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Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.
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Timothy Keller |
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When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us ..
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marriage
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Timothy Keller |
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0127d23
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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.
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gospel
humility
pride
sin
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Timothy Keller |
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73e5ef1
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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.
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time
marriage
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Timothy Keller |
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38332da
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Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.
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marriage
truth
sentimentality
tim-keller
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Timothy Keller |
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29f9b0b
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The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
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Timothy Keller |
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645736d
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If you want God's grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing. But that kind of spiritual humility is hard to muster. We come to God saying, "Look at all I've done," or maybe "Look at all I've suffered." God, however, wants us to look to him - to just wash."
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Timothy Keller |
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ab3ac8d
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If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.
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faith
motivation
heart
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Timothy Keller |
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e8e55e4
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This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social ..
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marriage
romance
love
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Timothy Keller |
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f2ae1b2
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Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn't mercy, but forgiveness comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.
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mercy
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Timothy Keller |
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7e7b644
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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.
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marriage
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Timothy Keller |
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4930b5a
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Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can..
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Timothy Keller |
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b0caf38
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Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won't matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.
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marriage
strength
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Timothy Keller |
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0067b96
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Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.
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marriage
spirituality
love
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Timothy Keller |
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5c59454
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Both men and women today see marriage not as a way of creating character and community but as a way to reach personal life goals. They are looking for a marriage partner who will 'fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires.' And that creates an extreme idealism that in turn leads to a deep pessimism that you will ever find the right person to marry.
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marriage
relationships
love
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Timothy Keller |
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f65a4df
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We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need - regardless of race, politics, class, and religion - is your neighbour. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbour, and you must love you..
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jesus
good-samaritan
neighbour
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Timothy Keller |
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67adef8
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When a newspaper posed the question, "What's Wrong with the World?" the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: "Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton." That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus."
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Timothy Keller |
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a919e3e
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in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from religious and moral observance were intrigued and attracted to him. We see this throughout the New Testament accounts of Jesus's life. In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person and a racial outcast (as in John 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outca..
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Timothy Keller |
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82e848b
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THE INCARNATION AND THE "UPSIDE-DOWN" ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL Because Jesus was the king who became a servant, we see a reversal of values in his kingdom administration (Luke 6:20 - 26). In Jesus' kingdom, the poor, sorrowful, and persecuted are above the rich, recognized, and satisfied. The first shall be last (Matt 19:30). Why would this be? This reversal is a way of imitating the pattern of Christ's salvation (Phil 2:1-11). Though Jesus was..
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Timothy Keller |
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a406604
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In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's great novel The Brothers Karamazov, there is a scene in which two people are talking about suffering. Ivan Karamazov is talking about there being any possibility that we can make sense of suffering, and here's what he says: "I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication..
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Timothy Keller |
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0ced5a4
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Flannery O'Connor, who wrote about one of her characters, Hazel Motes, that "he knew that the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin."2 If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to ..
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Timothy Keller |
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a443c12
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In Craig Blomberg's survey of the Mosaic laws of gleaning, releasing, tithing, and the Jubilee, he concludes that the Biblical attitude toward wealth and possessions does not fit into any of the normal categories of democratic capitalism, or of traditional monarchial feudalism, or of state socialism. The rules for the use of land in the Biblical laws challenge all major contemporary economic models. They "suggest a sharp critique of 1) the ..
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Timothy Keller |
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b3a5391
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D. A. Carson makes this observation about this section of 1 Corinthians: When in the last century Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission (now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship), started to wear his hair long and braided like Chinese men of the time and to put on their clothes and to eat their food, many of his fellow missionaries derided him. But Hudson Taylor had thought through what was essential to the gospel (and was th..
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Timothy Keller |
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a0b5117
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Ferry goes on to argue that almost all our possible answers to those big philosophical issues come from five or six major systems of thought. And today so many of the most common answers come from one system in particular. For example: Do you think it's generally a good idea to be kind to your enemies and reach out to them rather than kill them? Ferry says this idea--that you should love your enemies--came from Christianity and nowhere else..
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Timothy Keller |
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f256cbc
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human nature of their origins runs counter to the prevailing cultural view of the ancient Near East. In the Genesis narrative, we see man becoming a contributor under God in the ongoing work of creation, through the development of culture. We learn that city life is not to be seen as simply a punishment for humanity after the banishment from the garden. Rather the city has inherent capacities for bringing human beings together in such a way..
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Timothy Keller |
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8f94e55
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J. R. R. Tolkien's famous essay, "On Fairy-Stories," in Tree and Leaf (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 1-82. The consolation . . . the joy of the happy ending . . . the sudden joyous 'turn' . . . this joy which . . . stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist' nor 'fugitive.' . . . It is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and f..
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Timothy Keller |
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29192c2
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The Bible speaks of our relationship with God as knowing and being known (Gal 4:9; 1 Cor 13:12). The goal is not just the sharing of ideas but also of ourselves. Communication can lead to two-way personal revelation that produces what can only be called a dynamic experience. J. I. Packer, in his famous work Knowing God, writes: Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing. . . . Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of d..
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Timothy Keller |
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35c61cd
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If we just preach general doctrine and ethics from Scripture, we are not preaching the gospel. The gospel is the good news that God has accomplished our salvation for us through Christ in order to bring us into a right relationship with him and eventually to destroy all the results of sin in the world. Still, it can be rightly argued that in order to understand all this -- who God is, why we need salvation, what he has done to save us -- we..
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Timothy Keller |
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Con todo, puede argumentarse con precision que para entender todo esto -quien es Dios, por que necesitamos salvacion, que hizo para salvarnos- debemos conocer las ensenanzas basicas de toda la Biblia. J. Gresham Machen, por ejemplo, se refiere a las doctrinas biblicas de Dios y el hombre como las <>.10 Esto quiere decir que es totalmente necesario entender las doctrinas de la Trinidad, la encarnacion de Cristo..
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Timothy Keller |
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577698c
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Two recent books that make this case are by James K. A. Smith: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009); and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). Smith builds on Augustine's idea that what makes us what we are is the order of our loves, and therefore what changes us is changing not what we think but what we love. Smith rightly crit..
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Timothy Keller |
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20efe93
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GARDENS OR FIELDS? Craig Blomberg points out that in Matthew's parable of the mustard seed, the sower sows his seed in a "field" (agros, Matt 13:31), while in Luke the sowing is in a "garden" (kepos, Luke 13:19). Jews never grew mustard plants in gardens, but always out on farms, while Greeks in the Mediterranean basin did the opposite. It appears that each gospel writer was changing the word that Jesus used in Mark--the word for "earth" or..
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Timothy Keller |