Best 517 quotes of Timothy Keller on MyQuotes

Accepted in Christ, we now run the race 'for the joy that is set before us' rather than 'for fear that comes behind us'.

A Christian is somebody whose eyes have been opened, who admits that Jesus is not what you expected, but he’s what you need.

A church must be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional liberal churches and more deeply and practically committed to evangelism and conversion than traditional fundamentalist churches. This kind of church is profoundly counter-intuitive to American observers. It breaks their ability to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of church has any chance in the non-Christian west.

A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

Adam wasn't lonely because he was imperfect but because he was perfect. The ache for friends is not the result of sin.

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

After creation God said, 'It is finished'-and he rested. After redemption Jesus said, 'It is finished'-and we can rest.

A genuinely persuasive argument does not merely tell you that you are wrong about everything. It doesn't just beat on you from the outside. It comes inside your belief system, as it were, and affirms something you believe strongly. And then it says - well if you believe this (A) then why in the world can't you see that B is true?

A god of less wrath than the God of the Bible is necessarily a god of less love. His anger is a product of his love.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.

A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.

A life of gratitude to God for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self-righteousness over being good.

All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.

All Christians have opportunities to serve those who might never come to church or listen to a sermon.

All forms of love are necessary, and none are to be ignored, but all of us find some forms of love to be more emotionally valuable to us. They are a currency that we find particularly precious, a language that delivers the message of love to our hearts with the most power. Some types of love are more thrilling and fulfilling to us when we receive them.

All human problems are ultimately symptoms, and our separation from God is the cause.

All I know is, if I don't care about the poor, if my church doesn't care about the poor, that's evil.

All life-changing love is inconvenient.

An idol is something that we look to for things that only God can give. Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtly but deadly mistake. The sign that you have slipped into this form of self-justification is that you become what the book of Proverbs calls a 'scoffer'.

Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross

A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

Are you living to justify yourself, or are you living because you are justified?

A rich, vibrant, consoling, hard-won prayer life is the one good that makes it possible to receive all other kinds of goods rightly and beneficially. [Paul] does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself.

As long as we think we are not that bad, the idea of grace will never change us.

As things are brought back under Christ's rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom.

A triune God would call us to converse with him . . . because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself.

At the cross, we see the worst that sin can do, as humanity - of which each one of us is a part - crucified the Lord. But at the cross, we also see that the most that sin can do cannot thwart God's salvation.

At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone. . . . Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.

At the root of all our disobedience are particular ways in which we continue to seek control of our lives through systems of works-righteousness. The way to progress as a Christian is to continually repent and uproot these systems the same way we become Christians, namely by the vivid depiction (and re-depiction) of Christ’s saving work for us, and the abandoning of self-trusting efforts to complete ourselves. We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ-crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what he did and who we are in him.

Because creation was made in the image of a God who is equally one and many, the human race will finally be reunited and our racial and cultural diversity will remain intact in the renewed world. The human race finally lives together in peace and interdependence. Glory to God in the highest goes with peace on earth.

Because of the Cross, God can be both just towards sin and yet mercifully justifying to sinners.

Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.

Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts... It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them.

Big cities have a lot of 'younger brothers' who have left traditional parts of the world and their families for a more liberal lifestyle. But cities are filled to the gills with 'elder brothers' too.

Both men and women today see marriage not as a way of creating character and community but as a way to reach personal life goals. They are looking for a marriage partner who will 'fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires.' And that creates an extreme idealism that in turn leads to a deep pessimism that you will ever find the right person to marry.

But resurrection is not just consolation — it is restoration. We get it all back — the love, the loved ones, the goods, the beauties of this life — but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory and joy and strength.

But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God

Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties

Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering the radical grace of God.

Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, but it does provide deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair

Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration - not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.

Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.

Christians don't believe that goodness gets you to heaven. Christians believe it's exhausting to rely on your own goodness to please God.

Christians necessarily believe we depend on God for everything-a prayerless Christian, then, is a contradiction in terms.

Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God.

Christians tend to motivate others with guilt. We tend to say: You would do this if you were really committed Christians, indicating that we are committed and all that is needed is for others to become as good as we are! This is why so many churches quench the motivation of people for ministry. In our shoes, Paul would say: Remember the grace God has showered on you—what does living out and enjoying that grace look like in this situation?

Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them.

Christmas is an invitation by God to say: Look what I've done to come near to you. Now draw near to me...I want to be a friend.

Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.