D. A. Carson Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  212 Copy quote

• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.109, Baker Academic

  150 Copy quote

• The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.

  D. A. Carson

  Masters, Aim

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• The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.

  D. A. Carson

  Way, Anxious, Prayerful

  D. A. Carson (1996). “Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians”, p.73, Baker Books

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• 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

  59 Copy quote

• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.29, Baker Academic

  132 Copy quote

• Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.

  D. A. Carson

  Prayer, Blessing, Technique

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.33, Baker Academic

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• 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

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• We are lost when human opinion means more to us than God’s.

  D. A. Carson

  Mean, Opinion, Lost

  79 Copy quote

• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.121, Baker Academic

  95 Copy quote

• 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

  89 Copy quote

• 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

  Liars, Hate, Wrath

  111 Copy quote

• Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced.

  D. A. Carson

  Christian, Want, Christ

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.121, Baker Academic

  43 Copy quote

• ...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

  87 Copy quote

• 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

  62 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

• The more clearly we see sins horror, the more we shall treasure the cross.

  D. A. Carson

  Treasure, Horror, Sin

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• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.87, Baker Academic

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.37, Baker Academic

  66 Copy quote

• 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

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• 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

  D. A. Carson (1991). “The Gospel According to John”, p.350, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  42 Copy quote

• 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

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.83, Baker Academic

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• 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

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• 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

  41 Copy quote

• God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never mitigates human responsibility.

  D. A. Carson

  Responsibility, Sovereign, Sovereignty

  8 Copy quote

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