Quotes By Tim Keller
- God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us as we are.
- The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
- Christ’s resurrection not only gives you hope for the future; it gives you hope to handle your scars right now.
- To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.
- Legalistic remorse says, “I broke God’s rules,” while real repentance says, “I broke God’s heart.”
- God looks at the anxious and says, I tore my Son to shreds for you, and you’re afraid I will not give you what you need?
- The basic purpose of prayer is not to bend God’s will to mine, but to mold my will into His.
- The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.
- Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, ‘My life for your life.
Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.
Religion makes us proud of what we have done. The Gospel makes us proud of what Jesus has done.
Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, but it does provide deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.
Religion: ‘My identity is built on being a good person.’ Gospel: ‘My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ’s.
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts… It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them.
Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.
There are some needs only you can see. There are some hands only you can hold. There are some people only you can reach.
Love is the effort and desire to make someone else everything they were created to be.
Reason can get you to probability, but only commitment can get you to certainty.
We deserve to be forgotten because we forget Him. But because Jesus died on the cross, we will never, ever be forgotten by God.
The cross is the place where the Judge takes the Judgment.
It is impossible to forgive someone if you feel superior to him or her.
It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.
It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied.
Many times people think if God has called you to something, he’s promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.
Worry is not believing God will get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.
Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts.
Jesus didn’t come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer.
You’re more wicked than you ever believed, but at the same time more loved and accepted than you ever dared to hope.
If God’s purpose for your job is that you serve the human community, then the way to serve God best is to do the job as well as it can be done.
You don’t fall in love. You commit to it.
The great basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us.
How does Satan accuse us? By causing us to look at our sin rather than our Savior.
Trust is accepting what God sends into your life whether you understand it or not.
After creation God said, ‘It is finished’-and he rested. After redemption Jesus said, ‘It is finished’-and we can rest.
In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful.
If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.
The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.
All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.
God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.
The essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.
You are more sinful than you could dare imagine and you are more loved and accepted than you could ever dare hope.
If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.
Money isn’t an idol. It just shows you where your idols are.
What you do today is shaped by what you believe about tomorrow.
No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career — something will inevitably ruin it.
Tolerance isn’t about not having beliefs. It’s about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.
The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
You dont fall into love. You commit to it. Love is saying I will be there no matter what.
If you love anything in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations.
We need to remember that we are saved by grace when we fail. But we need to remember it much more when we succeed.
Those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character.
If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning of life, and identity then it is an idol.
Prayer though it is often draining, even an agony is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible.
Religious people find God useful. Growing Christians find God beautiful.
People are messy; therefore, relationships will be messy. Don’t be surprised by messiness.
If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.
Two things we want so desperately, glory and relationship, can coexist only in God.
The true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention.
You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God’s.
Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself.
Jesus Christ was treated as we deserved so that when we believe in Jesus, God treats us as Jesus deserves.
As many have learned and later taught, you don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
The way to find your calling is to look at the way you were created. Your gifts have not emerged by accident.
Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.
If you have been assigned the goods of this world by God and you don’t share them with others, it isn’t just stinginess, it is injustice.
If Jesus, the Lord of Love and Author of Grace spoke about hell more often, and in a more vivid, blood-curdling manner than anyone else, it must be a crucial truth.
The Bible defines sin as craving something more than God. Sin is making something more important than God.
If you don’t feel like praying, pray to God to give you the desire.
You know you are an addict when you are trying to escape your distress with the very thing that brought you your distress. And when you are in that spiral, you are stuck forever.
Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross.
In the end, we love people into belief. We do not argue them into belief.
The more you understand how your salvation isn’t about your behavior, the more radically your behavior will change.
Religion operates on the principle ‘I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.’ But the operating principle of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.’
Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.
Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him. The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.
