Top 581 Quotes & Sayings by Timothy Keller - Page 5

The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person.

A Christian is one who stops working to be saved, not one who stops working!

Jesus Christ as only an example will crush you. You'll never be able to live up to it. But Jesus Christ as the Lamb will save you.

We must go back again and again to the Gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him.

Life changing repentance begins where blame shifting ends.

When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone… two thinkers, you become confused… ten thinkers, you’ll begin developing your own voice… two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise and develop your voice.

Faith in God's promises means not always following the expected, rational path.

Jesus was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, & the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

The greatness of prayer is nothing but an extension of the greatness and glory of God in our lives To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule - it is a failure to treat God as God. It is a sin against his glory

God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver.

To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right.

Jesus may ask of you far more than you planned to give, but He can give to you infinitely more than you dared ask or think.

God loves you just because He loves you.

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne."

It is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

What you treasure will ultimately require you die for it, Jesus is the only treasure that died for you.

Jesus' purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories.

If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.

Only in Jesus Christ do we see how the untamable, infinite God can become a baby and a loving Savior. On the cross we see how both the love and the holiness of God can be fulfilled at once.

Easter means that Christmas worked.

We should let Scripture interpret us more than we interpret Scripture.

Love is counting someone else’s needs and interests as more important than your own needs or interests or comfort.

Out of the cross comes the resurrection. Out of weakness comes real strength.

Grace is to be let into a place that you don't have a right to be.

If you are trying to live a life in accordance with the Bible, the concept and call to justice are inescapable. We do justice when we give all human beings their due as creations of God. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable.

Discipleship is not an option. Jesus says that if anyone would come after me, he must follow me.

The resurrection makes Christianity the most irritating religion on the face of the earth.

Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it. He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God. He took so that now all suffering that comes into your life will only make you great. A lump of coal under pressure becomes a diamond. And the suffering of a person in Christ only turns you into somebody gorgeous.

Faith journeys are never simply intellectual exercises.

If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.

Christ will do everything for you or nothing. He's either all of your righteousness or none.

The sin under all other sins is a lack of joy in Christ.

The world is polarizing over religion. It is getting both more religious and less religious at the same time.

The irreligious don't repent at all and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians repent of their wrongfully placed righteousness.

The church is not a museum for pristine saints, but a hospital ward for broken sinners.

To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.

It's important to remember the Gospel is a story; not a set of bullet points.

Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.

Marriage does not so much bring you into confrontation with your spouse as confront you with yourself.

While we want doubts to give way to faith, we should be merciful and patient with those who are still in a doubt-troubled place.

Most people want Jesus as a consultant rather than a King, and He does not come that way.

Pride is that which claims to be the author of what is really a gift.

Men, you'll never be a good groom to your wife unless you're first a good bride to Jesus.

God's reckless grace is our greatest hope.

The essence of forgiveness is absorbing pain instead of giving it.

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever.

The resurrection of the body means that we do not merely receive a consolation for the life we have lost but a restoration of it. We not only get the bodies and lives we had but the bodies and lives we wished for but had never before received.

A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

Because we put ourselves in God’s place, He put Himself in our place.

An idol is something that we look to for things that only God can give. Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtly but deadly mistake. The sign that you have slipped into this form of self-justification is that you become what the book of Proverbs calls a 'scoffer'.

I am so bad that He had to die. I am so loved that He was glad to die.

Religion poses a danger of creating division or intolerance between groups of people. However, the gospel of Jesus lead us to three things: humble service, reconciling behavior that is neither patronizing nor self-righteous, and a love toward people who hold different beliefs than we do.

The common moral framework: Do anything as long as it does no harm to others. Problem: Whose definition of harm?

If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.

Christ did not suffer so you wouldn’t suffer. He suffered so when you suffer you will become like Him.

The more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you.

Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection.

If you are a child of God, you don’t lose your status if you have a bad week.

We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.

Your feelings come from where you find your hope. Where is your happiness and your significance?