Sermon quotes on good works
Augustine of Hippo
For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.
Augustine of Hippo
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
Jerry Bridges
Our expectation of God’s blessing depends on how well we feel we are living the Christian life. We declared temporary bankruptcy to get into His kingdom, so now we think we can and must pay our own way with God. We were saved by grace, but we are living by performance.
Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love, NavPress.
Jerry Bridges
My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our personal relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.
Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love, NavPress.
John Calvin
There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.
Victor Claar
Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the needs of others.
Kevin DeYoung
Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit.
Taken from The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung, © 2012, p.28. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
Martin Luther
Blessings that at times come to us through our labors and at times without our labors, but never because of our labors; for God always gives them because of His undeserved mercy.
Martin Luther
God does not need your good works, but our neighbor does.
Martin Luther
Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.
Works of Martin Luther: With Introductions and Notes, 1915, p.747.
Kurt E. Marquart
Luther maintained that good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works.”
Meister Eckhart
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God.
Steve Stockman
Evangelicals believe they are saved by grace through faith but then add a man-made waiver that you have to work as hard as you can meet middle-class behavioral patterns to hang onto it.
Teresa of Avila
My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.
Miroslav Volf
Naked need is the occasion for God’s giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.
Rick Warren
Most of us want to have enough… good works to get into heaven, but enough bad works to be fun.
William Gurnall
We are justified, not by giving anything to God, -what we do,-but by receiving from God, what Christ hath done for us.
Martin Luther
When a person has lost Christ, he must fall into the confidence of his own works…. Take great care that no one goes to mass trusting in confession, or prayer, or self-preparation; but lacking confidence in all these things let him rather go in high confidence in the Christ who gives the promise.
Charles Spurgeon
If we give God service it must be because He gives us grace. We work for Him because He works in us.
A.W. Tozer
Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
Aristotle
For what good would their prosperity do them if it did not provide them with the opportunity for good works?
Nichomachean Ethics
Brennan Manning
How is it then that we’ve come to imagine that Christianity consists primarily in what we do for God? How has this come to be the good news of Jesus?