Quotes about Sin

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.

Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. ... We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.

We must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness.

But the false serpent persuaded Adam that he must still do something to become like God: he must achieve that likeness by deciding and acting for himself...He wanted instead to unravel the mystery of his being for himself, to make himself what God had already made him. That was the Fall of man.

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is the more attractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.

Luther had said that grace alone can save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation to discipleship...The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship.

We should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus.

Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to their sin.

The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.

If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible.

Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love…. God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be—in our sin, suffering, and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us.6 "The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst