Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“Biblical preaching emphasizes the gospel and constantly elevates Christ crucified. But it also recognizes that the cross is not only our creed, it is the standard of our ministry.”

“But today, do not make the same mistake. If you hear the voice of God, believe and obey—unlike the response of your forefathers.” The very people whom God had saved from slavery were the ones he condemned to wander and die in the desert. So today the people of God should persevere in their faith and obedience, and not tumble into the unbelief (4:19) of their ancestors.”

“Old-fashioned hermeneutics belongs to the “modern” era in which science, scholarship, and serious study were thought capable of resolving most problems, of answering most questions, of understanding all of reality. Radical hermeneutics, by contrast, recognizes the subjectivity of interpretation, and how much of it is shaped by the cultures and subcultures to which the interpreter belongs.”

“. The ultimate rest, the writer of Hebrews insists, can only be the Gospel, in which men and women cease from their works (as God rested from his at Creation). All of this argumentation depends on reading the Bible in its salvation-historical progression, that is, reading it sequentially along its story-line and observing how the bits not only hang together but point forward and anticipate greater things to come. The argument is not one of analogy but of typology. That is what is calling us to persevering faith and obedience; that is part of what makes the word of God living, active, and penetrating (4:12-13).”

“If that is the case, it is vitally important to see that although God in his sovereignty rules over everything, including all deaths, this reign for him is not some cold piece of accounting. He knows better than we do the sheer ugliness and abnormality of death, how it is irrefragably tied to our rebellion and the curse we have attracted. It is immensely comforting to perceive that the death of the devout costs Yahweh dear. Still more wonderful is the price he was willing to pay to supplant death by resurrection.”

“Some churches try so hard to be user-friendly and relational that the Bible is implicitly ignored or depreciated. In one evangelical church that I recently attended, the morning’s skit came in three secenes that devoured about fifteen minutes. The closing lines on true love and friendship emerged from a scene in which one woman was giving comfort and love to another who had just had a miscarriage. The latter thanked her for not quoting verses like Romans 8:28 at her, but just loving her. Now I realize that quoting verses “at” someone can be done in an insensitive and triumphalistic fashion. Yet the fact remains that no Christian who passes through deep waters draws much comfort from God until he or she realizes that God really is in control, God really does love his own people, God really is wise and good, God really can use pain in this fallen world in remarkable ways.77 To turn people away from such God-centered truths to appeal to purely human comfort I might have expected from a liberal church; it is crushingly disappointing in a church that nominally retains its evangelical statement of faith.”

“Where one delights in the Word of God, constantly meditating on it, there one learns good counsel, there one's conduct is shaped by revelation, there one nurtures the grace of gratitude and praise. That is a sufficient criterion.”

“The unvarnished truth is that what we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value. If a large percentage of our thanksgiving is for material prosperity, it is because we value material prosperity proportionately.”

“The idea is not that Jesus gains through suffering a moral perfection he otherwise would have lacked, but that the perfection of his identification with us depended on participating in our common currency, which is suffering.”

“When one reads the Gospels rapidly, one after the other, again and again, one cannot but be struck by the towering figure of Jesus. Though they reflect the churches’ convictions, the Gospels are not about the churches’ convictions: they are about Jesus Christ. His excellence, his uniqueness, his authority, his compassion, his love, his wisdom, his holiness, all shine through passage after passage. What is important for the present discussion is to observe how these excellencies of Jesus are tied to the central biblical story-line, combining to create a whole worldview in which Jesus is the culmination of God’s redemptive promises, the highest disclosure of God himself, the Word incarnate; Jesus is the one who saves us from our sin, who inaugurates the kingdom, and who will one day consummate it.”

“It may be difficult to provide a perfect definition for Christian love. But it is not difficult to find its supreme example. Christ's love for us is not grounded in our loveliness, but in his own character. His love is not merely sentimental, yet it is charged with incalculable affection and warmth. It is resolute in its self-sacrifice, but never merely mechanical self-discipline.”

“When we live up to our calling, we remember that in God’s church people do not set the agenda, they are the agenda.”

“. What these two spheres of revelation demand is more than awe in the face of transcendent power, and more than personal delight in the personal, talking God—but both.”

“One of the principal arguments of this book is that confessional Christianity cannot wholly embrace either modernity or postmodernity, yet it must learn certain lessons from both; it must vigorously oppose many features of philosophical pluralism, without retreating to modernism.”

“Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher’s sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life.”

“To make it this way, with an emphasis on the love of Christ as that from which we cannot be separated, reminds us of the sheer glory and pleasure that is ours, both now and in eternity, to be in such a relationship. We are not simply acquitted; we are loved. We are loved not simply by a peer, but by God himself. Nor is this a reference to the general love that God has for his entire creation. What is at stake here is that special love that attaches to "all who have been called according to his purpose" (8:28).”

“But the form of his utterance emphasizes God’s sovereign providence even while implicitly acknowledging that providence is hard to read. God’s people must act responsibly, wisely, strategically in light of the circumstances that play out around them, knowing that God is in control.”

“Thus despite the best efforts we rebels can mount, God will not be gagged. We invent new ways of gagging God, of silencing him, of marginalizing or dismissing his revelation. But God has spoken, and by his Spirit through the Word still speaks.”

“Moreover, if we joyfully confess the lordship of Christ, then when we ask what is best for people our answers will be cast in terms of what he thinks is best for people, not necessarily what people think is best for themselves.”

“In every generation, what ultimately distinguishes the true from the false among God’s people, the blessed from the cursed, is faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the Word of God.”