Timothy J. Keller Quotes

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.

Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints.

...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.

Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.

Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.

Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.

All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.

A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

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

Men, you'll never be a good groom to your wife unless you're first a good bride to Jesus.

Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.

Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.

Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life.

The only way your child will grow out of their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for 20 years or so.

True love is generative. It is the only kind that makes more of itself as it goes along.

Idolatry means turning a good thing into the ultimate thing.

On Christ's attitude toward His disciples: "If I gave away My big all to get to you, can you give away your little all to follow Me?

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.

The weekly worship service can be very effective in evangelism of non-Christians and in edification of Christians if it does not aim at either alone but is gospel centered and in the vernacular.

If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work, without which work could bore you.

We often forget how thirsty we are because we believe we will fulfill our dreams.

To let the gospel of Jesus shape how we work means to heed the influence of both the psychological idols within our hearts as well as the sociological idols in our culture and profession.

What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse's holiness.

Gratitude is what you feel. Thanksgiving is what you do.

The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than alien intrusion of sin, as the villain.

The proper biblical understanding of sin is much more radical and far-reaching. It can never be used as a weapon, because it will recoil on anyone who tries to deploy it that way.

Underneath all notions of justice is a set of faith assumptions that are essentially religious, and these are often not acknowledged.

No one has ever been deeply changed by an act of the will. The only thing that can re-forge and change a life at its root, is love.

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Every artifact of human culture is a positive response to God's general revelation and simultaneously a rebellious assertion against His sovereign rule over us.

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

At Gethsemane: "Jesus is subordinating His loudest desires to His deepest desires.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is an offense to both religion and irreligion. It can't be co-opted by either moralism or relativism.

You (Millennials) are the generation most afraid of real community because it inevitably limits freedom and choice. Get over your fear.

Conversation with God leads to an encounter with God. Prayer turns theology into experience.

Anyone who wonders if a Christian can sin is ignorant about sin's enslaving nature.

Jesus Christ says, 'Kill me and in 3 days, not only this temple, but all temples in the whole world will be out of business.' This is the most stunning thing any human being has ever said.