Sinfulness Quotes & Sayings

If it were not for the Eucharist, if it were not for this marvelous manifestation of God's love, if it were not for this opportunity to place ourselves in the very real presence of God, if it were not for the sacrament that reminds us of His love, His suffering and His triumph, which indeed perpetuates for us His saving sacrifice on the cross, I am sure that I could never face the challenges of my life, my own weakness and sinfulness and my own need to reach out to the Living God. — Theodore Edgar McCarrick

When calling for authenticity, we need to take seriously the brokenness and sinfulness of the human heart. If to be authentic means to be who we really are or to express what we really feel, then in most cases I'm going to vote for hypocrisy. Our prisons are filled with men and women who acted on their feelings and impulses. If authenticity is about being true to yourself, these individuals should be our models of inspiration. — Erwin Raphael McManus

When you cry out against a God who punishes people in a place like hell, you cry out against the God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture. You cry out against His goodness, holiness, and justice; and all the while you minimize your own sinfulness or the sinfulness of others. — Tim Challies

The dynamics of human sinfulness and divine mercy and grace are the same for all of us, regardless of the particular temptations or weaknesses we face. — Wesley Hill

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding ...
Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

a county with a unique history of people starving and mortifying themselves for higher causes and principles, a political reflex that has twitched steadily down the years and seems rooted in some aggravated sense of sinfulness because, like no other county it is blistered with shrines and grottoes and prayer houses and hermitages just as it is crossed with pilgrim paths and penitential ways — Mike McCormack

The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God. "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting ... " (Luke 15:7). In his brokenness, the repentant prodigal knew an intimacy with his father that his sinless, self-righteous brother would never know. — Brennan Manning

How often God takes away our consolations, that we may only love Him for Himself; and reveals our sinfulness, that we may better appreciate the completeness of his salvation! — F.B. Meyer

Rules are not proof of our spirituality. If anything, they are proof of our sinfulness, a reminder that we have a tendency toward wrongdoing and that we need help. — Judah Smith

One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation.
Many of us have had a least part of that horror thrust on us at one time or other inour childhood. For many reasons I never went to Sunday School, so I was spared having a lot of peculiar teaching to unlearn. It's only lately that I've discovered that it was no less a person than St. Anselm who saw the atonement in terms of appeasement of an angry God, from which follows immediately the heresy that Jesus came to save us from God the Father. — Madeleine L'Engle

What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all. — C.S. Lewis

A Christian is nothing more than a sinner who has found out their sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ. — J.C. Ryle

For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men- and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In spite of our sinfulness, in spite of the darkness surrounding our souls, the Grace of the Holy Spirit, conferred by baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, still shines in our hearts with the inextinguishable light of Christ ... and when the sinner turns to the way of repentance the light smooths away every trace of the sins committed, clothing the former sinner in the garments of incorruption, spun of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. It is this acquisition of the Holy Spirit about which I have been speaking. — Seraphim Of Sarov

It is not the constant thought of their sins, but the vision of the holiness of God that makes the saints aware of their own sinfulness. — Anthony Of Sourozh

You see, evil alwys contains the seeds of its own destruction' said the angel said, 'It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moment of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of inquity and sink head first to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion. — Terry Pratchett

Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior. — Thomas Merton

To the extent that we ignore (or run from) our own sinfulness, we will be unable to care for other sinners. We will be unable to extend forgiveness to others until we are honest about the extent to which we are forgiven. — Tullian Tchividjian

My beloved church misunderstood me. It preached the corruptibility of humanity when I came to demonstrate its potential for incorruptibility. It propounded the sinfulness of humanity when I suffered to reveal your godliness and to overcome your guilt by demonstrating that you can totally rise above the death of the body. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Answer: "First, so that the longer we live the more we may come to know our sinfulness and the more eagerly look to Christ for forgiveness of sins and righteousness." Even in the Christian life we need this first use of the law to drive us out of ourselves to cling to our Savior. "Second, so that we may never stop striving, and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be renewed more and more after God's image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection."16 "Because — Michael S. Horton

