John Stott Quotes

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

Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.

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

God continues to speak through what He has spoken.

We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.

[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.

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

The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him.

At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. He bore the judgment we deserve in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. On the cross divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God's holy love was 'satisfied.'

In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

...The first and great evidence of our walking by the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit is not some private mystical experience of our own, but our practical relationships of love with other people.

It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.

Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.

The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.

The cross is not just a badge to identify us...it is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disoriented world.

All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name.

Although we have responsibilities to others, we are primarily accountable to God. It is before him that we stand, and to him that one day we must give an account. We should not therefore rate human opinion too highly.

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace.

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

Scripture is the royal scepter by which King Jesus rules his church

Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.

Many (Christians) have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless.

Faith's only function is to receive what grace offers.

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.

When Jesus is truly our Lord, He directs our lives and we gladly obey Him. Indeed, we bring every part of our lives under His lordship - our home and family, our sexuality and marriage, our job or unemployment, our money and possessions, our ambitions and recreations.

We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.

Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.

Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.

Here's how to determine God's will for your life: Go wherever your gifts will be exploited the most.

There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.

An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community.

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.

It is no exaggeration to say that without Scripture a Christian life is impossible.

The church is under orders. Evangelistic inactivity is disobedience.

The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.

... what I believe to be one of the major tragedies in the Church today. Namely, that evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary but not biblical, and almost nobody is building bridges and relating the biblical text to the modern context

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

God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.

The chief reason why the Christian believes in the divine origin of the Bible is that Jesus Christ Himself taught it.

Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.

What we need is not more learning, not more eloquence, not more persuasion, not more organization, but more power from the Holy Spirit.

It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

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.