Top 50 Michael S. Horton Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Jesus became not only the faithful speaker, but the faithful hearer and doer of the Word of God. He not only commanded as the Lord of the covenant, but answered back faithfully as the Servant of the covenant – in our place. No wonder Christ is everything in this new covenant relationship!”

— Michael S. Horton

2. “We were not just created and then given a covenant; we were created as covenant creatures – partners not in deity, to be sure, but in the drama that was about to unfold in history.”

— Michael S. Horton

3. “In his bestseller, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that in the Internet age we are losing our capacity for deep thinking, reading, and conversation.”

— Michael S. Horton

4. “CNN will not be showing up at a church that is simply trusting God to do extraordinary things through his ordinary means of grace delivered by ordinary servants. But God will. Week after week. These means of grace and the ordinary fellowship of the saints that nurtures and guides us throughout our life may seem frail, but they are jars that carry a rich treasure: Christ with all of his saving benefits.”

— Michael S. Horton

5. “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

6. “Sometimes we suffer for righteousness’ sake, other times for our own folly, and quite often, simply as a result of belonging to a fallen creation in which suffering and death are inevitable.”

— Michael S. Horton

7. “We are living as though God and our neighbors were made for us. In other words, we are living unnatural lives – living as if we were or could become someone other than the image of God, created to love God and each other. That is why the drive for achievement is no longer a virtue, why our pursuit of meaning and significance is so confusing and futile.”

— Michael S. Horton

8. “What would it say to our youth group if, instead of inviting the former NFL star, we had a couple visit who had been married for forty-five years to talk honestly about the ups and downs of growing together in Christ? What if we held up those “ordinary” examples of humble and faithful service over the worldly success stories?”

— Michael S. Horton

9. “Our families, including us, do not need more quality time, but more quantity time.”

— Michael S. Horton

10. “Facing another day, with ordinary callings to ordinary people all around us is much more difficult than chasing my own dreams that I have envisioned for the grand story of my life.”

— Michael S. Horton

11. “However, 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.”

— Michael S. Horton

12. “Vagueness about the object of our praise inevitably leads to making our own praise the object.”

— Michael S. Horton

13. “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

14. “Since God has descended to us in swaddling clothes and in hanging on a cross, we should not consider any calling menial or unimportant. When Christ – the God of the universe – wrapped a towel around his waist to wash his disciples’ feet, Calvin observes, he dignified the humblest callings. No one and no service is “beneath us” if it benefits others.”

— Michael S. Horton

15. “Personal faith without a clear understanding of the object of that faith is idolatry.”

— Michael S. Horton

16. “This has been the vicious cycle of evangelical revivalism ever since: a pendulum swinging between enthusiasm and disillusionment rather than steady maturity in Christ through participation in the ordinary life of the covenant community. The regular preaching of Christ from all of the Scriptures, baptism, the Supper, the prayers of confession and praise, and all of the other aspects of ordinary Christian fellowship are seen as too ordinary.”

— Michael S. Horton

17. “Trials are the workshop of a Father, not the threats of a Judge. The arrow that looks as if it were targeting our heart is actually aimed at the sin that clings to us, so that we may be loosened from its grip.”

— Michael S. Horton

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

— Michael S. Horton

19. “This may be the most valuable and the most challenging thing we can learn from Calvin’s ecclesiology today: that the church is not something that we form of our own accord. It is not a product of our reaching out to God, but a gift of God reaching out to us.”107.”

— Michael S. Horton

20. “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

21. “The problem is that our children increasingly have not been given enough of the Christian faith even to apostatize from it properly.”

— Michael S. Horton

22. “Love is more important than doctrine or holiness, we are told, so we must overlook the differences. But in actuality, whenever love and unity become more important than truth and loyalty to God Himself, they become idols.”

— Michael S. Horton

23. “Sometimes, chasing your dreams can be “easier” than just being who we are, where God has placed you, with the gifts he has given to you.”

— Michael S. Horton

24. “Despite the touching sentimentality of my grandmother’s favorite hymn, “In the Garden,” it is simply not true that you come to the garden alone with Jesus and “the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known.” If your personal relationship with Jesus is utterly unique, then it is not properly Christian.”

— Michael S. Horton

25. “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

26. “God does not exist for us; we exist for God.”

— Michael S. Horton

27. “Martin Luther put it well: “I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”84.”

— Michael S. Horton

28. “The Next Big Thing is Christ’s return. Until then, we live in hope that changes our ordinary lives here and now.”

