D. A. Carson famous quotes

All of us would be wiser if we would resolve never to put people down, except on our prayer lists.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #People #Would Be

...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.
-- D. A. Carson

#Integrity #People #Sometimes

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #Thinking #Self

We do not drift into spiritual life or disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray.
-- D. A. Carson

#Spiritual #Prayer #Praying

If the text is God's Word, it is appropriate that we respond with reverence, a certain fear, a holy joy, a questing obedience.
-- D. A. Carson

#Joy #Holy #Obedience

Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.
-- D. A. Carson

#Honor #Moral #Worship

Hell is not filled with people who are deeply sorry for their sins. It is filled with people who for all eternity still shake their puny fist in the face of God Almighty.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Sorry #People

Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #Blessing #Fruit

The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).
-- D. A. Carson

#Hate #Liars #Wrath

Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
-- D. A. Carson

#Running #Boys #Doors

The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Arrogance #Crosses #Humans

A prayerless person is a disaster waiting to happen.
-- D. A. Carson

#Waiting #Disaster #Persons

Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.
-- D. A. Carson

#Dirty #Eye #Imagination

The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
-- D. A. Carson

#Lying #Heaven #Cost

A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.
-- D. A. Carson

#Proof #Pretext

The broader problem is that a great deal of popular preaching and teaching uses the bible as a pegboard on which to hang a fair bit of Christianized pop psychology or moralizing encouragement, with very little effort to teach the faithful, from the Bible, the massive doctrines of historic confessional Christianity.
-- D. A. Carson

#Encouragement #Teaching #Effort

Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God's love, they cannot escape the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Crosses #Evidence Of God

It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father's will-and it was his love for sinners like me.
-- D. A. Carson

#Jesus #Father #Nails

That God normally operates the universe consistently makes science possible; that he does not always do so ought to keep science humble.
-- D. A. Carson

#Humble #Doe #Universe

There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Maturity #Discipline

Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #Worry

If you want to see what judgment looks like, go to the cross. If you want to see what love looks like, go to the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Looks #Want #Judgment

We are dealing with God's thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.
-- D. A. Carson

#Pain

Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciousl y set aside time to do nothing but pray.
-- D. A. Carson

#Spiritual #Prayer #Mean

Sin corrupts even our good deeds. We injure our shoulder trying to pat ourselves on the back.
-- D. A. Carson

#Trying #Deeds #Sin

Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Moving #Wrath #Covenant

The person who loves his life will lose it: it could not be otherwise, for to love one's life is a fundamental denial of God's sovereignty, of God's rights, and a brazen elevation of self to the apogee of one's perception, and therefore an idolatrous focus on self, which is the heart of all sin
-- D. A. Carson

#Heart #Rights #Self

Damn all false dichotomies to hell
-- D. A. Carson

#Hell #Dichotomy

There is no long-range effective teaching of the Bible that is not accompanied by long hours of ongoing study of the Bible.
-- D. A. Carson

#Teaching #Long #Ongoing

One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most “evangelistic” movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals.
-- D. A. Carson

#Crush #Tolerance #Western Culture

True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us
-- D. A. Carson

#Liberty #Genuine #Please

Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #Our World #Self

In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, 'How can I be most useful?', not, 'How can I feel most useful?'
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Real #Self

The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.
-- D. A. Carson

#Way #Anxious #Prayerful

Love the church because Jesus loves it.
-- D. A. Carson

#Jesus #Church #Jesus Love

To worship God 'in spirit and in truth' is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Mean #Reality

How much would our churches be transformed if each of us made it a practice to thank God for others and then to tell those others what it is about them that we thank God for?
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Practice #Thank God

The truth of the matter is that all we have to do is live long enough and we will suffer.
-- D. A. Carson

#Long #Suffering #Matter

The Christian's whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Jesus #Winning

Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.
-- D. A. Carson

#Absolutism #May #Heroic

You cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.
-- D. A. Carson

#Trying #Worship #Excellent

To God on whom we rely knows what suffering is all about- not merely in the way that God knows everything, but by experience.
-- D. A. Carson

#Suffering #Way #God Knows

To know God is to be transformed, and thus to be introduced to a life that could not otherwise be experienced.
-- D. A. Carson

