Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Lester Maddox, later elected Governor of Georgia, was one of the protesting restaurateurs. After closing his fried chicken outlets, he opened a memorial to the death of freedom, featuring a copy of the Bill of Rights resting in a black-draped coffin. To support himself he sold clubs and ax handles in three different sizes—Daddy, Mama, and Junior—replicas of the clubs used to beat black civil rights demonstrators. I bought one of those ax handles with money earned from my paper route. Lester Maddox sometimes attended my church (his sister was a member), and it was there I learned a twisted theological basis for my racism.”
“Legalism may “work” in an institution such as a Bible college or the Marine Corps. In a world of ungrace, structured shame has considerable power. But there is a cost, an incalculable cost: ungrace does not work in a relationship with God. I have come to see legalism in its pursuit of false purity as an elaborate scheme of grace avoidance. You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it”
“the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God’s grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.”
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
“The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like “Amazing Grace” for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace.”
“Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.”
“Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”
“Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative. Instead of waiting for his neighbor to make the first move,”
“Vengeance is a passion to get even. It is a hot desire to give back as much pain as someone gave you. . . . The problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes.”
“it seems so unfair, to forgive injustice. I am caught between forgiveness and justice.”
“I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.”
topics: hypocrisy
“There is one major flaw in the law of revenge, however: it never settles the score.”
“Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist.”
topics: legalism
“Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.”
“We may be abominations, but we are still God’s pride and joy. All of us in the church need “grace-healed eyes” to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us.”
“This is a very important book about the most important subject in human history.”
“Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.”
“It has taken me years to distill the Gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it. Sadly, many of my friends gave up on the effort, never getting to Jesus because the pettiness of the church blocked the way.”
“The free offer of grace extends not just to the undeserving but to those who in fact deserve the opposite: to Ku Klux Klanners as well as civil rights marchers, to P.”
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Philip Yancey is an American Christian author. Fourteen million of his books have been sold worldwide, making him one of the best-selling evangelical Christian authors. Two of his books have won the ECPA's Christian Book of the Year Award: The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996, What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998. He is published by Zondervan Publishing.
Yancey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. When Yancey was one year old, his father, stricken with polio, died after his church elders suggested he go off life support in faith that God would heal him. This was one of the reasons he had lost his faith at one point of time. Yancey earned his MA with highest honors from the graduate school of Wheaton College. His two graduate degrees in Communications and English were earned from Wheaton College Graduate School and the University of Chicago.
Yancey moved to Chicago, Illinois, and in 1971 joined the staff of Campus Life magazine--a sister publication of Christianity Today directed towards high school and college students--where he served as editor for eight years. Yancey was for many years an editor for Christianity Today and wrote articles for Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Eternity, Moody Monthly, and National Wildlife, among others. He now lives in Colorado, working as a columnist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He is a member of the editorial board of Books and Culture, another magazine affiliated with Christianity Today, and travels around the world for speaking engagements.