Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“The notion that you can come to church on Sunday and bend your knee in worship when in fact you have not done so during the week is a delusion.”

“To put one’s faith in King Jesus is to renounce his enemies.”

“There is great urgency—there are sheep without a shepherd, unprotected from death—let’s pray. There is great opportunity—there is a harvest waiting to be brought in, if only there are harvesters to do it—let’s pray.”

“Don’t roll your eyes. This question may make you “face palm” in amazement at how strange someone else’s conscience might be. That’s typically how someone with a strong conscience reacts when they hear about the scruples of the weak. But to the weak of conscience, these are life-and-death matters. Conscience is always a life-and-death matter since sinning against it is always a sin, and getting used to sinning against conscience in one area will make it easier to sin against conscience in other areas. The strong must not look down on the weak but bear with them (Romans 15:1) and, if opportunity arises, gently help them calibrate their conscience (p. 79).”

“We do not speak for Christ because we do not so love his name that we cannot bear to see him unacknowledged and unadored. If only our eyes were opened to see his glory, and if only we felt wounded by the shame of his public humiliation among men, we should not be able to remain silent. Rather would we echo the apostles’ words [in Acts 4 v 20]: “we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

“Forbearance and genuine tenderheartedness are much tougher than niceness, and sometimes…tough love is confrontational (p. 54).”

“Not a drop of rain can fall outside the orb of Jesus’ sovereignty. All our days—our health, our illnesses, our joys, our victories, our tears, our prayers, and the answers to our prayers—fall within the sweep of the sovereignty of one who wears a human face, a thorn-shadowed face.”

“In the biblical view of things, a deeper knowledge of God brings with it improvement in the other areas mentioned: purity, integrity, a willingness to sacrifice, evangelistic faithfulness, better study of Scripture, improved private and corporate worship, better relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ, a heart for the lost, and much more. But if we seek these things without passionately desiring a deeper knowledge of God, we may be running after God’s blessings or pursuing God’s power without running after him.”

“The New Testament writers, even while writing the texts on love and forbearance that we are trying to understand and obey, condemn false prophets, expel the man who is sleeping with his step-mother, declare that it would be better for Judas Iscariot if he had not been born, assure readers that the evil of Alexander the metal-worker will be required of him, and solemnly warn of eternal judgement to come. Sometimes, of course, churches with right-wing passions use these same texts to bully their members unto unflagging submission to the local dictator. The threat of church discipline can degenerate into a form of manipulation, of spiritual abuse. Where, then, is the line to be drawn? To a postmodern relativist, any form of confessional discipline will seem nothing more than intolerant, manipulative abuse. From a Christian perspective, what lines must be drawn and why? How does Christian love work itself out in such cases? (p. 149).”

“What we actually do reflects our highest priorities. That means we can proclaim our commitment to prayer until the cows come home, but unless we actually pray, our actions disown our words.”

“Christian freedom is not “I always do what I want.” Nor is it “I always do whatever the other person wants.” It is “I do what brings glory to God. I do what brings others under the influence of the gospel. I do what leads to peace in the church (p. 115).”

“The fundamental danger with all critical study of the Bible lies in what hermeneutical experts call distanciation. Distanciation is a necessary component of critical work; but it is difficult and sometimes costly.”

“In all our pursuit of excellence, we must never worship excellence. That would simply be idolatrous.”

“If this were all the Bible discloses about God, we would read in its pages of a holy God of impeccable justice. But what of love? The love of Allah is providential, which, as we saw in the first chapter, is one of the ways the Bible speaks of God. But here there is more: in eternity past, the Father loved the Son, and the Son loved the Father. There has been an other-orientation to the love of God. All the manifestations of the love of God emerge out of this deeper, more fundamental reality: love is bound up in the very nature of God. God is love.”

“knowledge of God’s will, knowledge that consists of all spiritual wisdom and understanding, turns in part on obedience, on conformity to the will of God.”

“But if you define success in terms of faithfulness, then you are in a position to persevere, because you are released from the demand of immediately observable results, freeing you for faithfulness to the Gospel’s message and methods, leaving numbers to the Lord.”

“When God finds us so puffed up that we do not feel our need for him, it is an act of kindness on his part to take us down a peg or two; it would be an act of judgment to leave us in our vaulting self-esteem.”

“It shouldn’t surprise you that you have a conscience. You’re made in the image of God, and God is a moral God, so you must be a moral creature who makes moral judgments.”

“It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming for impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety-hour weeks: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out.”

“Briefly, the Regulative Principle states that everything we do in a corporate worship gathering must be clearly warranted by Scripture. Clear warrant can either take the form of an explicit biblical command, or a good and necessary implication of a biblical text.”