Quotes
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“Keller asked the Oxford students to imagine an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in AD 800. Inside he feels the impulse to destroy anyone who disrespects him. That’s the response his honor/shame culture demands, and so he does. But he also feels sexually attracted to men. His culture demands that he suppress those feelings, so he…
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“Confronted with this kind of violent reaction when they seek to mold their congregations into instruments of evangelism and social healing, pastors gradually settle down and lose interest in being change agents in the church. An unconscious conspiracy arises between their flesh and that of their congregations. It becomes tacitly understood that the laity will…
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“Kathy Keller recalled a class when ‘Betty’ Elliot walked up and down the aisles, listing her qualifications to be ordained. ‘I am better versed in Hebrew and Greek than any of you,’ she said, ‘as well as multiple other languages. I have more communication skills than do any of you, male or female. I am…
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“It is the atonement of the cross reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender that hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner’s heart, and he can take a kindred impression from the character of God now brought nigh and now at peace with him. Separate the…
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“The arithmetic of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding—and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness, and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave,…
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“A man will no more consent to the misery of being without an object because that object is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit because that pursuit terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will voluntarily submit himself to the torture because that torture is to be of short duration. If…
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“Is it possible to alter the subtle tendencies that pattern how you look at people? Yes. The Holy Spirit is about this business. It takes a while: a lot of walking on the paths of light, a lot of needing God and loving God, a lot of receiving his mercies, a lot of learning to…
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“When you recognize sin’s subtlety, you realize how much your life hangs upon sheer mercy from God. He is utterly aware of thoughts and intentions of which we may be barely aware or wholly unaware. Mercy extends here, too.” —David Powlison, Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017),…
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“For if our Lord spoke only of things that are obscure and beyond our reach, we might have cause to complain that we were wasting time on speculations which required much hard work, which in the end did us no good and left us no wiser than before. In that case it would be right…
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“God works organically in our lives. Organic growth has integrity. God works step-by-step. He walks with you. He’s always interested in how you take your very next step. Walking through life with him feels right. You’re going somewhere. The day of “completion” will not arrive until the day when Jesus Christ arrives (Phil. 1:6). When…
S.W.F. Knecht 