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If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist.

D. A. Carson

Effectiveness in teaching the Bible is purchased at the price of much study, some of it lonely, all of it tiring.
D. A. CARSON

Effectiveness Lonely Teaching
Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.
D. A. CARSON

Absolutism Heroic May
To God on whom we rely knows what suffering is all about- not merely in the way that God knows everything, but by experience.
D. A. CARSON

God Knows Suffering Way
Damn all false dichotomies to hell
D. A. CARSON

Damn Dichotomy Hell
Some have argued that the Christian notion of Scripture is not epistemologically sustainable. It’s not philosophically possible with rigor to uphold the Christian understanding of Scripture.
D. A. CARSON

Christian Scripture Understanding
Effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.
D. A. CARSON

Blessing Prayer Technique
Good praying is more easily caught than taught.
D. A. CARSON

Caught Praying Taught
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
Systematic theology will ask questions like “What are the attributes of God? What is sin? What does the cross achieve?” Biblical theology tends to ask questions such as “What is the theology of the prophecy of Isaiah? What do we learn from John’s Gospel?
D. A. CARSON

Biblical Important Systematic
Both God’s love and God’s wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax – in the cross.
D. A. CARSON

Covenant Moving Wrath
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
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
What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort.
D. A. CARSON

Christian Jesus Jobs
What the Bible says is what God has disclosed and we want to approach this sacred text with cognitive reverence.
D. A. CARSON

Reverence Sacred Want
It’s just that the group has accepted that document as authoritative for their group. And some documents are truthful and reliable but they are ignored, so they have no authority for that particular group.
D. A. CARSON

Accept Group Particular Truthful
They revere Scripture, not because Scripture becomes an idol, but because it discloses God who is especially come after us in salvation and redemption through the person of his son, his cross, his resurrection, the full sweep of the gospel.
D. A. CARSON

Cross Disclose God Redemption
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
God’s wrath is not an implacable, blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against his holiness. But his love . . . wells up amidst his perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved.
D. A. CARSON

Emotional Love Wrath
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
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
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
The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone.
D. A. CARSON

Hate Liars Wrath
Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.
D. A. CARSON

Christian Inspired Worship
Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.
D. A. CARSON

Our Prayer Self World
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
True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us
D. A. CARSON

Genuine Liberty Please
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

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist.

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If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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