Top 180 John Owen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

— John Owen

2. “Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

— John Owen

3. “If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation.”

— John Owen

4. “If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false.”

— John Owen

5. “Fill your affections with the cross of Christ that there may be no room for sin.”

— John Owen

6. “If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.”

— John Owen

7. “We are never nearer Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at His unspeakable love.”

— John Owen

8. “There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men, and they are, first, a due consideration of God, and then of themselves – of God, in His greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty, and authority; of ourselves, in our mean, abject, and sinful condition.”

— John Owen

9. “A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.”

— John Owen

10. “For to pretend that men may live habitually sinful lives without any attempt by the Spirit to mortify sin in them, nor with any desire for repentance, is to deny the Christian religion.”

— John Owen

11. “Satan’s greatest success is in making people think they have plenty of time before they die to consider their eternal welfare.”

— John Owen

12. “There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.”

— John Owen

13. “The more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes.”

— John Owen

14. “The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.”

— John Owen

15. “To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.”

— John Owen

16. “We shall not benefit from reading the Old Testament unless we look for and meditate on the glory of Christ in its pages.”

— John Owen

17. “Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through the good providence of God, live to see thy lust dead at thy feet.”

— John Owen

18. “If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.”

— John Owen

19. “Christ’s blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls.”

— John Owen

20. “The foundation of true holiness and true Christian worship is the doctrine of the gospel, what we are to believe. So when Christian doctrine is neglected, forsaken, or corrupted, true holiness and worship will also be neglected, forsaken, and corrupted.”

— John Owen

21. “Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.”

— John Owen

22. “The seed of every sin is in every heart.”

— John Owen

23. “He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.”

— John Owen

24. “There is no broader way to apostasy than to reject God’s sovereignty in all things concerning the revelation of himself and our obedience...”

— John Owen

25. “I do not understand how a man can be a true believer, in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble.”

— John Owen

26. “All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.”

— John Owen

27. “Unless we are thoroughly convinced that without Christ we are under the eternal curse of God, as the worst of His enemies, we shall never flee to Him for refuge.”

— John Owen

28. “Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be our only friend. I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with Him.”

— John Owen

29. “If Scripture has more than one meaning, it has no meaning at all.”

— John Owen

30. “When the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers, he does a complete work in them. He puts into their minds, wills and hearts a gracious, supernatural principle which fills them with a holy desire to live to God. The whole life and being of holiness lies in this. This is the new creation.”

— John Owen

31. “Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification.”

— John Owen

32. “Unless men see a beauty and delight in the worship of God, they will not do it willingly.”

— John Owen

33. “The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted.”

— John Owen

34. “Free will is “corrupted nature’s deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds””

— John Owen

35. “No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter who does not in some measure behold it here by faith.”

— John Owen

36. “Before the work of grace the heart is ‘stony.’ It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.”

— John Owen

37. “Indwelling sin always abides whilst we are in this world; therefore it is always to be mortified.”

— John Owen

38. “All that may be known of God for our salvation, especially his wisdom, love, goodness, grace and mercy on which the life of our souls depends, are represented to us in all their splendour in and through Christ. No wonder then that Christ is glorious in the eyes of believers!”

— John Owen

39. “The purpose of our holy and righteous God was to save his church, but their sin could not go unpunished. It was, therefore, necessary that the punishment for that sin be transferred from those who deserved it but could not bear it, to one who did not deserve it but was able to bear it.”

— John Owen

40. “Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.”

— John Owen

41. “It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.”

— John Owen

42. “When we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for-then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.”

— John Owen

43. “To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.”

— John Owen

44. “Leanness of body and soul may go together.”

— John Owen

45. “We all profess that we are bound for heaven, immortality, and glory: but is it any evidence that we really design it if all our thoughts are consumed about the trifles of this world, which we must leave behind us, and have only occasional thoughts of things above?”

— John Owen

46. “The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word.”

— John Owen

47. “There is a state of perfect peace with God which can be attained under imperfect obedience.”

— John Owen

48. “For a man solemnly to undertake the interpretation of any portion of Scripture without invocation of God, to be taught and instructed by His Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who thus proudly engages in a work so much beyond his ability.”

— John Owen

49. “The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh is the constant duty of believers.”

— John Owen

50. “Every time we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, we mean we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.”

— John Owen