She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good. — A.S. Byatt

Guilt is the sum total of: All the negative feelings we have ever had about ourselves! Any form of self-hatred, self-rejection, feelings of worthlessness, sinfulness, inferiority, incompetence, failure, or emptiness. The feeling that there are things in us that are lacking or missing or incomplete. — Kenneth Wapnick

Both the poor and the rich need salvation. At the same time, each person has his or her specific sinfulness and enslavement. The patterns of enslavement differ, which means that the specific sinfulness of the rich is different from that of the poor. Therefore, in Luke's gospel, the rich are tested on the ground of their wealth, whereas others are tested on loyalty toward their family, their people, their culture, and their work (Lk 9:59-61) (Nissen 1984:175). This means that the poor are sinners like everyone else, because ultimately sinfulness is rooted in the human heart. — David J. Bosch

The foundation of our love for the Lord lies in the recognition of His holiness, our sinfulness, and His grace. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

God loved me enough to make me aware, at a deep experiential level, of my own pride and sinfulness, and my desperate need for his mercy and continuing work in my life as a believer. — J.P. Moreland

We must never forget that Christ did not suffer just during His three years of public ministry or the last few days of His life when He was crucified. No, He suffered throughout His life on earth. He who was without sin lived daily with the corruption and sinfulness of lost humanity. — A.B. Simpson

[Biblical counseling] Must insist that the image of God is central to developing a solid view of personality; that our sinfulness, not how we've been sinned against, is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real change. — Dan B. Allender

I warn every reader of this [article] to beware of quack medicines in religion. Beware of supposing that penitence, reformation, formality, and priestcraft[40] can ever give you peace with God. They cannot do it. It is not in them. The man who says they can must be ignorant of two things: he cannot know the length and breadth of human sinfulness; he cannot understand the height and depth of the holiness of God. There never breathed the man or woman on earth who tried to cleanse himself from his sins and in so doing obtained relief. — Arthur W. Pink

Doesn't it take your breath away for a moment to hear God say, "I love you"? To which we, in our sinfulness, must certainly respond, "Why?" And then to hear him answer, "Because you're my child." To which we ask the obvious question, "Why would I, a hopeless sinner, now be called your cherished child?" Only to hear him say, "Because I wanted you, and I came to get you so that you might know me as Father. — David Platt

The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact - that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable - exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We insist on finding relief without coming to God on His terms. — Larry Crabb

Every week I counsel young people from solid Christian homes who are undone by their sin. As parents, we are sometimes more invested in protecting our children from the sinful influences of this world than we are in preparing them for the deep sinfulness of their own hearts. — Barbara R. Duguid

At its core, sinfulness is selfishness. It's enthroning yourself - your desires, your needs, your plans - above all else. You may still seek God, but you don't seek Him first. You seek Him second or third or seventh. You may sing "Jesus at the center of it all," but what you really want is for people to bow down to you as you bow down to Christ. It's a subtle form of selfishness that masquerades as spirituality, but it's not Christ-centric. It's me-centric. It's less about us serving His purposes and more about Him serving our purposes. — Mark Batterson

We are only prepared to receive and comprehend the grace of God when we have understood His infinite holiness and our incredible sinfulness. — James MacDonald

All around me insisted that my doubts proved only my own ignorance and sinfulness; that they knew by experience they would soon give place to true knowledge, and an advance in religion; and I felt something like indecision. — Maria Monk

Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness. — George Will

Scripture has the remedy for sinfulness. — Billy Graham

While guilt over sinfulness can often lead to repentance, shame leads to indifference, intolerance, lack of vulnerability, and lack of intimacy with others as it burros its way further into our minds. — Tyler Braun

