Life & Wisdom Quote by Edwin Louis Cole

Cole’s line snaps like a gavel: salvation is not a handout you’re entitled to; it’s a verdict you can’t even petition for until you’ve owned the charge. Structurally, it’s a hard conditional - “cannot… until” - designed to shut down a familiar religious escape hatch: the urge to talk redemption without touching culpability. In one sentence, he yanks the spotlight off grace-as-branding and back onto confession as accountability.

The subtext is psychological as much as theological. “Responsible for sin” doesn’t mean merely “sinful” (a general, abstract human condition); it means answerable. Cole is pressing against the soft-focus spirituality that treats wrongdoing as a mistake, a trauma response, or “not really me.” He’s arguing that transformation requires agency: you don’t get to outsource the mess to circumstances and then claim credit for the makeover. Salvation, in this framing, isn’t a vibe; it’s a moral transaction that begins with owning the debt.

Context matters. Cole wrote and preached in late 20th-century American evangelical culture, where altar-call language could sometimes slide into cheap absolution: say the right words, feel the right feeling, move on. His insistence on responsibility is a corrective to that economy. It also echoes the 12-step logic that confession precedes repair: you can’t “make amends” to a problem you keep describing as someone else’s fault.

It works because it’s confrontational without being complicated. The sentence forces a sequence, and sequences are harder to wriggle out of than slogans.