The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God's Story

The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God's Story

by D.A. Carson

Eminent evangelical theologian provides a basic introduction to the faith that traces the story of redemption through the Bible.

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ebook, 240 pages

Published July 1st 2010 by Baker Books

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, christianity, religion, evangelism, biblical, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“At the end of the day, prime allegiance must be to God himself, to God alone.”

― D.A. Carson

“That is what a lot of people think that “sin” is: just breaking a rule. What is at stake here is something deeper, bigger, sadder, uglier, more heinous. It is a revolution. It makes me god and thus de-gods God.”

― D.A. Carson

“Wisdom literature clarifies the polarity between holiness and unholiness, between righteousness and unrighteousness. But although it clarifies, it cannot save us. If all we had were wisdom literature, it would tend to puff us up when we are doing well and drive us to despair when we are not.”

― D.A. Carson

“Listen: The God who is there, the God who has named himself supremely in Jesus, gathers and transforms his people. Without this transformation so-called Christianity is no Christianity at all. For this God gathers and transforms his people.”

― D.A. Carson

“By his death we have life. By his crucifixion on a pole, we begin eternal life. The new birth is grounded in Jesus’s death. That is what Jesus is saying. You and I receive the benefit of this not by trying harder or by being ultra-religious but by believing in Jesus.”

― D.A. Carson

“For all the failures in Abraham’s life and in your life and mine, God provides the sacrificial lamb. The stories and the accounts begin to multiply through the Old Testament pages in anticipation of the time when God would provide a sacrifice that far exceeds the value of some ram caught in a thicket.”

― D.A. Carson

“What gives sin its most horrendous odor, its most heinous aspect, is precisely that it is defiance of the God who made us and who judges us on the last day.”

― D.A. Carson

“Are you out of your skull? Look around! This is Eden; this is paradise! God knows exactly what he is doing. He made everything; he even made me. My husband loves me and I love him—and we are both intoxicated with the joy and holiness of our beloved Maker. My very being resonates with the desire to reflect something of his spectacular glory back to him. How could I possibly question his wisdom and love? He knows, in a way I never can, exactly what is best—and I trust him absolutely. And you want me to doubt him or question the purity of his motives and character? How idiotic is that? Besides, what possible good can come of a creature defying his Creator and Sovereign? Are you out of your skull?”

― D.A. Carson

“Instead of focusing primarily on one short passage or chapter from the Bible, I shall cite a handful of passages at length and offer some brief comments along the way so that you can hear Paul’s argument with slightly different emphases, emphases that insist that the Good News about Christ and his cross, what the Bible calls “the gospel,” calls out people, gathers them together, and transforms them. Any so-called Christianity that does not incorporate this reality into its vision is not worthy of the name it carries.”

― D.A. Carson

“The first doctrine to be denied, according to the Bible, is the doctrine of judgment. In many disputes about God and religion, this pattern often repeats itself, because if you can get rid of that one teaching, then rebellion has no adverse consequences, and so you are free to do anything.”

― D.A. Carson

“If God makes image-bearers and pronounces what is good and what is evil, if he orders the whole system, then to come along at any point and say, “No, I will declare my own good. What you declare to be evil, I will declare to be good. What you say is good, I will declare to be evil”—this is why the tree bearing this fruit is said to be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What is crucial is not the tree but the rebellion. What is so wretchedly tragic is God’s image-bearer standing over against God. This is the de-god-ing of God so that I can be my own god. This, in short, is idolatry.”

― D.A. Carson

“We should not think that the serpent’s temptation is nothing more than an invitation to break a rule, arbitrary or otherwise. That is what a lot of people think that “sin” is: just breaking a rule. What is at stake here is something deeper, bigger, sadder, uglier, more heinous. It is a revolution. It makes me god and thus de-gods God.”

― D.A. Carson

“This is the God who is there, who has named himself and disclosed himself. In his mercy he has come back again and again to save his people, and he keeps promising an even greater deliverance to come. He insists that the reason people do not see this reality is that this side of the fall we human beings suffer from such a deep moral and spiritual corruption that we are blind to the obvious. It is the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God.”

― D.A. Carson

“There is no way back to innocence. In the Bible, there is only a way forward—to the cross.”

― D.A. Carson

“No, there is only one way you are going to have a relationship with this kind of God, and that is if he displays sovereign grace to you. We have nothing with which to barter.”

― D.A. Carson

“Do you want to know where God’s justice is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. Do you want to know where God’s love is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. There Jesus, the God-man, bore hell itself, and God did this both to be just and to be the one who declares just those who have faith in him.”

― D.A. Carson

“The point is that the temple in the Old Testament was the great meeting place between God and human beings, as we have seen. It was the place of sacrifice. Now Jesus, referring to his own body, says, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” He means that by the destruction of his own life and its resurrection, he becomes the great meeting place between God and human beings. By rising again after his death, he becomes the great temple with all the power that is required to bring someone back from the dead.”

― D.A. Carson

“There is a wonderful chapter, John 17, that is sometimes called “Jesus’s high priestly prayer,” where there is a kind of extended meditation on the fact that in eternity past the Father loved the Son in a perfection of love. And in return, the Son loved the Father in a perfection of love, past our wildest, most generous imaginations.”

― D.A. Carson

“We human beings are a mystery to ourselves. We are rational and irrational, civilized and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger. We are Rembrandt and Hitler, Mozart and Stalin, Antigone and Lady Macbeth, Ruth and Jezebel. “What a work of art,” says Shakespeare of humanity. “We are very dangerous,” says Arthur Miller in After the Fall. “We meet . . . not in some garden of wax fruit and painted leaves that lies East of Eden, but after the Fall, after many, many deaths.”

― D.A. Carson

“The most spectacular display of God’s glory is in a bloody instrument of torture because that is where God’s goodness was most displayed. It is good to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but we must also sing, “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame”—because there God displayed his glory in Christ Jesus, who thus became our tabernacle, our temple, the meeting place between God and human beings.”

― D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson

Donald Arthur Carson is a Canadian-born evangelical theologian and professor of New Testament.

Carson served as pastor of Richmond Baptist Church in Richmond, British Columbia from 1970 to 1972. Following his doctoral studies, he served for three years at Northwest Baptist Theological College (Vancouver) and in 1976 was the founding dean of the seminary. In 1978, Carson joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he is currently serving as research professor.

Carson has written or edited 57 books, many of which have been translated into Chinese.
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