For the Love of God Quotes

“...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Do this in remembrance of me" (22:19). It is shocking that this should be necessary, in exactly the same way that it is shocking that a commemorative rite like the Passover should have been necessary. But history shows how quickly the people of God drift toward peripheral matters, and end up ignoring or denying the center. By a simple rite, Jesus wants his followers to come back to his death, his shed blood, his broken body, again and again and again.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“again.
Here is a sober lesson. Even after times of spectacular revival, reformation, or covenantal renewal, the people of God are never more than a generation or two from infidelity, unbelief, massive idolatry, disobedience, and wrath. God help us.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“In the Bible, God's utter sovereignty does not diminish human responsibility; conversely, human beings are moral agents who choose, believe, obey, disbelieve, and disobey, and this fact does not make God's sovereignty finally contingent.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“All appropriate behavior and outlook for human beings made in the image of God find their reference point and measure in God himself. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of both knowledge (Prow 1:7) and wisdom (Prow 9:10), for "knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Prow 9:10).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“In a theistic universe, there can be nothing worse than being truly abandoned by God himself. The worst of hell's torments is that men and women are truly abandoned by God. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“What would you like to be doing, saying, thinking, or planning when Jesus comes again? What would you not like to be doing, saying, thinking, or planning when Jesus comes again? Jesus tells you always to “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (24:42).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“Only prescribed mediators and sacrifices were acceptable. The entire structure was designed to enhance the transcendence of God, to establish and clarify the sheer ugliness and vileness of sin, to demonstrate that a person could be accepted by God only if that sin were atoned for.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“But in this gospel the evangelist points out that Jesus' miracles are not mere events of power, they are significant: they point beyond themselves, like signs. This miracle points to the fact that Jesus not only provides bread, but rightly understood he is bread. He is the staple apart from which there is no real life at all.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Providence is mysterious. It must never be used to justify wrong actions or to mitigate sin: Isaac and his family are more than a little sleazy, Judas is a deceitful wretch, Haman is vile, and the Roman court trying Paul is more than a little corrupt. Yet God sovereignly rules, behind the scenes, bringing glory out of gore and honor out of shame.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“The centurion, of course, was not speaking within the framework of a mature Christian doctrine of Christ, but the eyes of faith had enabled him to penetrate very far indeed.
This is the faith we need. It trusts Jesus' word, reflects a simple profundity, and believes that when Jesus speaks, God speaks.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Peter is already presupposing a fairly sophisticated David-typology.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Further, once again it is clear that the promised line is not chosen because of its intrinsic superiority; implicitly, this chapter argues for the primacy of grace.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“And so here, at the very beginning of the history of the nation of Israel, God displays his concern for the despised and the outcast, people who are not organically connected with the promised line.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Worship and religion are not primarily about offering to God something called praise, something God prefers not to be without. Worship and religion are first of all about God-centeredness-and because we are rebels, that means that worship and religion are in the first instance about being reconciled to this God, our Creator and Redeemer, from whom we have willfully become alienated. The heart of the temple is not its choirs, its incense, its ceremonies. The heart of the temple is about averting the wrath of God, by the means he himself has provided.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“So the place where the temple was built is the place where David built an altar to the Lord, calling on him with sacrificial offerings (21:25-27), and where the angel of death sheathed his sword.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“However difficult it is to be discerning in such matters, one cannot say too often or too loudly that what the church needs are leaders with unction-a word favored by the Puritans. It simply means "anointing," i.e., an anointing by the Spirit. Is that too much to ask, in an age when under the terms of the new covenant all of the covenant people of God receive the Spirit poured out at Pentecost?”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (16:7).
This is a lesson that must be learned afresh, especially in our day, for our day loves images more than reality. Even some preachers devote more thought to how "to dress for success" and how to develop a compelling and authoritative voice than they do to maintaining a pure heart.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Perhaps the most frightening cases are those where countless sins are committed by many, many people, and God does absolutely nothing about it. For the worst judgment occurs when God turns his back on people, and resolutely lets sin take its course. Far better to be pulled up sharply before things get out of hand.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“In what ways does your life show you cherish every word that comes from the mouth of God, above all the blessings and even the necessities of this life?”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“We might well ask ourselves what steps we take to teach our children to fear the Lord our God, not with the cringing terror that is frightened of whimsical malice but with the profound conviction that this God is perfectly just and does not play around with sin.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“ONE OF THE FEATURES OF THE PSALMS that describe the enthronement of a Davidic king, or the reign of a Davidic king, is how often the language goes "over the top." This feature combines with the built-in Davidic typology to give these psalms a twin focus. On the one hand, they can be read as somewhat extravagant descriptions of one of the Davidic kings (in this case Solomon, according to the superscription); on the other, they invite the reader to anticipate something more than a David or a Solomon or a Josiah.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Jesus' surprising analysis makes sense only if three things are true: (a) All of us deserve to perish. If we are spared, that is an act of grace. What should surprise us is that so many of us are spared so long. (b) Death comes to all of us. Our world often argues that the worst disaster is for someone to die young. Not so. The real disaster is that we all stand under this sentence of death, and we all die. The age at which we die is only relatively better or worse. (c) Death has the last word for all of us-unless we repent, which alone leads us beyond death to the life of the consummated kingdom.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“The name of God (3:13-14) may be rendered "I AM WHO I AM," as it is in the NIV, or "I will be what I will be." In Hebrew, the abbreviated form "I am" is related in some fashion to YHWH, often spelled out as Yahweh (and commonly rendered "LORD," in capital letters; the same Hebrew letters stand behind English Jehovah). The least that this name suggests is that God is self-existent, eternal, completely independent, and utterly sovereign: God is what he is, dependent on no one and nothing.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“By contrast, Joseph weeps (50:17). He cannot help but see that these groveling lies betray how little he is loved or trusted, even after seventeen years (47:28) of nominal reconciliation. His verbal response displays not only pastoral gentle- ness-"he reassured them and spoke kindly to them," promising to provide for them and their families (50:21)-it also reflects a man who has thought deeply about the mysteries of providence, about God's sovereignty and human responsibility”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Second, this method of bringing a canonical book into being is entirely in line with its subject matter: God himself brought the messianic Son of David, the Son of God, into this world (1:35), the eternal invading the temporal, forever assuring that one could talk of him as a witness speaks of what is observed. The transmission of Christian truth necessarily rests, in part, not on mysticism, but on witness.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“For it is an infallible rule of the kingdom that self-focus issues in death, while "whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it" (8:35). Only for a few will this commitment entail loss of physical life; for all of us it means death to self, discipleship to Jesus. And that includes a glad confession of Jesus, and principled refusal to be ashamed of Jesus and his words in this adulterous and sinful generation (8:38).”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Living as we do on this side of the cross, it is easy for us to be a bit condescending about Peter's reaction and rebuke of the Master (8:32). From Peter's perspective, Jesus simply had to be wrong on this subject. After all, messiahs don't get killed: they win. And how could a God-anointed, miracle-working Messiah like Jesus lose? Peter was wrong, of course, profoundly wrong. For even the disciples had not yet grasped that Jesus the Messiah was simultaneously conquering King and Suffering Servant.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“Twenty years or so have passed since Jacob's outward-bound journey. Some people learn nothing in twenty years. Jacob has learned humility, tenacity, godly fear, reliance upon God's covenantal promises, and how to pray. None of this means he is so paralyzed by fear that he does nothing but retreat into prayer. Rather, it means he does what he can, while believing utterly that salvation is of the Lord.
By the time the sun rises, he may walk with a limp, but he is a stronger and better man.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1