John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

A man may steal because he is hungry or his family is hungry, or he may kill somebody because he has been greatly wronged. There is some provocation for nearly every sin in the world. The devil says to a man, "You will prosper by stealing." He says, "You will have pleasure by getting drunk." He says, "If you do this, or do that or the other, I will pay you so and so." But the devil says of this man who curses, "I will get him to sin without even promising him a thing." So he gets him to curse and take God's name in vain. - John R. Rice

A man told me once that about all the wrong he had ever done was just to curse a little bit. I told him, "You might as well say, 'All I've ever done is just kill a few men now and then.' " The fact is, God judges men's hearts. God knows the depth of the cancer of sin, and He puts that command about taking His name in vain before the command about murder. It is more important in God's sight. It more nearly reveals the state of the human heart and the terrible, terrible sin that is in the heart. Jesus said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." A blasphemous mouth shows a rotten heart. - John R. Rice

God says, "The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain." Whether you are a woman who uses the words "Christ," "God," "Lord," "Jesus," or "Almighty" as bywords, or as exclamations, or a man who gets angry and curses with vile blasphemy, or a preacher who repeats a joke he has heard using the name of God in it without meaning it reverently: it is the same sin, a terrible sin, and God "will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain." - John R. Rice

Sometimes people say, "Oh, I am so troubled; I am afraid I have committed the unpardonable sin." The fact that you wish you could be saved is proof that you can. Jesus said, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." It is not God who commits it, and it does not change the plan of God. It is the lost sinner who commits it, and it changes the lost sinner. There is nothing you could do that would make it so God would not love you and still want you saved. - John R. Rice

A young woman said to me, "Brother Rice, I heard someone say Jesus went to Hell and He had to suffer in Hell three days more to atone for man's sin."
I said to her, "One verse of Scripture ought to settle that. When Jesus died on the cross, He said, 'It is finished.' So when Jesus died it was finished."
God does not want any more atonement. God does not want any more price to be paid. He does not want you to add anything to the perfect Price, to the perfect Offering that had been paid for sins for every man, for every woman, for every child who ever lived or ever will live. That is already paid for "once for all," the Bible says. - John R. Rice

Too long I depended on holding on to God; now I am depending on God's holding on to me. Too long I depended on my holding out faithful. I have long since found out that God is the only One who is faithful. Sometimes you talk about holding out faithful. You never started faithful; how can you hold out faithful? No one here can say that he has ever been faithful to God. Your hope of Heaven is that God will be faithful to you. I am glad we have a settled salvation, a one-Man, one-Offering, and one-time, "once for all" salvation. - John R. Rice

Everyone can bring his own offering to God as a love gift. He can give all he want's for love's sake. But as far as paying for salvation is concerned, that has already been paid once for all. The Father and the Son are perfectly satisfied with the price that has already been paid. No payment you could bring to God for salvation could possibly be anything but an insult. By that you could be saying, "I am afraid Jesus' death isn't enough; I need to add something to God's perfect Offering." You slander God; you insult Almighty God; you blaspheme Jesus Christ to presume that anything you could do be added alongside the blessed offering Jesus made to increase its value. You see why Jesus sat down, don't you? His work was finished so He sat down. - John R. Rice