Top 160 John R.W. Stott Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “If we claim to be Christian, we must be like Christ.”

— John R.W. Stott

102. “Everyone who has been truly set free by Jesus Christ expresses liberty in these three ways, first in self-control, next in loving service of our neighbor, and third in obedience to the law of God.”

— John R.W. Stott

103. “At every step of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend.”

— John R.W. Stott

104. “As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.”

— John R.W. Stott

105. “When Jesus is truly our Lord, He directs our lives and we gladly obey Him. Indeed, we bring every part of our lives under His lordship – our home and family, our sexuality and marriage, our job or unemployment, our money and possessions, our ambitions and recreations.”

— John R.W. Stott

106. “Prayer is the very way God Himself has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our humble dependence on Him.”

— John R.W. Stott

107. “The good news is the gospel of God, about Christ, according to Scripture, for the nations, unto the obedience of faith, and for the sake of the Name.”

— John R.W. Stott

108. “Good works are indispensable to salvation – not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.”

— John R.W. Stott

109. “The essence of apostasy is changing sides from that of the crucified to that of the crucifier.”

— John R.W. Stott

110. “Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; Christ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ.”

— John R.W. Stott

111. “The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.”

— John R.W. Stott

112. “Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.”

— John R.W. Stott

113. “Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.”

— John R.W. Stott

114. “Do not be content with a static Christian life. Determine rather to grow in faith and love, in knowledge and holiness.”

— John R.W. Stott

115. “So close was Christ’s connection with God that he equated a man’s attitude to himself with the man’s attitude to God.”

— John R.W. Stott

116. “It is when we begin to see the gravity of sin and the majesty of God that our questions change. No longer do we ask why God finds it difficult to forgive sins, but how he finds it possible.”

— John R.W. Stott

117. “It is no exaggeration to say that without Scripture a Christian life is impossible.”

— John R.W. Stott

118. “A marriage that isn’t built around the Cross will be devoid of grace, mercy, and humility that come when both husband and wife recognize their need for a savior.”

— John R.W. Stott

119. “God. Our highest destiny is to know God, to be in personal relationship with him. Our chief claim to nobility as human beings is that we were made in the image of God and are therefore capable of knowing him.”

— John R.W. Stott

120. “The very first step to becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is the humble admission that we need him. Nothing keeps us out of the kingdom of God more surely than our pride and self-sufficiency.”

— John R.W. Stott

121. “And self-sacrifice is what the Bible means by ‘love.’ While sin is possessive, love is expansive. Sin’s characteristic is the desire to get; love’s characteristic is the desire to give.”

— John R.W. Stott

122. “Never use a gallon of words to express a spoonful of thought. Our unadorned word should be enough.”

— John R.W. Stott

123. “Here’s how to determine God’s will for your life: Go wherever your gifts will be exploited the most.”

— John R.W. Stott

124. “The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ’s achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.”

— John R.W. Stott

125. “We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead.”

— John R.W. Stott

126. “Why is it that some Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, as missionaries? What on earth impels them? It is not in order to commend a civilization, an institution or an ideology, but rather a person, Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be unique.”

— John R.W. Stott

127. “When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.”

— John R.W. Stott

128. “If we love our neighbor we shall without doubt tell him the good news of Jesus. But equally if we truly love our neighbor we shall not stop there.”

— John R.W. Stott

129. “Nobody can call himself a Christian who does not worship Jesus.”

— John R.W. Stott

130. “God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.”

— John R.W. Stott

131. “A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.”

— John R.W. Stott

132. “We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.”

— John R.W. Stott

133. “There is evidence for the deity of Jesus – good, strong, historical, cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.”

— John R.W. Stott

134. “Life is a pilgrimage of learning, a voyage of discovery, in which our mistaken views are corrected, our distorted notions adjusted, our shallow opinions deepened and some of our vast ignorances diminished.”

— John R.W. Stott

135. “To be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century.”

— John R.W. Stott

136. “If we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.”

— John R.W. Stott

137. “We may wish, indeed,’ wrote C. S. Lewis, ‘that we were of so little account to God that he left us alone to follow our natural impulses – that he would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more love, but for less... To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God...”

— John R.W. Stott

138. “We are to be like Christ in his incarnation.”

— John R.W. Stott

139. “Christianity is a religion of salvation, and the fact is that there is nothing in any of the non-Christian religions to compare with this message of a God who loved, and came after, and died for, a world of lost sinners.”

— John R.W. Stott

140. “The first thing that has to be said about the biblical gospel of reconciliation, however, is that it begins with reconciliation to God, and continues with a reconciled community in Christ. Reconciliation is not a term the Bible uses to describe ‘coming to terms with oneself’, although it does insist that it is only through losing ourselves in love for God and neighbour that we truly find ourselves.”

— John R.W. Stott

141. “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.’ This situation is tragic beyond words. We are missing the destiny for which God made us.”

— John R.W. Stott

142. “The essence of discipleship is union with Christ, which means identification with him in both his sufferings and his glory.”

— John R.W. Stott

143. “What then must we do? We must commit ourselves, heart and mind, soul and will, home and life, personally and unreservedly to Jesus Christ. We must humble ourselves before him. We must trust in him as our Saviour and submit to him as our Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of the church and responsible citizens in the community.”

— John R.W. Stott

144. “God hides himself from intellectual dilettantes, but reveals himself in Christ to those who humbly seek him.”

— John R.W. Stott

145. “Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; – but the Father, for love!’181.”

— John R.W. Stott

146. “If the Cross of Christ is anything to the mind, it is surely everything – the most profound reality and the sublimest mystery.”

— John R.W. Stott

147. “Human beings are comfortable with what is outward, visible, material and superficial. What matters to God is a deep, inward, secret work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.”

— John R.W. Stott

148. “Christianity is not just about what we believe; it’s also about how we behave.”

— John R.W. Stott

149. “In God’s providence we have four gospels! For Jesus Christ is too great and glorious a person to be captured by one author or one perspective.”

— John R.W. Stott

150. “We are not, therefore, to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated.”

— John R.W. Stott