Jump to content

John Stott

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.

John Robert Walmsley Stott CBE (27 April 1921 – 27 July 2011) was an English Christian leader and Anglican cleric who was noted as a leader of the worldwide Evangelical movement.

Quotes

[edit]
  • Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.
    • The Epistles of John: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1964), p. 205. Commentary on 2 John 4–11
  • 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.
    • Culture and the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1981), p. 33
  • I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross'. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.
    • The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1986), pp. 335–36
[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about: