Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light does put in an appearance, they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20). In fact, wherever it is true that the light shines in the darkness, it is also true that the darkness has not understood it (taking katelaben as in the NIV). Reading v. 5 this way anticipates the rejection theme that becomes explicit in vv. 10–11. Alternatively, even if katelaben means something like ‘did not overcome it’ (see Additional Note), it is quite possible that John, subtle writer that he is, wants his readers to see in the Word both the light of creation and the light of the redemption the Word brings in his incarnation.”

“Something of the same difficulty attaches to a number of other books. For example, while one deeply appreciates the tact, humility, and good spirit Fackre displays in one of his recent works,35 pretty soon one recalls the fundamental point Machen made more than half a century ago: At some point one must face the fact that the kind of disavowals and denials one finds in many branches of classic liberalism, and repeated by the major proponents of religious pluralism, are much deeper even than the chasms between, say, Russian Orthodoxy and American Pentecostalism, or between Roman Catholicism and classic evangelicalism; we are dealing with “different religions,” in the strongest sense of that expression.36”

“Perhaps the most frightening cases are those where countless sins are committed by many, many people, and God does absolutely nothing about it. For the worst judgment occurs when God turns his back on people, and resolutely lets sin take its course.”

“Paul agonizes far more over the difficult things he has had to suffer at the hands of his own converts in Corinth than over the beatings and privations he has endured at the hands of outsiders. Thus, pastors and other Christian leaders must not be surprised by the extraordinary emotional pressures that may befall them, imposed by thoughtless or even renegade church members. These will rarely be fair; they can be soul-destroying. But from a biblical perspective, they are scarcely surprising. To expect them is to rob them of part of their power; to endure them with grace and fortitude is nothing other than following the example of Jesus.”

“Jesus’ special knowledge of his Father’s will for him, articulated in v. 1, is now repeated, but with two significant additions: he knew not only that the time had come for him to leave this world, but that he had come from God and that the Father had put all things under his power. With such power and status at his disposal, we might have expected him to defeat the devil in an immediate and flashy confrontation, and to devastate Judas with an unstoppable blast of divine wrath. Instead, he washes his disciples’ feet, including the feet of the betrayer.”

“As J. A. Motyer has put it: “Special privileges, special obligations; special grace, special holiness; special revelation, special scrutiny; special love, special responsiveness . . . the church of God cannot ever escape the perils of its uniqueness.”

“Over the last several decades, government power has been in the process of massive expansion. One doubts whether this expansion can be turned around by the periodic triumph of a particular party, because the moral consensus necessary for sustained restraint is no longer present. On the long haul, people without a controlling vision beyond economic advancement will simply vote for more. That “more” may mean a temporary tax-break, but only rarely will it mean a cut in services. The more we demand, the more government takes; the more it takes and the more it provides, the more we think it unthinkable that we could do without what is provided. Such a world allows no aristocracy of excellence, for there are no agreed criteria as to what is praiseworthy, and therefore no direction toward which the country as a whole “pulls.”

“Fear makes us lose perspective, doubt God's faithfulness, question the value of the fight. Fear induces stress, bitterness, cowardice, and folly. But David's testimony is a wonderful encouragement: "I sought the LORD and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears" (34:4).”

“The degree of our peace of mind is tied to our prayer life (Phil. 4:6-7). This not because prayer is psychologically soothing, but because we address a prayer-answering God, a personal God, a responding God, a sovereign God whom we can trust with the outcomes of life's confusions. And we learn, with time, that if God in this or that instance does not choose to take away the suffering, or utterly remove the evil, he does send grace and power. The result is praise; and that, of course, is itself enjoyable, in exactly the same way that lovers enjoy giving each other complements.”

“Great God, in Christ you call our name and then receive us as your own, not through some merit, right or claim, but by your gracious love alone. We strain to glimpse your mercy-seat and find you kneeling at our feet.   Then take the towel, and break the bread, and humble us, and call us friends. Suffer and serve till all are fed, and show how grandly love intends to work till all creation sings, to fill all worlds, to crown all things.   Brian A. Wren (1936–)388”

“Their approach is almost always to relativize Jesus, diminish his significance, or allow him to stand as part of the background noise while they direct the attention of believers to their own agenda—legalism, perhaps, or endless self-help, or sentimentalized therapy, or a Jesus who is no more than one of many options. Thus by their teaching they disown the Jesus whose death potentially embraced all, not least these false teachers who nominally submit to him but who in reality domesticate him or reinvent him.”

“Despite the sincerity of their motives, one wonders more than a little to what extent the growing popularity of various forms of annihilationism and conditional immortality are a reflection of this age of pluralism. It is getting harder and harder to be faithful to the “hard” lines of Scripture. And in this way, evangelicalism itself may contribute to the gagging of God by silencing the severity of his warnings and by minimizing the awfulness of the punishment that justly awaits those untouched by his redeeming grace. Newbigin is right: “It is one of the weaknesses of a great deal of contemporary Christianity that we do not speak of the last judgement and of the possibility of being finally lost.”56”

“If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. This is a direct reference to Deuteronomy 13:9; 17:7 (cf. Lv. 24:14)–the witnesses of the crime must be the first to throw the stones, and they must not be participants in the crime itself. Jesus’ saying does not mean that the authorities must be paragons of sinless perfection before the death sentence can properly be meted out, nor does it mean that one must be free even from lust before one can legitimately condemn adultery (even though lust and adultery belong to the same genus, Mt. 5:28). It means, rather, that they must not be guilty of this particular sin. As in many societies around the world, so here: when it comes to sexual sins, the woman was much more likely to be in legal and social jeopardy than her paramour. The man could lead a ‘respectable’ life while masking the same sexual sins with a knowing wink. Jesus’ simple condition, without calling into question the Mosaic code, cuts through the double standard and drives hard to reach the conscience.”

“whereas wine offers a kind of high, it is treacherous, for it leads to debauchery. By contrast, the “high” engendered by the Holy Spirit brings no debauchery, no hangovers, but purity, right relationships, and the joy of the Lord”

“On the other hand, the malice of their conspiracy has not caught God flat-footed, as if he had not foreseen the cross, much less planned it. The text plainly insists that God's sovereignty is not mitigated by human actions, and human guilt is not exculpated by appeal to divine sovereignty. This duality is sometimes called compatibilism: God's utter sovereignty and human moral responsibility are compatible. Complex issues are involved, but there can be no serious doubt that this stance is either taught or presupposed by the biblical writers”

“The deep tension between faithfulness to God and alienation from one’s own people is an unvarying constant in the ministry of faithful preachers assigned to a declining culture.”

“What is unsure is how long democracies can survive once they lose a controlling vision of the common good that extends beyond the merely pragmatic. It may take a long time—I certainly hope so—but it is hard to be optimistic. What seems so difficult for Westerners to grasp at the moment is that our problems are not merely economic (though many are tied to economics), but reflect the most fundamental questions of cultural cohesiveness. They touch all of life. They are as much tied to religion, philosophy, the family, heritage, direction, vision of the future, language, and everything else that contributes to any culture, as to the interest rate and the federal deficit.”

“Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light does put in an appearance, they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20).”

“The only thing that holds such people together is their shared allegiance to Jesus Christ, their devotion to him, stemming from his indescribable love for them.”

“At one level, this is a simple story of God's faithfulness in the little things of life, at a time of social malaise, religious declension, political confusion, and frequent anarchy. God still has his people-working hard, acting honorably, marrying, bearing children, looking after the elderly They could not know that Obed's was the line that would sire King David-and, according to the flesh, King Jesus.”