Quotes about Sin

We're all bastards but God loves us anyway.

The role of a doctor may be the most revealing image in thinking about God and sin. What a doctor does for me physically - guide me toward health - God does for me spiritually. I am learning to view sins not as an arbitrary list of rules drawn up by a cranky Judge, but rather as a list of dangers that must be avoided at all costs - for our own sakes.

Our only option, then, is honesty that leads to repentance. As the Bible shows, God's grace can cover any sin, including murder, infidelity, or betrayal. Yet by definition grace must be received, and hypocrisy disguises our need to receive grace. When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

Because of Jesus, I can never say about a person, "She must be suffering because of some sin she committed"; Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.

None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.

Christianity has a principle, "Hate the sin but love the sinner," which is more easily preached than practiced. If Christians could simply recover that practice, modeled so exquisitely by Jesus, we would go a long way toward fulfilling our calling as dispensers of God's grace.

Law merely indicated the sickness; grace brought about the cure.

Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.

a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.

The Bible's many fierce passages on sin appear in a new light once I understand God's desire to press me toward repentance, the doorway to grace.

The enemy's ways are anything but original. He's been trapping people the same way since the beginning of time.