John Flavel

We can have no saving benefit separate and apart from the person of Christ: many would willingly receive his privileges, who will not receive his person; but it cannot be; if we will have one, we must take the other too.

—John Flavel

An upright soul may fall into sin, yet he is restless and unquiet in that condition, like a bone out of joint, and that shows he is not one of sin’s servants.

—John Flavel

Your heart may be kept from shrinking back at [death] by considering the necessity of death, in order to the full fruition of God. Whether you are willing to die or not, I assure you there is no other way to obtain the full satisfaction of your soul and complete its happiness.

—John Flavel

The soul is not at all times fit to pass judgment upon its own condition…Examine your hearts upon your beds, and be still (Ps. 4:4). This is rather a season for watching and resisting than for judging and determining.

—John Flavel

If God be a God of so much mercy, how can I abuse so good a God? Shall I take so glorious an attribute as the mercy of God is and abuse it unto sin?

—John Flavel

If yet your heart hangs back (from thoughts of death), consider the great advantage you will have by death above all that ever you enjoyed on earth. For your communion with God, the time of perfecting that is now come.

—John Flavel

The consideration of the sufferings of Christ for sin powerfully withholds a gracious soul from the commission of it.

—John Flavel

For never was any wound healed by a prepared, but unapplied plaster. Nor was it ever known, that a poor deceived, condemned sinner, was actually delivered out of that woeful state, until of God, Christ was made unto him, wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

—John Flavel

The sincerity of our profession much depends upon the care we exercise in keeping our hearts. Most certainly, that man who is careless of the frame of his heart, is but a hypocrite in his profession, however eminent he be in the externals of religion.

—John Flavel

The intrinsic evil and filthiness that is in sin keeps back the gracious soul from it: Abhor that which is evil; hate it as hell itself (Rom 12:9).

—John Flavel

If you will be Christ’s, you must submit to all those means Christ has appointed for the mortification of your corruptions, be they never so hard: rebukes from God, rebukes from men, by afflictions, and by the Word, for the mortification of sin.

—John Flavel

A truly gracious soul cannot long subsist without secret prayer. It is true – there is not always an equal freedom and delight, a like enlargement and comfort in those retirements, but yet he cannot be without them.

—John Flavel

There are some people who have lived forty or fifty years in the world, and have had scarcely one hour’s discourse with their own hearts.

—John Flavel

When a man compares himself with others: thus measuring ourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, we show our folly and nourish our pride; but if any man will compare his own life with Christ’s, he will find abundant cause at every time to be humbled.

—John Flavel

The sincere soul hates sin with an irreconcilable hatred. There was a time when sin and his soul fell out, but there never will be a time of reconciliation between them again.

—John Flavel

I don’t know how others find it, but I am sure I find sin in my very bosom, in my very bowels; it is present with me. O wretched man that I am! A gracious soul can mourn to see in others, but to find it in himself pierces him to the very heart.

—John Flavel

God will shortly put a blessed end to all your troubles, cares, and watchings. The time is coming when your heart will be as you would have it, when you will be discharged of these cares, fears & sorrows and never cry out, Oh my hard, proud, vain & earthly heart anymore.

—John Flavel

The upright soul, though he may be drawn to sin, yet he cannot reflect upon his sin without shame and sorrow, which plainly shows it to be an involuntary surprise.

—John Flavel

Experience of the bitterness of sin is a restraint to a gracious heart.

—John Flavel

Sin was the sword that pierced Christ, and so the death of Christ becomes the death of sin in His people.

—John Flavel

Whatever our sin or trouble is, it should rather drive us to God than from God. Suppose it is true that you have sinned, that you are thus long and sadly deserted, yet it is a false inference that therefore you should be discouraged, as if there were no help for you in your God.

—John Flavel

A graceless heart may be troubled for the rod that sin draws after it, but not for sin itself.

—John Flavel

Your soul shall shortly stand before the face of God and have the immediate emanations and beamings forth of His glory upon it.

—John Flavel

Keeping the heart is the most important business of a Christian’s life. Without this we are but formalists in religion: all our professions, gifts and duties signify nothing.

—John Flavel

Your body must be refined and cast into a new mold, else that new wine of heavenly glory would break it…. Who would not be willing to die for a full sight and enjoyment of God?

—John Flavel

It is only a wink, and you shall see God. Your happiness shall not be deferred till the resurrection, but as soon as the body is dead the gracious soul is swallowed up in life (Rom 8:10–11).

—John Flavel

The upright soul hates sin in himself more than he hates it in any other, as a man hates a serpent in the hedge, but much more in his own bosom: But I see another law in my members…I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me (Rom. 7:23, 21).

—John Flavel

So deep is the hatred that upright ones bear to sin that nothing pleases them more than the thoughts of a full deliverance from it.

—John Flavel

A Christian may be drawn to sin, yet he would be glad with all his heart to be rid of sin. It would be more to him than thousands of gold and silver, that he might grieve and offend God no more; He that is under the dominion of sin is loath to leave his lusts….

—John Flavel

A sincere heart dares not sin because of the eye and fear of God that is on him; so you find it in Job 31:1 & 4. He dared not allow his thoughts to sin because he lived under the awe of God’s eye.

—John Flavel