Inspirational Quotes by John Stott
“One of the most urgent needs in the church of God today is a recovery of the simple biblical truth that the Christian life is a life of faith in response to God’s Word. Faith feeds on the promises of God and grows healthy and strong by them.”
“The spirit of our age is hostile toward people who state their opinions clearly and hold them strongly.”
“Thus the gospel creates the church, which spreads the gospel, which creates more churches, which in their turn spread the gospel further.”
“Everyone who has been truly set free by Jesus Christ expresses liberty in these three ways, first in self-control, next in loving service of our neighbor, and third in obedience to the law of God.”
“Christian liberty is freedom not to indulge the flesh but to control the flesh, freedom not to exploit our neighbor but to serve our neighbor, freedom not to disregard the law but to fulfill the law.”
“It is true that ever since the first disobedience in the Garden of Eden fallen human beings have been running away from God. Indeed, we are worse than fugitives; we are rebels who defy his authority and resist his love. And yet we are restless in our rebellion. Instinctively we know that the God we are trying to avoid is our only home. So at times we “feel after him.” We seek to find him whom we are simultaneously seeking to escape. Such is the paradox of our fallenness.”
“Jesus evidently thought that human beings still retained a residue of their former glory.”
“So then, according to Jesus, the ‘evils’ which we think, say and do are not due primarily to our environment, nor are they bad habits picked up from bad teaching, bad company or bad example; they are due to the inward corruption of our heart.”
“Experience must never be the criterion of truth; truth must always be the criterion of experience.”
topics: christian
“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.”
“But the Holy Spirit is not in a hurry. Character is the produce of a lifetime.”
“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.”
“We may believe in the deity and the salvation of Christ, and acknowledge ourselves to be sinners in need of his salvation; but this does not make us Christians. We have to make a personal response to Jesus Chris, committing ourselves unreservedly to him as our Savior and Lord.”
“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.”
“We are terrified to see what fallible, arrogant humanity can do with the hard steel of the absolute standards of right and wrong.”
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John Robert Walmsley Stott is a British Christian leader and Anglican clergyman who is noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement. He is famous as one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974.
Stott was ordained in 1945 and went on to become a curate at All Souls Church, Langham Place (1945-1950) then rector (1950-75). This was the church in which he had grown up, and in which he has spent almost all of his life, aside from a few years spent in Cambridge.
Stott played a central role at two landmark events in the history of British evangelicalism. He was chairing the National Assembly of Evangelicals in 1966, a convention organised by the Evangelical Alliance, when Martyn Lloyd-Jones made an unexpected call for evangelicals to unite together as evangelicals and no longer within their 'mixed' denominations.