Timothy Keller Quotes

We are free to fight sin, and free to win; but we must still fight.

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.

Christmas means Jesus came down and got involved in suffering. He hears your cries.

You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love "in the bank" to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.

You cannot have Jesus' rescue without accepting His rule.

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.

Legalism is looking to something besides Jesus Christ in order to be acceptable and clean before God.

Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration - not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking.

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.

The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.

Paul reminds us that in the Gospel we are both brought lower and raised higher than we can imagine.

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.

Prayer is never just an emergency flare or desperate anxious gamble. God's attention is not based on our performance but parental love.

Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

Most people in the world believe that if there is a God, you relate to God by being good. Most religions are based on that principle, though there are a million different variations on it...But they all have the same logic: If I perform, if I obey, I’m accepted. The gospel of Jesus is not only different from that but diametrically opposed to it: I’m fully accepted in Jesus Christ, and therefore I obey.

If you have to run away from something that used to be an idol, you're actually still enslaved by it. It's still controlling you.

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

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.

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'.

The ministry of mercy, then, is the best advertising a church can have. It convinces a community that this church provides people with actions for their problems, not only talk. It shows the community that this church is compassionate.

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.

We must have a strong inner life of fellowship and intimacy with Jesus if we are going to have a strong outer life of ministry

Christ's resurrection not only gives you hope for the future; it gives you hope to handle your scars right now.

Paul sees all kinds of sins in himself and all kinds of accomplishments too, but he refuses to connect them with his identity.

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

Most apologetic books are really written for Christians, even the ones that purport to be written for non-believers.

The gospel is not about choosing to follow advice; it's about being called to follow a King.

Christianity is not just for the strong; it's for everyone.

Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.

Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints.

Jesus asks for far more than you ever thought, but offers more than you ever dreamed.

The product of a true, growing, gospel-centered nature is often gentleness.

Christmas is an invitation by God to say: Look what I've done to come near to you. Now draw near to me...I want to be a friend.

The only love that won’t disappoint you is one that can’t change, that can’t be lost, that is not based on the ups and downs of life or of how well you live. It is something that not even death can take away from you. God’s love is the only thing like that.

If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an idealized version of yourself.

Only if God can say things that make you struggle will you know that you have met a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

Contextualization is not giving people what they want. It is giving God's answers (which they probably do not want) to the questions they are asking and in forms they can comprehend.

We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it’s not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that’s not what sends you to heaven or Hell.

Living is giving....If you spend your money on yourself, you are just surviving. But if you want your life to count, if you want to really live - give.

God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us as we are.

Like a baby learning language, we learn how to communicate with God by listening to His words first.

If the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak, then these things are perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust?

...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said.

The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like His teaching but if He ‪rose from the dead.

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

Bad evangelism says: I'm right, you're wrong, and I would love to tell you about it