Tim Keller (pastor) - People Quotes

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

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
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
There are many ways to cover up our sin. We may justify or minimize it by blaming circumstances and others people. However, real repentance first admits sin as sin and takes full responsibility. True confession and repentance begins when blame shifting ends...Just as real repentance begins only where blame shifting ends, so it also begins where self-pity ends, and we start to turn from our sin out of love for God rather than mere self-interest.

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
If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Tim Keller
When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.

Tim Keller
Remember that according to the Bible, the heart is not primarily the emotions but rather the seat of our fundamental commitments and trusts, and therefore it is the control center of the whole life. So to preach to the heart means to go right for the commanding commitments of people's lives that drive their desires, thinking, feeling, and action.

Tim Keller
Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day.

Tim Keller
God's grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

Tim Keller
Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration - not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.

Tim Keller
While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.

Tim Keller
A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

Tim Keller
While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world's sorrows, tasting the coming joy.

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
No one is exempt from trials and tribulations. In fact, this is often what happens to people God loves very much, for it is part of God's often mysterious and good plan for turning us into something great.

Tim Keller
Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study.

Tim Keller