Michael Horton Quotes

I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups.

People ask me, 'Why pray if God is sovereign?' I respond, 'Why pray if He isn't?

To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas.

No one will be offended if we tell them that they are good people who could be a little better. The offense comes when we tell them that they - and we - are ungodly people who cannot impress God or escape his tribunal. Until our preaching of the law has exposed our hearts and God's holiness at that profound level, our hearers will never flee to Christ alone for safety even if they come to us for advice.

The goal of Christian mission is not success, but faithful witness; not power, but proclamation; not technique, but truth; not method, but message.

My conscience does not render a positive verdict in God’s courtroom when I look inside myself. The only reason I can sleep well at night is that even though my heart is filled with corruption and even though I am not doing my best to please him, I have in heaven at the Father’s right hand the beloved Son, who has not only done his best for himself but has fulfilled all righteousness for me in my place.

God's church is not a stage for us to perform on but a garden for us to grow in.

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient

Christians are driven by God's promises, and directed by God's purposes.

When the focus becomes 'What would Jesus do?' instead of 'What has Jesus done?' the [conservative/liberal] labels no longer matter.

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard.

God is not a supporting actor in our life movie. We exist for his purposes, not the other way around.

We cannot find God for the same reason that a thief can't find a police officer.

The power of God unto salvation is not our passion for God, but the passion He has exhibited toward us sinners by sending his own Son to redeem us.

The gospel of submission, commitment, decision, and victorious living is not good news about what God has achieved but a demand to save ourselves with God’s help. Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father.

Ask the proficient athlete, artist, businessperson, or homemaker what creates excellence and they'll all agree: a commitment to long-term goals - and with a community of mentors and fellow "disciples."

If you want to be an athlete, there's no way around it: You have to go to the gym. You can't Google your way to it.

Our society trains us to think of marriage as a contractual arrangement. If one party fails to fulfill his or her end, the contract is null and void. Increasingly children are raised in a contractual environment. When contractual thinking dominates our horizon, we can even make Jesus or the church an asset we think we can manage.

Once we truly grasp the message of the New Testament, it is impossible to read the Old Testament again without seeing Christ on every page, in every story, foreshadowed or anticipated in every event and narrative. The Bible must be read as a whole, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation, letting promise and fulfillment guide or expectations for what we will find there.

But the heart of Christianity is Good News. It comes not as a task for us to fulfill, a mission for us to accomplish, a game plan for us to follow with the help of life coaches, but as a report that someone else has already fulfilled, accomplished, followed, and achieved everything for us.

God’s Word does not merely impart information; it actually creates life. It’s not only descriptive; it’s effective too, God speaking is God acting.

Faith in Christ is able to endure doubts-it's able to endure temptations-bec ause it faces them, not because it pretends they're not there.

Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism.

You can't find a YouTube clip to become a craftsman, friend, parent - or disciple of Christ. It's all of grace. And to grow in that grace, you need two things: time and community.

The gospel is unintelligible to most people today, especially in the West, because their own particular stories are remote from the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that is narrated in the Bible. Our focus is introspective and narrow, confided to our own immediate knowledge, experience, and intuition. Trying desperately to get others, including God, to make us happy, we cannot seem to catch a glimpse of the real story that gives us a meaningful role.

The proper focus of holiness is not on being set apart from something (i.e., the world), but on being set apart for something.

How can I trust that the Bible is reliable?

Our weaknesses are an opportunity for God to show his strength.

If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution.

As Paul argues, it is the righteousness of God that is revealed in the law, and this condemns us all (Ro 1:18 - 3:20), while the gospel reveals the righteousness from God, namely, that we "are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Ro 3:24).

Christians must return to the great story that has its fulfillment in life after death, so we may live and die well in the light of our extraordinary hope that enables us to embrace the ordinary lives God gives us here and now.

Excellence is being thwarted not only by laziness but by reckless attachment to causes, programs, and - in some cases, leaders.

Jesus and spirituality can easily become therapies that merely help us cope with life. They can serve us if we chose Him over other service providers. We even talk about "making Jesus my personal Lord and Savior," as if we could make Him anything!

The gospel frees us to confess our sins without fear of condemnation.

At the end of the day, we need to stop thinking about what we can make of ourselves and start thinking more about who God is, what he has done and is doing in Christ for us and for our neighbors, and how he can use us and our fellow brothers and sisters to be instruments of his gift-giving.

When salvation is viewed as man's program, it is left up to man as to whether he will let God do this or that, but when it is viewed as God's program, there is a confidence and a certainty that no one whom God regenerates will be a carnal Christian.

Eternal joy can never be taken from God's people. Therefore ambition, restlessness, and avarice can be put away for the first time as we rest more and more in the work of the Son of God.

If the focus of our testimony is our changed life, we as well as our hearers are bound to be disappointed.

We need more Christians who take their place alongside believing and unbelieving neighbors in the daily gift exchange

The object is evident in the name of the discipline. Similarly, theology (theologia) is the study of God. The object of theology is not the church's teaching or the experience of pious souls. It is not a subset of ethics, religious studies, cultural anthropology, or psychology. God is the object of this discipline.

As we are brought into God's extraordinary kingdom through ordinary means, we are remade, no longer fashioned as competitors for commodities in a world of scarce resources, but as co-sharers with Christ in the circulation of gifts that flows outward from its source without running out.