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God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.

D. A. Carson

It’s not as if the New Testament writers came along and said, “The culmination of Old Testament books is more books, New Testament books.”
D. A. CARSON

Book Father Son
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
D. A. CARSON

Boys Doors Running
Christians come together because they have all been loved by Jesus himself. They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.
D. A. CARSON

Another Christian Come Sake
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
D. A. CARSON

Believe Evidence Moral Want
A billion years or so into eternity, how many toys we accumulated during this life will not seem too terribly important.
D. A. CARSON

Important Toy Years
To know God is to be transformed, and thus to be introduced to a life that could not otherwise be experienced.
D. A. CARSON

Father God Knowing Loving Resolution
It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will-and it was his love for sinners like me.
D. A. CARSON

Father Jesus Unqualified
As long as young people are asking, ‘Can I get away with this?’ or ‘Can I get away with that?’ I wonder if they’re regenerate. If they’re asking, instead, ‘How can I grow in holiness?’ then I suspect they’ve begun to understand.
D. A. CARSON

Holiness People Suspect Wonder Young
Jesus is hungry but feeds others; He grows weary but offers others rest; He is the King Messiah but pays tribute; He is called the devil but casts out demons; He dies the death of a sinner but comes to save His people from their sins;
D. A. CARSON

Jesus Kings People
So there are all kinds of things that grammarian purists would argue are awkward forms of speech and sometimes they are intentional for rhetorical effect and sometimes it’s the way people chose to write at the time. Inerrancy isn’t interested in any of those kinds of things.
D. A. CARSON

Awkward People Writing
Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.
D. A. CARSON

Absolutism Heroic May
Damn all false dichotomies to hell
D. A. CARSON

Damn Dichotomy Hell
Good praying is more easily caught than taught.
D. A. CARSON

Caught Praying Taught
Study Bibles tend to circulate widely, so they play a disproportionate role in helping Christians and others understand holy Scripture.
D. A. CARSON

Christian Holy Play Scripture Two
We are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).
D. A. CARSON

Abandoned God Sinner Told
A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.
D. A. CARSON

Context Pretext Proof
When Christians speak of the authority of Scripture, because Christians believe that this word, even though it’s mediated through many different human authors.
D. A. CARSON

Believe Christian Mistake
God’s love in John 3:16 is not amazing because the world is so big, but because the world is so bad.
D. A. CARSON

Bigs God Love World
In every generation there are voices that question the authority of Scripture. So in one sense this is merely part of the continuing stream. But there’s a sense in which the questions that are raised against Scripture vary a wee bit from generation to generation.
D. A. CARSON

Generations Scripture Voice
Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture.
D. A. CARSON

Mistake Pain Play
The Christian’s whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.
D. A. CARSON

Christian Jesus Winning
Some people say What’s the use of the term if it has to be so fully documented and constrained and footnoted and all the rest.
D. A. CARSON

Doe People Philosophical
I suspect that relatively few people will sit down and read 1250 pages [ of The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures.] all the way through from cover to cover.
D. A. CARSON

Book Christian People
We are lost when human opinion means more to us than God’s.
D. A. CARSON

Lost Mean Opinion
There’s a change in the heart; there’s a cleaning up, a change in orientation, and holiness becomes attractive, instead of something you have to put up with to figure out what you can get away with.
D. A. CARSON

Away Change Figure Orientation People
God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.
D. A. CARSON

Contribution Distinctive God Vocabulary
There is no long-range effective teaching of the Bible that is not accompanied by long hours of ongoing study of the Bible.
D. A. CARSON

Long Teaching

God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.

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God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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