"Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like not only to be immaculately, perfectly pure but also to live in a culture that was immaculately, perfectly pure? It is so hard to imagine. What would it be like never ever to have lied about anybody or anything? What would it be like always, always to have loved God with heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself? What would it be like to live in a society where that was true of absolutely everyone around you? Don’t you see? This is normal in God’s mind. It is the way it was at the beginning. It is the way it will be at the end (p. 221)."
— D. A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 221.
"
In the eighteenth century there was a very famous preacher (probably the most famous preacher in the Western world at the time) named George Whitefield. He was a Brit, but he sailed across the Atlantic thirteen times (taking six weeks to three months), so he became as famous a preacher in the thirteen colonies as he was on the English side. He preached to vast crowds without a PA system. He must have had spectacular lungs and vocal chords. Again and again, he preached from this text, ‘You must be born again,’ until finally somebody got really ticked with him, cornered him one day, and asked, ‘Mr. Whitefield, why is it that you keep preaching again and again, ‘You must be born again. You must be born again’?’
‘Because, sir,’ Whitefield replied, ‘you must be born again.’ (p. 131).
"
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 131.
"Biblically faithful Christianity does not present itself as a nice religious structure that makes happier parents and well-ordered children and good taxpaying citizens. It may produce better parents and taxpaying citizens, but the issues at stake in biblical Christianity have to do with eternity: heaven and hell, matters of the utmost significance, your relationship to your Maker, what God has provided in Christ, what the cross is about, the resurrection.
At the end of the day, what hell measures is how much Christ paid for those who escape hell. The measure of his torment (in ways I do not pretend to begin to understand) as the God-man is the measure of torment that we deserve and he bore. And if you see that and believe it, you will find it difficult to contemplate the cross for very long without tears."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 210.
"In the first century it was simply unthinkable that someone would become a Christian and not simultaneously join a church and be baptized. For this community has been set free by Christ’s death and resurrection, and empowered by the Holy Spirit himself. This community, the church, is the matrix in which individual believers grow, flourish, are encouraged and admonished, and frequently become leaders themselves.
Something is disastrously awry when the word “church” refers to nothing more than a building, or when a local “church” is made up of many people who do not know God, do not trust Christ, know nothing of having their sins forgiven, and have experienced nothing of the power of Spirit to transform their lives. That is simply not what the New Testament says the church really is."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 193.
"Do you want to know where God’s justice is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. Do you want to know where God’s love is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. There Jesus, the God-man, bore hell itself, and God did this both to be just and to be the one who declares just those who have faith in him."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 181.
"God does not pretend that good deeds make up for bad deeds. Rather, he has found a way to declare the guilty just-and retain his integrity while doing it. Instead of self-justification, he finds a way to justify us; he finds a way to grant us justification that is not self-justification but justification from the God who is our Maker and our Judge."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 170.
"But Jesus comes to die and rise again. This pair of events, Jesus’s death and resurrection, are so central to everything the Bible says about Jesus and all the purpose of his coming that the apostle Paul, writing a couple of decades after Jesus rose from the dead, announces to his readers in 1 Corinthians 15 that he is going to lay out the matters “of first importance” (15:3) - and he first says, ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (15:3), and then he spends much of the rest of the chapter talking about Jesus’s resurrection. These are matters of first importance. They are the basis for everything in Christian belief, conduct, and understanding. We have to get this right, or we have no part of Christianity left."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 153.
"But Jesus doesn’t go to the cross because he is a victim of fate. He does not go to the cross as an abstract lesson. He does not go to the cross as a mere example (though he is an example). He has a purpose in going to the cross. It is to save people from condemnation that is already hanging on them. ‘Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them’ (John 3:36, emphasis added); ‘whoever does not believe stands condemned already’ (John 3:38, emphasis added).
We are back to the Bible’s storyline. Jesus does not come to neutral people and arbitrarily condemn a few here and save a few there. Rather, he comes to people who are already condemned. We stand this side of Genesis 3. We are already under God’s judgement. We are already a lost and ungrateful brood. The purpose of his coming and his death on the cross is not to condemn but to save the world (see John 3:17)."
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 144.
"Do you want to know what the character of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the holiness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the wrath of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the forgiveness of God is like? Study Jesus. Do you want to know what the glory of God is like? Study Jesus all the way to that wretched cross. Study Jesus."
— D. A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 117.
"
Those of you who have been Christians for some time or who have gotten to know some elderly believers have discovered that elderly Christians are usually the ones who love the book of Psalms. Not a lot of people know the book of Psalms well at twenty-five. This is because the book of Psalms resonates with people who have had a lot of experiences. You have to have quite a lot of different experiences under your belt before you resonate easily with a lot of the things that are said in the book of Psalms: lament, loss, shame, death, triumph, the exaltation of informed and godly God-centered praise, and prophecy anticipating what is still to come.
If instead you have a very limited experience, most of these things just sound a bit over the top or a bit extravagant or even alien to you. I have been by the beds of enough people who were dying to discover that if I ask, ‘What would you like me to read to you?’ many will say, ‘Psalm 23. The Lor is my shepherd’ or ‘Psalm 42’ or ‘Psalm 40, about how he lifts me out of the miry bog and sets my feet on a safe, stable place.’ But until you have been through experiences where you feel as if you are wallowing in a miry bog, that psalm is probably not going to speak powerfully to you.
"
— D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There, p. 86.
