C. S. Lewis Quotes About Sin

• We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Guilt, Doe, Facts

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Determination, Feelings, Doe

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.115, HarperCollins UK

• I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Sin, Disobeying

• Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.

  C. S. Lewis

  Time, Errors, Sin

• Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Passion, People

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

• Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.

  C. S. Lewis

  Motivational, Thinking, Sin

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.127, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• It is not enough to want to get rid of one’s sins, we also need to believe in the One who saves us from our sins.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Needs, Want

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.288, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• We must beware of the Past, mustn't we? I mean that any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us. Notice in Dante that the lost souls are entirely concerned with their past! Not so the saved.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Past, Evil

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Letters to an American Lady”, p.103, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor-that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender-this movement full speed astern-is repentance.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sorry, Men, Track

• Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Dream, Religious

• The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Pain, Men

• And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Forgiving, Suggestions, Sin

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

• We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.

  C. S. Lewis

  Laughter, Humble, Blood

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• By repenting, one acknowledges them as sins-therefore not to be repeated.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sin, Repent, Acknowledge

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works”, p.38, Harper Collins

• Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of lucifer.... An instrument strung, but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Pride, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

• The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave us free will.

  C. S. Lewis

  Angel, Men, Facts

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Party, Love Is, Law

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.55, HarperCollins UK

• In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Past, Offering

  "The Problem of Pain". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1940.

• We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Jesus, Dying

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.99, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Stupidity, World

• After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required.

  C. S. Lewis

  Errors, Temptation, Needs

• we follow One who stood and wept at the grave of Lazarus-not surely, because He was grieved that Mary and Martha wept, and sorrowed for their lack of faith (though some thus interpret) but because death, the punishment of sin, is even more horrible in his eyes than in ours.

  C. S. Lewis

  Eye, Punishment, Lazarus

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.159, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Taken, People

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.12, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Past, Men, Heaven

• I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one's friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Selfish, Thinking, Evil

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963”, p.6, Harper Collins

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