Philip Yancey Quotes

126 Sourced Quotes

One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.

Philip Yancey
C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Philip Yancey
When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?

Philip Yancey
Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.

Philip Yancey
As Ecclesiastes tells it, a wholesale devotion to pleasure will, paradoxically, lead to a state of utter despair.

Philip Yancey
True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.

Philip Yancey
Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?

Philip Yancey
The people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass.

Philip Yancey
Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments or proclaim lofty words that don't translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love - and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God's grace goes unheard.

Philip Yancey
Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.

Philip Yancey
Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.

Philip Yancey
Jesus' response to suffering people and to "nobodies" provides a glimpse into the heart of God. God is not the unmoved Absolute, but rather the Loving One who draws near.

Philip Yancey
The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.

Philip Yancey
Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.

Philip Yancey
I never see God. I seldom run into visual clues that remind me of God unless I am looking. The act of looking, the pursuit itself, makes possible the encounter. For this reason, Christianity has always insisted that trust and obedience come first, and knowledge follows.

Philip Yancey
Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.

Philip Yancey
The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.

Philip Yancey
True healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are.

Philip Yancey
People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

Philip Yancey
Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.

Philip Yancey
When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer-as does it.

Philip Yancey
I begin with confession not in order to feel miserable, rather to call to mind a reality I often ignore. When I acknowledge where I stand before a perfect God, it restores the true state of the universe. Confession simply establishes the proper ground rules of creatures relating to their creator.

Philip Yancey
All too often the church holds up a mirror
reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a
different way.

Philip Yancey
As a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.

Philip Yancey
Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people... Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God.

Philip Yancey
Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

Philip Yancey
What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?

Philip Yancey
Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.

Philip Yancey
God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough.... For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw the spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, "nobodies" who failed to leave their names...

Philip Yancey
We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the "real" world and the unseen world as the "unreal" world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite.

Philip Yancey