D. A. Carson Quotes

Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.

The broader problem is that a great deal of popular preaching and teaching uses the bible as a pegboard on which to hang a fair bit of Christianized pop psychology or moralizing encouragement, with very little effort to teach the faithful, from the Bible, the massive doctrines of historic confessional Christianity.

If it is hard to accept a rebuke, even a private one, it is harder still to administer one in loving humility.

Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.

Hell is not filled with people who are deeply sorry for their sins. It is filled with people who for all eternity still shake their puny fist in the face of God Almighty.

Authority can mean different things to different people. For example, some document or other may be authoritative for particular group even though it's not reliable. It's just that the group has accepted that document as authoritative for their group. And some documents are truthful and reliable but they are ignored, so they have no authority for that particular group.

The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.

When Christians speak of the authority of Scripture, because Christians believe that this word, even though it's mediated through many different human authors, nevertheless is God breathed and is revealed by God and is utterly reliable and all that it says, with all of its different literary genres, it's trustworthy and without mistake or distortion. It is trustworthy and therefore, because it is from God it has God's authority.

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.

We do not drift into spiritual life or disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray.

There is no sense in which Mohammed is viewed as a writer.

Love the church because Jesus loves it.

So there are all kinds of things that grammarian purists would argue are awkward forms of speech and sometimes they are intentional for rhetorical effect and sometimes it's the way people chose to write at the time. Inerrancy isn't interested in any of those kinds of things.

A weak understanding of what the Bible says about sin is tied to a weak understanding of what the Bible says is achieved by the cross.

What the Bible says is what God has disclosed and we want to approach this sacred text with cognitive reverence.

Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God's love, they cannot escape the cross.

It's better to emphasize biblical theology, partly because there are fine Study Bibles already available that lean into systematic theology, and partly because biblical theology is particularly strong at helping readers see how the Bible hangs together in its own categories: that is, God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.

Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.

...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.

When we suffer, there will sometimes be mystery. Will there also be faith? Yes, if our attention is focused more on the cross, and on the God of the cross, than on the suffering itself.

Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.

We treat the Bible, not as if it's a magic book that has to be handled like a piece of abracadabra, make sure it's dusted, never put it on the floor, and things like that.

Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship, worship rather than worship God.

To worship God 'in spirit and in truth' is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.

Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel, conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns

To assume the gospel in one generation is to lose it in the next.

Jesus is hungry but feeds others; He grows weary but offers others rest; He is the King Messiah but pays tribute; He is called the devil but casts out demons; He dies the death of a sinner but comes to save His people from their sins; He is sold for thirty pieces of silver but gives His life a ransom for many; He will not turn stones to bread for Himself but gives His own body as bread for people.

Some have argued that the Christian notion of Scripture is not epistemologically sustainable. It's not philosophically possible with rigor to uphold the Christian understanding of Scripture.

Study Bibles tend to circulate widely, so they play a disproportionate role in helping Christians and others understand holy Scripture. Further, many of our members have long used one or two other Study Bibles, and it is important that Christians not be tied too tightly to only one option, however good it may be.

The important thing, Jesus is saying (in Matthew 5:33-37), is to tell the truth and keep one's pledges without insisting that a certain form of words must be used if it is to be binding. No oath is necessary for the truthful person... Their word is so reliable that nothing more than a statement is needed from them.

How much would our churches be transformed if each of us made it a practice to thank God for others and then to tell those others what it is about them that we thank God for?

The truth of the matter is that all we have to do is live long enough and we will suffer.

Damn all false dichotomies to hell

Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.

There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.

Wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath-but there will always be love in God. Where God in His holiness confronts His image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, or God is not the jealous God He claims to be, and His holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God's wrath is diminishing God's holiness.

We want to fan the flames of Christians for whom inerrancy and the authority of Scripture are not mere shibboleths, but part of her life beat, part of the beating heart of what makes them tick. They revere Scripture, not because Scripture becomes an idol, but because it discloses God who is especially come after us in salvation and redemption through the person of his son, his cross, his resurrection, the full sweep of the gospel.

Ordinary Bibles often include cross-references and brief concordances; Study Bibles include much more, all bound up in one fat volume, so that readers can find a lot of useful explanation on each page without having to hunt through Bible dictionaries and commentaries and the like.

One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most “evangelistic” movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals.

Sin corrupts even our good deeds. We injure our shoulder trying to pat ourselves on the back.

Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.

Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.

Not all Scripture is propositional, some of it is asking questions, some of it's rhetorical, but where Scripture is stating something, asserting something, making a truth claim, uttering a proposition that is claiming to be true, it is the truth.

Prayer is God's appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.

Draw nigh to God, so that you may dread the grave as little as your bed. Draw nigh to God, that you may live a happy and useful life. Drawing nigh to God is the most concentrated energy of the soul. Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.

"Study Bible" is the expression used for Bibles that include significant explanatory notes, usually at the bottom of the page, sometimes in the margins. Often a Study Bible will also include some brief articles, photographs of geographical and archaeological sites, fairly extensive maps, and charts that summarize a lot of information.

Others have questions about how it is that God and human beings can both be speaking through the one document such that you can see and read the personalities of the human authors with their individual vocabularies and literary genres, and yet this is nevertheless the word of God. How can that be? This is quite a contrast with Islam, for example, which holds that the Koran has been dictated in Arabic by God and as a result Mohammed is nothing more than the one who memorizes the word so as to pass it on. There is nothing of human contribution.

I suspect that relatively few people will sit down and read 1250 pages [ of The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures.] all the way through from cover to cover. There may be some, but not everybody. But there are many, many, many different Christian, theological, pastoral, specialisms that are covered by one section or another of the book and this will become, therefore, a resource volume for many people.