John Owen Quotes - Page 6

All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.

Spiritual wisdom consists in finding out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin... to trace this serpent in all its turnings and windings; be able to say, at its most secret actings, 'This is your old way and course; I know what you aim at.'

We admit no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works.

Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after...unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.

In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.

Believers obey Christ as the one whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God's presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.

The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.

As rivers, the nearer they come to the ocean whither they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more fully and freely in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.

When we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for-then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.

Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.

As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace.

Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?

It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.

Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it.

It is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, and another to be afraid of the evil threatened.

He that loves works out good to those that he loves, as he is able. God's power and will are equal; what He wills He works.

The least grace is a better security for heaven than the greatest gifts or privileges whatsoever.

I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.

A natural man hath no such thing as free-will at all, if you take it for a power of doing that which is good and well-pleasing unto God in things spiritual.

Assurance encourateth us in our combat; it delivers us not from it. We may have peace with God when we have done from the assaults of Satan.

It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone.

He that stands still and suffers his enemies to double blows upon him without resistance, will undoubtedly be conquered in the issue.