Top 180 John Owen Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Suppose a man to be a true believer, and yet finds in himself a powerful indwelling sin, leading him captive to the law of it, consuming his heart with trouble, perplexing his thoughts, weakening his soul as to duties of communion with God, disquieting him as to peace, and perhaps defiling his conscience, and exposing him to hardening through the deceitfulness of sin, – what.”

— John Owen

102. “It is truth alone that capacitates any soul to glorify God.”

— John Owen

103. “Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts.”

— John Owen

104. “To say that we are able by our own efforts to think good thoughts or give God spiritual obedience before we are spiritually regenerate is to overthrow the gospel and the faith of the universal church in all ages.”

— John Owen

105. “We do not have the ability in ourselves to accomplish the least of God’s tasks. This is a law of grace. When we recognize it is impossible for us to perform a duty in our own strength, we will discover the secret of its accomplishment. But alas, this is a secret we often fail to discover.”

— John Owen

106. “I cannot conceive an intention in God that Christ should satisfy his justice for the sin of them that were in hell some thousands of years before, and yet be still resolved to continue their punishment on them to all eternity.”

— John Owen

107. “Without a sincere and diligent effort in every area of obedience, there will be no sucessful mortification of any one besetting sin.”

— John Owen

108. “The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.”

— John Owen

109. “A soul under the power of conviction from the law is pressed to fight against sin, but hath no strength for the combat.”

— John Owen

110. “A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary; while the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more. This is the folly of some men; they set themselves with all earnestness and diligence against the appearing eruption of lust, but, leaving the principle and root untouched, perhaps unsearched out, they make but little or no progress in this work of mortification.”

— John Owen

111. “Temptation gains power where we see it prevail in others we know and we express neither shock or hatred of them and their ways nor pity and prayer for their deliverance.”

— John Owen

112. “We admit no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works.”

— John Owen

113. “We ought as much to pray for a blessing upon our daily rod as upon our daily bread.”

— John Owen

114. “No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to his mind and will.”

— John Owen

115. “Mortification is the soul’s vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.”

— John Owen

116. “He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, doth but half his work, Gal. vi. 9; Heb. xii. 1; 2 Cor. vii. 1.”

— John Owen

117. “The good Lord send out a spirit of mortification to cure our distempers, or we are in a sad condition!”

— John Owen

118. “He, then, that would mortify any disquieting lust: let him take care to be equally diligent in all parts of obedience, and know that every lust, every omission of duty, is burdensome to God, though only one be burdensome to him.”

— John Owen

119. “We must not be concerned only with that which troubles us, but with all that troubles God.”

— John Owen

120. “By faith ponder on this, that though thou art no way able in or by thyself to get the conquest over thy distemper, though thou art even weary of contending, and art utterly ready to faint, yet that there is enough in Jesus Christ to yield thee relief...”

— John Owen

121. “Sin will be always acting, if we be not always mortifying, we are lost creatures...”

— John Owen

122. “Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it.”

— John Owen

123. “It is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin; he is promised to do it, and all other means without him are empty and vain. How shall he, then, mortify sin that has not the Spirit? A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.”

— John Owen

124. “We need to attend diligently to the state of our soul, and to deal fervently and effectively with God about it.”

— John Owen

125. “A man may be carried on in a constant course of mortification all his days; and yet perhaps never enjoy a good day of peace and consolation.”

— John Owen

126. “A natural man hath no such thing as free-will at all, if you take it for a power of doing that which is good and well-pleasing unto God in things spiritual.”

— John Owen

127. “We speak much of God, and talk of him, his ways, his works; the truth is, we know very little of him.”

— John Owen

128. “Whatever vices and corruptions men see in the lives of their ministers will not be attributed to the depravity of their old nature which still abides in them, but to the gospel.”

— John Owen

129. “It is evident that you contend against sin merely because of how it troubles you.”

— John Owen

130. “And as men diversions increase from the world, so do their entanglements from Satan. When they have more to do in the world than they can well manage, they shall have more to do from Satan than they can withstand.”

— John Owen

131. “When we realize a constant enemy of the soul abides within us, what diligence and watchfulness we should have! How woeful is the sloth and negligence then of so many who live blind and asleep to this reality of sin. There is an exceeding efficacy nad power in the indwelling sin of believers, for it constantly inclines itself towards evil. We need to be awake, then, if our hearts would know the ways of God. Our enemy is not only upon us, as it was with Samson, but it is also in us.”

— John Owen

132. “The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart.”

— John Owen

133. “Do not seek to empty your cup as a way to avoid sin, but rather seek to fill it up with the Spirit of life, so there is no longer room for sin.”

— John Owen

134. “The flesh would fain be indulged upon the account of grace: and every word that is spoken of mercy, it stands ready to catch at, and to pervert to its own corrupt aims and purposes. To apply mercy, then, to a sin not vigorously mortified, is to fulfil the end of the flesh pon the gospel.”

— John Owen

135. “There is only one way to be revived and healed from our backslidings so that we may become fruitful even in old age. We must take a steady look at the glory of Christ in His special character, in His grace and work, as shown to us in the Scripture.”

— John Owen

136. “Believers obey Christ as the one whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God’s presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.”

— John Owen

137. “In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.”

— John Owen

138. “As rivers, the nearer they come to the ocean whither they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more fully and freely in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.”

— John Owen

139. “A sin is not mortified when it is only diverted. Simon Magus for a season left his sorceries; but his covetousness and ambition, that set him on work, remained still, and would have been acting another way. Therefore Peter tells him, “I perceive thou art in the gall of bitterness;” – “Notwithstanding.”

— John Owen

140. “Not to see the wisdom of God, and the power of God, and consequently all the other holy properties of his nature, in Christ, is to be an unbeliever.”

— John Owen

141. “Let a soul exercise itself to a communion with Christ in the good things of the gospel – pardon of sin, fruits of holiness, hope of glory, peace with God, joy in the Holy Ghost, dominion over sin – and he shall have a mighty preservative against all temptations.”

— John Owen

142. “There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick faculty.”

— John Owen

143. “To mortify a sin is not utterly to kill, root it out, and destroy it, that it should have no more hold at all nor residence in our hearts. It is true this is that which is aimed at; but this is not in this life to be accomplished.”

— John Owen

144. “Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?”

— John Owen

145. “We cannot enjoy peace in this world unless we are ready to yield to the will of God in respect of death. Our times are in His hand, at His sovereign disposal. We must accept that as best.”

— John Owen

146. “A river continually fed by a living fountain may as soon end its streams before it come to the ocean, as a stop be put to the course and progress of grace before it issue in glory.”

— John Owen

147. “If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ’s Kingdom, and of His love.”

— John Owen

148. “When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin.”

— John Owen

149. “So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more.”

— John Owen

150. “A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.”

— John Owen