Timothy J. Keller Quotes

Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.

~ Timothy J. Keller

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts — not only their own but their friends' and neighbors'. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide the grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt.

~ Timothy J. Keller

If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

~ Timothy J. Keller

God directs his people not simply to worship but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers, we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.

~ Timothy J. 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 J. Keller

A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Idolatry means turning a good thing into the ultimate thing.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have ...A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

~ Timothy J. Keller

True love is generative. It is the only kind that makes more of itself as it goes along.

~ Timothy J. Keller

The only way your child will grow out of their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for 20 years or so.

~ Timothy J. Keller

On Christ's attitude toward His disciples: If I gave away My big all to get to you, can you give away your little all to follow Me?

~ Timothy J. Keller

In religion our only hope is to live a life good enough to require God to bless us, so every instance of sin and repentance is therefore traumatic, unnatural and threatening. Only under great duress do religious people admit they have sinned, because their only hope is their moral goodness. In the gospel the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit that we are flawed, because we know we won't be cast off if we confess the true depths of our sinfulness. Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own, so it is not as traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses.

~ Timothy J. Keller

If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to add to God's salvation you subtract. If you try to merit God's salvation you haven't believed at all, even if you try to do a little bit.

~ Timothy J. Keller

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.

~ Timothy J. 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 J. Keller

We often forget how thirsty we are because we believe we will fulfill our dreams.

~ Timothy J. Keller

There is a third quality to friendship, and it is not as easy to put into a single word. The right word, literally, is sympathy - sym-pathos, common passion. This means that friendships are discovered more than they are created at will.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such as academia, publishing, media, entertainment, and the arts. The assumption that society will improve simply be more Christian believers being present is no longer valid.

~ Timothy J. Keller

To let the gospel of Jesus shape how we work means to heed the influence of both the psychological idols within our hearts as well as the sociological idols in our culture and profession.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!' Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel. Each spouse then should give him- or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory.

~ Timothy J. Keller

What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse's holiness.

~ Timothy J. Keller

When you feel great delight in someone, meeting their needs and getting their gratitude and affection in return is extremely rewarding to your ego. At those times you may be acting more out of the desire to get that love and satisfaction yourself, rather than out of a desire to seek the good of the other person. Kierkegaard observed, you may not be loving that person so much as loving yourself.

~ Timothy J. Keller

The gospel, if it is really believed, removes neediness - the need to be constantly respected, appreciated, and well regarded; the need to have everything in your life go well; the need to have power over others. All of these great, deep needs continue to control you only because the concept of the glorious God delighting in you with all His being is just that - a concept and nothing more. Our hearts don't believe it, so they operate in default mode. Paul is saying that if you want to really change, you must let the gospel teach you - that is to train, discipline, coach you - over a period of time. You must let the gospel argue with you. You must let the gospel sink down deeply into your heart, until it changes your motivation and views and attitudes.

~ Timothy J. Keller

The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion - it is something else altogether. Religion makes law and moral obedience a means of salvation, while irreligion makes the individual a law to him - or herself. The gospel, however, is that Jesus takes the law of God so seriously that He paid the penalty of disobedience, so we can be saved by sheer grace.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Why didn't Jacob simply refuse to go along with this bold, obvious swindle? Again, Robert Alter's insights are invaluable. When Jacob asks, 'Why have you DECEIVED me?' the Hebrew word is the same one used in chapter 27 to describe what Jacob did to Isaac. Alter then quotes an ancient rabbinical commentator who imagines the conversation the next day between Jacob and Leah. Jacob says to Leah: 'I called out Rachel in the dark and you answered. Why did you do that to me?' And Leah says to him, 'Your father called out Esau in the dark and you answered. Why did you do that to him?' His fury dies on his lips. He sees what it is like to be manipulated and deceived, and he meekly complies with Laban's offer.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work, without which work could bore you.

~ Timothy J. Keller