God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

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

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and checkered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God [Gen. 3:1-7], while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man [2 Cor. 5:21]. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God’s will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

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.

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)

God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?

John Stott (Author, 1921 – 2011)