Timothy Keller Quotes

No writer or thinker has taught me as much as James Hunter has about this all-important and complex subject of how culture is changed.

Marriage is two broken people having little broken people.

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

A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God's family freely by grace.

Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such as academia, publishing, media, entertainment, and the arts. The assumption that society will improve simply be more Christian believers being present is no longer valid.

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

In every other religion the indicative flows from the imperative. Which means, ‘because I do, therefore I am... because I do this, therefore I’m a child of God.’ But only in Christianity does the imperative flow from the indicative. ‘Because I am in Christ all these things, therefore I obey.’ Exactly the opposite.

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

Big cities have a lot of 'younger brothers' who have left traditional parts of the world and their families for a more liberal lifestyle. But cities are filled to the gills with 'elder brothers' too.

Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity.

Religious people find God useful. Gospel people find him beautiful.

No one is too bad for Jesus. A lot of people think they are too good for Jesus.

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice.

When we try and use fear or pride to stop from sinning, we are forgetting that we sin because of either fear or pride.

The Gospel is good news not good advice. Advice = what we should do. News = report of what was done for us.

Ministry to the poor is a crucial sign that we believe the gospel.

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. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.

Cities have more “image of God” per square inch than anywhere else, and so we must not idealize the country as somehow a more spiritual place than the city.

The world is a dark place, and yet the coming of Jesus Christ shows us no one and nothing is hopeless.

If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.

We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.

Repentance is like antiseptic. You pour antiseptic onto a wound and, at first, it stings. Then it heals.

Holding a grudge against someone means you think you know what they deserve and you take it upon yourself to give it to them.

Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It 's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God .

It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly. Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn our hearts away from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.

While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy.

All forms of love are necessary, and none are to be ignored, but all of us find some forms of love to be more emotionally valuable to us. They are a currency that we find particularly precious, a language that delivers the message of love to our hearts with the most power. Some types of love are more thrilling and fulfilling to us when we receive them.

If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.

In the original language, 'Fear the Lord' doesn't mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.

After creation God said, 'It is finished'-and he rested. After redemption Jesus said, 'It is finished'-and we can rest.

You are worse than you think you are, but also far more loved than you feel you are.

There seems to be a human instinct for prayer. Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls it our 'incurable God-sickness.'

I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ - therefore I obey

When you experience God it is deeply personal, but it's not at all private.

If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them - if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it's going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim - and that is this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them.

I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church.

Tolerance is not the absence of belief. Tolerance is how your beliefs teach you to treat other people

Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him. The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.

Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.

The gospel destroys pride because it tells us we are so lost that Jesus had to die for us.

Because of the Cross, God can be both just towards sin and yet mercifully justifying to sinners.

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.

It's impossible to have met the real Jesus and be indifferent. You either bow down in wonder OR go away offended.

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

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

Suffering dispels the illusion that we have the strength and competence to rule our own lives and save ourselves.

Marriage is so much like salvation and our relationship with Christ that you can’t understand marriage w/o looking at the gospel.