LDS Quotes About Sin
“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 sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ.”
“Let us instruct young people who come to us, first, young men throughout the Church, to know that a woman should be queen of her own body. The marriage covenant does not give the man the right to enslave her, or to abuse her, or to use her merely for the gratification of his passion. Your marriage ceremony does not give you that right”
| Conference Report, Apr. 1952, 86
“However, like other faculties, our consciences may become inert through sin or misuse. If we become desensitized to the things of God in our lives, we too lose reception of the signal needed to guide us. Keeping the commandments is our best assurance to maintain a strong signal with the Divine.”
| Gifts to Help Us Navigate Our Life
“Our task on earth is to resist the conforming of our spirit to our natural environment with its allures and distractions, and to shape our affections, inclinations, and desires in the mold shown us by the Savior. This is repentance: a conscious choice, born out of contraries, to be shaped and directed into a genuine spiritual begetting after the image of God, in accordance with the seed of divine potential in all of us.”
“If you are suffering the disheartening effects of transgression, please recognize that the only path to permanent relief from sadness is sincere repentance with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”
| A Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit
“Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and watch over them with tenderness.”
“Fear which ‘shall come upon every man’ D&C 63:33 is the natural consequence of a sense of weakness, also of sin. Fear is a chief weapon of Satan in making mankind unhappy. He who fears loses strength for the combat of life, for the fight against evil. Therefore, the power of evil ever seeks to engender fear in human hearts. In this day of sorrow, fear walks with humanity. It directs, measurably, the course of every battle. It remains as a gnawing poison in the heart of victors as of the vanquished.
| "If Ye Are Prepared Ye Shall Not Fear"
“After baptism, all men sin. None obey the Lord’s law in perfection; none remain clean and spotless and fit for the association of Gods and angels.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith
“Hell is not a fixed place of retribution, but the experience of our own alienation from God. In other words, hell is the condition of suffering that results from sin.”
“Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Light dispels darkness. When light is present, darkness is vanquished and must depart. More important, darkness cannot conquer light unless the light is diminished or departs.”
| Ensign, May 2002
“It is not good practice to become intrigued by Satan and his mysteries. No good can come from getting close to evil. Like playing with fire, it is too easy to get burned. … The only safe course is to keep well distanced from him and any of his wicked activities or nefarious practices. The mischief of devil worship, sorcery, casting spells, witchcraft, voodooism, black magic, and all other forms of demonism should be avoided like the plague.
“However, Brigham Young said that it is important to ‘study … evil, and its consequences’. Since Satan is the author of all evil in the world, it would therefore be essential to realize that he is the influence behind the opposition to the work of God.” —James E. Faust, “The Great Imitator”
“Satan’s increasing influence in the world is allowed to provide an atmosphere in which to prove ourselves. While he causes havoc today, Satan’s final destiny was fixed by Jesus Christ through His Atonement and Resurrection. The devil will not triumph.
Even now, he must operate within bounds set by the Lord. He cannot take away any blessing that has been earned. He cannot alter character that has been woven from righteous decisions. He has no power to destroy the eternal bonds forged in a holy temple between a husband, wife, and children. He cannot quench true faith. He cannot take away your testimony. Yes, these things can be lost by succumbing to his temptations. But he has no power in and of himself to destroy them.”
| “The Power of a Strong Testimony”
“Lord, help me to forgive others who sin differently than I.”
| BYU Education Week 2000
“In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride. It is always considered as a sin. We are not speaking of a wholesome view of self-worth, which is best established by a close relationship with God. But we are speaking of pride as the universal sin. . . . Essentially, pride is a “my will” rather than “thy will” approach to life. The opposite of pride is humbleness, meekness, submissiveness (see Alma 13:28), or teachableness. . . .Pride is characterized by “What do I want out of life?” rather than by “What would God have me do with my life?” It is self-will as opposed to God’s will. It is the fear of man over the fear of God.”
| in Conference Report, April 1986, pp. 5-6; or “Cleansing the Inner Vessel,” Ensign, May 1986, pp. 6-7
[A sacrament is] “a pledge and promise on man’s part to forsake personal sins, knowing that if he does so he will be blessed by the Lord. When the saints partake of the ordinance of the sacrament, they promise not simply to keep the commandments in general, but also to serve and conform and obey where they as individuals have fallen short in the past. Every man’s sacraments are thus his own; he alone knows his failures and sins, and he alone must overcome the world and the flesh so that he can have fellowship with the saints.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith
“God uses no magic wand to simply wave bad things into nonexistence. The sins that he remits, he remits by making them his own and suffering them. The pain and heartaches that he relieves, he relieves by suffering them himself. These things can be shared and absorbed, but they cannot be simply wished or waved away. They must be suffered.”
| Believing Christ: The Parable of the Bicycle and Other Good News
“Pride is the sin of comparison. This is the sin of, ‘Thank God I am more special than you.’ At its core is the desire to be admired or envied. It is the sin of self-glorification. When those they envy stumble or suffer, they secretly cheer. When we become obsessed with our status; when we focus on our importance, power, or reputation; when we dwell on our public image…that’s when pride begins to corrupt. Despite his magnificent abilities and accomplishments, the Savior was always meek and humble.”
