Timothy Keller
When I forget the gospel I become dependent on the smiles and evaluation of others.Collection: Evaluation
Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.Collection: Motivation
You don't fall in love. You commit to it.Collection: Falling In Love
...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.Collection: Religious
Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.Collection: God
Christ's resurrection not only gives you hope for the future; it gives you hope to handle your scars right now.Collection: Giving
The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.Collection: Christian
Every single emotion you have should be processed in prayer.Collection: Prayer
Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study.Collection: Character
We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.Collection: Jesus
It takes pride to be anxious – I am not wise enough to know how my life should go.Collection: Wise
How you experience your present is completely shaped by what you believe your ultimate future to be.Collection: Believe
Those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character.Collection: Strong
If you don't feel like praying, pray to God to give you the desire.Collection: Giving
If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.Collection: Ifs
Many times people think if God has called you to something, he's promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.Collection: Thinking
Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.Collection: Jesus
Unless you believe the gospel, everything you do will be driven by either pride or fear.Collection: Believe
This is the humbling truth that lies at the heart of Christianity. We love to be our own saviors. Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves. So we find messages of self-salvation extremely attractive, whether they are religious (Keep these rules and you earn eternal blessing) or secular (Grab hold of these things and you’ll experience blessing now).Collection: Religious
In the end, we love people into belief. We do not argue them into belief.Collection: People
Religion operates on the principle 'I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.' But the operating principle of the gospel is 'I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.'Collection: Principles
When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.Collection: Racism
Generosity is not only about money. There is more than one currency. Let your generosity be pervasive in life.Collection: Generosity
If you can't show the difference between religion and the Gospel, people will confuse morality with a changed heartCollection: Heart
Truth is more important, freedom is more complex, and Jesus is more liberating than you think.Collection: Jesus
To say doctrine doesn't matter, only how you live matters, is itself a doctrine. It's the doctrine of salvation by works.Collection: Doctrine
The Gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.Collection: Promise
To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love.Collection: Greatness
Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.Collection: Religious
Describe the God you've rejected. Describe the God you don't believe in. Maybe I don't believe in that God either.Collection: Believe
Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite.Collection: Suffering
Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing , religious people of his day.Collection: Religious
Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the crossCollection: Long
The essence of forgiveness is absorbing pain instead of giving it.Collection: Pain
You are a totally loved moral failure.Collection: Moral
A sense of Jesus’ absence might be a sign of his presence- a sign that he’s working already in your life.Collection: Jesus
Because of Jesus-there is always hope, even in the darkest moments of your life.Collection: Jesus
Men, you'll never be a good groom to your wife unless you're first a good bride to Jesus.Collection: Marriage
We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it’s not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that’s not what sends you to heaven or Hell.Collection: People
The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.Collection: Christian
We're far worse than we ever imagined, and far more loved than we could ever dream.Collection: Dream
The world is a dark place, and yet the coming of Jesus Christ shows us no one and nothing is hopeless.Collection: Jesus
Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection.Collection: Wise
To take a person out of slavery takes an instant. To take slavery out of a person takes a process.Collection: Slavery
We can only grasp the gospel's sweetness if we first grapple with its offense- you can't save yourself.Collection: Firsts
Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.Collection: Heaven
Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.Collection: Grief
We deserve to be forgotten because we forget Him. But because Jesus died on the cross, we will never, ever be forgotten by God.Collection: Jesus
No one is so good that they don’t need the grace of the gospel, nor so bad that they can’t receive the grace of the gospel.Collection: Grace