Lewis B. Smedes Quotes

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Lewis B. Smedes

Profession : Author

Birth : August 20, 1921

Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven.

Lewis B. Smedes

At the cross, God was punishing Jesus for the sins of the world. God's justice required a penalty from sinners, and in his unspeakable love, he paid the penalty himself in the person of his crucified Son.

Lewis B. Smedes

Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.

Lewis B. Smedes

My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died.

Lewis B. Smedes

Promise keeping is a powerful means of grace in a time when people hardly depend on each other to remember and live by their word.

Lewis B. Smedes

Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance.

Lewis B. Smedes

We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them.

Lewis B. Smedes

God is not a doormat, nor should anyone else be a doormat.

Lewis B. Smedes

I believe that we should, on biblical grounds, tell all parents of mentally disabled children that God loves their children, regrets terribly that they are disabled, and will, when they die, carry them gently into a heavenly life where every person is forever whole.

Lewis B. Smedes

The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.

Lewis B. Smedes

Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.

Lewis B. Smedes

Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.

Lewis B. Smedes

Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.

Lewis B. Smedes

Nothing is more private than a woman's body; it is her physical, emotional, and moral citadel. She cannot be free at all if she is not free to decide for herself, in private, what to do with her body.

Lewis B. Smedes

Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness.

Lewis B. Smedes

No one really forgives unless he has been hurt.

Lewis B. Smedes

Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.

Lewis B. Smedes

In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.

Lewis B. Smedes

Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.

Lewis B. Smedes

No doubt, corporate CEOs who lie to their shareholders and politicians who lie to their public know and believe intellectually that lying is immoral. Why then do they lie? They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.

Lewis B. Smedes