Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“...porque fomos criados para Deus, e nossa alma não tem descanso enquanto não o conhecemos.”

“By contrast, Paul says, “we preach Christ crucified” (1:23). That is our content, and to those who do not know Christ it is an astonishingly odd message. In the first century, it must have sounded like a contradiction in terms, like frozen steam or hateful love or upward decline or godly rapist—only far more shocking. For many Jews, the long-expected Messiah2 had to come in splendor and glory; he had to begin his reign with uncontested power. “Crucified Messiah”: this juxtaposition of words is only a whisker away from blasphemy,”

“Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”[4]”

“democracy is the best form of government where the populace is reasonably literate”

“irreducible complexity,” that is, structures in nature and in the human being that are so complex that it is statistically impossible that they could have come to be by chance. To appeal to a chance mutation, or to the mere selection of the fittest, or to any of the other appeals on offer in the various heritages that spring from Darwinism, simply makes no sense. Living systems have an irreducible complexity to them that makes it statistically impossible that all of the necessary but highly improbable steps were taken at the same time—and without such statistically impossible simultaneity, life could not be. What this suggests, it is argued, is the need for a designer.”

“The heart of our wretched rebellion is that each of us wants to be number one. We make ourselves the center of all our thoughts and hopes and imaginings. This”

“The Bible’s storyline, we have discovered, has, from the opening chapters of Genesis, set up a massive tension—cosmic in scope but descending all the way down to the level of the individual. The tension is grounded in the fact that God made everything good. God himself, the Creator, is different from the creation, but all that he made was initially God-centered and good. The nature of evil is tied to revolution against this God. In Genesis 3, we saw how this is depicted as obsessive desire to challenge God—to become God ourselves, to usurp to ourselves the prerogatives that belong only to the Creator. Out of this idolatry come all of the social evils, the horizontal evils that we know. With everybody wanting to be at the center of the universe, there can only be strife.”

“It will also show itself in a large-hearted attitude that avoids quarreling and jealousy, and refuses to sink into narrow factionalism. If some who have the Spirit are slow to display this rising maturity, the kindest interpretation is that they are “worldly.” In these matters they are acting like “mere men” instead of like Christian men and women, men and women empowered by the Spirit of God. They are wretchedly, unacceptably, spiritually immature.”

“The old Day of Atonement, once held every year in accordance with the Mosaic covenant, has been superseded, because we have the ultimate sacrifice for sin: Jesus himself, who shed his blood on our behalf, a perfect moral sacrifice. He offers up his life, takes our death, and bears our sin away in a fashion that no animal ever could. The law pointed forward to that sole means of God reconciling rebels to himself and brings together in Jesus the poles of Exodus 34: God abounds “in love and faithfulness” (34:6), and he forgives “wickedness, rebellion and sin” (34:7), not because he leaves the guilty unpunished but because another bears their punishment. Here is the God who legislates, and even in his legislation he points us to Jesus.”

“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.”

“The fear in view is not the kind of cringing fear that a whipped dog has when you pick up a newspaper, knowing that you are an arbitrary and cruel master who extracts cheap glee out of scaring the poor little thing to death. This is the fear of God that recognizes that he is matchlessly holy, righteous, and just—and we are not. God is our judge as well as our only hope. There lies the beginning of wisdom. This is the opposite of what we found in Psalm 14:1: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” A right sense of how to live under the sun must begin with God and his self-disclosure. There is the beginning of wisdom.”

“we cannot imagine that the church gathers for worship on Sunday morning if by this we mean that we then engage in something that we have not been engaging in the rest of the week.”

“No Christian leader is to be venerated or listened to or adulated with the kind of allegiance and devotion properly reserved for God alone. That is folly; it betrays a deep ignorance of the nature of true Christian leadership and of the corporate and mutually supportive ways in which Christian leaders complement one another’s work under God.”

“this also means that Christian leaders should refrain from presenting themselves as if they had the corner on the truth, or all the gifts, or exclusive authority or insight. We are all “only servants.” We are “fellow workers,” and we are God’s.”

“Worship embraces relationship, attitude, act, life.”

“So in one sense Christians are oriented to the future and are awaiting the kingdom. This stance we may designate futurist eschatology. In another sense, Christians have already been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s Son. We are already in the kingdom. This stance is sometimes referred to as realized or inaugurated eschatology.”

“retelling ought to prove formative, nurturing, stabilizing, delightful.26”

“The sole heresy has become the view that there is such a thing as heresy.”

“Has the smoothness of the performance become more important to us than the fear of the Lord? Has polish, one of the modern equivalents of ancient rhetoric, displaced substance? Have professional competence and smooth showmanship become more valuable than sober reckoning over what it means to focus on Christ crucified? Do not fear weakness, illness, or a sense of being overwhelmed. The truth of the matter is that such experiences are often the occasions when God most greatly displays his power.”

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”