The Parables of Jesus Quotes

“I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; It was not I that found, O Savior true; No, I was found of thee.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“People love sin. Sin hardens their hearts. Therefore, they will not receive the gospel of the kingdom of God when it is preached to them.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Religion is your seeking after a god in your own image. Christianity is God’s seeking you and moving to redeem you by the death of His Son.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“To know God as the sovereign God of the universe is to know ourselves as His subjects, in rebellion against Him. To know God in His holiness is to know ourselves as sinners. To know Him as love is to see ourselves as loved though unlovely. To seek God’s wisdom is to see our own foolishness in spiritual things. Since God is the only standard by which any of those things can be measured, we do not know anything properly unless we know Him. Or to put it in other terms, if we do not know God, we consider ourselves to be sovereign over our own lives, holy, loving, wise, and so on, when in reality we are none of those things.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“You are not called to poverty in Christ but to the greatest of spiritual wealth. You are not called to disappointment but to fulfillment. You are not called to sorrow but to joy. How could it be otherwise when the treasure is the only Son of God?”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“if we are justified we will have that nature of God that will increasingly and inevitably express itself in forgiveness, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us, we will be able to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). The Lutherans says: “We are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith which is alone.” It is always faith and life: first, the life of God within; then faith; then, the expression of the inner, divine life in what we do. The conclusion is: if we do not forgive, we are not forgiven. We are not justified. We are not God’s children, regardless of what our profession may be.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“ten thousand talents. It is hard to estimate exactly what that was worth, and it may in fact only mean the largest debt conceivable, “ten thousand” being one of the largest common numbers and a “talent” being the largest denomination of currency. However, if we do estimate it in dollars, we derive some interesting results. A talent was seventy-five pounds, so ten thousand talents would be 750,000 pounds. We do not know whether they were talents of gold or silver. But since Jesus is trying to exaggerate the contrast between this great debt and the relatively small debt of verse 28, we may suppose that He was thinking of the greater of the two talents, namely, gold. In troy weight there are twelve ounces to a pound. So we are now dealing with 750,000 times 12, or 9 million ounces of gold. Assuming that gold is selling at about $400 an ounce, we come to a figure of $3,600 million (three trillion six hundred million dollars). That is beyond our comprehension, which is precisely Christ’s point. It is an astronomical debt, entirely beyond this servant’s or anybody else’s capacity to pay.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, He came preaching God’s right to rule over the minds and hearts of all people. But that is precisely what the people involved did not want. Adam did not want it. He had great freedom, but he was offended by God’s unreasonable and arbitrary (so he judged) restriction in the case of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“No one should take comfort in sin. The church is impure; we cannot always distinguish between the wheat and tares in this age. But a day is coming when that distinction will be made. The harvest will come. The wheat will be gathered into God’s barn, and the tares will be burned. As a result, we should examine ourselves as to whether we are true children of God or not. And we should be careful to “confirm [our] calling and election,” as Peter indicates (2 Pet. 1:10).”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“is the world or the church is actually irrelevant. The point is simply that the devil is going to bring forward people (whether in the church or out of it) so much like true Christians, yet not Christians, that even the servants of God will not be able to tell them apart.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, He came preaching God’s right to rule over the minds and hearts of all people.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“When the tax collector prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” he was thinking of the animal sacrifices because, although Jesus was then present, He had not yet died. When we pray the tax collector’s prayer, we think of Jesus and the way in which God has provided a full and perfect salvation through Him. Do you think of Jesus? Have you prayed that prayer? No one will ever be justified who has not prayed it, nor will anyone be received by God who has not first of all taken his stand with sinners in need of that mercy that God alone provides.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Jesus said, “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved” (John 10:9). That includes you, and it refers to something that can take place now. If you have not yet trusted Jesus, You can trust Him now. Today is the day of salvation.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The call of God is not restricted by anything you can imagine: race, education, social position, wealth, achievements, good deeds, the lack of them, or anything else. Therefore, there is no reason why you (whoever you are) should not be among the number of those whom God draws to Jesus.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“John 6:44 looks at the matter from the Godward side and declares, quite rightly, that no one ever made the first move toward God. We come to God only because God draws us. On the other hand, as the texts about the open door show, God does not show favoritism. Anyone, regardless of who he or she is or where he or she comes from, may be among that number.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“That truth has sometimes been taken as contradicting John 6:44, which says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” But that is a mistaken inference. Those who dislike John 6:44 either disregard it or try to use the gospel invitation to overturn its plain meaning. Actually the two verses are not in conflict. John 6:44 looks at the matter from the Godward side and declares, quite rightly, that no one ever made the first move toward God. We come to God only because God draws us. On the other hand, as the texts about the open door show, God does not show favoritism. Anyone, regardless of who he or she is or where he or she comes from, may be among that number.