Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“Our true city is the new Jerusalem, even while we still belong to Paris or Budapest or New York.”

“Personal aggrandizement will inevitably prove an unstable base for making wise assessments of the ministry of others.”

“We must always remember that: The Gospel is not admired in Scripture primarily because of the social transformation it effects, but because it reconciles men and women to a holy God. Its purpose is not that we might feel fulfilled, but that we might be reconciled to the living and holy God.”

“Unfortunately, victimization convinces men and women who should be looking for a Savior to search for a scapegoat. After all, if I am not to blame for what I do, the Cross is much ado about nothing. How hopelessly out of date the old spiritual sounds to us. “Not my mother or my father, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Victims do not need God, just a sympathetic therapist or a good lawyer.41”

“If found guilty on compelling evidence (35:30), the murderer was to be executed. One recalls the principle laid down in Genesis 9:6: those who murder human beings, who are made in the image of God, have done something so vile that the ultimate sanction is mandated. The logic is not one of deterrence, but of values (cf. Num. 35:31-33).”

“First, “the Gospel” is not in the first instance about something God has done for me, but about something God has objectively done in history. It is about Jesus, especially about his death and resurrection. We have not preached the Gospel when we have told our testimony and no more, or when we have conveyed an array of nice stories about Jesus, but not reached the telos (the goal or end) of the story told in the four Gospels.”

“My point, then, is that in the real world, for all the difficulties there are in communication from person to person and from culture to culture, we still expect people to say more or less what they mean (and if they don’t, we chide them for it), and we expect mature people to understand what others say, and represent it fairly. The understanding is doubtless never absolutely exhaustive and perfect, but that does not mean the only alternative is to dissociate text from speaker, and then locate all meaning in the reader or hearer. True knowledge of the meaning of a text and even of the thoughts of the author who wrote it is possible, even if perfect and exhaustive knowledge is not. That is the way things are in the real world—and that in turn suggests that any theory that flies in the face of these realities needs to be examined again.”

“(2) When David starts to enumerate "all his benefits" (103:2), he begins with the forgiveness of sins (103:3). Here is a man who understands what is of greatest importance. If we have everything but God's forgiveness, we have nothing of worth; if we have God's forgiveness, everything else of value is also promised (cf. Rom. 8:32).”

“For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”

“No one in the early church saw the significance of Jesus as something brand new, or standing in isolation from all that had come before. Rather, they saw him as the capstone, the culmination, the glorious goal, the climax of all of God’s antecedent revelation in holy Scripture.”

“The relevant social barriers of first-century Palestine may not have been that strong in any case: rabbis were expected to gain a skilled trade apart from their study (thus Paul was a leather-worker), so that the stratification that divided the teacher from the manual labourer in Stoic and other circles of the hellenistic world was not a significant factor in much of Palestine.”

“Two introductory remarks may prove helpful. First, there is widespread recognition that Western culture is in trouble. A very long chapter would be needed merely to chronicle the range of troubled reflection.”

“While pleading for vindication, it is urgently important that we confess our own sin, and entreat God for mercy. For the God of justice is also the God of grace. If this be not so, there is no hope for any of us.”

“The truth of the matter is that meeting God is either transcendentally wonderful, or utterly horrific. If God meets sinners—sinners like you and me—in mere justice, in raw justice, the ultimate result is cataclysmic judgment; if God meets sinners in mercy and transforming power, the ultimate result is ecstasy.”

“Second, although it is notoriously difficult to chart simple causes and effects at the societal level, few would be so bold as to deny that one of the factors that has powerfully contributed to the changes convulsing Western culture is the decline in Judeo-Christian assumptions, allied with (but emphatically differentiable from) the shift from modernity to postmodernity.”

“The tearing of the curtain at the moment of Jesus’ death therefore symbolizes that Jesus’ death has gained access for sinners into the very presence of God. He is our great high priest; he is our atoning sacrifice.”

“Irenaeus recalls: I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which have happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and becomes united to it, so I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed, how he came in and went out, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, the discourse which he made to the people, how he reported his converse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, including his miracles and his teaching,3 and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures (H. E. V. xx. 5–6).”

“GOD IS SO WONDERFULLY GENEROUS in his self-disclosure. He has not revealed himself to this race of rebels in some stinting way, but in nature, by his Spirit, in his Word, in great events in redemptive history, in institutions that he ordained to unveil his purposes and his nature, even in our very makeup. (We bear the imago Dei.)”

“The dimensions of evil are thus established by the dimensions of God; the ugliness of evil is established by the beauty of God; the filth of evil is established by the purity of God; the selfishness of evil is established by the love of God.”

“. Whether under the old covenant or the new, nothing is more important for the growth and maturation of God’s people than a heart hungry to read and understand what God says, and people to make it plain.”