We could not be further from ballooning's established tropes: freedom, spiritual exaltation, human progress. Redon's eternally open eye is deeply unsettling. The eye in the sky; God's security camera. And that lumpish human head invites us to conclude that the colonisation of space doesn't purify the colonisers; all that has happened is that we have brought our sinfulness to a new location. — Julian Barnes

A few have heeded our words,' Adam comforted, placing his arm about her, but in his face Shaina read such suffering as she had never seen upon a human countenance. ' Man born into sinfulness no longer finds the things of God appealing. It requires a long, slow miraculous turning to bring him once more into tune with His Maker, and few will submit to the process because it is so much easier to simply enjoy the bounties of the earth and gratify every impulse. And upon us both rests the burden of this knowledge--the sordidness of man, his cruelty, his greed. All our legacy to those for whom God planned so much. — June Strong

Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance. — Igor Stravinsky

A man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it, and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty ... We shall do well to remember that when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. — J.C. Ryle

There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance. — George Gillespie

The world couldn't heal as long as human beings were so determined to place gain over virtue, so determined to lead others to ruin down the wrong path. — Rosslyn Elliott

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which "God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men. — Thomas Merton

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of
humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one
can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without
overcoming this double exclusion - without transposing the enemy from the
sphere of the monstrous ... into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from
the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When
one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally
triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and
imitate God's love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates]
that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of
God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. — Miroslav Volf

In Jesus, God wills to be true God not only in the height but also in the depth - in the depth of human creatureliness, sinfulness and mortality. — Karl Barth

Converted sinners ought frequently to reflect upon the sinfulness and misery of the state they were in by nature. — Matthew Henry

What is it, really, that we could lose if we handed ourselves over to the discernment of faith? Would we really lose anything except the illusion of control? This question suggests that there may be an idolatrous project underlying resistance to spiritual discernment: the desire for a decision-making process that we can predict and control.
But the obedience of faith offers no certainties, not even that of being certain of our our fidelity. We cannot know if the decision we make here and now are correct. We only know that they are the best we are able to make, and that in the future we might both regret them and need to change them. The reason has nothing to do with our sinfulness and everything to do with the fact that faith has to do with the Living God, who always moves ahead of us in surprising and sometimes shocking ways. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31). — Luke Timothy Johnson

The survival instinct, however, is self-conscious in human beings; and when it consciously motivates our behavior, it defines us as radically self-centered creatures. Our self-centered drive to survive is a universal reality rooted in our biology. It was this aspect of our humanity that led our ancient religious mythmakers to try to describe its origins. "Original sin" was their answer to the question of the source of our universal human self-centeredness. No one understood that survival was an involuntary biological drive in life. Instead it was understood as the result of sinfulness and of disobedience. Atonement theology was born as a way to address this universal flaw in our understanding of human life. — John Shelby Spong

When sin is characterized as a crime, we see that Christ is the One Who actually comes under judgment in the drama of the atonement. He functions as the Substitute, the One Who stands in the place of the true criminals-you and me.
Christ, then, is the One Who made satisfaction. By His work on the cross, He satisfied the demands of God's justice with regard to our debt, our state of enmity, and our crime. In light of the facts of God's justice and our sinfulness, it is not difficult to see the absolute necessity of the atonement. — R.C. Sproul

Sometimes we get way too fixated on how powerful sin is and how weak we are. We worry that if we relax for a second, we'll mess up royally and ruin everything. Ironically, our paranoia only serves to make us more conscious of our sinfulness. — Judah Smith

God prevented Adam & Even from ETERNAL SINFULNESS by giving them the gift of death, the ability to exit this life & arrive safely in the wondrous life to come. Death, though it would appear to be man's greatest enemy, would in the end, prove to be his greatest friend. Only through can we go to God. — Paul P. Enns

If we had not experienced our deep sinfulness and Jesus' deep forgiveness through the cross, we will not love others well in the midst of their struggles. If we do not see the beauty and glory of God in our own redemption, we will not be able to offer a compelling redemptive vision for those who are hopeless and who doubt God's love for them. — James MacDonald

