John Stott Quotes:

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.

Topics: Christian, Vision, Missionary, Jesus Inspirational, Inspirational Missionary

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

Topics: Sacrifice, Men, Essence, Assertion, Service And Sacrifice

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.

Topics: Greatness, Kingdoms, Obedience, Kingdom Of God

An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community.

Topics: Christian, Lying, Community, Purpose Of God, Afterthought

The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God.

Topics: People, Spirit, Submit, Man Of God

The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Topics: Friday, Lying, Heart, Good Friday, Substitution

God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?

Topics: Christian, Real, Hands, Pious, Cellars

Saving faith is resting faith, the trust which relies entirely on the Savior.

Topics: Saving, Savior, Rely

Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony

source: - John Stott (2015). “TNTC Letters of John”, p.150, SPCK

Topics: Children, Together, May, Child Of God

Christians who neglect the Bible simply do not mature.

source: - John R. W. Stott (1991). “You Can Trust the Bible: Our Foundation for Belief and Obedience”, Discovery House Pub

Topics: Christian, Mature, Neglect, Spiritual Maturity

The gospel is NOT preached if Christ is not preached.

Topics: Christ

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

Topics: Christian, Responsibility, Impossible

The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.

Topics: Friday, Jesus, Crosses, Good Friday

I have sometimes called this 'double listening'. Listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and listening to the voices of the modern world, with all their cries of anger, pain and despair.

Topics: Pain, Voice, Listening

The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.

source: - John Stott (2016). “Reading Romans with John Stott”, p.113, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Prayer, Purpose

Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.

Topics: Jesus, Men, Earth, Nazareth

Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God's call to us to do so.

Topics: Christian, Decision, Christ, Following Jesus

The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Secret, Relevance

Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.

Topics: Prayer, Humble, Needs, Dependence

... what I believe to be one of the major tragedies in the Church today. Namely, that evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary but not biblical, and almost nobody is building bridges and relating the biblical text to the modern context

Topics: Believe, Biblical, Bridges, Church Today, Building Bridges

These then are the marks of the ideal Church - love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.

Topics: Humility, Suffering, Church, Sound Doctrine, Genuineness

Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.

Topics: Humble, Leader, Christian Leaders

We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead.

source: - "Authentic Christianity". Book by John Stott, 1995.

Topics: Bible, Christian, Needs, Mind Made Up, Sanctification

It is a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our savior.

Topics: Judging, Comfort, Savior, Mighty God, Confidence In God

A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Men

The good news is the gospel of God, about Christ, according to Scripture, for the nations, unto the obedience of faith, and for the sake of the Name.

Topics: Names, News, Sake

We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve.

Topics: Jesus, Expression, World

The chief occupational hazard of leadership is pride.

Topics: Pride, Hazards, Chiefs, Occupational Hazards

Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Vision, Christian Discipleship, True Vision

A Christian should resemble a fruit tree with real fruit, not a Christmas tree with decorations tied on

Topics: Christian, Real, Tree, Christmas Tree, Fruit Trees

There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God.

source: - George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama (2017). “Inaugural Speeches from the Presidents of the United States - Complete Edition”, p.210, e-artnow sro

Topics: Ambition, Inappropriate, Cherish

We live and die; Christ died and lived!

Topics: Easter, Christ, Jesus Christ Easter, Jesus Resurrection, Kids Easter

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

Topics: Easter, Done, Christianity, Christ On The Cross

Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.

Topics: Christian, Water, Baptism, Forgiveness Of Sins

Nobody can call himself a Christian who does not worship Jesus.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Doe, Worship Jesus

It is no exaggeration to say that without Scripture a Christian life is impossible.

Topics: Christian, Scripture, Impossible

God condemned sin in Christ, so that holiness might appear in us.

Topics: Holiness, Might, Sin

Many (Christians) have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless.

Topics: Christian, Clueless, Enlightenment

The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless "all the families of the earth," he has promised to do so "through Abraham's seed" (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). Now we are Abraham's seed by faith, and the earth's families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God's plain purpose.

Topics: Christian, Blessed, Purpose

We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.

Topics: Waiting, Church, Needs, Pentecost

A gift is acceptable according to what the giver has, not according to what he has not.

Topics: Generosity, Giver

At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself.

Topics: God Love, Christ, Holy, Divine Mercy

Why is it that some Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, as missionaries? What on earth impels them? It is not in order to commend a civilization, an institution or an ideology, but rather a person, Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be unique.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Believe, Land And Sea

Mission arises from the heart of God Himself and is communicated from His heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.

Topics: Heart, People, Arise, Outreach

Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.

Topics: Believe, Heaven, Church

The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.

