Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

I daresay we've heard a bit about original sin, but not nearly enough about original glory, which comes before sin and is deeper to our nature. We were crowned with glory and honor. Why does a woman long to be beautiful? Why does a man hope to be found brave? Because we remember, if only faintly, that we were once more than we are now.

History is riddled with blood and sin.

If it were left to us, we would all fall away from the faith and perish.

Perfection isn't attainable, that's why we demand it from others.

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light,   Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown.

up they rose As from unrest; and, each the other viewing, Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds How darkened. Innocence, that, as a veil, Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone; Just confidence, and native righteousness, And honour, from about them, naked left To guilty shame; He covered, but his robe Uncovered more.

Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.

But that we are so totally depraved, is a truth which no one ever truly learned by being only told it.

God's great, holy joke about the messiah complex is this: Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from it—except one. And he was the Messiah.

the depth and complexity and ugliness and danger of sin in professing Christians is either minimized—since we are already justified—or psychologized as a symptom of woundedness rather than corruption.