John Owen Quotes

#1. 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

#2. Before the work of grace the heart is 'stony.' It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.

John Owen

#3. Christ by his death destroying the works of the devil, procuring the Spirit for us, hath so killed sin, as to its reign in believers, that it shall not obtain its end and dominion.

John Owen

#4. If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than he built in the day of his doctrine.

John Owen

#5. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.

John Owen

#6. 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

#7. Spiritual wisdom consists in finding out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin ... to trace this serpent in all its turnings and windings; be able to say, at its most secret actings, 'This is your old way and course; I know what you aim at.'

John Owen

#8. Pardon comes not to the soul alone; or rather, Christ comes not to the soul with pardon only! It is that which He opens the door and enters by, but He comes with a Spirit of life and power.

John Owen

#9. If our principal treasure be as we profess, in things spiritual and heavenly, and woe unto us if it be not so! on them will our affections, and consequently our desires and thoughts, be principally fixed.

John Owen

#10. A sense of the love of Christ in the cross; lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification

John Owen

#11. The whole Pelagian poison of free-will ... a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God ... That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented.

John Owen

#12. To break men off particular sins, and not to break their hearts, is to deprive ourselves of advantages of dealing with them

John Owen

#13. The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.

John Owen

#14. When the heart is once won to rest in God, to repose himself on him, he will assuredly satisfy it. He will never be as water that fails; nor hath he said at any time to the seed of Jacob, "Seek ye my face in vain." If Christ be chosen for the foundation of our supply, he will not fail us.

John Owen

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!

John Owen

#19. 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

#20. To the sick man the physician when he enters seems to have three faces, those of a man, a devil, a god. When the physician first comes and announces the safety of the patient, then the sick man says: Behold a God or a guardian angel!

John Owen

#21. Never was sin seen to be more abominably sinful and full of provocation than when the burden of it was upon the shoulders of the Son of God ... Would you, then, see the true demerit of sin?-take the measure of it from the mediation of Christ, especially his cross.

John Owen

#22. Prosperity hath slain the foolish and wounded the wise.

John Owen

#23. That 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

#24. 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

#25. He who finds not opposition from [sin] ... is at peace with it, not dying to it.

John Owen

#26. As a tender and loving friend is grieved at the unkindness of his friend ... so is it with this tender and loving Spirit, who hath chosen our hearts for a habitation to dwell in.

John Owen

#27. Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in.

John Owen

#28. See in the meantime that your faith brings forth obedience, and God in due time will cause it to bring forth peace.

John Owen

#29. The pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith while they are here in this world, are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

John Owen

#30. Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after ... unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.

John Owen

#31. Arminians pretend, very speciously, that Christ died for all men, yet, in effect, they make him die for no one man at all.

John Owen

#32. Christ greatly delights in
his people and they greatly
delight in him

John Owen

#33. As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace.

John Owen

#34. All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain.

John Owen

#35. Christ is the meritorious cause of the bestowing of those good gifts, faith and constancy unto martyrdom, upon you.

John Owen

#36. We are taught in an especial manner to pray that God would give his Holy Spirit unto us, that through his aid and assistance we may live unto God in that holy obedience which he requires at our hands.

John Owen

#37. When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone.

John Owen

#38. Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root.

John Owen

#39. It being our duty to mortify ... we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, does but half his work.

John Owen

#40. Temptation gains power by persistent solicitations that beget thoughts that make evil less serious

John Owen

#41. 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

#42. Take away the dispensation of the Spirit, and his effectual operations in all the intercourse that is between God and man; be ashamed to avow or profess the work attributed unto him in the gospel, -- and Christianity is plucked up by the roots.

John Owen

#43. 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

#44. What do we want? What would we be at? What do our souls desire? Is it not that we might have a more full, clear, stable comprehension of the wisdom, love, grace, goodness, holiness, righteousness, and power of God, as declared and exalted in Christ unto our redemption and eternal salvation?

John Owen

#45. The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.

John Owen

#46. Sin will be always acting, if we be not always mortifying, we are lost creatures ...

John Owen

#47. 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

#48. If Scripture has more than one meaning, it has no meaning at all.

John Owen

#49. Men think all things would be very glorious, it they might be done according their mind. Perhaps, indeed, they would-but with their glory, not the glory of God.

John Owen

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. He can make the dry parched ground of my soul to become a pool and my thirsty barren heart as springs of water. Yes he can make this habitation of dragons this heart which is so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations to be a place of bounty and fruitfulness unto Himself

John Owen

#54. All spiritual acts well-pleasing unto God, as faith, repentance, obedience, are supernatural; flesh and blood revealeth not these things.

John Owen

#55. 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

#56. The goal of the Christian life is not external conformity or mindless action, but a passionate love for God informed by the mind and embraced by the will.

John Owen

#57. To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live.

John Owen

#58. There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick faculty.

John Owen

#59. A true saving knowledge of sin is to be had only in the Lord Christ: in him may we see the desert of our iniquities.

John Owen

#60. 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

#61. He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.

John Owen

#62. The will is the sovereign faculty and power of the soul; whatever principle acts in it and determines it, that hath the rule. Notwithstanding

John Owen

#63. We ought as much to pray for a blessing upon our daily rod as upon our daily bread.

John Owen

#64. 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

#65. There is no way of deliverance from the state and condition of being in the flesh, but by the Spirit of Christ.

John Owen

#66. 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

#67. The stronghold of the contemplation of Christ's glory affords the soul rest, for it will be made evident that our troubles grow on the root of an over-valuation of temporal things. The mind is its own greatest troubler.

John Owen

#68. 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

#69. So great an advantage is given to sin and Satan by your temper and disposition, that without extraordinary watchfulness, care, and diligence, they will prevail against your soul.

John Owen

#70. Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.

John Owen

#71. The gospel shall be victorious. This greatly comforts and refreshes me.

John Owen

#72. If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.

John Owen

#73. But the Spirit was not limited to doing surprising and extraordinary things. He was present in the Old Testament period in giving civil rule and government ... moral virtues ... physical strength ... and intellectual abilities.

John Owen

#74. The seed of every sin is in every heart.

John Owen

#75. There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon. It will always be so while we live in this world. Sin will not spare for one day. There is no safety but in a constant warfare for those who desire deliverance from sin's perplexing rebellion.

John Owen

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

John Owen

#77. 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

#78. When we give vent to the soul, to try what grace is there, corruption comes out; and when we search for corruption, grace appears. So

John Owen

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

John Owen

#80. Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but He died for all God's elect, that they should believe.

John Owen

#81. The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.

John Owen

#82. 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

#83. The more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes.

John Owen

#84. There is no true gospel fruit without faith and repentance.

John Owen

#85. It is evident that you contend against sin merely because of how it troubles you.

John Owen

#86. Only what God has commanded in His word should be regarded as binding; in all else there may be liberty of actions.

John Owen

#87. 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

#88. Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"

John Owen

#89. 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

#90. Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion ... [then] it could not bear an hour's absence from Him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour.

John Owen

#91. Extra Full - 45 yards. Full - 40 yards. Modified - 35 yards. Improved Cylinder - 30 yards. Cylinder - 25 Yards.

John Owen

#92. 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

#93. Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.

John Owen

#94. After hearing the evidence, I will record a verdict of natural causes.

John Owen

#95. 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

#96. A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.

John Owen

#97. None of the children of men can attain so great glory, power, and dominion in this world, but that in their imaginations and desires they can infinitely exceed what they do enjoy, like him who wept that he had not another world to conquer. They

John Owen

#98. If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation.

John Owen

#99. 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

#100. 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