Topics: Jesus, Self, People

The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him.

Topics: People, Reason, Chiefs

We can all be stimulated to greater generosity by the known generosity of others.

Topics: Generosity, Stewardship, Generosity Of Others, Biblical Stewardship

Pride is more than the first of the seven deadly sins; it is itself the essence of all sin.

Topics: Pride, Essence, Firsts, Deadly Sins, Seven Deadly Sins

It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.

Topics: Prayer, Goes On, Our Love

Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvellous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern world.

Topics: Christian, Mind, Development, Marvellous

The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.

source: - John R. W. Stott (1985). “Involvement: Social and sexual relationships in the modern world”, Fleming H. Revell Company

Topics: Christian, Humble, Hands, Christian Leaders

What we need is not more learning, not more eloquence, not more persuasion, not more organization, but more power from the Holy Spirit.

Topics: Organization, Needs, Spirit

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.

Topics: Christian, Focus, Community, Eucharistic, Offering To God

Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God's Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men.

Topics: Men, Speech, Down And

The hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutiny and, if necessary, reform.

Topics: Inspirational, Success, Uplifting, Old Traditions

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, 'I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.' Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Galatians”, p.63, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Cutting, Gay, Suffering

Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.

Topics: Grace, Care, Rescue

Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.

Topics: Acceptance, Religion, Apathy

The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.

Topics: Fall, Love Is, Fire

In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

Topics: Pain, Real, World, Immune

Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and checkered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture .

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of the Sermon on the Mount”, p.44, SPCK

Topics: Christian, Long, Tragedy, Checkered, Counter Culture

A Christian's freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of His care.

Topics: Christian, Father, Worry, Overcoming Anxiety

No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.

Topics: Stars, Dark, Night

Here's how to determine God's will for your life: Go wherever your gifts will be exploited the most.

Topics: Determine, God's Will

Scripture is the royal scepter by which King Jesus rules his church

Topics: Jesus, Kings, Church

Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.

Topics: Christian, Conservative, Should

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross.

Topics: Christian, Focus, Doe

The chief reason why the Christian believes in the divine origin of the Bible is that Jesus Christ Himself taught it.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Believe

The essence of apostasy is changing sides from that of the crucified to that of the crucifier.

Topics: Essence, Sides, Apostasy

Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion. The concept of resurrection lies at its heart. If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed.

Topics: Lying, Heart, Essence

We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.

source: - "John Stott: 10 Memorable Quotes" by Eryn Sun, www.christianpost.com. July 28, 2011.

Topics: Spiritual, Patterns, Complacency

If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love.

Topics: Suffering, Church, Firsts, Genuineness

Simplicity is the first cousin of contentment.

Topics: Cousin, Simplicity, Contentment

Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Acts”, p.27, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Christian, Character, Understanding, Christian Discipleship, Christlikeness

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us with no other choice.

Topics: Giving, Choices, Heaven, Christian Missionary, Hope Of Success

The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men... but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.

Topics: Jesus, Ambition, Men, Presumptuous

Faith's only function is to receive what grace offers.

Topics: Grace, Function, Offers

God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.

source: - John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, p.172, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Doe, God Love, Christ

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.

Topics: Christian, Pain, Exercise

Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfuln ess, not by self-congratula tion.

Topics: Christian, Sacrifice, Self

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.

Topics: Christian, Spiritual, Sacrifice

Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.

Topics: Judgment, Christ

Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.

Topics: Faith, Faith In God, Trustworthiness, Trust And Faith

Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.

source: - John Stott (1998). “Romans: Encountering the Gospel's Power”, Intervarsity Press

Topics: Jesus, Giving, Grace, Stoops

Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?

Topics: Spiritual, Biblical, Tolerance, Postmodernism, Legalism

When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.

Topics: Christian, Identity, True Identity

The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.

Topics: Lying, Church, Purpose

The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.

Topics: Christian, Tears, Truth Is

If we truly worship God, acknowledging and adoring his infinite worth, we find ourselves impelled to make him known to others, in order that they may worship him too. Thus worship leads to witness, and witness in its turn to worship, in a perpetual circle.

Topics: Order, Circles, May

Truth without love is too hard; love without truth is too soft.

Topics: Love Is, Hard Love, Truth Is, Without Love

Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.

source: - John Stott (2015). “TNTC Letters of John”, p.160, SPCK

Topics: Christian Inspirational, Our Love, Love Grows

We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather we should ask, “What has happened to salt and light?

Topics: Light, Religion, World, Salt And Light

At every step of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend.

Topics: Christian, Humility, Pride, Christian Discipleship

Do not be content with a static Christian life. Determine rather to grow in faith and love, in knowledge and holiness.

