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Michael S. Horton QUOTES

Michael S. Horton QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Michael S. Horton

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

― Michael S. Horton

3 " Faith is tested throughout our lives (James 1:3; I Peter 1:7). As the object of our faith proves Himself faithful throughout these trials, our faith grows. Even if we do not have God’s personal revelation about why we are suffering or how He is weaving our trials into a hidden pattern, we do have the revelation of God’s hidden purposes for us and for creation in Jesus Christ. God has demonstrated His faithfulness objectively, publicly, and finally in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. "

― Michael S. Horton , The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way

4 " The real problem is that our values are changing and the new ones are wearing us out. But they're also keeping us from forming genuine, long-term, and meaningful commitments that actually contribute to the lives of others. Over time, the hype of living a new life, taking up a radical calling, and changing the world can creep into every area of our life. And it can make us tired, depressed, and mean. Michael Horton, Ordinary, 13-14 "

― Michael S. Horton

5 " We want big results-sooner rather than later. And we've forgotten that God showers his extraordinary gifts through ordinary means of grace, loves us through ordinary fellow image bearers, and sends us into the world to love and serve others in ordinary callings. Michael Horton, Ordinary, 14 "

― Michael S. Horton

6 " If we fail to recognize there is a unified whole to Scripture, we will have only a pile of pieces. Simplistic slogans, formulas and catchphrases will not suffice in conveying the richness of the Scriptures. "

― Michael S. Horton

7 " I expect that Calvin would evaluate our worship today not as too emotional, but as too narrow in its emotional repertoire. "

― Michael S. Horton , Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever

8 " God’s downward descent to us in grace reversed by our upward ascent in pragmatic enthusiasm, we are increasingly becoming a sheep without a Shepherd—and all in the name of mission. Instead of churching the unchurched, we are well on our way to even unchurching the churched. "

― Michael S. Horton , Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church

9 " Whether you realize it or not, you are a theologian. You come to a book like this with a working theology, an existing understanding of God. Whether you are an agnostic or a fundamentalist — or something in between — you have a working theology that shapes and informs the way you think and live. However, I suspect that you are reading this book because you’re interested in examining your theology more closely. You are open to having it challenged and strengthened. You know that theology — the study of God — is more than an intellectual hobby. It’s a matter of life and death, something that affects the way you think, the decisions you make each day, the way you relate to God and other people, and the way you see yourself and the world around you. "

― Michael S. Horton , Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

10 " 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. "

― Michael S. Horton , Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church

11 " Regardless of the official theology held on paper, moralistic preaching (the bane of conservatives and liberals alike) assumes that we are not really helpless sinners who need to be rescued but decent folks who need good examples, exhortations, and instructions. "

― Michael S. Horton , Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church

12 " God did not become flesh and suffer an ignominious death at our hands so that we could have sprawling church campuses, programs, and budgets. "

― Michael S. Horton , The Gospel Commission: Recovering God's Strategy for Making Disciples

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

― Michael S. Horton , Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church

14 " 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. "

― Michael S. Horton

15 " In American religion, as in ancient Gnosticism, there is almost no sense of God’s difference from us—in other words, his majesty, sovereignty, self-existence, and holiness. God is my buddy, my inmost experience, or the power source for my living my best life now. "

― Michael S. Horton

16 " The greatest threat to Christ-centered witness even in churches that formally affirm sound teaching is what British evangelical David Gibson calls ‘the assumed gospel.’ The idea is that the gospel is necessary for getting saved, but after we sign on, the rest of the Christian life is all the fine print: conditional forgiveness. "

― Michael S. Horton

17 " Secularization—that is, the gradual conformity of our thinking, beliefs, commitments, and practices to the pattern of this fading age—is not just something that happens to the church; it is something that happens in the church. In fact, it’s difficult to think of secularism as anything other than a Christian heresy. "

― Michael S. Horton , The Gospel Commission: Recovering God's Strategy for Making Disciples

18 " As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it is not that our desires are too strong (as Stoicism would have it), but that they are too weak. 3 The irony of our lives is that we demand the ephemeral, momentary glories of this fading age, too easily amused and seduced by the trivial, when ultimate joy is held out to us. "

― Michael S. Horton , A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

19 " The challenge here is that we have been trained to read even the Bible as a catalog of heroes to emulate. Moses is the great model of leadership, Joshua is the ideal warrior, and we should “dare to be a Daniel,” as the old hymn exhorts. This is a little odd, when you actually read the narratives and discover that Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and all the rest were ordinary sinners like the rest of us who had received an extraordinary calling. They fell short of that calling, but God was faithful. And they too needed a Savior — and this is the central plot unfolding in Scripture. In our ambition, we trip over the central character and the central meaning of the whole story. "

― Michael S. Horton , Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

20 " There can be no separation of the Word of God from the church’s speech. God could speak to us today apart from human mediation, but he has chosen instead to address us through other sinners whose mouth he consecrates. "

― Michael S. Horton