith without works; not unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor, I think, can we preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for his elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets s ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Justification by faith is the hinge on which all true religion turns. ~ John Calvin

Every week I preach justification by faith to my people, because every week they forget it. ~ Martin Luther

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling. By this he meant that when this doctrine is understood, believed, and preached, as it was in New-Testament times, the church stands in the grace of God and is alive; but where it is neglected, overlaid, or denied, ... the church falls from grace and its life drains away, leaving it in a state of darkness and death. ~ J.I. Packer

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace. ~ Charles Spurgeon

This does not, therefore, mean `the gospel reveals justification by faith as the true scheme of salvation, as opposed to Jewish self-help moralism'. When we unpack it fully, in the light of subsequent passages in the letter, it means:
The gospel - the announcement of the lordship of Jesus the Messiah - reveals God's righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, his dealing with the sin of the world through the fulfilment of his covenant in this Lord Jesus Christ. He has done all this righteously, that is, impartially. He has dealt with sin, and rescued the helpless. He has thereby fulfilled his promises. ~ N. T. Wright

Stressing the necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification by faith alone. The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness. Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit. God declares us just solely on account of the righteousness of Christ credited (imputed) to us (2 Cor. 5:21). Our innocence in God's sight is in no way grounded in works of love or acts of charity. Whereas a Catholic might answer the question "What must I do to be saved?" by saying, "Repent, believe, and live in charity,"7 the apostle Paul answers the same exact question with, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31). Getting right with God is entirely and only dependent upon faith.8 ~ Kevin DeYoung

What God said to Abraham was not 'Obey this law and I will bless you', but 'I will bless you; believe my promise'. ~ John R.W. Stott

The inner change, justification, is effected at the moment of salvation. The outer change in the believer's daily walk, sanctification, continues throughout life. But the progressive work of sanctification is only fully effective when the radical, inner transformation of justification is realized and appropriated by faith. ~ Neil T. Anderson

The genius of the Reformation lay in the fact that human beings were made free under God. Justification "by faith alone" cut away the bureaucratic jungle of human authorities and subservience. But where this liberty was not balanced by responsibility, the Reformation made human beings so free under God that it was only a short step to their being free from God. We might say that the despair of existentialism is simply the logic of atheism, but this is true only insofar as atheism itself is the logic of ungrateful Protestantism. ~ Os Guinness

justification by faith alone frees me to love my neighbor disinterestedly, for his or her own sake, as my sister or brother, not as the calculated means to my own desired ends. ~ Timothy George

We all are like filthy rags in the site of God; not one clean enough, good enough, righteous enough, to stand before a holy God. ~ Robin Bertram

Mankind could point with pride to this fine flower of the human spirit--if it were not for one thing: namely that God is God and grace is grace. At this point begins the destruction of our illusions and of our cultural enthusiasm, the great destruction which God himself effects, and which the ancient myth of the tower of Babel typifies. 'And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' Our way to the eternal is interrupted and we are plunged back into the depths from which we came, with out philosophy and art, our morality and religion. For another way now opens, the way of God to man, the way of revelation and grace, the way of Christ, the way of justification by faith alone. 'My ways are not your ways,' that is the answer now. It is not we who go to God, but God who comes to us. It is not religion that sets us right with God, for God alone can do this; it is his action on which we must depend. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

20Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us [1] that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. ~ Anonymous

The evidence of justification by faith is the ongoing work of sanctification through the Holy Spirit. ~ Paul Washer

As well as being essential to theological study, philosophy is an indispensable tool for communicating theology, for evangelization and catechesis. A faith based on how warm and comfortable you feel and how "affirmed" you are by your community is pleasant, but there is no guarantee that it is true. Fides et ratio make clear that philosophy's central tasks are to justify our grasp of reality, of truth, and to make cogent suggestions as to life's true meaning. Being able to say something compelling on these topics -- reality, truth, and life's meaning -- is critical in winning young and old alike to the faith. A theology that incorporates philosophy's work in these areas will be faithful to the teaching of the Church and able to stand up to the most rigorous secular arguments and the ideologies of the age. ~ George Cardinal Pell

But at some point it becomes obvious that, ultimately, the adventure of faith is the most sensible thing to do, and in fact the only thing worth doing. As Sam says toward the end of The Two Towers, no one remembers the tales in which the characters give up and turn back. Great and heroic deeds remain undone if no one leaps into the dark to do them. That's true when it comes to faith, too. You can't play a meaningful role in the great story by playing it safe. Once you hit the road, there is no going back to life as it was before. When Jesus asks His disciples if they will leave him to, Peter says, "Lord to whom will we go?" (verse 68). It's either walk with Jesus, unsafe as it seems sometimes, or go home. ~ Sarah Arthur