Topics: Christian, Holiness, And Love, Faith And Love, Christian Life

God has clothed His thoughts in words, and there is no way to know Him except by knowing the Scriptures.

Topics: Knowing, Way, Scripture

Faith, Hope & Love. Faith is directed towards God, love towards others (both within the Christian fellowship and beyond it) and hope towards the future, in particular, the glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Similarly, faith rests of the past; love works in the present; hope looks to the future. Every Christian without exception is a believer, a lover and a hoper. Faith, hope and love are three sure evidences of regeneration by the Holy Spirit.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Thessalonians”, p.18, SPCK

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Past, Faith Hope Love, Looking To The Future

Although we have responsibilities to others, we are primarily accountable to God. It is before him that we stand, and to him that one day we must give an account. We should not therefore rate human opinion too highly.

Topics: Responsibility, Giving, One Day, Responsibility To Others

No man preaches his sermon well to others if he does not first preach it to his own heart.

Topics: Heart, Men, Doe, Sermons

It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Galatians”, p.63, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Feet, Size, Crosses

The church is under orders. Evangelistic inactivity is disobedience.

Topics: Order, Church, Inactivity

All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousn ess, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

Topics: Self, Views, Feet, Calvary

When we look at the cross we see the justice, love, wisdom and power of God. It is not easy to decide which is the most luminously revealed, whether the justice of God in judging sin, or the love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, or the wisdom of God in perfectly combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God’s justice, love, wisdom and power. The cross assures us that this God is the reality within, behind and beyond the universe.

source: - John Stott, Alister E. McGrath (2006). “The Cross of Christ”, p.274, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Believe, Reality, Justice Of God, Love Wisdom

The cross is not just a badge to identify us...it is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disoriented world.

Topics: Giving, World, Compass

When Jesus is truly our Lord, He directs our lives and we gladly obey Him. Indeed, we bring every part of our lives under His lordship - our home and family, our sexuality and marriage, our job or unemployment, our money and possessions, our ambitions and recreations.

Topics: Jesus, Jobs, Home, Lordship, Home And Family

We should travel light and live simply. Our enemy is not possessions but excess.

source: - John R. W. Stott (1999). “Our Social and Sexual Revolution: Major Issues for a New Century”, Baker Publishing Group

Topics: Money, Light, Enemy, Travel Light, Live Simply

Never use a gallon of words to express a spoonful of thought. Our unadorned word should be enough.

Topics: Use, Enough, Should, Gallons

Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.

source: - John Stott (2015). “TNTC Letters of John”, p.145, SPCK

Topics: Prayer, Bending, Way

The Christian's chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.

Topics: Christian, Hazards, Discouragement, Occupational Hazards

The Bible isn’t about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us.

source: - John Stott (2012). “Basic Christianity”, p.17, InterVarsity Press

Topics: People, Trying, Reaching

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace.

source: - John Stott (2013). “Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life”, p.84, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Christian, Spiritual, Cutting, Superficiality

The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ's achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Galatians”, p.26, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Believe, Law, Achievement

The Christian life is not just our own private affair. If we have been born again into God's family, not only has he become our Father but every other Christian believer in the world, whatever his nation or denomination, has become our brother or sister in Christ. But it is no good supposing that membership of the universal Church of Christ is enough; we must belong to some local branch of it. Every Christian's place is in a local church. sharing in its worship, its fellowship, and its witness.

Topics: Christian, Brother, Father, Local Church, Church Of Christ

There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.

source: - John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Jesus, Christianity, Crosses

We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.

Topics: Country, Mean, Religion

Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.

source: - John Stott, Alister E. McGrath (2006). “The Cross of Christ”, p.206, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Heart, Perfection, God Love

God continues to speak through what He has spoken.

source: - John Stott (2013). “Through the Bible, Through the Year: Daily Reflections from Genesis to Revelation”, p.391, Candle Books

Topics: Speak

...The first and great evidence of our walking by the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit is not some private mystical experience of our own, but our practical relationships of love with other people.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Galatians”, p.56, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Mystical Experiences, People, Firsts

All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name.

Topics: Intelligent, Names, Worship

Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Ephesians”, p.1, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Mean, Good Work, Salvation

I believe that to preach or to expound the scripture is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and His people obey Him

source: - "Between Two Worlds: An Interview With John Stott". Interview With R. Albert Mohler, Jr., www.christianpost.com. August 8, 2011.