#Loving God #Knowing God

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.
-- D. A. Carson

#Love #Pain #Teaching

Damn all false antitheses to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings who oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ
-- D. A. Carson

#Brother #Swings #Idols

When you are converted, you want to do what you didn't want to do before, and you don't want to do what you wanted to do before. There's a change in the heart; there's a cleaning up, a change in orientation, and holiness becomes attractive, instead of something you have to put up with to figure out what you can get away with. As long as young people are asking, 'Can I get away with this?' or 'Can I get away with that?' I wonder if they're regenerate. If they're asking, instead, 'How can I grow in holiness?' then I suspect they've begun to understand.
-- D. A. Carson

#Heart #Long #People

Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.
-- D. A. Carson

#Pain #Mistake #Play

The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God's story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible.
-- D. A. Carson

#Interesting #Stories #Fountain

The Bible does not tell us that life in this world will be fair. Evil and sin are not Victorian gentlemen; they do not play fair.
-- D. A. Carson

#Play #Evil #Gentleman

The person who prays more in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God's approval than in human praise. Not piety but a reputation for piety is his concern.
-- D. A. Carson

#Prayer #Approval #Reputation

Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship, worship rather than worship God.
-- D. A. Carson

#Worship #Sometimes #Wonder

Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher's sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Prayer #War

A billion years or so into eternity, how many toys we accumulated during this life will not seem too terribly important.
-- D. A. Carson

#Years #Important #Toys

Do you wish to see God's love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see God's wrath? Look at the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Wrath #Wish #Looks

It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
-- D. A. Carson

#Passion #Temptation #Sin

We are lost when human opinion means more to us than God’s.
-- D. A. Carson

#Mean #Opinion #Lost

Sin defies God, utterly corrupts each individual, corrodes all social relationships, and issues in death.
-- D. A. Carson

#Issues #Sin #Individual

Jesus is hungry but feeds others; He grows weary but offers others rest; He is the King Messiah but pays tribute; He is called the devil but casts out demons; He dies the death of a sinner but comes to save His people from their sins; He is sold for thirty pieces of silver but gives His life a ransom for many; He will not turn stones to bread for Himself but gives His own body as bread for people.
-- D. A. Carson

#Jesus #Kings #People

The way you lose the gospel is not by denying it, but by assuming it.
-- D. A. Carson

#Way #Assuming

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.
-- D. A. Carson

#Brother #Blood #Lust

... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.
-- D. A. Carson

#Spiritual #Children #Heritage

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.
-- D. A. Carson

#Artist #Doctors #Profound

What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together because they have all been loved by Jesus himself. They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake.
-- D. A. Carson

#Christian #Jesus #Jobs

Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
-- D. A. Carson

#Believe #Want #Moral

The important thing, Jesus is saying (in Matthew 5:33-37), is to tell the truth and keep one's pledges without insisting that a certain form of words must be used if it is to be binding. No oath is necessary for the truthful person... Their word is so reliable that nothing more than a statement is needed from them.
-- D. A. Carson

#Jesus #Important #Truthful

If it is hard to accept a rebuke, even a private one, it is harder still to administer one in loving humility.
-- D. A. Carson

#Humility #Accepting #Harder

Wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath-but there will always be love in God. Where God in His holiness confronts His image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, or God is not the jealous God He claims to be, and His holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God's wrath is diminishing God's holiness.
-- D. A. Carson

#Jealous #Love Is #Wrath

The more clearly we see sins horror, the more we shall treasure the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Treasure #Horror #Sin

A weak understanding of what the Bible says about sin is tied to a weak understanding of what the Bible says is achieved by the cross.
-- D. A. Carson

#Understanding #Sin #Weak

Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel, conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns
-- D. A. Carson

#Religious #Heart #Reality

Effectiveness in teaching the Bible is purchased at the price of much study, some of it lonely, all of it tiring.
-- D. A. Carson

#Lonely #Teaching #Effectiveness

God's wrath is not an implacable, blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against his holiness. But his love . . . wells up amidst his perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at the same time. God in his perfections must be wrathful against his rebel image-bearers, for they have offended him; God in his perfections must be loving toward his rebel image-bearers, for he is that kind of God
-- D. A. Carson

#Love Is #Emotional #Wrath