There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God ...
Your devoted child in J.C.
M. Teresa ~ Brian Kolodiejchuk

Our Lord and the saints accomplished more by suffering than by acting. ~ Vincent De Paul

To some it may seem old-fashioned to speak of virtue and chastity, honesty, morality, faith, character, but these are the qualities which have built great men and women and point the way by which one may find happiness in the living of today and eternal joy in the world to come. These are the qualities which are the anchors to our lives, in spite of the trials, the tragedies, the pestilences, and the cruelties of war which bring in their wake appalling destruction, hunger, and bloodshed ~ Harold B. Lee

Doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination - a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science's ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith! ~ Dan Brown

Look, his ego is inflated; B he is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith. C, f ~ Anonymous

The quality of your faith will be judged by the quality of justice in the land; and the quality of justice in the land will be judged by how the weakest and most vulnerable groups in society ('widows, orphans, and strangers') fared while you were alive. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, What is God like? and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion....But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and god's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot? and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image.

Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well, we are not saints, you and I. Suffering to us is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain. That is beautiful in that corner - to them. It needs a lot of learning to see things with a saint's eye: a s ~ Graham Greene

We ought to relentlessly ignore excuses, especially those we are told by ourselves. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. ~ Alexander Hamilton

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black. ~ Robert Browning

Merc: Sometimes I wonder if you just encourage trouble, like by running DELIBERATELY into the blues.
Faith: Maybe, it's cute the way they try to catch me.
Merc: Yeah, well, I hear the bullet. And you CAN'T outrun those.
Faith: But i CAN outthink the brain behind the gun. That's half the battle.
Merc: See, occasionally, just occasionally i actually think you listen to me. ~ Rhianna Pratchett

To be Christians indeed, is to have our hearts changed by God's Holy Spirit, so as to have His love shed abroad there where once was only hatred and indifference; to have repentance where there was once no sense of sin; and to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ where at one time was unbelief. ~ George E. Sargent

It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God -- men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. ~ E.M. Bounds

Eternally the embers glow masterfully fueled by lovers passion. ~ Truth Devour

The greatest things I have learned from Coach Dungy would have to be humility and consistency. He truly leads by example, and he does it consistently. This allows people to really see his faith every single day, and that's the most important thing. ~ Ben Utecht

How the intelligent young do fight shy of the mention of God! It makes them feel both bored and superior."

I tried to explain: "Well, once you stop believing in an old gentleman with a beard … It's only the word God, you know - it makes such a conventional noise."

"It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."

"And do religious people find out what it's all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle?"

"They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes." He smiled at me and I smiled back and we both drank our madeira. Then he went on: "I suppose church services make a conventional noise to you, too - and I rather understand it. Oh, they're all right for the old hands and they make for sociability, but I sometimes think their main use is to help weather churches - like smoking pipes to colour them, you know. If any - well, unreligious person, needed consolation from religion, I'd advise him or her to sit in an empty church. Sit, not kneel. And listen, not pray. Prayer's a very tricky business."

"Goodness, is it?"

"Well, for inexperienced pray-ers it sometimes is. You see, they're apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing comes out they say 'I knew dashed well it was empty' - when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine's full."

"But how can one know?"

"By filling it oneself."

"With faith?"
< ~ Dodie Smith

But in everything we should surrender our desires to God in prayer. Then we must wait for His response, that we can walk by faith and not by sight. ~ Adam Houge

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I've lost what's really there been seduced by someone else's standard of beauty or by the sitter's own idea of the best in him. That's not usually the best. So each sitting becomes a contest. ~ Richard Avedon

We have truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, and the Spirit to guard us. We have the Word of God to battle for us. Through it all we pray to the Spirit to protect and guide us against the schemes of the devil. In this way we can fight against and overcome the spiritual forces that are set against us and committed to our downfall. We can wage war against and defeat the spiritual forces that seek to lead us away from discernment by offering a clever and subtle counterfeit of the truth. ~ Tim Challies

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago. ~ Victor J. Stenger

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

WHAT DADDY WOULD HAVE DONE

First he would have listened intently which one could always tell by the rhythmic shift and angle of the way he held his head.

Then he would have gently spoken assuring me that all would eventually be well.

Next he would tell me to bow with him in faith to obtain guidance and strength for my way.

Finally, he would have made a few calls to some of the many folks he knew to see what they would say or do.

In the end, he would complete a follow-up with me. He would stay abreast of the situation and through his participation I would glean the most useful updates.

But, just a few years ago, he had to go away
Now each time I have a problem, I remember how he handled things 'back in the day'.
This is when the realization hits me like a ton of bricks on the run - for I'm plumb on my own.

But, though he's now long gone, my past experience knows and stands to say what my Daddy would have done.

I tell you, Daddy would have said… Daddy would have done…Well, now I think we all know what Daddy would have said and done… ~ Ursula Denise Walker

The unbelievable is nothing more than my lack of faith in action. Easter is nothing less than God building my faith by putting the unbelievable into action. ~ Craig D Lounsbrough

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have "lost" is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them. ~ Helen Keller

You're no different than the rest of us, Victor. We all see ourselves as this dissatisfied thing, this ego, looking outside ourselves for just that one other thing that will make us complete. That job, that lover, that pot of money. Even enlightenment, as if that too is a thing we can grab hold of to complete what needs completing. There is always something, we believe, that will make us whole. But if you take a finite thing, like body and mind, and look for something outside it to make it complete, something like money or love or faith, what you are seeking is also just a finite thing. So you have a finite thing reaching for the infinite by grabbing for some other finite thing and you end up with nothing more than a deeper sense of dissatisfaction. ~ William Lashner

For action makes propaganda's effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable. He is obliged to continue to advance in the direction indicated by propaganda, for action demands more action. He is what one calls committed - which is certainly what the Communist party anticipates, for example, and what the Nazis accomplished. The man who has acted in accordance with the existing propaganda has taken his place in society. From then on he has enemies. Often he has broken with his milieu or his family; he may be compromised. He is forced to accept the new milieu and the new friends that propaganda makes for him. Often he has committed an act reprehensible by traditional moral standards and has disturbed a certain order; he needs a justification for this - and he gets more deeply involved by repeating the act in order to prove that it was just. Thus he is caught up in a movement that develops until it totally occupies the breadth of his conscience. Propaganda now masters him completely - and we must bear in mind that any propaganda that does not lead to this kind of participation is mere child's play. ~ Jacques Ellul

How does a mission of outreach and support to immigrant communities square with the repressive politics of the region? In a way, it's the guiding question of this book - how can a nation that professes to be majority Christian become a breeding ground for hate? How can Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham preach purity for women from the pulpit and still support as president a man who brags about grabbing women by the pussy? How can people who have seen me spend my whole life struggling to live and practice my faith call me godless?

How can a message of peace and unity bring so much pain and loss and destruction?

When I ask what is happening to our churches, what I really want to know is what is happening to our souls? ~ Lyz Lenz

As both a conservative and a Republican, I confess that we deserve to lose this year. We have governed badly and have earned the wrath of voters, who will learn in due course how inadequate the nostrums of liberal Democrats are to the crisis of our times. If I cannot in good faith cast a vote against the Bush years by voting for Obama, I can at least do so by withholding my vote from McCain. ~ Rod Dreher

But Republicans put God and family on their side and 'we like that. The Scripture says Jesus wants us to be about his Father's business.' Their faith had guided them through a painful loss of family, friends, neighbors, frogs, turtles, and trees [from the pollution left by petrochemical companies in Louisiana's Cancer Alley]. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I will run every mile, i will save
every line, i will say i reached the
top and i will fall back down standing.
I will write down every thing, the good
and the bad,I will wake up one day and
go back to the start. I will notice
that the good ones were nothing but my
beautiful lines, were everything painted
by my mind. I will notice that the bad
ones were nothing but pieces of my
pain that should have been crumbled and thrown away the first time i started to
rain. I will leave home and i won't
mind, i will miss some beating pieces
but i will survive.the sky will stay
in place, mountains won't shake and my
mind will go nowhere.the stars will
take my side not yours, and the new air
in your chest will feel forever cold. I
will donate a piece of my heart to hurt
you forever and a lifelong lasting
question about what you have lost.My
hands won't ever fit in yours and my
faith says that crown on your head will
hurt you the most.
One day i won't overlook anything
anymore. One day i won't remember
anything anymore.I will stop
pretending i'm ice cold and i will
learn how to be strong.one day I will
grow out of this, i will grow out of
us. ~ Mennah Al Refaey

The Legionary Movement, since its first manifestation, was the object of all sorts of slander. One of the most common allegations by its countless internal and external enemies was that the Legion was a "branch of Nazism." Such statements can be made as a result of ignorance or bad faith. The anti-Semitism of the Legionary Movement has nothing in common with German anti-Semitism. By taking a stand against the Jewish danger, a danger extremely active and menacing in Romania, Corneliu Codreanu was simply continuing an almost century old Romanian tradition. ~ Horia Sima

The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room. ~ Vivian Gornick

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth. ~ Philip Yancey