Timothy Keller Quotes & Sayings

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking, when nothing is forcing you to think about anything in particular. — Timothy Keller

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. — Timothy Keller

Let's think back for a moment to the boring sermon. Sometimes the sermon we hear is boring because it went on for too long (or it was not long enough) to engage the listeners. One of the most culturally sensitive areas of human life is this area of time. What various people and cultures consider "late" and "too long" varies widely. In the United States, African-American and Hispanic Christians have services in which singing, prayer, and preaching go on at least 50 percent longer than the attention spans and comfort zones of most Anglo people. Anyone who leads worship services will, then, unavoidably be contextualizing toward some people and away from others. — Timothy Keller

The weekly worship service can be very effective in evangelism of non-Christians and in edification of Christians if it does not aim at either alone but is gospel centered and in the vernacular. — Timothy Keller

Most people want Jesus as a consultant rather than a King, and He does not come that way. — Timothy Keller

The essence of sin is "I do not want to have God in my life." And the essence of God's judicial wrath is to give us what we have asked for. — Timothy Keller

If God does not have our highest allegiance, we will use prayer to try to get things that have that designation. — Timothy Keller

Legalistic remorse says, "I broke God's rules," while real repentance says, "I broke God's heart." — Timothy Keller

Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough. — Timothy Keller

Romans 8:16 tells us that the Spirit bears witness to our hearts that we are children of God. Part of the mission of the Spirit is to tell you about God's love for you, his delight in you, and the fact that you are his child. These things you may know in your head, but the Holy Spirit makes them a fiery reality in your life. Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that one day he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him - and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father's arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally, there was no difference, but subjectively and experientially, there was all the difference in the world. In his father's arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship. — Timothy Keller

Hurricanes have massive power, yet God's is greater - he — Timothy Keller

Religion poses a danger of creating division or intolerance between groups of people. However, the gospel of Jesus lead us to three things: humble service, reconciling behavior that is neither patronizing nor self-righteous, and a love toward people who hold different beliefs than we do. — Timothy Keller

Contextualized gospel ministry should affirm the beliefs of the culture wherever it can be done with integrity. — Timothy Keller

When Heaven is going to give a great responsibility to someone, it first makes his mind endure suffering. It makes his sinews and bones experience toil, and his body to suffer hunger. It inflicts him with poverty and knocks down everything he tries to build. In this way Heaven stimulates his mind, stabilizes his temper, and develops his weak points. - The Book of Mencius (Chinese, 300 BC) — Timothy Keller

Even though the gospel is a set of truths to understand and believe, it cannot remain a set of beliefs if it is truly believed and understood. As Lesslie Newbigin states, "The Christian story provides us with such a set of lenses, not something for us to look at, but for us to look through."2 — Timothy Keller

The reason the stone was rolled away on Jesus's tomb was not so that Jesus could get out, but so that we could get in. — Timothy Keller

Meditate on the passage: Write down answers to the following questions: What does this text show me about God for which I should praise or thank him? What does the text show me about my sin that I should confess and repent of? What false attitudes, behavior, emotions, or idols come alive in me whenever I forget this truth? What does the text show me about a need that I have? What do I need to do or become in light of this? How shall I petition God for it? How is Jesus Christ or the grace that I have in him crucial to helping me overcome the sin I have confessed or to answering the need I have? Finally: How would this change my life if I took it seriously - if this truth were fully alive and effective in my inward being? Also, why might God be showing this to me now? What is going on in my life that he would be bringing this to my attention today? — Timothy Keller

Sound preaching arises out of two loves - love of the Word of God and love of people - and from them both a desire to show people God's glorious grace. — Timothy Keller

You're nobody till somebody loves you," went the popular song, and we are an entire culture that has taken it literally. We maintain the fantasy that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed. But when our expectations and hopes reach that magnitude, as Becker says, "the love object is God." No lover, no human being, is qualified for that role. No one can live up to that. The inevitable result is bitter disillusionment. — Timothy Keller