— Michael S. Horton

29. “If your personal relationship with Jesus is utterly unique, then it is not properly Christian.”

— Michael S. Horton

30. “We often assume that the question, “How can I be happy?” can be successfully answered without reference to the love of God and our neighbors. And the irony is that if our biggest question is our own happiness, we can never know the God in whom we find our ultimate joy and rest.”

— Michael S. Horton

31. “Christians should be some of the most conflicted people in the world. It is far simpler to be dead to God and to live for oneself. But Christians must struggle against their selfish ambition because they are alive to God in Christ Jesus, and the indwelling Spirit turns on the lights to enable them to see their sin.”

— Michael S. Horton

32. “The gospel is not something you can just tack on to another worldview. On the contrary, it makes you rethink everything from the ground up, from the center out.”

— Michael S. Horton

33. “In an economy of grace, there is enough to go around. The Father’s love and generosity are not scarce. His table is brimming with luxurious fare. That is why we invite those who cannot repay us. After all, it is not our table, but his.”

— Michael S. Horton

34. “He lived for nearly a year, however, almost paralyzed from head to toe. Since even his face had lost muscular control, his eyelids drooped, exposing their red interior. It was as if his whole face had melted like wax, and we could hardly recognize him – except for the eyes, which were always filled with emotion, usually unspeakable pain. But occasionally, and more frequently toward the end, they evidenced hope and a confidence that came from another place.”

— Michael S. Horton

35. “The triune God is the sun on this horizon, and we orient ourselves to this sun, not the other way around. Instead of starting with ourselves – our plans, purposes, dreams, and accomplishments – and seeking to learn how God can serve our goals and desires, we begin with God, who is life, and who freely created, sustains, and directs history to his ends.”

— Michael S. Horton

36. “Even important biblical exhortations and commands become dislocated from their indicative, gospel habitat. Instead of the gospel giving us new thoughts, experiences, and a motivation for grateful obedience, we lodge the power of God in our own piety and programs.”

— Michael S. Horton

37. “He demands perfect righteousness, not good intentions.”

— Michael S. Horton

38. “The power of our activism, campaigns, movements, and strategies cannot forgive sins or raise the dead.”

— Michael S. Horton

39. “Because of our common curse, no time, place, cultural movement, or civilization is capable of restoring paradise.”

— Michael S. Horton

40. “It is the preaching of God’s commands that brings conviction, while the proclamation of Christ in the gospel creates and keeps on creating faith and its fruit.”

— Michael S. Horton

41. “Like the easy-listening Muzak that plays ubiquitously in the background in other shopping venues, the message of American Christianity has simply become trivial, sentimental, affirming, and irrelevant.”

— Michael S. Horton

42. “Reason quite properly rejects contradiction, but rationalism abhors mystery, which every heresy attempts in its own way to resolve.”

— Michael S. Horton

43. “Loving Neighbors Is Tougher Than Loving Causes.”

— Michael S. Horton

44. “We are justified through faith in Christ, not through doctrinal precision.”

— Michael S. Horton

45. “To be clear, it’s not as if all of the values being promoted today by calls to be “radical” or invitations to change the world are wrong-headed or unbiblical. Taking a summer to build wells in Africa is, for some, a genuine calling. But so is fixing a neighbor’s plumbing, feeding one’s family, and sharing in the burdens and joys of a local church. What we are called to do every day, right where God has placed us, is rich and rewarding.”

— Michael S. Horton

46. “Our life has to count! We have to leave our mark, have a legacy, and make a difference. And all of this should be something that can be managed, measured, and maintained. We have to live up to our Facebook profile. It’s one of the newer versions of salvation by works.”

— Michael S. Horton

47. “Many evangelicals have a problem with sacraments precisely because they regard them chiefly as human works, but Scripture presents them as God’s testimony to his work.”

— Michael S. Horton

48. “The Next Big Thing is not another Pentecost or another apostle or another political or social cause. It is Christ’s return.”

— Michael S. Horton

49. “Not long ago I had a conversation with a Jewish rabbi who said to me, “You know, one of the greatest differences between our two religions is this idea that you’ve committed a sin just by desiring or thinking it. We believe you have to actually commit the physical act before it’s really sin. Otherwise,” he concluded with an incredulous chuckle, “we’d be sinning all the time!” “We are,” I replied. “That’s the whole point.”

— Michael S. Horton

50. “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