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Do not make the mistake of counting on your moral record as a way of coming to God. It is your record that gets you into trouble in the first place. Your record will condemn you, no matter how good you think you are or how good you appear in other people’s eyes. Count on the fact that Jesus paid the penalty for your sin, and accept the fact that He is the way for simple, sinful people like you and me to enter heaven.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. ROMANS 3:10–12”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“No one finds God in mere pious thoughts or religion, either. That is, we will not find God in the mere performance of religious duties, whether the fourfold or sevenfold path to Nirvana, a life of meditation, the “religion” of drugs, or even the ceremonial aspects of Christianity. God has written no overall human efforts to be religious in order that He might write a yes over all who abandon religion and turn to Him in Christ. Religion is your seeking after a god in your own image. Christianity is God’s seeking you and moving to redeem you by the death of His Son.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The Bible says that the revelation of God in nature condemns us for our failure to recognize Him. Romans 1:18–20 (NIV) says that “the wrath of God” is being revealed from heaven against all people because “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” No one has ever come to our Lord Jesus Christ through nature alone.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“These two parables as well as other teachings of the Lord about prayer cut to pieces the false doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God that has been so popular in this century. They teach that God is not the Father of all men. He is the Creator of all. But He is uniquely the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and becomes the Father only of those persons who believe on Christ.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Many who begin early will lose their reward (or not even actually come to a true faith in Christ and salvation) because they are approaching God in a false spirit, on the basis of their merit and not on the basis of His grace.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Finally, you must sell off your sinful pleasures and practices, too. It is not pleasure itself that must be sold off. There are holy pleasures, for the saints are a joyful people. It is only sinful pleasure that must go, for you cannot serve God and sin. You cannot say that you love Christ and fail to keep His commandments. Do you find that hard? Do you draw back? Is that too great a price to pay for salvation? If so, you are not the man of Christ’s parable who finds the treasure and sells all he has to have it. You are not the merchant who trades off everything to possess the great pearl. You have not even properly seen the value of what you are rejecting.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“in election and “irresistible” grace God does not disregard or act contrary to the will of any man or woman, as implied above. Rather, He regenerates the individual, as the result of which a will is born that now desires what the old will previously despised. Before, George hated Christ. Now he loves Him and so comes willingly when the gospel is preached. Again, if Mary desires to come, it is not in spite of God’s predetermination in her case but because of it.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The secular church is one dominated by the world, as much of the contemporary church is. It is characterized by the world’s wisdom, the world’s theology, the world’s agenda, and the world’s methods. The evangelical church, when it is secular, is one that seeks to do God’s work but in the world’s way. It looks to the media and money rather than to God and His power, which is unleashed through prayer.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“As Christians, we must be on guard against Satan’s tactics. We are warned not only against his infusion of his own people into the Christian community, but also against the visible church’s bureaucratic growth (which confuses size and structure with spiritual fruit) and against the infusion of evil into the lives even of believing people (which confuses a loving and forgiving spirit with treason to Christ’s cause). In other words, we are to beware of the secular church and evangelical secularism as well.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“So rather than repent of sin and turn for mercy to a God who is altogether sovereign, holy, knowing, and unchangeable, men and women suppress what knowledge they have and refuse to seek out that additional knowledge that could be the salvation of their souls.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“What is it that leads such a person to reject the truth of God in the first place? According to Paul, it is a determined opposition to the nature of God Himself, which the apostle describes as human “ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Parables differ from fables in that a fable is not a real situation. An example of a fable is any of Aesop’s stories, in which animals talk. In those stories the animals are simply people in disguise. Parables also differ from allegories, since in an allegory each or nearly each detail has meaning. C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are essentially allegories. In the parables of Jesus not every detail has meaning. Indeed, to try to force meaning into each one can produce strange and even demonstrably false doctrines. Parables are merely real-life stories from which one or possibly a few basic truths are drawn.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“A parable is a story taken from real life (or a real-life situation) from which a moral or spiritual truth is drawn. Examples are many: the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14), the wedding banquet (Matt. 22:1–14; Luke 14:15–24), the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46), and others, including the parables of the kingdom that will occupy our attention in this first set of studies. By my count there are about twenty-seven parables, though some are closely related and may simply be different versions of the same story.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus