Inspirational Quotes by John Stott
“What we seek for ourselves, and what we teach to others, must be governed by the Scripture alone. Only when the Word of God dwells in us richly shall we be able to evaluate the experiences that we and others may have.”
“Third, this revelation of the purpose of God in Scripture should be sought primarily in its didactic rather than its descriptive parts. More precisely, we should look for it in the teaching of Jesus, and in the sermons and writings of the apostles, rather than in the purely narrative portions of the Acts. What is described in Scripture as having happened to others is not necessarily intended for us, whereas what is promised to us we are to appropriate, and what is commanded to us we are to obey.”
“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.”
topics: holy-spirit
“The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move—hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one.… It cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological. ”
― John Stott ,
from The Message of Acts
“True, pastors are not apostles, for the apostles were given authority to formulate and teach the gospel, while pastors are responsible to expound the message which the apostles have bequeathed to us in the New Testament”
― John Stott ,
from The Message of Acts
“Escritura habla mucho de la diferencia entre la reputación y la realidad, entre lo que ven los seres humanos y lo que ve Dios. “Yahvéh no mira lo que mira el hombre; pues el hombre mira lo que está delante de sus ojos, pero Yahvéh mira el corazón” (1 Samuel 16:7). La obsesión por la apariencia y la reputación conduce de manera natural a la hipocresía (algo que Jesús aborrece). Esto nos indica que la sinceridad caracteriza a la iglesia viva y verdadera. Misión. Al escribir a Filadelfi a, Jesús se presenta”
― John Stott ,
“The noun eleos (mercy)… always deals with what we see of pain, misery and distress, these results of sin; and charis (grace) always deals with the sin and guilt itself. The one extends relief, the other pardon; the one cures, heals, helps, the other cleanses and reinstates.”
“Whenever Christians are conscientious citizens, they are acting like salt in the community. As Sir Frederick Catherwood put it in his contribution to the symposium Is revolution change? ‘To try to improve society is not worldliness but love. To wash your hands of society is not love but worldliness.”
“The Old Testament is the Gospel in the bud, the New Testament is the Gospel in full flower. The Old Testament is the Gospel in the blade; the New Testament is the Gospel in full ear.”
“A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”
“Prayer, then, is not ‘unseemly’; it is the very way God himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of him and our humble dependence on him.”
“So then, the unbelief of Israel, which in Romans 9 is attributed to God’s purpose of election, in Romans 10 is attributed to her pride, ignorance and stubbornness. The tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility constitutes an antinomy which the finite mind cannot fathom.”
“So when we resist change, whether in church or society, we need to ask whether in reality it is Scripture we are defending (as it is our custom stoutly to insist) or rather some cherished tradition of the ecclesiastical elders or of our cultural heritage.”
― John Stott ,
“Experience must never be the criterion of truth; truth must always be the criterion of experience.”
topics: christian
“Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain.”
“Use your sense of humour. Laugh about things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh about yourself, and about your own absurdity. We are all of us infinitesimally small and ludicrous creatures within God's universe. You have to be aerious, but never solemn, because if you are solemn about anything, there is the risk of becoming solemn about yourself.”
“But the Holy Spirit is not in a hurry. Character is the produce of a lifetime.”
“Speaking personally, I find it helpful to detect in the four evangelists four dimensions of the saving purpose of God: its length, depth, breadth and height. Matthew reveals its length, for he depicts the Christ of Scripture, who looks back over long-centuries of expectation. Mark emphasizes its depth, for he depicts the Suffering Servant who looks down to the depths of the humiliation he endured. In Luke it is the breadth of God's purpose which emerges, for he depicts the Savior of the world who looks round in mercy to the broadest possible spectrum of human beings. Then John reveals its height, for he depicts the Word made flesh who looks up to the heights from which he came and to which he intends to raise us.”
“We may believe in the deity and the salvation of Christ, and acknowledge ourselves to be sinners in need of his salvation; but this does not make us Christians. We have to make a personal response to Jesus Chris, committing ourselves unreservedly to him as our Savior and Lord.”
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John Robert Walmsley Stott is a British Christian leader and Anglican clergyman who is noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement. He is famous as one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974.
Stott was ordained in 1945 and went on to become a curate at All Souls Church, Langham Place (1945-1950) then rector (1950-75). This was the church in which he had grown up, and in which he has spent almost all of his life, aside from a few years spent in Cambridge.
Stott played a central role at two landmark events in the history of British evangelicalism. He was chairing the National Assembly of Evangelicals in 1966, a convention organised by the Evangelical Alliance, when Martyn Lloyd-Jones made an unexpected call for evangelicals to unite together as evangelicals and no longer within their 'mixed' denominations.