For the Love of God Quotes

“Or have we ourselves become so caught up in the spirit of this age that we are content to be rich in information and impoverished in wisdom and godliness?”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“If what you dream of is possessing a certain thing, if what you pant for is a certain salary or reputation, that shapes your life. But if above all else you see it to be your duty to guard your heart, that resolve will translate itself into choices of what you read, how you pray, what you linger over. It will prompt self-examination and confession, repentance, and faith, and will transform the rest of your life.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“One of the slogans of the Reformation was simul justus et peccator, a Latin phrase meaning something like “simultaneously just[ified] and a sinner.” It was a way of getting at the legal nature of justification as expounded by Paul. On the ground of Christ’s death, God declares guilty sinners just—not because, from the act of justification itself, they are in their actions and thoughts truly just or righteous, but because they have been acquitted before the bar of God’s justice. Because Christ has paid their penalty, they are just in God’s eyes, even though, at the level of their very being, they are sinners still.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“From a canonical perspective, here once again is the missionary God—far more committed to reaching toward “outsiders” than his people are. Here too he prepares the ground, step by step, for the Great Commission that mandates believers to herald the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the whole world.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Men have looked so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“The matter has become increasingly difficult here since Western states have come to think they have a therapeutic role in society, defining the “illnesses” that must be confronted and the “therapies” that must be imposed as they go along. The potential for injustice and inequity multiplies.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Rather striking is David’s glance at the orbit where he intends to bear witness: “I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies” (57:9-10). No truncated vision, this. And today as countless millions sing these words, David’s vow has been fulfilled far more extensively than even he could have imagined.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“What they want is divine approval for the plan they themselves have already concocted. They do not want God’s best, or God’s will, but God’s approval of their will.”
― Donald Arthur Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Or—more to the point—God may actually speak in the language of pain, forestalling arrogance and independence (33:19-28). He may do these things more than once to someone, thereby turning back his soul from the grave (33:29-30). Elihu has thus opened up questions as to the purpose of suffering not entertained by either Job or his antagonists. He is certainly not saying that Job deserves all the suffering he is facing; indeed, Elihu insists that he wants Job to be cleared (33:32).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“(4:19)”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Here, then, is a picture of the “once-for-all” element in the cross (cf. Heb. 9:11-14, 23-26); we do not need a new sacrifice, but fresh confession (1 John 1:7, 9).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“True, to be the elect of God may mean being first in line for chastening (Amos 3:2), but it also means being loved by God from before the foundation of the earth, cherished by him, preserved by him, and finally brought into eschatological glory.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“In verse 14, John declares that the Word became flesh (i.e., a human being) and (literally) “tabernacled” among us. Readers of the Old Testament instantly see that this means that in some sense Jesus, for John, is a new tabernacle, a new temple (cf. John 2:13-25). Indeed, there are half a dozen allusions to Exodus 32—34 in John 1:14-18.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Here are rudimentary pieces of what comes to be called the doctrine of the Trinity. From the beginning, God has always been a complex unity.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“John finds it wonderfully appropriate: in the eternal “Word” that becomes flesh, God discloses himself in creation, revelation, and redemption. Even the word Word is evocative. We might paraphrase, “In the beginning God disclosed himself, and that self-disclosure was with God, and that self-disclosure was God.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“He saw himself not only as the rightful messianic king in the line of David, but also as the suffering servant who would be wounded for our transgressions. He knew he was not only the atoning sacrifice but also the priest who offered the sacrifice. He was not only the obedient Son who discharged the mission his Father assigned him, but also the eternal Word made flesh who disclosed the Father perfectly to a generation of rebellious image-bearers.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“But God answers with words Habakkuk does not want to hear. Habakkuk wants revival; God promises judgment (1:6-11). If Habakkuk is so concerned about the injustice, he should know that God is going to do something about it: he is going to punish it. God will do something astonishing: he will raise up the Babylonians, “that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own” (1:6).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“But the words “Remember Lot’s wife,” and the verse that follows, combine to show that the real issue is hesitation as to where one’s heart belongs. Those who longingly look back to the City of Destruction and try to cling to its toys are destroyed with them. Press on, then; invest in heaven’s stock (Matt. 6:19-21); set your sights on the New Jerusalem.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Many, many times when believers have been crushed under wicked regimes, or when innocent nations have been pulverized by brutal and powerful nations, words like these have sustained the faithful: God is just, and will hold the violent oppressors accountable, regardless of their political stance, religious affiliation, race, economics, or public image.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“For unless we are given grace to see the horror of our sin, it is quite certain that we shall never grasp the glory of grace, and we will love Jesus too little.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“So many Bibles, so many Bibles—and so little thoughtful reading of them. The next stage is the Bible as source of prooftexts; the stage after that is the Bible as quaint relic; the next, the Bible as antiquarian magic; the next, implacable ignorance—and all the while, a growing hunger for something wise, something stable, something intelligent, something prophetic, something true. And the hunger is not satisfied. The only answer is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“If we are to pray according to God’s will (1 John 5:14), then Luther was right: “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. Prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness.” It is not so much a means of talking God into a position repugnant to him, as a God-ordained means of obtaining the blessings that God in the perfection of his virtues is willing to bestow.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“As J. A. Motyer has put it: “Special privileges, special obligations; special grace, special holiness; special revelation, special scrutiny; special love, special responsiveness . . . the church of God cannot ever escape the perils of its uniqueness.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“David knows that this focus on what God has done is a God-given means of connecting with the living God himself, and that is what he wants: “I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” (143:6).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“(1) David’s initial appeal is to God’s faithfulness and righteousness (143:1). This is entirely appropriate, in exactly the same way that the goodness of a potentate or the integrity of a judge is welcomed by those trying to redress a wrong. The difficulty, of course, is that as we sinners appeal to the righteousness of God for vindication, it is easy to remember that we ourselves are horribly soiled compared with the clean glory of the unshielded holiness of the Almighty. Hence verse 2: David acknowledges that “no one living is righteous before you.” This is a tension not finally resolved until the cross (Rom. 3:21-26; cf. 1 John 1:9).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Contrast this specificity with more than a few contemporary praise choruses that endlessly exhort us to praise the Lord, without telling us why we should praise the Lord, or perhaps giving us only a reason or two. In the choruses, the emphasis tends to be on worship; here, the emphasis is on the One who is worshiped, such that the worship has the flavor of being no more than the inevitable response to so great a God. The one focuses on what we do, the other on who God is and what he has done.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Indeed, within the larger canonical framework, the fact that God is God and not a mere mortal, the fact that both his wrath and his love must be satisfied, means that wrath and love will rush forward together—until they meet in the cross, the cross of the man who was also called out of Egypt by God to be the perfect son, the perfect anti-type of Israel (11:1; Matt. 2:15).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“It is the juxtaposition of such themes that has driven orthodox confessionalism to insist that God is simultaneously, on the one hand, sovereign and transcendent, and, on the other, personal and interactive with his image-bearers.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“. (3) The maturity David has reached is grounded not in escapist retreat from life’s complexities, but in trust in the Lord (131:3), whose perfect knowledge is a bulwark for our hope.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“This exactly mirrors God’s situation. In theory he could righteously dismiss his “bride” and forget about her. Instead, he is committed to getting her back, to paying whatever is necessary to do so—but he also expects his bride, newly returned, to be faithful to him. God still loves his elect. He will pursue them, even after the most horrible rebellion and chastening, and he will buy them back. Indeed, the last verses of chapter 3 envisage an exile which on the long haul will do good: it will establish a time when the remnant will truly “seek the LORD their God and David their king” (3:5).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word