Top 160 Quotes & Sayings by John Stott - Page 3

Nobody can call himself a Christian who does not worship Jesus.

Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.

If Christ seldom makes offers without demands, He also seldom makes demands without offers. He offers His strength to enable us to meet His demands.

To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us with no other choice.

The overriding reason why we should take other people's cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously.

Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.

Mission arises from the heart of God Himself and is communicated from His heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.

The hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutiny and, if necessary, reform.

God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

If we love our neighbor we shall without doubt tell him the good news of Jesus. But equally if we truly love our neighbor we shall not stop there.

Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; Christ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ.

Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross.

So close was Christ's connection with God that he equated a man's attitude to himself with the man's attitude to God.

God condemned sin in Christ, so that holiness might appear in us.

If God speaks to us about himself and his own glorious greatness, we respond by humbling ourselves before him in worship... If He speaks to us about His commandments, we determine to obey them.

Ambitions for self may be quite modest. . . . Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. How can we ever be content that he should acquire just a little more honour in the world? No. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place. We become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.

Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.

At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself.

We can all be stimulated to greater generosity by the known generosity of others.

We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church order whose principle of cohesion is a superficial social camaraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center.

There is evidence for the deity of Jesus -- good, strong, historical , cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.

The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.

A gift is acceptable according to what the giver has, not according to what he has not.

A deaf church is a dead church: that is an unalterable principle.

God intends... our care of Creation to reflect our love for the Creator.

I have never been able to conjure up (as some great Evangelical missionaries have) the appalling vision of the millions who are not only perishing but will inevitably perish. On the other hand... I am not and cannot be a universalist. Between these extremes I cherish and hope the majority of the human race will be be saved. And I have a solid biblical basis for this belief.

The good news is the gospel of God, about Christ, according to Scripture, for the nations, unto the obedience of faith, and for the sake of the Name.

Biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well....Thus Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God.

Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership.

Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity - Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself.

The gospel creates the church, which spreads the gospel, which creates more churches, which in turn spread the gospel further ad infinitum.

Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.

So, because in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human (in his birth), then bear our sins (in his death), then conquer death (in his resurrection) and then enter his people (by his Spirit), he is uniquely able to save sinners. Nobody else has his qualifications.

The question is not so much what the hand is doing (passing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it.

The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.

Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.

God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.