Are you contented to embrace all corrections from the hand of God for the killing of the remainders of sin in you? If you will be for Christ, you must submit to Christ’s: It is in vain to say, If I can travel to heaven without meeting a storm in the way, I am willing to go
—John Flavel
“The great ocean of Jesus’ loving self-sacrifice can swallow up the mountains of our sins.”
The renewed nature of a saint restrains him from sin. The spirit lusts against the flesh, so that you cannot do the thing you would (Gal. 5:17).
—John Flavel
A sincere Christian falls into sin and commits evil, yet he proceeds not from evil to evil as the ungodly do but makes his fall into one sin a caution to prevent another sin…. It is not so with the servants of sin. One sin leaves them much more disposed to another sin.
—John Flavel
To think of a grave is not pleasant in itself, but to think of a parting time with sin, that’s sweet and pleasant indeed.
—John Flavel
To suffer sin to lodge quietly in the heart, to let thy heart habitually and without control wander from God, is a sad, a dangerous symptom indeed.
—John Flavel
To be troubled for grosser sins and have no trouble for ordinary sins daily incurred is an ill sign of a bad heart.
—John Flavel
As the fear of God, so the love of God is a principle of restraint from sin to the soul that is upright. This kept back Joseph from sin: How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
—John Flavel
The gracious soul hates not only this or that particular sin, but the whole kind—everything that is sinful. True hatred is of the whole nature or kind. I hate every false way (Ps. 119:104).
—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
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
The consideration of the sufferings of Christ for sin powerfully withholds a gracious soul from the commission of it.
—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
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
My sin may be as high as the highest mountain, but the sacrifice that covers it is as high as the highest heaven; my guilt may be as deep as the ocean, but the atonement that swallows it up is as deep as eternity.
—R. A. Torrey
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
You can never convict a man of sin, because that is the work of the Holy Spirit. You can reason and reason and you will fail. It is ours to preach the Word and look to the Holy Spirit to produce conviction.
—R. A. Torrey
Sin was the sword that pierced Christ, and so the death of Christ becomes the death of sin in His people.
—John Flavel
Experience of the bitterness of sin is a restraint to a gracious heart.
—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
If there is any man or woman who thinks they have a complete mastery over themselves, if there is any man who thinks he has power to break away in his own strength from the sin that is within, he is a sadly deceived man.
—R. A. Torrey
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
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
—Martyn Lloyd-Jones
… until we truly humble ourselves, forgetting other people, and those who are worse than we are, until we see ourselves as we are in the sight of God, and confess our sins and come it ourselves into His Almighty hands, we have no right to look for peace and happiness.
—Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Why is the world at it is, and why are we ever guilty of sin? It is because we do not realize the holy character of God.
—Martyn Lloyd-Jones