Sinclair B. Ferguson Quotes

1. “God has chosen us. Our status is not a matter of our worthiness, but of His love.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

2. “The goal of theology is the worship of God. The posture of theology is on one’s knees. The mode of theology is repentance.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

3. “Repentance is a characteristic of the whole life, not the action of a single moment.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

4. “Humility is not simply feeling small and useless – like an inferiority complex. It is sensing how great and glorious God is, and seeing myself in that light.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

5. “Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

6. “Jesus Christ is able to set us free because He has dealt with the sin that enslaves us.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

7. “The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

8. “We discover the will of God by a sensitive application of Scripture to our own lives.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

9. “Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

10. “Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

11. “Spiritual growth depends on two things: first a willingness to live according to the Word of God; second, a willingness to take whatever consequences emerge as a result.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

12. “Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

13. “The weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

14. “Christian contentment, therefore, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

15. “How do we bring glory to God? The Bible’s short answer is: by growing more and more like Jesus Christ.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

16. “The true church is too different for the world to tolerate it.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

17. “The notion that we are children of God, his own sons and daughters, lies at the heart of all Christian theology, and is the mainspring of all Christian living.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

18. “My security as a Christian does not reside in the strength of my faith but in the indestructibili ty of my Savior.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

19. “The jewels of spiritual service are always quarried in the depths of spiritual experience. Never is this more true than in revival. Bend the church and save the people.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

20. “The foundation of our love for the Lord lies in the recognition of His holiness, our sinfulness, and His grace.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

21. “The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

22. “Jesus has a special, compassionate concern for those who are broken and needy.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

23. “We are far too good at analyzing what is wrong with the culture and far too myopic at analyzing what is wrong in the church.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

24. “Worship is not something we “work up,” it is something that “comes down” to us, from the character of God.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

25. “The benefits of the gospel are in Christ. They do not exist apart from him. They are ours only in him. They cannot be abstracted from him as if we ourselves could possess them independently of him.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

26. “To be free from the possibility of discouragements would be more ‘spiritual’ than Jesus-and therefore not truly spiritual at all.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

27. “Marriage, and the process of coming to it, is not heaven! It is the bonding together of two needy sinners in order to make a partnership which is substantially greater than either of them alone.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

28. “God made everything else but man “after its kind”? – that is, according to the purpose and destiny he envisaged for it. But he made man in His own image. Man is patterned on God! He was made to represent God – in created, human form.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

29. “God is God; you are but one of His creatures. Your only joy is to be found in obeying Him, your true fulfillment is to be found in worshiping Him, your only wisdom is to be found in trusting and knowing Him.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

30. “The holiness of God teaches us that there is only one way to deal with sin- radically, seriously, painfully, constantly. If you do not so live, you do not live in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

31. “When man became the measure of all things what was lost was man.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

32. “Don’t tell me that you have a Reformed Church in the tradition of Calvin until you have the preaching of the Word every day of the week, devote Wednesday’s to prayer and have the church gather together for prayer.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

33. “If you desire anything less for yourself than absolute obedience to God, a life of total devotion to the Lord, a life of absolute sin-less-ness – if you desire anything less, you are fighting against God’s desire for you.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

34. “In the New Testament the basic command of old covenant life, ‘Be holy as I am holy’, now means, ‘Become like Jesus.’ God involves himself in this work as the triune Lord: the Father commands it; the Son has died to provide the resources for it; the Spirit indwells us in order to effect it in our lives. As Augustine famously prayed, God commands what he wills and gives what he commands.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

35. “Man’s insulting God is not reversed by our insulting man.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

36. “Secular humanism debases the human.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

37. “The Father did not require the death of Christ to persuade Him to love us. Christ died because the Father loves us.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

38. “Evil deeds are the fruit of an evil heart. They are not an aberration from our true self but a revelation of it.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

39. “There is nothing more important to learn about Christian growth than this: Growing in grace means becoming like Christ.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

40. “God can be trusted even when he cannot be seen or understood.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

41. “You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

42. “Until we acknowledge our sin and guilt, we will never come to discover that it can be forgiven.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

43. “Contentment is an undervalued grace.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

44. “You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

45. “True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

46. “The problem is not in the clarity of the revelation. The problem is in the darkness of the human mind.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

47. “If you are justified, you can no more be unjustified than Christ can be pulled down from heaven.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

48. “When you look at the Cross, what do you see? You see God’s awesome faithfulness. Nothing – not even the instinct to spare His own Son – will turn him back from keeping His word.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

49. “Do I learn through dark providences, or simply seem relieved when they are over?”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

50. “Regeneration, however it is described, is a divine activity in us, in which we are not the actors but the recipients.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson