Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“Sin is so serious and so pervasive in the world that God’s redemptive work is the only antidote for it.”

“any society, no matter how tolerant, draws limits somewhere.10 In much of the Western world at the moment, however, there is very little culture-wide consensus on right and wrong, good and evil, holiness and sin, while tolerance has been elevated to the highest spot in the moral echelon. It’s not that we have self-consciously taken that step; rather, for reasons I’ve tried to outline elsewhere, tolerance has become more important than truth, morality, or any widely held value system. Tolerance becomes the supreme good, the supreme god in the culture’s pantheon, in a sphere of existence that often argues by merest clichés11 and that has very few other widely agreed desiderata. The complicating irony is that those who hold tenaciously to the supreme virtue of this new tolerance are by and large extremely intolerant of those who do not agree with them.”

“tolerance has been elevated to the highest spot in the moral echelon.”

“The deep cultural animus against the category of sin means that many preachers much prefer to talk about weaknesses, mistakes, tragedies, failures, inconsistencies, hurts, disappointment, blindness—anything but sin.”

“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.”

“The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.3”

“In the days of the early church, the declaration “Jesus is Lord!” was a seditious and blasphemous rejection of the emperor’s authority, and they killed Christians for saying it. Today, the declaration “Jesus is Lord” is an intolerant and bigoted rejection of pluralism, and the world reviles us for it.”

“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.”

“In the last book of J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnificent epic The Lord of the Rings, the heroes of the story come to the darkest part of their journey. They’ve traveled a thousand miles and come finally to the evil land that has been their goal, but for several different reasons, everything seems lost now. Yet in that darkest moment, one of the heroes, Sam, looks into the black sky. Here’s what Tolkien writes: Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. That is one of my favorite moments in the story, because it is right there that Tolkien, who himself professed faith in Christ, points us to where we find the courage to press on through darkness. It comes from hope. It comes from knowing that our present sufferings are indeed a small and passing thing, and that, as Paul said, they truly are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us when our King returns.”

“When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit, therefore, they weren’t just violating some arbitrary command, “Don’t eat the fruit.” They were doing something much sadder and much more serious. They were rejecting God’s authority over them and declaring their independence from him. Adam and Eve wanted to be, as the Serpent promised them, “like God,” so both of them seized on what they thought was an opportunity to shed the vice-regency and take the crown itself. In all the universe, there was only one thing God had not placed under Adam’s feet—God himself. Yet Adam decided this arrangement was not good enough for him, and so he rebelled.”

“When a church listens and follows, it begins to look like the One it is following.”

“He had been privy to much, and blind to even more.”

“If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a canyon and seen the birds swooping below you and the clouds stretched out over your head, or if you’ve ever stood in a field and felt a tiny rush of fear as you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in over the horizon, then you know what this means. There is something about the grandeur of creation that calls out to the human heart, saying, “You are not all there is!”

“Mark felt eyes on him as tight as a sniper's aim.”

“The distance had been evaporated by humor”

“God’s grace saves us from ourselves.”

“His eyes touched lightly, and passed on.”

“wristband). The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us. So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us.”

“For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present.”

“Though we still sin, we are nevertheless considered righteous, perfectly loved and accepted by our Father in heaven.”