Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“It is the best way to limit power and make government more or less responsive; it is not the best way of determining right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and bad.”

“David faces enemies who attack him like a pack of wolves, but if the Lord is his light and salvation, David will not be afraid. With a God this sovereign, this good, this self-revealing, this delightful, how will he not also be our security?”

“The aim of this chapter has been to recognize, within a Christian framework, certain truths in postmodernity, without getting snookered by the entire package. The Scylla of modernity and the Charybdis of postmodernity are equally uninviting to those who want to follow another Way, who are convinced that in a universe made by and for a personal/transcendent and omniscient God who talks, the only reasonable stance is that of the apostle Paul: “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).”

“Conscience may be instructed and shaped by truth. But until conscience has been reformed by Scripture, it is best not to contravene it.”

“This is a point that our generation cannot afford to ignore. Why is it that we constantly parade Christian athletes, media personalities, and pop singers? Why should we think that their opinions or their experiences of grace are of any more significance than those of any other believer? When we tell outsiders about people in our church, do we instantly think of the despised and the lowly who have become Christians, or do we love to impress people with the importance of the men and women who have become Christians? Modern Western evangelicalism is deeply infected with the virus of triumphalism, and the resulting illness destroys humility, minimizes grace, and offers far too much homage to the money and influence and “wisdom” of our day. Paul”

“In any declining culture much of the declension comes about by leaders and preachers who are self-serving or even rapacious, corrupt, and perhaps vicious, people who are far more interested in retaining power than in serving, people who devote more attention to the “spin” they will give to public answers than to the truthfulness of their answers. Pretty soon the entire fabric of the culture unravels. Corruption is soon tolerated, then expected. Cynicism becomes the order of the day. More and more people do more and more of what they think they can get away with. Integrity becomes so rare it is newsworthy.”

“In our shortsightedness we sometimes think God is a little abrupt when in certain passages, not least in the Old Testament, he instantly chastens his people for their sins. But what is the alternative? Quite simply, it is not instantly chastening them. If chastening were merely a matter of remedial education to morally neutral people, the timing and severity would not matter very much; we would learn. But the Bible insists that this side of the Fall we are by nature and persistent choice rebels against God. If we are chastened, we whine at God's severity. If we are not chastened, we descend into debauchery until the very foundations of society are threatened. We may then cry to God for mercy. Well and good, but at least we should see that it would have been a mercy if we had not been permitted to descend so far down into the abyss.”

“Despite the verve and wit of his writing, Fox is simply wrong on so many points it is hard to know where to begin. To argue that there is no “mystical” tradition within the heritage of orthodox Christianity is simply astonishing. His exegesis of biblical texts exhibits the kind and range of errors that a first-year seminarian would be worked over for—either that, or, more likely perhaps, his exegesis betrays a thorough commitment to the canons of postmodernity (but in that case, why is he so passionate about trying to convince the rest of us what ought to be?). There is no attempt to wrestle with the rising literature that places “green” concerns within the framework of the Bible’s story-line and the matrix of Christian theology;56 rather, there is an eclectic and emotional takeover of Christian terms, history, heritage, and language in order to serve an agenda fundamentally extra-biblical and finally anti-biblical. The real tragedy is that Fox’s analysis of the human dilemma is unutterably shallow. Even when he makes telling points about the earth, the best of them can easily be brought under the framework of responsible Christian living in God’s universe. But his thought, characterized by a kind of new paganism, does not deal with most of the human ills and sins that generate the very evils he is concerned about—and a lot of others to which he is curiously indifferent.”

“When my daughter was born, my wife found herself unable to nurse our infant. That gave me the privilege of sharing the midnight feedings. Tiffany was a dream: I could zap the formula in the microwave, change her, feed her the whole eight ounces, and tuck her back into her crib—all in under twenty minutes. Then our son came along. Midnight feedings with him were horrendous. Although he had an enormous appetite, he sucked and drank with only three speeds: slow, dead slow, and stop. Worse, he had to be burped every ounce or so—a painfully slow process—or he would display his remarkable gift for projectile vomiting. Without any warning, he could upchuck what he had taken in and send it fifteen feet across the room. If there were an Olympic event in projectile vomiting, he would have taken one of the medals. I never got him back into his crib in under an hour; an hour and a half was more common.”