A deepening sense of one's sinfulness remains a touchstone of the genuine Christian life. — J.I. Packer

In the midst of demotion, our hearts are laid bare before us, and we see grime, chaff, and darkness rise up in what we thought were our pure and dedicated hearts. What we often overlook is the fact that being demoted did not cause sinfulness to arise in our hearts; it simply revealed what was brewing within. The Lord will often use seasons of demotion to bring to our attention what has been before His eyes all along. To the sincere heart, this is a priceless gift. — Anna Blanc

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own? — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holiness and our sinfulness. — C.J. Mahaney

What has to be forgiven is not just what we do but who we are, not just our sinning but our sinfulness, not just our choices but what we have chosen in place of God. — David F. Wells

Salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. — David Platt

In Confession, Jesus welcomes us with all our sinfulness, to give us a new heart, capable of loving as he loves. — Pope Francis

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant. — Jimmy Carter

Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him. — Brennan Manning

[Christ's] goodness is still a rebuke to our badness; His purity still shows up our impurities; His sinlessness still reveals our sinfulness; and unless we allow [Jesus] to destroy the evil within us, the evil within us still wants to destroy Him. This is the conflict of the ages. — Billy Graham

If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one's own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human — Friedrich Nietzsche

In a head-on collision with Fanatics, the real problem is always the same: how can we possibly behave decently toward people so arrogantly ignorant that they believe, first, that they possess Christ's power to bestow salvation, second, that forcing us to memorize and regurgitate a few of their favorite Bible phrases and attend their church is that salvation, and third, that any discomfort, frustration, anger or disagreement we express in the face of their moronic barrages is due not to their astounding effrontery but to our sinfulness? — David James Duncan

So the controversy over Duck Dynasty sends a clear signal to anyone who has anything to risk in public life: Say nothing about the sinfulness of homosexual acts or risk sure and certain destruction by the revolutionaries of the new morality. You have been warned. — Albert Mohler

If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Francis Spufford, using very contemporary idiom, calls for the same thing in this way. When discussing our sinfulness, he says: What we're talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It's our active inclination to break stuff, "stuff" here including . . . promises, relationships we care about and our own well-being and other people's. . . . [You are] a being whose wants make no sense, don't harmonize: whose desires deep down are discordantly arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not to at the very same time. You're equipped, you realize, more for farce (or even tragedy) than happy endings. . . . You're human, and that's where we live; that's our normal experience.180 Until we fully acknowledge the chaos within us that the Bible calls sin, we live in what Calvin calls "unreality. — Timothy J. Keller

Christians actually need to be confronted by their real need-an understanding of God's holiness and their own sinfulness-so they can be usable to Him for His Glory. When we have a right relationship to God, every aspect of our lives will settle into its divinely ordained place ... We are still to need other needs but it begins with a high view of God. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

I've been able to dig deeper into awareness of my own sinfulness, and take baby steps toward spiritual healing. I'm able to worship in an ancient communion full of awesome beauty, one that is now being blessed with quiet revival. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

Oh, God show me more of Your holiness.
Show me more of my sinfulness.
Help me to hate sin and to love righteousness as You do.
Grant me a deeper conviction of sin and a more thorough spirit of repentance.
And make me holy as You are holy. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

There is no form of sinfulness to which you are addicted which Christ cannot remove. — Charles Spurgeon

The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.