When we look at the whole scope of this story line, we see clearly that Christianity is not only about getting one's individual sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. That is an important means of God's salvation, but not the final end or purpose of it. The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it. It is not just to bring personal forgiveness and peace, but also justice and shalom to the world. God created both the body and soul, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both body and soul. The work of the Spirit of God is not only to save souls but also to care and cultivate the face of the earth, the material world. — Timothy Keller

Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be. — Timothy Keller

Because of the Cross, God can be both just towards sin and yet mercifully justifying to sinners. — Timothy Keller

Preaching is compelling to young secular adults ...
- not if preachers use video clips from their favorite movies and dress informally and sound sophisticated,
- but if the preachers understand their hearts and culture so well that listeners feel the force of the sermon's reasoning, even if in the end they don't agree with it. — Timothy Keller

To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. — Timothy Keller

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting ... We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow. — Timothy Keller

The happy ending of the Resurrection is so enormous that it swallows up even the sorrow of the Cross. — Timothy Keller

We only grasp the gospel when we understand, as Paul did, that we are the worst sinner we know (1 Timothy 1:15) - and that if Jesus came to die for us, there is no one that he would not die for. — Timothy Keller

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. — Timothy Keller

I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church. — Timothy Keller

God does not set his justice aside; he turns it onto himself. — Timothy Keller

Jesus was much more interested in the quality of the people's response to him than in the quantity of the crowd. — Timothy Keller

When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. — Timothy Keller

While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world's sorrows, tasting the coming joy. — Timothy Keller

Two things we want so desperately, glory and relationship, can coexist only in God. — Timothy Keller

Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. That is what the Christian faith promises. — Timothy Keller

Human life is fatally fragile and subject to forces beyond our power to manage. Life is tragic. — Timothy Keller

Faith journeys are never simply intellectual exercises. — Timothy Keller

The Bible does not say that God speaks and then proceeds to act, that he names and then proceeds to shape - but that God's speaking and acting are the same thing. His word is his action, his divine power. — Timothy Keller

Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them. — Timothy Keller

To practice Sabbath is a disciplined and faithful way to remember that you are not the one who keeps the world running, who provides for your family, not even the one who keeps your work projects moving forward. — Timothy Keller

A church must be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional liberal churches and more deeply and practically committed to evangelism and conversion than traditional fundamentalist churches. This kind of church is profoundly counter-intuitive to American observers. It breaks their ability to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of church has any chance in the non-Christian west. — Timothy Keller

As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as "drive" and your anxiety as "hope." And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is. Most of us tell ourselves that the reason we remain unfulfilled is because we simply haven't been able to achieve our goals. And so we can live almost our entire lives without admitting to ourselves the depth of our spiritual thirst. And that is why the few people in life who actually do reach or exceed their dreams are shocked to discover that these longed-for circumstances do not satisfy. Indeed they can enhance the inner emptiness by their presence. — Timothy Keller

What, then, would the effect be if we were to dive even more deeply into Jesus's teaching and life and work? What if we were to be so immersed in his promises and summonses, his counsels and encouragements, that they dominated our inner life, capturing our imagination, and simply bubbled out spontaneously when we faced some challenge? How would we live if we instinctively, almost unconsciously, knew Jesus's mind and heart regarding things that confronted us? When you received criticism, you would never be crushed, because Jesus's love and acceptance of you is so deeply "in there." When you gave criticism, you would be gentle and patient, because your whole inner world would be saturated by a sense of Jesus's loving patience and gentleness with you. — Timothy Keller

We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it's not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that's not what sends you to heaven or Hell. — Timothy Keller

Churches, laypersons, and ministers regularly have bad experiences in imbalanced churches and in response flee to the opposite extreme - an equally unbalanced form of ministry. — Timothy Keller

It's impossible to have met the real Jesus and be indifferent. You either bow down in wonder OR go away offended. — Timothy Keller