“Moreover, this covenant has a confirming sign. The Noahic covenant had the sign of the rainbow; the Abrahamic, circumcision; the Sinai covenant, the sprinkled blood. The everlasting covenant has as its eternal sign a transformed universe (55:12-13; cf. 2:2-5; 11:1-16).”

“James”

“The locus of the new covenant community was no longer a nation (as was the old covenant community) but a transnational fellowship seeking to live out the new life imparted by the Spirit in a world that could not be expected to share its values. Moreover, this world, politically speaking, was not a democracy in which ordinary citizens could have much direct say in the organization and direction of the Empire. It is impossible to draw straight lines from their circumstances to ours. Nevertheless it is impossible not to recognize that in the current unravelling of Western culture our drift toward pluralism is casting up many parallels to the situation Christians faced in the first century. More precisely, we find in our culture two opposing hermeneutical effects. At one level our culture is departing from the heritage of Judeo-Christian values that so long sustained it, and so we are removing ourselves from the worldview of New Testament writers. At another level we are returning, through no virtue of our own, to something analogous to the pluralistic world the earliest Christians had to confront, and so in this sense the New Testament can be applied to us and our culture more directly than was possible fifty years ago. The fundamental difference, of course, is that the modern rush toward pluralism owes a great deal to the church’s weaknesses and compromises during the past century or two, while the church in the first century carried no such burden. Moreover, the earliest Christians confronted their world from the position of the underdog; we are inclined to confront our world from the position of the once favored mascot who has recently become or is in the process of becoming the neighborhood cur, and expend too much of our energy on howls of protesting outrage. Even so, we shall be less morbid and despairing if we read the Scriptures today and recognize that the challenges of pluralism are not entirely new.”

“The point is that however much the Old Testament points to Jesus, much of this prophecy is in veiled terms—in types and shadows and structures of thought.”

“To “remember” God is not simply to recall the bare fact of his existence, but to abandon all illusions of independence and self-sufficiency as God regains his rightful centrality in our lives. God made everything, he alone sees the entire pattern, he is the One who has put eternity into our hearts (3:11). He is the One who made everything good, and we are the ones who have done so much damage with our schemes (7:29).”

“...the rising biblical illiteracy in Western culture means that the Bible is increasingly a closed book, even to many Christians. As the culture drifts away from its former rootedness in a Judeo-Christian understanding of God, history, truth, right and wrong, purpose, judgment, forgiveness, and community, so the Bible seems stranger and stranger. For precisely the same reason, it becomes all the more urgent to read it and reread it, so that at least confessing Christians preserve the heritage and outlook of a mind shaped and informed by holy Scripture.”

“In short, if we do not comprehend the massive role that sin plays in the Bible and therefore in biblically faithful Christianity, we shall misread the Bible.”

“It is our obligation, as people created and owned by God, to give him the honor and glory that is due to him, to live and speak and act and think in a way that recognizes and acknowledges his authority over us. We are made by him, owned by him, dependent on him, and therefore accountable to him.”

“Piense en ese hermano o hermana a quien no se ha molestado en conocer porque no piensa que serán compatibles. Piense en esa persona con la que tiene una relación rota y no ha querido repararla. Ahora considere que esa misma persona ama y adora al mismo Señor que usted. Considere que el mismo Señor que murió por usted, también murió por él, o ella. Me pregunto si su entendimiento del evangelio de Jesucristo–las buenas nuevas de que Jesús le salvó sin que usted lo mereciera–es lo suficientemente profundo como para tragarse las pequeñas críticas que tiene contra sus hermanos y hermanas. Me pregunto si es lo suficientemente profundo como para enterrar las ofensas que han cometido en su contra, incluyendo las más dolorosas, y como para llevarle a perdonarlos y amarlos justo como Jesús mismo lo ha hecho por usted. Me pregunto si la vastedad del amor de Dios por usted ha incrementado su amor por los demás.”

“God does not declare us righteous because we are ourselves righteous. And thank God that is true, because none of us would meet that standard! No, God declares us righteous because by faith, we are clothed with Christ’s righteous life. God saves us by pure grace, not because of anything we have done, but solely because of what Jesus has done for us.”

“It's (sin) the breaking of a relationship, and even more, it is a rejection of God Himself--a repudiation of God's rule, God's care, God's authority, and God's right to command those to whom He gave life.”