At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature. — Ian Breward

You know, we live in a day when we are more afraid of holiness than we are of sinfulness. — Leonard Ravenhill

The point of this good-day-bad-day comparison is this: Regardless of our performance, we are always dependent on God's grace, His undeserved favor to those who deserve His wrath. Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing. — Jerry Bridges

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they'd have no relationship with Him at all. And, of course, no relationship can be based on guilt and survive. — Geoffrey Wood

The worst of it is, that we can believe God about everything except the present pressing trial. This is folly. Come, my soul, shake off such sinfulness, and trust thy God with the load, the labour, the longing of this present. This done, all is done. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient — Michael Horton

The power of God is effective when a person asks for the help from God, acknowledging his own weakness and sinfulness. This is why humility and the striving towards God are the fundamental virtues of a Christian. — John Of Shanghai And San Francisco

I preach on specific sins because people are not convicted by sermons on sin in general. It was when our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, 'Go call thy husband ... ' (John 4:16), that she really faced up to her sinfulness. — Vance Havner

Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked "Where are you wanted by the law?" Barrow replied, "Wherever I've been." What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our sinfulness because it follows us everywhere. Neither can we escape the mercy of God that is always there. — William Branks

Credulity as a character trait is encouraged in every child who grows up with religious training, which invariably insists on the virtue of blind faith and the sinfulness of doubting and questioning. — Barbara G. Walker

By embracing the "outcast," Jesus underscored the "sinfulness" of the persons and systems that cast them out. — Miroslav Volf

There is no tongue to speak his eulogy; Too brightly burned his splendor for our eyes; Far easier to condemn his injurers, Than for the tongue to reach his smallest worth, He to the realms of sinfulness came down, To teach mankind, ascending then to God, Heaven unbarred to him her lofty gates, To whom his country heres refused to ope. Ungrateful land! Well, too, does this instruct That greatest ills fall to the perfectest. And, midst a thousand proofs, let this suffice- That, as his exile had no parallel, So never was there man more great than he. — Michelangelo

[On Jerry Falwell] No, and I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to ... The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. — Christopher Hitchens

If I should ever decide in the future to discuss my deep Christian beliefs and condemnation and sinfulness, I would use another forum besides Playboy. — Jimmy Carter

It would be lovely if we could gather up all the evil people and put them together on one island, leaving them to self-destruct in their collective sinfulness. — Matthew Kelly

Furthermore, even a deep, penetrating sense of our sinfulness does not do justice to the reality of our predicament. Our need is not to be measured by our own sense of need, but by what God had to do to meet that need. — Jerry Bridges

Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president. — John Podhoretz

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But, in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. — Ruth Haley Barton

For my part I am persuaded the more light we have, the more we see our own sinfulness: the nearer we get to heaven, the more we are clothed with humility. In every age of the Church you will find it true, if you will study biographies, that the most eminent saints - men like Bradford, Rutherford, and McCheyne - have always been the humblest men. On — J.C. Ryle

With forbidden, seething Havana waiting to open up nearby, South Beach is a riot of loose luxe and easy sleazy, where dancing the night away amid hundreds of tanned, undulating bodies is a standard prelude to hot, anonymous sex. — Maureen Orth

The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex. — E. M. Forster

This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture - of sinfulness and hell and God's notable severity - is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you. — Matt Chandler

Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The inner self is "purified" by the acknowledgment of sin, not precisely because the inner self is the seat of sin, but because both our sinfulness and our interiority tend to be rejected in one and the same movement by the exterior self and relegated to the same darkness, so that when the inner self is brought back to light, sin emerges and is liquidated by the assuming of responsibility and by sorrow. — Thomas Merton

The brightest saint is the man who has the most heart-searching sense of his own sinfulness, and the liveliest sense of his own complete acceptance in Christ. — J.C. Ryle

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities. — Matt Groening

We are to come to the Word in a spirit of humility and contrition because we recognize that we are sinful, that we are often blind to our sinfulness, and that we need the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. — Jerry Bridges

In religion our only hope is to live a life good enough to require God to bless us, so every instance of sin and repentance is therefore traumatic, unnatural and threatening. Only under great duress do religious people admit they have sinned, because their only hope is their moral goodness.
In the gospel the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit that we are flawed, because we know we won't be cast off if we confess the true depths of our sinfulness. Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own, so it is not as traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses. — Timothy Keller