John Stott famous quotes

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Vision #Missionary

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.
-- John Stott

#Sacrifice #Men #Essence

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.
-- John Stott

#Greatness #Kingdoms #Obedience

An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Lying #Community

The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God.
-- John Stott

#People #Spirit #Submit

We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather we should ask, “What has happened to salt and light?
-- John Stott

#Light #Religion #World

The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
-- John Stott

#Friday #Lying #Heart

God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?
-- John Stott

#Christian #Real #Hands

Saving faith is resting faith, the trust which relies entirely on the Savior.
-- John Stott

#Saving #Savior #Rely

Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony
-- John Stott

#Children #Together #May

Christians who neglect the Bible simply do not mature.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Mature #Neglect

The gospel is NOT preached if Christ is not preached.
-- John Stott

#Christ

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Responsibility #Impossible

The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.
-- John Stott

#Friday #Jesus #Crosses

I have sometimes called this 'double listening'. Listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and listening to the voices of the modern world, with all their cries of anger, pain and despair.
-- John Stott

#Pain #Voice #Listening

The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.
-- John Stott

#Prayer #Purpose

Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Men #Earth

Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God's call to us to do so.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Decision #Christ

The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Secret

Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.
-- John Stott

#Prayer #Humble #Needs

... what I believe to be one of the major tragedies in the Church today. Namely, that evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary but not biblical, and almost nobody is building bridges and relating the biblical text to the modern context
-- John Stott

#Believe #Biblical #Bridges

These then are the marks of the ideal Church - love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.
-- John Stott

#Humility #Suffering #Church

Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.
-- John Stott

#Humble #Leader

We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead.
-- John Stott

#Bible #Christian #Needs

It is a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our savior.
-- John Stott

#Judging #Comfort #Savior

A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Men

The good news is the gospel of God, about Christ, according to Scripture, for the nations, unto the obedience of faith, and for the sake of the Name.
-- John Stott

#Names #News #Sake

We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve.
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Expression #World

The chief occupational hazard of leadership is pride.
-- John Stott

#Pride #Hazards #Chiefs

Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Vision

A Christian should resemble a fruit tree with real fruit, not a Christmas tree with decorations tied on
-- John Stott

#Christian #Real #Tree

There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God.
-- John Stott

#Ambition #Inappropriate #Cherish

We live and die; Christ died and lived!
-- John Stott

#Easter #Christ

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.
-- John Stott

#Easter #Done #Christianity

Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Water #Baptism

Nobody can call himself a Christian who does not worship Jesus.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Doe

It is no exaggeration to say that without Scripture a Christian life is impossible.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Scripture #Impossible

God condemned sin in Christ, so that holiness might appear in us.
-- John Stott

#Holiness #Might #Sin

The Bible isn’t about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us.
-- John Stott

#People #Trying #Reaching

Many (Christians) have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Clueless #Enlightenment

The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless "all the families of the earth," he has promised to do so "through Abraham's seed" (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). Now we are Abraham's seed by faith, and the earth's families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God's plain purpose.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Blessed #Purpose

We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.
-- John Stott

#Waiting #Church #Needs

A gift is acceptable according to what the giver has, not according to what he has not.
-- John Stott

#Generosity #Giver

At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself.
-- John Stott

#God Love #Christ #Holy

Why is it that some Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, as missionaries? What on earth impels them? It is not in order to commend a civilization, an institution or an ideology, but rather a person, Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be unique.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Believe

Mission arises from the heart of God Himself and is communicated from His heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.
-- John Stott

#Heart #People #Arise

Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.
-- John Stott

#Believe #Heaven #Church

The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Self #People

The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him.
-- John Stott

#People #Reason #Chiefs

We can all be stimulated to greater generosity by the known generosity of others.
-- John Stott

#Generosity #Stewardship

Pride is more than the first of the seven deadly sins; it is itself the essence of all sin.
-- John Stott

#Pride #Essence #Firsts

It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.
-- John Stott

#Prayer #Goes On #Our Love

Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvellous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern world.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Mind #Development

The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Humble #Hands

What we need is not more learning, not more eloquence, not more persuasion, not more organization, but more power from the Holy Spirit.
-- John Stott

#Organization #Needs #Spirit

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Focus #Community

Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God's Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men.
-- John Stott

#Men #Speech #Down And

The hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutiny and, if necessary, reform.
-- John Stott

#Inspirational #Success #Uplifting

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, 'I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.' Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.
-- John Stott

#Cutting #Gay #Suffering

Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.
-- John Stott

#Grace #Care #Rescue

Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.
-- John Stott

#Acceptance #Religion #Apathy

The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.
-- John Stott

#Fall #Love Is #Fire

In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?
-- John Stott

#Pain #Real #World

Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and checkered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture .
-- John Stott

#Christian #Long #Tragedy

A Christian's freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of His care.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Father #Worry

No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.
-- John Stott

#Stars #Dark #Night

Here's how to determine God's will for your life: Go wherever your gifts will be exploited the most.
-- John Stott

#Determine

Scripture is the royal scepter by which King Jesus rules his church
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Kings #Church

Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Conservative #Should

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Focus #Doe

The chief reason why the Christian believes in the divine origin of the Bible is that Jesus Christ Himself taught it.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Jesus #Believe

The essence of apostasy is changing sides from that of the crucified to that of the crucifier.
-- John Stott

#Essence #Sides

Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion. The concept of resurrection lies at its heart. If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed.
-- John Stott

#Lying #Heart #Essence

We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.
-- John Stott

#Spiritual #Patterns #Complacency

If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love.
-- John Stott

#Suffering #Church #Firsts

Simplicity is the first cousin of contentment.
-- John Stott

#Cousin #Simplicity #Contentment

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.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Character #Understanding

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us with no other choice.
-- John Stott

#Giving #Choices #Heaven

The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men... but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Ambition #Men

Faith's only function is to receive what grace offers.
-- John Stott

#Grace #Function #Offers

God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.
-- John Stott

#Doe #God Love #Christ

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Pain #Exercise

Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfuln ess, not by self-congratula tion.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Sacrifice #Self

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Spiritual #Sacrifice

Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.
-- John Stott

#Judgment #Christ

Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.
-- John Stott

#Faith #Faith In God #Trustworthiness

Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.
-- John Stott

#Jesus #Giving #Grace

Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?
-- John Stott

#Spiritual #Biblical #Tolerance

When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Identity

The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.
-- John Stott

#Lying #Church #Purpose

The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.
-- John Stott

#Christian #Tears #Truth Is

If we truly worship God, acknowledging and adoring his infinite worth, we find ourselves impelled to make him known to others, in order that they may worship him too. Thus worship leads to witness, and witness in its turn to worship, in a perpetual circle.
-- John Stott

#Order #Circles #May

Truth without love is too hard; love without truth is too soft.
-- John Stott

#Love Is #Hard Love #Truth Is

When we look at the cross we see the justice, love, wisdom and power of God. It is not easy to decide which is the most luminously revealed, whether the justice of God in judging sin, or the love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, or the wisdom of God in perfectly combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God’s justice, love, wisdom and power. The cross assures us that this God is the reality within, behind and beyond the universe.
-- John Stott

#Believe #Reality #Two

Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.
-- John Stott

#Christian Inspirational #Our Love #Love Grows