D. A. Carson Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

If the text is God's Word, it is appropriate that we respond with reverence, a certain fear, a holy joy, a questing obedience.

D. A. Carson
A weak understanding of what the Bible says about sin is tied to a weak understanding of what the Bible says is achieved by the cross.

D. A. Carson
The person who loves his life will lose it: it could not be otherwise, for to love one's life is a fundamental denial of God's sovereignty, of God's rights, and a brazen elevation of self to the apogee of one's perception, and therefore an idolatrous focus on self, which is the heart of all sin

D. A. Carson
The Bible does not tell us that life in this world will be fair. Evil and sin are not Victorian gentlemen; they do not play fair.

D. A. Carson
In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, 'How can I be most useful?', not, 'How can I feel most useful?'

D. A. Carson
To know God is to be transformed, and thus to be introduced to a life that could not otherwise be experienced.

D. A. Carson
All of us would be wiser if we would resolve never to put people down, except on our prayer lists.

D. A. Carson
Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciousl y set aside time to do nothing but pray.

D. A. Carson
True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us

D. A. Carson
Damn all false antitheses to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings who oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ

D. A. Carson
The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.

D. A. Carson
The place where God has supremely destroyed all human arrogance and pretension is the cross.

D. A. Carson
Prayer is God's appointed means for appropriating the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.

D. A. Carson
Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.

D. A. Carson
For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

D. A. Carson
One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most evangelistic movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals.

D. A. Carson
The worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.

D. A. Carson
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.

D. A. Carson
When we suffer, there will sometimes be mystery... Will there also be faith?

D. A. Carson
Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel, conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns

D. A. Carson
That God normally operates the universe consistently makes science possible; that he does not always do so ought to keep science humble.

D. A. Carson
The more we get to know God, the more we want to know him better.

D. A. Carson
It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.

D. A. Carson
Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.

D. A. Carson
Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced.

D. A. Carson
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.

D. A. Carson
Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God's love, they cannot escape the cross.

D. A. Carson
Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.

D. A. Carson
The Christian's whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.

D. A. Carson
The truth of the matter is that all we have to do is live long enough and we will suffer.

D. A. Carson