Jim Elliot on the Sinner-Saint Paradox

Here is an interesting quote from one of Jim Elliot's sermons. The sermon is about the life of Peter, based on I Peter 1:3.

There is mercy for you in that God is picking you out to do a job you never could do before. Great mercy, Peter. But, "I am a sinful man. Oh Lord." "Fear not." Interesting words from the lips of Jesus Christ, for that person who confesses that he's a sinful man is the first man to receive great mercies. Such a person who owns up to his waywardness and his unbelief, who is impetuous enough to confess his own feeling and his own conscience and say, "I am a sinful man," that individual will always hear the words of Jesus the Christ saying, "Fear not. Fear not. Peace." Because God is at peace with those men who will confess themselves to be sinners.

Interesting paradox. A man who has made God his enemy, that man has a chance with God. A man who admits that he has offended God and has terribly outraged His law, that man has an opportunity to lay hold of the compassion in the Godhead. But conversely the man who refuses to admit his sin, the man who says everything is all right between him and God, the man who recognizes no breach of fellowship between his Creator and himself, that man never hears the word of Christ, "Fear not."

But let a man once confess that he is a sinner, that he is disobedient, that he is an unbeliever, and that man hears from Christ the word as Peter heard in great mercy, "Fear not." 

(Jim Elliot: A Christian Martyr Speaks to You, Edited by Robert Lloyd Russell, Xulon Press, 2010, pp. 55-56)

Special thanks to Robert Lloyd Russell, who was kind enough to let me know about the recently published collection of Jim Elliot's sermons, and granted permission for this quotation.

You can buy the book direct from the publisher here.

The First and Last Entries

Below is an excerpt from the first entry in Jim Elliot's Journal, followed by the final entry, which was written about one week before his martyrdom by the Auca Indians in South America:

January 17, 1948

What is written in these pages I suppose will someday be read by others than myself. For this reason I cannot hope to be absolutely honest in what is herein recorded, for the hypocrisy of this shamming heart will ever be putting on a front and dares not to have written what is actually found in its abysmal depths. Yet, I pray, Lord, that You will make these notations to be as nearly true to fact as is possible so that I may know my own heart and be able to definitely pray regarding my gross, though often unviewed, inconsistencies. . . .

Help me, Lord, not to "mourn and weep" only for those things, once precious, which You teach me are but dead (whether desires, pleasures, or whatever may be precious to my soul now), but give me a willingness to put them away out of my sight (Gen. 23:4). Burying places are costly, but I would own a Machpelah where corpses (dead things in my life) can be put away.

December 31, 1955

A month of temptation. Satan and the flesh have been on me hard. How God holds my soul in His life and permits one with such wretchedness to continue in His service I cannot tell. Oh, it has been hard . . . I have been very low inside me struggling and casting myself hourly on Christ for help. Marriage is divorce from the privacy a man loves, but there is some privacy nothing can share. It is the knowledge of a sinful heart.

These are the days of the New Year's Believers' conference on the Sermon on the Mount. Yesterday I preached and was helped on "whoever looks upon a woman . . ."!

"Let spirit conquer though flesh conspire."

Out of such humility came fierce preaching and a willingness to die for the cause of Christ.

Below are the three parts of a sermon preached by Elliot in 1951.

The Resurrection - Jim Elliot (Part 1)



The Resurrection - Jim Elliot (Part 2)



The Resurrection - Jim Elliot (Part 3)


Certainly a passionate, Scripture-saturated preacher! Some thought-provoking things here. And some real challenges, too.