If anyone insists on his own goodness and despises others . . . let him look into himself when this petition confronts him. He will find he is no better than others and that in the presence of God everyone must duck his head and come into the joy of forgiveness only through the low door of humility. — Timothy Keller

In areas where the Bible has left us free, when we carry out Christian ministry, we should be constantly engaged in cultural adaptation - refraining from certain attitudes or behaviors to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks from the paths of people with culturally framed perceptions. — Timothy Keller

You cannot have Jesus' rescue without accepting His rule. — Timothy Keller

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice. — Timothy Keller

As long as we think we are not that bad, the idea of grace will never change us. — Timothy Keller

Think about this. The God of the universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you. — Timothy Keller

For every one look at your sins, take five looks at your Savior. — Timothy Keller

Accepted in Christ, we now run the race 'for the joy that is set before us' rather than 'for fear that comes behind us'. — Timothy Keller

People are messy; therefore, relationships will be messy. Don't be surprised by messiness. — Timothy Keller

We're far worse than we ever imagined, and far more loved than we could ever dream. — Timothy Keller

The story of Jesus changes our lives because it is true. — Timothy Keller

There are some needs only you can see. There are some hands only you can hold. There are some people only you can reach. — Timothy Keller

If you remember with grateful amazement that Jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, you can begin to sense him in your smaller furnaces with you. — Timothy Keller

Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious. — Timothy Keller

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 always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. — Timothy Keller

While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. — Timothy Keller

Old Testament scholar David Atkinson writes: "Shame . . . is that sense of unease with yourself at the heart of your being."89 We know there is something wrong with us, but we can't admit it or identify it. There is a deep restlessness, which can take various forms - guilt and striving to prove ourselves, rebellion and the need to assert our independence, compliance and the need to please others. Something is wrong, and we may know the effects, but we fall short of understanding the true causes. — Timothy Keller

There's an old saying that the difference between abstract knowledge and real wisdom is that "wisdom is knowledge with the knower left in." It is taking the truth into all your relationships. It is to ask, "What does this mean for my relationship to God? to myself? to this or that person or group? to this or that behavior or habit? to my friends, to the culture? — Timothy Keller

Everyone needs the gospel, both the "you" inside the church and the "you" who are yet outside it. The gospel is the way people are called to faith, and the way people grow in faith. — Timothy Keller

Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it. — Timothy Keller

I am so bad that He had to die. I am so loved that He was glad to die. — Timothy Keller

Unless you're able to look at marriage through the lens of Scripture instead of through your own fears or romanticism, through your particular experience, or through your culture's narrow perspectives, you won't be able to make intelligent decisions about your own marital future. — Timothy Keller

The gospel destroys pride because it tells us we are so lost that Jesus had to die for us. — Timothy Keller

In other words, we are only proud of being more successful, more intelligent or more good-looking than the next person, and we are in the presence of someone who is more successful, intelligent and good-looking than we are, we lose all pleasure in what we had. That is because we really had no pleasure in it. We were proud of it. — Timothy Keller

The only way into a ministry that sees people's lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism. — Timothy Keller

Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to the opposite ratio. Leisure and pleasure are great goods, but we can take only so much of them. — Timothy Keller

To know how to meditate on and delight in the Bible is the secret to a relationship with God and to life itself. — Timothy Keller

[People] who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons ... Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce, defensive assertion of their own righteousness, and defensive criticism of others. — Timothy Keller

Easter means that Christmas worked. — Timothy Keller

Work is taking the raw material of creation and developing it for the sake of others. — Timothy Keller

And if you determine to run your marriage your way, you're in for a lot of trouble, because marriage is God's institution. — Timothy Keller

This woman saw the gospel - that you're more wicked than you ever believed, but at the same time more loved and accepted than you ever dared to hope. — Timothy Keller

