Top 160 John R.W. Stott Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”

— John R.W. Stott

Featured in: Christian Quotes, Vision Quotes

2. “Pride is more than the first of the seven deadly sins; it is itself the essence of all sin.”

— John R.W. Stott

3. “Truth without love is too hard; love without truth is too soft.”

— John R.W. Stott

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

— John R.W. Stott

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

— John R.W. Stott

6. “The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God.”

— John R.W. Stott

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

— John R.W. Stott

8. “We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve.”

— John R.W. Stott

9. “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 R.W. Stott

10. “We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.”

— John R.W. Stott

11. “There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.”

— John R.W. Stott

12. “Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection.”

— John R.W. Stott

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

— John R.W. Stott

14. “We live and die; Christ died and lived!”

— John R.W. Stott

15. “Mission arises from the heart of God Himself and is communicated from His heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.”

— John R.W. Stott

16. “Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.”

— John R.W. Stott

17. “The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.”

— John R.W. Stott

18. “The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.”

— John R.W. Stott

19. “Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.”

— John R.W. Stott

20. “At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself.”

— John R.W. Stott

21. “Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.”

— John R.W. Stott

22. “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.”

— John R.W. Stott

23. “The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.”

— John R.W. Stott

24. “All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousn ess, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

— John R.W. Stott

25. “Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.”

— John R.W. Stott

26. “A Christian should resemble a fruit tree with real fruit, not a Christmas tree with decorations tied on.”

— John R.W. Stott

27. “Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.”

— John R.W. Stott

28. “The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.”

— John R.W. Stott

29. “No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.”

— John R.W. Stott

30. “Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.”

— John R.W. Stott

31. “Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion. The concept of resurrection lies at its heart. If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed.”

— John R.W. Stott

32. “It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

— John R.W. Stott

33. “The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.”

— John R.W. Stott

34. “The chief reason people do not know God is not because He hides from them but because they hide from Him.”

— John R.W. Stott

35. “We should travel light and live simply. Our enemy is not possessions but excess.”

— John R.W. Stott

36. “A Christian’s freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of His care.”

— John R.W. Stott

37. “Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.”

— John R.W. Stott

38. “Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony.”

— John R.W. Stott

39. “Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.”

— John R.W. Stott

40. “Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.”

— John R.W. Stott

41. “Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.”

— John R.W. Stott

42. “Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.”

— John R.W. Stott

43. “Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.”

— John R.W. Stott

44. “It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.”

— John R.W. Stott

45. “These then are the marks of the ideal Church – love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.”

— John R.W. Stott

46. “Christians who neglect the Bible simply do not mature.”

— John R.W. Stott

47. “The gospel is NOT preached if Christ is not preached.”

— John R.W. Stott

48. “Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God’s call to us to do so.”

— John R.W. Stott

49. “We are to be strong in faith, and soft in love.”

— John R.W. Stott

50. “The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.”

— John R.W. Stott