John Stott Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God.

John Stott
The gospel creates the church, which spreads the gospel, which creates more churches, which in turn spread the gospel further ad infinitum.

John Stott
Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and stewardship. Did God make the world? Does he sustain it? Has he committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for his own creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned.

John Stott
Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.

John Stott
The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.

John Stott
Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.

John Stott
Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.

John Stott
Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.

John Stott
The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.

John Stott
The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.

John Stott
In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

John Stott
Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

John Stott
Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, 'I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.' Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.

John Stott
The Bible isn't about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us.

John Stott
For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

John Stott
Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.

John Stott
The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.

John Stott
Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.

John Stott
Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection.

John Stott
Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

John Stott
The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.

John Stott
All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousn ess, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

John Stott
Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.

John Stott
At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. He bore the judgment we deserve in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. On the cross divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God's holy love was 'satisfied.'

John Stott
The question is not so much what the hand is doing (passing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it.

John Stott