Tim Keller (pastor) - Jesus Quotes

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It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly. Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn away our hearts from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.

Tim Keller
The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

Tim Keller
Jesus is not asking us to do anything for him that he hasn't already done for us, under conditions of difficulty beyond our comprehension.

Tim Keller
By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived.

Tim Keller
Jesus' claims are particularly unnerving, because if they are true there is no alternative but to bow the knee to him.

Tim Keller
Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.

Tim Keller
We are so evil and sinful and flawed that Jesus had to die for us... But we are so lobed and valued that he was willing to due for us.

Tim Keller
The simple fact is that only if I love Jesus more than my wife will I be able to serve her needs ahead of my own.

Tim Keller
On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God's family freely by grace.

Tim Keller
We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.

Tim Keller
The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.

Tim Keller
The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus.

Tim Keller
At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone.... Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.

Tim Keller
Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.

Tim Keller
Jesus Christ, who had all the power in the world, saw us enslaved by the very things we thought would free us... He laid aside the infinities and immensities of His being and, at the cost of His life, paid the debt for our sins, purchasing us the only place our hearts can rest, in His Father's house. Knowing He did this will transform us from the inside out.

Tim Keller
I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ - therefore I obey

Tim Keller
If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.

Tim Keller
Only in Jesus Christ do we see how the untamable, infinite God can become a baby and a loving Savior. On the cross we see how both the love and the holiness of God can be fulfilled at once.

Tim Keller
As many have learned and later taught, you don't realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.

Tim Keller
Jesus's miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.

Tim Keller
Most people in the world believe that if there is a God, you relate to God by being good. Most religions are based on that principle, though there are a million different variations on it...But they all have the same logic: If I perform, if I obey, I'm accepted. The gospel of Jesus is not only different from that but diametrically opposed to it: I'm fully accepted in Jesus Christ, and therefore I obey.

Tim Keller
It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them.

Tim Keller
The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.

Tim Keller
The best people often have terrible lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate 'Job,' the only truly, fully innocent sufferer — is another.

Tim Keller
Because of Jesus-there is always hope, even in the darkest moments of your life.

Tim Keller
In Ephesians 5, Paul shows us that even on earth Jesus did not use his power to oppress us but sacrificed everything to bring us into union with him. And this takes us beyond the philosophical to the personal and the practical. If God had the gospel of Jesus's salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only 'works' to the degree that approximates the pattern of God's self-giving love in Christ.

Tim Keller
The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.

Tim Keller
Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

Tim Keller
Jesus does not divide the world into the moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys". He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways. Even though both sons are wrong, however, the father cares for them and invites them both back into his love and feast.

Tim Keller
A sense of Jesus' absence might be a sign of his presence- a sign that he's working already in your life.

Tim Keller