My Favorite Christian Quotes

There is nothing, in my view, quite like a good quote. Whether writing or preaching, I’ve always loved to have a good quote from someone else—after all, I have spent my adult life speaking the words of Another to his people.

As I look in Scripture, I can find writers using the words of others. Yes, every biblical writer spoke as God directed, and, in the New Testament, the authors often quoted from Old Testament prophets. Yet, I’m thinking of other quotes. For example, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33) likely comes from Menander’s comedy Thais. At the Areopagus, Paul quoted from Aratus’s poem “Phainomena” and said, “For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28). Other examples could be given, but the two Pauline references show that New Testament writers were not afraid—as they were inspired of God—to quote from others.

Today, I want to give you some of my all-time favorite Christian quotes.

C. S. Lewis:

• “There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.’”
• “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”
• “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
• “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
• “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
• “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
• “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”
• “Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”
• “Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
• “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

G. K. Chesterton

• “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
• “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
• “Love means loving the unlovable – or it is no virtue at all.”
• “When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”
• “The only defensible war is a war of defense.”

Marshall Keeble

• “You don’t have to be smart to obey the Gospel – just honest.”
• “The Gospel is so plain, a man in the asylum can understand it. Oh, his mind may come and go, but if it does, he can catch it coming even if he loses it while it’s going.”
• “Preachers need to preach the Truth – bear down on it. We don’t need to make friends, we need to save souls.”
• “Jesus made a man out of mud and the man walked. I used to make men out of mud – mine wouldn’t walk. God did something man couldn’t do. Men try to save themselves can’t to it no more than my mud men could walk. But God can do what man can’t do. SAVE.”
• “A man is not saved and then baptized. A woman doesn’t wash clothes because they are already clean. I’ve seen a lot of smart women, but not that smart. She washes the clothes because they’re dirty. Man is baptized because he’s dirty and needs to be cleaned.”

Others

• Charles Spurgeon: “No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me.”
• A. W. Tozer: “Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will.”
• Dwight L. Moody: “Let God have your life; He can do more with it than you can.”
• John MacArthur: “True faith is never seen as passive – it is always obedient.”
• John Piper: “Christ died that we might live. This is the opposite of abortion. Abortion kills that someone might live differently.”
• Oswald Chambers: “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.”
• Ravi Zacharias: “It was not the volume of sin that sent Christ to the cross; it was the fact of sin.”
• Hudson Taylor: “The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.”
• Corrie Ten Boom: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

What is your favorite quote? God bless!