God is still primarily concerned with his plan of salvation. He must establish his people; the gospel must be proclaimed; human beings must be reconciled to him. Yet he assures his people that serving the good of this pagan city is part of this very plan: "If it prospers, you too will prosper" (Jer 29:7). Loving and serving the city not only shows love and compassion; doing so also strengthens the hands of the people of God, who bear the message of the gospel to the world. Because the Jews in exile obeyed this command, they accrued the influence and leverage needed to eventually return to and restore their homeland. God ties, as it were, the fortunes of the people of God to the effectiveness of their urban ministry. — Timothy Keller

Christians necessarily believe we depend on God for everything-a prayerless Christian, then, is a contradiction in terms. — Timothy Keller

The key question in order to change you is not 'What would Jesus do?' but "What has Jesus done for you?" — Timothy Keller

The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion. — Timothy Keller

Generosity is not only about money. There is more than one currency. Let your generosity be pervasive in life. — Timothy Keller

The simple fact is that only if I love Jesus more than my wife will I be able to serve her needs ahead of my own. — Timothy Keller

How Religion Works: If I obey, then God will love and accept me. The Gospel: I'm loved and accepted, therefore I wish to obey. — Timothy Keller

The church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission. — Timothy Keller

When that happens you'll say, like Jewel the Unicorn at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, "I've come home at last! This is my real country ... This is the land I've been looking for all my life."15 — Timothy Keller

Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit - that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back - then we "cut our loses" and drop the relationship. This has also been called "commodification," a process by which social relationships are reduced to economic exchange relationships, and so the very idea of "covenant" is disappearing in our culture. Covenant is therefore a concept increasingly foreign to us, and yet the Bible says it is the essence of marriage. — Timothy Keller

The life of faith is not the perfect life; it is the life which clings on to what God has said he will do. — Timothy Keller

God has a celebration meal with us not after we finally get out of the dark valley but in the middle of it, in the presence of our enemies. He wants us to rejoice in him in the midst of our troubles. — Timothy Keller

The Gospel is this: You're more sinful, evil and weak than you'd ever believe. But you're more valued, accepted and loved than you dared hope. — Timothy Keller

Sin has caused our affections to stray, propelling us to worship relationships, achievement, and work-everything but God. — Timothy Keller

Without the gospel, our self-image is based on living up to some standards - either our own or someone else's imposed on us. If we live up to those standards, we will be confident but not humble; if we don't live up to them, we will be humble but not confident. Only in the gospel can we be both enormously bold and utterly sensitive and humble, for we are simul justus et peccator, both perfect and sinner! — Timothy Keller

Grace is the free, unmerited favor of God, working powerfully on the mind and heart to change lives. — Timothy Keller

In John's Gospel chapter 11, after Lazarus has died, he comes to be with Martha and Mary, the sisters. Martha says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," and Jesus rebukes her. Then Mary comes up and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," and Jesus just weeps with her. Same words - by no means the same response. Why? Because Jesus always gives you what you need, and he knows better than you what that is. He's the Wonderful Counselor. — Timothy Keller

The problem is not with marriage itself. According to Genesis 1 and 2, we were made for marriage, and marriage was made for us. Genesis 3 tells us that marriage, along with every other aspect of human life, has been broken because of sin. If our views of marriage are too romantic and idealistic, we underestimate the influence of sin on human life. If they are too pessimistic and cynical, we misunderstand marriage's divine origin. If we somehow manage, as our modern culture has, to do both at once, we are doubly burdened by a distorted vision. Yet the trouble is not within the institution of marriage but within ourselves. — Timothy Keller

I had then, and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Oftentimes in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart. I felt a harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet and powerful words. I seemed often to see so much light exhibited by every sentence, and such a refreshing food communicated, that I could not get along in reading; often dwelling long on one sentence, to see the wonders contained in it; and yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders. — Timothy Keller

The way to find your calling is to look at the way you were created. Your gifts have not emerged by accident. — Timothy Keller

Just because we don't see a reason for evil and suffering doesn't mean there's not a reason for it. — Timothy Keller

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. — Timothy Keller