Inspirational Quotes by John Stott

“And a century later still, the great Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) made this unexpected statement: “If of these two things you can do only one—either hear the mass or hear the sermon—you should let the mass go, rather than the sermon. . . . There is less peril for your soul in not hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon.”14”

“He felt oppressed by the ignorance, laziness, and licentiousness of the clergy, which had been exposed by a parliamentary committee in their report The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests (1643), which supplied one hundred shocking case histories. So Baxter addressed his Reformed Pastor to his fellow clergy,”

“The verbs to “know” and “believe” and “be persuaded” are liberally sprinkled throughout the New Testament. Faith and confidence are regarded as norms of Christian experience, not as exceptions.”

“We should not acquiesce in a condition of basic and chronic doubt, as if it were characteristic of Christian normality. It is not. It is rather a symptom of spiritual sickness in our spiritually sick age.”

“Such is the theological foundation for the ministry of preaching. God is light; God has acted; God has spoken; and God has caused his action and speech to be preserved in writing. Through this written Word he continues to speak with a living voice powerfully. And the church needs to listen attentively to his Word, since its health and maturity depend upon it. So pastors must expound it; it is to this they have been called.”

“P. T. Forsyth’s book Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. These are its opening words: ‘It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.”

“For sin is ‘an implicitly aggressive quality – a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of humanity, a partial alienation, or act of rebellion....Sin has a willful, defiant or disloyal quality: someone is defied or offended or hurt’ (p.19). To ignore this would be dishonest.”

“Perhaps it is a deep-seated reluctance to face up to the gravity of sin which has led to its omission from the vocabulary of many of our contemporaries. One acute observer of the human condition, who has noticed the disappearance of the word, is the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. He has written about it in his book, Whatever Became of Sin? Describing the malaise of western society, its general mood of gloom and doom, he adds that ‘one misses any mention of “sin”’. ‘It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but is now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean’, he asks, ‘that no sin is involved in all our troubles...? Has no-one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?’ (p.13). Enquiring into the causes of sin’s disappearance, Dr Menninger notes first that ‘many former sins have become crimes’, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman (p.50), while others have dissipated into sicknesses, or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced by treatment (pp.74ff.). A third convenient device called ‘collective irresponsibility’ has enabled us to transfer the blame for some of our deviant behaviour from ourselves as individuals to society as a whole or to one of its many groupings (pp.94ff.).”

“many former sins have become crimes’, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman (p.50), while others have dissipated into sicknesses, or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced by treatment (pp.74ff.). A third convenient device called ‘collective irresponsibility’ has enabled us to transfer the blame for some of our deviant behaviour from ourselves as individuals to society as a whole or to one of its many groupings (pp.94ff.).”

“John is telling us nothing less than that from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future the centre of the stage is occupied by the Lamb of God who was slain.”

“But even if we remain in our own country, Christians and non-Christians are often widely separated from one another by social sub-cultures and lifestyles as well as by different values, beliefs and moral standards. Only an incarnation can span these divides, for an incarnation means entering other people’s worlds, their thought-world, and the worlds of their alienation, loneliness and pain. Moreover, the incarnation led to the cross. Jesus first took our flesh, then bore our sin. This was a depth of penetration into our world in order to reach us, in comparison with which our little attempts to reach people seem amateur and shallow. The cross calls us to a much more radical and costly kind of evangelism than most churches have begun to consider, let alone experience.”

“Christ’s cross. For, whether we like it or not, we are involved. Our sins put him there. So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts his word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by his love and full of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in his service.”

“For if there is ‘false guilt’ (feeling bad about evil we have not done), there is also ‘false innocence’ (feeling good about the evil we have done). If false contrition is unhealthy (an ungrounded weeping over guilt), so is false assurance (an ungrounded rejoicing over forgiveness).”

“P. T. Forsyth, the English Congregationalist, wrote in The Cruciality of the Cross (1909): Christ is to us just what his cross is. All that Christ was in heaven or on earth was put into what he did there...Christ, I repeat, is to us just what his cross is. You do not understand Christ till you understand his cross. (pp.44–45)”

“Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain.”

“Use your sense of humour. Laugh about things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh about yourself, and about your own absurdity. We are all of us infinitesimally small and ludicrous creatures within God's universe. You have to be aerious, but never solemn, because if you are solemn about anything, there is the risk of becoming solemn about yourself.”

“Speaking personally, I find it helpful to detect in the four evangelists four dimensions of the saving purpose of God: its length, depth, breadth and height. Matthew reveals its length, for he depicts the Christ of Scripture, who looks back over long-centuries of expectation. Mark emphasizes its depth, for he depicts the Suffering Servant who looks down to the depths of the humiliation he endured. In Luke it is the breadth of God's purpose which emerges, for he depicts the Savior of the world who looks round in mercy to the broadest possible spectrum of human beings. Then John reveals its height, for he depicts the Word made flesh who looks up to the heights from which he came and to which he intends to raise us.”

“Yet Jesus Christ says he is standing knocking at the door of our lives, waiting. Notice that he is standing at the door, not pushing it; speaking to us, not shouting. This is all the more remarkable when we reflect that the house is his in any case. He is the architect; he designed it. He is the builder; he made it. He is the landlord; he bought it with his own blood. So it is his by right of plan, construction, and purchase. We are only tenants in a house that does not belong to us. He could put his shoulder to the door; he prefers to put his hand on the knocker. He could command us to open to him; instead, he merely invites us to do so. He will not force an entry to anybody's life. He says (verse 18) 'I counsel you.' He could issue orders; he is content to give advice. This is the nature of his humility and the extent of the freedom he has given us.”

“The nature of the love of God for us is thereby revealed. It is not the love of an indulgent parent who gives into every whim of the child. In the end that is not the ‘love’ for the child but a form of self love for the parent. Despite the massive propaganda to the contrary, Our lord’s purpose for us is not to make us happy, but to make us holy. He loves us too much to leave us part saved, part remade, part sanctified. He wills our holiness, and since ‘suffering produces…’ (Rom 5:3), we may expect him to allow things in our lives which, in our self-centred pursuit of happiness, we ourselves would exclude. Yet even in the shadow of his love there is always mercy. Our sorrows are shared by him; he comes to us in our pain. The end of it all is not only his glory, which needs no justifying, but also our good.”

“our God seeks active rescue for the victims of oppression: My”