52
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. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.
- John Stott
51
His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice.
- John Stott
50
Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, not by self-congratulation.
- John Stott
49
The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.
- John Stott
48
God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.
- John Stott
47
We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.
- John Stott
46
We should not ask, "What is wrong with the world?" for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, "What has happened to the salt and light?"
- John Stott
45
The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice - and so the pain - of the cross.
- John Stott
44
All around us we see Christians and churches relaxing their grasp on the gospel, fumbling it, and in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether.
- John Stott
43
Unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied; it is a sin to be deplored. Is sinfulness lies in the fact that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to Him.
- John Stott
42
Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.
- John Stott
41
These then are the marks of the ideal Church - love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.
- John Stott
40
We must never think of salvation as a kind of transaction between God and us in which He contributes grace and we contribute faith. For we were dead and had to be quickened before we could believe. No, Christ's apostles clearly teach elsewhere that saving faith too is God's gracious gift.
- John Stott
39
The very first thing which needs to be said about Christian ministers of all kinds is that they are "under" people as their servants rather than "over" them (as their leaders, let alone their lords). Jesus made this absolutely plain. he chief characteristic of Christian leaders, he insisted, is humility not authority, and gentleness not power.
- John Stott
38
We preachers cannot expect to communicate verbally from the pulpit if we visually out of it contradict ourselves.
- John Stott
37
Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.
- John Stott
36
The chief reason why the Christian believes in the divine origin of the Bible is that Jesus Christ Himself taught it.
- John Stott
35
Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership.
- John Stott
34
Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace.
- John Stott
33
The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.
- John Stott
32
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
31
Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?
- John Stott
30
What Jesus emphasized in His teaching (in Matthew 5:33-37) was that honest men do not need to resort to oaths; it was not that they should refuse to take an oath if required by some external authority to do so.
- John Stott
29
A person's life is his most precious possession. Consequently, to rob him of it is the greatest sin we can commit against him, while to give one's own life on his behalf is the greatest possible expression of love for him. This, then, is the ultimate contrast: Cain's hatred issued in murder, Christ's love (issued) in self-sacrifice.
- John Stott
27
How did Jesus expect His disciples to react under persecution? (In Matthew 5:12 He said), "Rejoice and be glad!" We are not to retaliate like an unbeliever, nor sulk like a child, nor lick our wound in self-pity like a dog, nor just grin a bear it like a Stoic, still less pretend we enjoy it like a masochist. What then? We are to rejoice as a Christian should and even "leap for joy" (Lk. 6:23).
- John Stott
26
Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.
- John Stott
25
Self-love vitiates all relationships. Diotrephes (3 John 9-10) slandered (the Apostle) John, cold-shouldered the missionaries and excommunicated loyal believers-all because he loved himself and wanted to have pre-eminence. Personal vanity still lies at the root of most dissensions in every local church today.
- John Stott
24
A Christian's freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of His care.
- John Stott
23
It was your great American wit, Mark Twain, who once said, "Man is the only animal that blushes, and the only animal that needs to." We are ashamed, are we not, of things we've done in the past? Nobody is free who is unforgiven. Instead of being able to look God in the face or to look one another in the face, we want to run away and hide when our conscience troubles us.
- John Stott
21
The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.
- John Stott
20
Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.
- John Stott
19
To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.
- John Stott
18
Oath-taking is really a pathetic confession of our own dishonesty. What do we find it necessary to introduce our promises by some tremendous formula? The only reason is that we know our simple word is not likely to be trusted. So we try to induce people to believe us by adding a solemn oath.
- John Stott
17
To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and that as the reigning Lord he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe.
- John Stott
16
And seldom if ever do I leave the pulpit without a sense of partial failure, a mood of penitence, a cry to God for forgiveness, and a resolve to look to Him for grace to do better in the future.
- John Stott
15
Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.
- John Stott
14
Universalism, fashionable as it is today, is incompatible with the teaching of Christ and His apostles, and is a deadly enemy of evangelism. The true universalism of the Bible is the call to universal evangelism in obedience to Christ's universal commission. It is the conviction that not all men will be saved in the end, but that all men must hear the gospel of salvation before the end.
- John Stott
13
Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.
- John Stott
11
So there is such a thing as perfect hatred, just as there is such a thing as righteous anger. But it is a hatred for God's enemies, not our own enemies. It is entirely free of all spite, rancor and vindictiveness, and is fired only by love for God's honor and glory.
- John Stott
10
The particularity of each New Testament author was in no way smothered by the unique process of inspiration. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit first prepared, and then used, their individuality of upbringing, experience, temperament and personality, in order to convey through each some distinctive and appropriate truth.
- John Stott
9
The Gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.
- John Stott
8
Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony.
- John Stott
7
Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.
- John Stott
5
Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.
- John Stott
4
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