Philip Yancey Quotes

If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.

Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.

Arminianism is 'natural' in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of Biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man.

It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

Lutherans, whose arguments and mistakes will not be difficult to contest or discover, do not want to attribute any value to works, and they do not understand enough the scope of the justification.

For, since the fall of Adam had brought disgrace upon all his posterity, God restores those, whom He separates as His own, so that their condition may be better than that of all other nations. At the same time it must be remarked, that this grace of renewal is effaced in many who have afterwards profaned it

You can't resist the will of God and receive the grace of God at the same time.

God inclines to shower His graces upon us, but our perverted will is a barrier to His generosity.

I once laboured hard for the free will of man, until the grace of God at length overcame me.

Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God's 'free grace' but on Man's 'free will.'

Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.

It is false that the will, left to itself, can do good as well as evil, for it is not free, but in bondage...On the side of man there is nothing that goes before grace, unless it be impotency and even rebellion.

Let all Arminians know: we have as high an esteem for faith as any men in the world, but yet we will not rob Christ to clothe faith.

Christianity alone teaches that our only way for reconciliation with God is by his grace that is received through faith.

God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.

Fallen man is free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. His fall is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.

No sinner has the right to say with impunity, 'God you owe me grace.' If grace is owed, it is not grace. The very essence of grace is its voluntary character. God reserves to himself the sovereign, absolute right to give grace to some and withhold that grace from others.

There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.

And I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, "If any man ascribes any of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ aright."

The first chapters of the Bible tell us of the sin of man. The guilt of that sin had rested upon every single one of us, it guilt and its terrible results..but..it also tells us of something greater still; it tells us of the grace of the offended God.