Topics: Believe, Voice, People

Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity - Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself.

source: - John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, p.57, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Vanity, Envy, Coins

Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you.

source: - John Stott (2013). “Through the Bible, Through the Year: Daily Reflections from Genesis to Revelation”, p.296, Candle Books

Topics: Jesus, May, Praying

Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; Christ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Galatians”, p.49, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Men, Circumcision, Done, Finished Work

The reason I am a Christian is not that it is nice, but that it is true.

source: - John Stott (2012). “Why I am a Christian: A Clear; Compelling Account Of The Basis Of The Author'S Belief”, p.19, SPCK

Topics: Christian, Nice, Reason

[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.

Topics: Christian, Rights, Views, Social Injustice, Dehumanization

Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and stewardship. Did God make the world? Does he sustain it? Has he committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for his own creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned.

Topics: Christian, Responsibility, People, Environmental Responsibility, Vanguard

Good conduct arises out of good doctrine.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Ephesians”, p.122, SPCK

Topics: Doctrine, Arise

Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.

source: - John R. W. Stott, Dale Larsen, Sandy Larsen (1998). “The Beatitudes: Developing Spiritual Character”, Intervarsity Press

Topics: Two, Persecution, Clash, Value Systems

Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection.

source: - John Stott, Rick Warren (2012). “Basic Christianity, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition”, p.70, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Topics: Jesus, Transformation, Resurrection

Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.

Topics: Intelligent, Names, Impossible

If Christ seldom makes offers without demands, He also seldom makes demands without offers. He offers His strength to enable us to meet His demands.

Topics: Demand, Christ, Offers

If we love our neighbor we shall without doubt tell him the good news of Jesus. But equally if we truly love our neighbor we shall not stop there.

Topics: Jesus, Doubt, News

Ambitions for self may be quite modest. . . . Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. How can we ever be content that he should acquire just a little more honour in the world? No. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place. We become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.

Topics: Kings, Ambition, Self

The question is not so much what the hand is doing (passing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it.

Topics: Heart, Thinking, Hands

We are to be strong in faith, and soft in love.

Topics: Strong

God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.

source: - John Stott (1992). “The contemporary Christian: an urgent plea for double listening”

Topics: Prayer, Liberty, Scripture

To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.

Topics: Home, Self Worth, Reality, God's Love, Christian Marriage

God intends... our care of Creation to reflect our love for the Creator.

Topics: Our Love, Care, Creation

We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church order whose principle of cohesion is a superficial social camaraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

source: - John Stott (2015). “TNTC Letters of John”, p.54, SPCK

Topics: Spiritual, Jesus, Father, Cohesion

The gospel creates the church, which spreads the gospel, which creates more churches, which in turn spread the gospel further ad infinitum.

source: - John Stott (2014). “The Message of Thessalonians”, p.16, SPCK

Topics: Church, Turns, Spread

Biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well....Thus Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God.

Topics: Christian, Biblical, Community

There is evidence for the deity of Jesus -- good, strong, historical , cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.

source: - John Stott, Rick Warren (2012). “Basic Christianity, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Topics: Suicide, Jesus, Strong, Honest Person

Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.

source: - John Stott (2013). “Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life”, p.19, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Powerful, Philosophy, Imagination, Captured

There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center.

Topics: Biblical, Christianity, Crosses

So, because in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human (in his birth), then bear our sins (in his death), then conquer death (in his resurrection) and then enter his people (by his Spirit), he is uniquely able to save sinners. Nobody else has his qualifications.

Topics: Jesus, People, Able, Nazareth, God First

A deaf church is a dead church: that is an unalterable principle.

Topics: Church, Principles, Deaf

The overriding reason why we should take other people's cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously.

Topics: Taken, People, Culture

Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.

Topics: Christian, Believe, Men, True Worship

I have never been able to conjure up (as some great Evangelical missionaries have) the appalling vision of the millions who are not only perishing but will inevitably perish. On the other hand... I am not and cannot be a universalist. Between these extremes I cherish and hope the majority of the human race will be be saved. And I have a solid biblical basis for this belief.

Topics: Biblical, Hands, Race

Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership.

source: - John R. W. Stott (1999). “Our Social and Sexual Revolution: Major Issues for a New Century”, Baker Publishing Group

Topics: Powerful, Compassion, Vision

The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.

source: - John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Sight, Christ On The Cross, Sin, Penitence

The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.

source: - John Stott (2012). “The Cross of Christ”, p.328, InterVarsity Press

Topics: Strong, Thrones, Speak

Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.

Topics: Christian, Self, World, Resonating, Self Revelation

If God speaks to us about himself and his own glorious greatness, we respond by humbling ourselves before him in worship... If He speaks to us about His commandments, we determine to obey them.

Topics: Greatness, Worship, Speak, Commandments

So close was Christ's connection with God that he equated a man's attitude to himself with the man's attitude to God.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Attitude