The Wisdom of John R.W. Stott

"Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it."

"Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us."

"Good conduct arises out of good doctrine."

"We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior."

"Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable."

"We should not ask, 'What is wrong with the world?' for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, 'Where is the salt and light? Where is the Church? Why are the salt and light of Jesus Christ not permeating and changing our society?'"

"To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence."

"The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So, the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a Eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival."

"His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice."

"Christian giving, like Christian living, is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, not by self-congratulation."

"The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion."

"The chief occupational hazard of leadership is pride."

"It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures."

"The Gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales."

"These are the marks of the ideal Church: love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. This is what Christ desires to find."

"The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice--and so the pain--of the cross."

King, Judge, and Lawgiver

"There is to come a day when men shall be judged--judged after a better fashion than you or I can judge. How dare we, then, travesty God's great assize by ourselves mounting the throne and pretending to rehearse the solemn transactions of that tremendous hour? Judgment will come soon enough: may the Lord have mercy upon us in that day. My brother, why neediest thou hurry it on by thyself ascending the throne? Cannot God do his own work? Between brother and brother, differing on minor points, between Christian and Christian, each one obeying his conscience, we are not to exercise mutual condemnation. Come hither, brethren! Here is work enough for you all. Let us not therefore impudently intrude ourselves into the office and perogative of Christ. Let God be God--and let us content ourselves by this alone: He has redeemed the weak and the strong alike." Charles H. Spurgeon