Top 80 Josh McDowell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.”

— Josh McDowell

2. “It is more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.”

— Josh McDowell

3. “Belief is knowing what you believe. Conviction is knowing why you believe it.”

— Josh McDowell

4. “Prayer is talking with God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart.”

— Josh McDowell

5. “Forgiveness is the oil of relationships.”

— Josh McDowell

6. “You can laugh at Christianity; you can mock and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions, because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.”

— Josh McDowell

7. “No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.”

— Josh McDowell

8. “Truth is objective because God exists outside ourselves; it is universal because God is above all; it is constant because God is eternal. Absolute truth is absolute because it originates from the original.”

— Josh McDowell

9. “Knowing that God is faithful, it really helps me to not be captivated by worry. But knowing that He will do what He has said, He will cause it to happen, whatever He has promised, and then it causes me to be less involved in worrying about a situation.”

— Josh McDowell

10. “After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history.”

— Josh McDowell

11. “We no longer live in a post-Christian society, we live in an anti-Christian society, one in which the Christian faith is dismissed or ridiculed and Christians are considered suspect and their motives and behavior berated.”

— Josh McDowell

12. “True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person...”

— Josh McDowell

13. “Endorsing immoral behavior is not equivalent to loving a person, nor is correcting that behavior equivalent to rejecting a person.”

— Josh McDowell

14. “Love can wait to give; it is lust that can’t wait to get.”

— Josh McDowell

15. “I am not a Christian because God changed my life; I am a Christian because of my convictions about who Jesus Christ is.”

— Josh McDowell

16. “Christianity is not a religion. Religion is humans trying to work their way to God through good works. Christianity is God coming to men and women through Jesus Christ.”

— Josh McDowell

17. “Why don’t the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn’t claim to be God, but Jesus did.”

— Josh McDowell

18. “You can laugh at Christianity, you can mock it and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. I should say Jesus Christ changes lives. Christianity is not a religion; it’s not a system; it’s not an ethical idea; it’s not a psychological phenomenon. It’s a person. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.”

— Josh McDowell

19. “If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.”

— Josh McDowell

20. “If one discards the Bible as being unreliable, then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity.”

— Josh McDowell

21. “Tolerance is the worst roar of all, including tolerance for homosexuals, feminists, and religions that don’t follow Christ.”

— Josh McDowell

22. “While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.”

— Josh McDowell

23. “Having convictions can be defined as being so thoroughly convinced that Christ and His Word are both objectively true and relationally meaningful that you act on your beliefs regardless of the consequences.”

— Josh McDowell

24. “This is the age of the new tolerance and it is producing a bumper crop of anti-Christian and anti-American sentiment.”

— Josh McDowell

25. “I’ve never had anyone define purity. You probably can’t define purity. Purity is to live according to original design.”

— Josh McDowell

26. “My joy in life is not because I have not had any problems. I have joy because I have learned there is nothing too great for Gods power to deal with, nor anything too small or insignificant for His love to be concerned about.”

— Josh McDowell

27. “After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn’t, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God’s Son.”

— Josh McDowell

28. “Here’s the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them.”

— Josh McDowell

29. “Christ can be trusted to keep His Word that He will exchange our drab existence for joyous living, abundant life! And while true love, total acceptance, and complete security are rare in our frantic world, the biblical evidence that our desires in these areas will be fulfilled in Christ is abundant.”

— Josh McDowell

30. “This is what God has done for us: He has said, “I forgive you.” But he paid the price for the forgiveness himself through the Cross. It’s a payment that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, or any other religious or ethical leader cannot offer. No one can pay the price by “just living a good life.” I know it sounds exclusive to say it, but we must say it simply because it is true: There is no other way but Jesus.”

— Josh McDowell

31. “God is not a harsh taskmaster who simply wants obedience. His instructions in his Word for thinking and acting rightly are for our benefit. He knows that when we live according to his ways, it brings us joy, fulfillment, and meaning in life.”

— Josh McDowell

32. “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.”

— Josh McDowell

33. “Forgiveness is an action, not an emotion.”

— Josh McDowell

34. “My greatest asset now is my focus.”

— Josh McDowell

35. “For centuries many of the world’s distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.”

— Josh McDowell

36. “We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models – most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.”

— Josh McDowell

37. “The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes – undisturbed in form and position.”

— Josh McDowell

38. “No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary.”

— Josh McDowell

39. “Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone to a worldview that provides the perspective to all of life.”

— Josh McDowell

40. “Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.”

— Josh McDowell

41. “Thomas Aquinas writes: “There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.”

— Josh McDowell

42. “The Christian faith is faith in Christ. Its value or worth is not in the one believing but in the One believed – not in the one trusting, but in the One trusted.”

— Josh McDowell

43. “Whenever you do judge, the only basis of judgment is not your own perspective or anything else, it’s the very character and nature of God and that’s why we are to allow Him to exercise His justice, where I personally want to take it upon myself.”

— Josh McDowell

44. “If one discards the Bible as unreliable historically, then he or she must discard all the literature of antiquity. No other document has as much evidence to confirm its reliability.”

— Josh McDowell

45. “God’s laws tell us right from wrong and how we are to treat others. As the founding fathers established a new democracy in America, they did so on the premise that humanity was fallen and thus there was a need for a rule of law to curb our natural tendencies to follow our own wants and lusts even to the detriment of others.”

— Josh McDowell

46. “The downfall of the church will not come from a lack of apologetic teaching; it will come from disintegration of the families in the church.”

— Josh McDowell

47. “Well how can a holy, just, righteous God allow sin into His presence?”

— Josh McDowell

48. “My heart and mind were created to work in harmony together. Never has an individual been called upon to commit intellectual suicide in trusting Christ as Savior and Lord.”

— Josh McDowell

49. “Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort have created a biblically sound course that will not only motivate Christians; it will equip them to fulfill the Great Commission.”

— Josh McDowell

50. “I would say much of religious heresy is the result of a misunderstanding of the basic nature of God. And once we have a proper understanding of God, then usually most of the areas of our life coincide with who God is and what He desires for each one of us.”

— Josh McDowell