Top 180 Jerry Bridges Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign Ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of our wholehearted obedience.”

— Jerry Bridges

152. “Faith in Christ and a reliance on ourselves, even to the smallest degree, are mutually exclusive.”

— Jerry Bridges

153. “We are brought into God’s kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace.”

— Jerry Bridges

154. “In the deceitfulness of our hearts, we sometimes play with temptation by entertaining the thought that we can always confess and later ask forgiveness. Such thinking is exceedingly dangerous. God’s judgement is without partiality. He never overlooks our sin. He never decides not to bother, since the sin is only a small one. No, God hates sin intensely whenever and wherever He finds it.”

— Jerry Bridges

155. “Though the power for godly character comes from Christ, the responsibility for developing and displaying that character is ours.”

— Jerry Bridges

156. “If you are going to experience the joy of your freedom in Christ, you have to decide whether you will please God or people.”

— Jerry Bridges

157. “Faith itself has no merit; in fact, by its nature it is self-emptying. It involves our complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness and a relying entirely on the perfect righteousness and death of Christ.”

— Jerry Bridges

158. “I warmly commend it to all Christians who want to grow in their faith.”

— Jerry Bridges

159. “The pursuit of holiness requires sustained and vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in the life of a Christian, because to be holy is to be like Christ – God’s goal for every Christian.”

— Jerry Bridges

160. “Truth is we must plant and we must water if we are to make progress with our children in holiness but only the Holy Spirit can change our children more and more into the likeness of Jesus. Our problem is we tend to depend upon our planting and watering rather than the Lord.”

— Jerry Bridges

161. “For an action to be truly obedient to God, it must be done from a motivation of genuine love and gratitude to Him.”

— Jerry Bridges

162. “Holiness and usefulness are linked together.”

— Jerry Bridges

163. “But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.”

— Jerry Bridges

164. “In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense.”

— Jerry Bridges

165. “We need to ask God daily to search our hearts for sin that we cannot or will not see.”

— Jerry Bridges

166. “Many Christians have what we might call a “cultural holiness”. They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.”

— Jerry Bridges

167. “Christ’s death was the result of God’s grace; grace is not the result of Christ’s death.”

— Jerry Bridges

168. “Even as Christians our best efforts are still marred with imperfect performance and impure motives. But God no longer “sees” either our deliberate disobedience or our marred performances. Instead He “sees” the righteousness of Christ, which He has already imputed to us.”

— Jerry Bridges

169. “The reason most of us do not see opportunities to serve is that we are continually thinking about ourselves instead of others.”

— Jerry Bridges

170. “Many people will profess faithfulness, but few will demonstrate it. The virtue of faithfulness is often costly, and few people are willing to pay the price. But for the godly person, faithfulness is an absolutely essential quality of his character, regardless of what it might cost.”

— Jerry Bridges

171. “Obeying the revealed will of God and trusting Him for the results.”

— Jerry Bridges

172. “Holiness has to do with more than mere acts. Our motives must be holy, that is, arising from a desire to do something simply because it is the will of God. Our thoughts should be holy, since they are known to God even before they are formed in our minds.”

— Jerry Bridges

173. “What was in the cup Jesus drank at His crucifixion? It was the wrath of God.”

— Jerry Bridges

174. “If we are to trust God, we must learn to see that He is continuously at work in every aspect and every moment of our lives.”

— Jerry Bridges

175. “Grace is not a matter of God’s making up the difference, but of God’s providing all the “cost” of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.”

— Jerry Bridges

176. “Contentment with what we have – whether it is possessions, or station in life, or mental or physical abilities – is worth far, far more than all the things we don’t have.”

— Jerry Bridges

177. “The same grace that brings salvation teaches us to renounce ungodly living.”

— Jerry Bridges

178. “If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur outside of God’s sovereign control, then we cannot trust Him.”

— Jerry Bridges

179. “We may feel that a particular habit ’isn’t too bad,’but continually giving in to that habit weakens our wills against the onslaughts of temptation from other directions.”

— Jerry Bridges

180. “A willingness to share our possessions with one another is a very important aspect of true biblical community.”

— Jerry Bridges

181. “We can develop the habit of thinking thoughts that are pure, true, and good. We can develop the habits of prayer and meditating on the Scriptures. But these habits will only be developed through frequent repetition.”

— Jerry Bridges

182. “We are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand, approaching every relationship and every circumstance in reference to Him.”

— Jerry Bridges

183. “But the holiness of Jesus was more than simply the absence of actual sin. It was also a perfect conformity to the will of His Father.”

— Jerry Bridges

184. “Regardless of how helpful an item or body of knowledge may be to society, if it does not have as its final purpose the glory of God, it remains defective.”

— Jerry Bridges

185. “Whether before breakfast or after, morning or evening, the point is we must all arrange our schedules to provide for this daily intake of the Word of God.”

— Jerry Bridges

186. “All my labors are marred by sin and imperfection. As I think of every act I have ever done for God, I can only cry out, ‘Oh, God, forgive the iniquity of my holy things.’”5.”

— Jerry Bridges

187. “The Holy Spirit opens the inner recesses of our hearts and enables us to see the moral cesspools hidden there.”

— Jerry Bridges

188. “We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness. God will not let us get away with that kind of attitude.”

— Jerry Bridges

189. “Without this relationship with God, there can be no spiritual relationship with one another.”

— Jerry Bridges

190. “We do not know why God allowed the enemies of His people to prevail at one time and restrained them at another. It is enough to know that God can and does restrain the harmful acts of others toward us when that is His sovereign will. Furthermore, God, in His infinite wisdom and love, intends that good ultimately comes from those harmful acts. The.”

— Jerry Bridges

191. “The realization that my daily relationship with God is based on the infinite merit of Christ instead of on my own performance is a very freeing and joyous experience.”

— Jerry Bridges

192. “It is relatively easy to serve those above us – even the world expects this – but Jesus served downward.”

— Jerry Bridges

193. “Quite possibly there is no greater conformity to the world among evangelical Christians today than the way in which we, instead of presenting our bodies as holy sacrifices, pamper and indulge them in defiance of our better judgment and our Christian purpose in life.”

— Jerry Bridges

194. “Scripture speaks of a holiness which we have in Christ before God and a holiness which we must strive after.”

— Jerry Bridges

195. “Nothing is so small or trivial as to escape the attention of God’s sovereign control; nothing is so great as to be beyond His power to control it.”

— Jerry Bridges

196. “The problem with self righteousness is that it seems almost impossible to recognize in ourselves. We will own up to almost any other sin. but not the sin of self-righteousness. When we have this attitude, though, we deprive ourselves of the joy of living in the grace of God. Because you see, grace is only for sinners.”

— Jerry Bridges

197. “There is a familiar play on the word “justification” that it means “just as if I’d never sinned.” But there is another way of saying this that is even better – justification means “just as if I’d always obeyed.” That’s the way we stand before God: clothed in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that’s the way we can live with the discomfort of the justified life.”

— Jerry Bridges

198. “Just as the airplane must have both wings to fly, so we must exercise both discipline and dependence in the pursuit of holiness. Just as it is impossible for an airplane to fly with only one wing, so it is impossible for us to successfully pursue holiness with only dependence or discipline. We absolutely must have both.”

— Jerry Bridges