“It is my testimony that many of the deepest regrets of tomorrow can be prevented by following the Savior today. If we have sinned or made mistakes—if we have made choices that we now regret—there is the precious gift of Christ’s Atonement, through which we can be forgiven. We cannot go back in time and change the past, but we can repent.”
“God reveals to His prophets that there are moral absolutes. Sin will always be sin. Disobedience to the Lord’s commandments will always deprive us of His blessings.”
“Grace is original. Grace is what comes first, and it is sin that then comes in response. Or creating is what comes first, and it is the fall that then comes in response. Sin at root, is a rejection of what God by way of creation, has given as a grace.”
| Future Mormon
“The repenting sinner must suffer for his sins, but this suffering has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is to change.”
“When we pray, we are not conveying any information to God that he does not already have. Nor, when we confess our sins before him, is it news to him that we have misbehaved. More than we realize, being honest with God in our prayers helps us to be more honest with ourselves.”
“Rationalizing is the bringing of ideals down to the level of one’s conduct. Repentance is the bringing of one’s conduct up to the level of his ideals.”
| The Miracle of Forgiveness
| The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book
“Twelve years ago President Ezra Taft Benson delivered a powerful conference address declaring that pride is “the universal sin, the great vice.” (“Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989, p. 6) He taught that pride is essentially competitive in nature and made reference to his quote from C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. (Mere Christianity, 1960, p. 95 [or 109-110])”
| “To Walk Humbly with Thy God,” Ensign, May 2001, p. 10
“God reveals to his prophets that there are moral absolutes. Sin will always be sin. Disobedience to the Lord’s commandments will always deprive us of his blessings.
“There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand in hand with reproof.”
| Documentary History of the Church, vol. 5, p. 24.
“What symbol more expressive of a cleansing from sin could be given than that of baptism in water?”
| Articles of Faith, 109
“I call evil inverted good, or a correct principle made an evil use of.”
| Journal of Discourses
“I have learned an important lesson. Yes, God can make some good come from evil. But even He, in all His majesty, won’t make the evil go away. Men are free. He won’t control them. There is wickedness in this world.”
| My Story: Elizabeth Smart
“God’s desire that Latter-day Saints keep on trying also extends beyond overcoming sin. Whether we suffer because of troubled relationships, economic challenges, or illnesses or as a consequence of someone else’s sins, the Savior’s infinite Atonement can heal even—and perhaps especially—those who have innocently suffered. He understands perfectly what it is like to suffer innocently as a consequence of another’s transgression. As prophesied, the Savior will “bind up the brokenhearted, … give … beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, [and] the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” No matter what, with His help, God expects Latter-day Saints to keep on trying.”
| "Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying"
Man unquestionably has impressive powers … But after all our obedience and good works, we cannot be saved from the effects of our sins without the grace extended by the atonement of Jesus Christ … Man cannot earn his own salvation.
“Never must we allow supposed mercy to the unrepentant sinner to rob the justice by which the true repentance from sinful practices is predicated.”
| Strengthening the Home, 1973, p. 5.
“If the time comes when you have done all that you can to repent of your sins, and have made amends and restitution to the best of your ability; if it be something that will affect your standing in the church and you have gone through the proper authorities, then you will want that confirming answer as to whether or not the Lord has accepted of you. In your soul searching, if you seek for and you find that peace of conscience, by that token you may know that the Lord has accepted your repentance.”
Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what pow’r it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.
| Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, Page 62
“Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren’t interested in changing their opinions to agree with God’s.”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
“The vocabulary of sin and guilt and damnation has too often overwhelmed the restored gospel’s message of absolute love and powerfully grounded hopefulness. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, summarizing the almost universal misapprehension of overanxious Saints among us, we must learn to ‘distinguish more clearly between divine discontent and the devil’s dissonance, between dissatisfaction with self and disdain for self. We need the first and must shun the second. When conscience calls to us from the next ridge,’ he wrote, her purpose is to beckon not to scold.
“Rather than continuing to frame our lives in terms of deficiency and inadequacy, we would benefit from the perspective of Irenaeus, who emphasized the forward-looking process in which we should be engaged: becoming ‘perfected after the image and likeness of God.'”
Call it secularism or modernity or the technological age or existentialism on steroids—whatever you want to call such an approach to life, we do know a thing or two about it. Most important, we know that it cannot answer the yearning questions of the soul, nor is it substantial enough to sustain us in times of moral crises.
| Religion: Bound by Loving Ties
“Pride is a very misunderstood sin, and many are sinning in ignorance. In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride—it is always considered a sin. Therefore, no matter how the world uses the term, we must understand how God uses the term so we can understand the language of holy writ and profit thereby.”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
“Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves.”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989