Quotes about Belief

From start to finish, the whole Christian life is by grace through faith. A new life in Christ commences with faith, continues by faith, and will be completed by faith.

God is not intimidated by such hard and testing questions, nor is he unable to answer them. But we must come with the right kind of skepticism—not the kind that refuses to believe anything at all, but the kind that is committed to believe only what is really true.

People certainly do not want anyone to bring God into the discussion. They talk about the separation of church and state, but often what they mean is the separation of God from daily life. What business does God have telling us what to do, anyway? If people believe in God at all, they like to think of him as a kind of cosmic Santa Claus who is there to do nice things for people, not disapprove of what we are doing.

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.

We find everywhere in this world the traces of a revealed God and of a hidden God; revealed enough to strengthen our faith, concealed enough to try our faith.

If we wish to be good, we must first believe that we are bad.

A Creed,3 or Rule of Faith,4 or Symbol,5 is a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief, which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian Church.

If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery," says Luther, "I ought to have gotten there.

but if the Spirit "bloweth" where He "listeth," those, too, who have become believers here are made partakers of that gift; and that according to the proportion of their faith, not in consequence of their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

John was not a logician, but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition.

The Calvinistic system involves a positive truth: the election to eternal life by free grace, and the negative inference: the reprobation to eternal death by arbitrary justice. The former is the strength, the latter is the weakness of the system. The former is practically accepted by all true believers; the latter always has been, and always will be, repelled by the great majority of Christians.

Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.