Top 300 Philip Yancey Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward.”

— Philip Yancey

302. “We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.”

— Philip Yancey

303. “History is a test of faith, and the correct response to that test is persistent prayer.”

— Philip Yancey

304. “We should do whatever we can to cut through the scum that has grown on our understanding and rediscover freshness.”

— Philip Yancey

305. “What we have to go through to commit sin distances us from God – we change in the very act of rebellion – and there is no guarantee we will ever come back. You ask me about forgiveness now, but will you even want it later, especially if it involves repentance?”

— Philip Yancey

306. “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.“7-19 He lists hope at the end, instead of where I would normally expect it, at the beginning, as the fuel that keeps a person going. No, hope emerges from the struggle, a byproduct of faithfulness.”

— Philip Yancey

307. “Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified. – Mahatma Gandhi.”

— Philip Yancey

308. “We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?”

— Philip Yancey

309. “We do not pray to tell God what he does not know, nor to remind him of things he has forgotten. He already cares for the things we pray about... He has simply been waiting for us to care about them with him.”

— Philip Yancey

310. “Can we live now “as if ” God is loving, gracious, merciful, and all-powerful, even while the blinders of time are obscuring our vision? The prophets proclaim that history will be determined not by the past or present, but by the future.”

— Philip Yancey

311. “Christians behave like spies, living in one world while our deepest allegiance belongs to another.”

— Philip Yancey

312. “Throughout the Bible, in fact, God shows a marked preference for “real” people over “good” people.”

— Philip Yancey

313. “All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as “the sum of the world’s suffering,” an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it.”

— Philip Yancey

314. “Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their nine hundred years,” wrote Martin Luther. “Eve would say, ‘You ate the apple,’ and Adam would retort, ‘You gave it to me.”

— Philip Yancey

315. “If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.”

— Philip Yancey

316. “Can we live now “as if” God is loving, gracious, merciful, and all-powerful, even while the blinders of time are obscuring our vision? The.”

— Philip Yancey

317. “Lord, if you can’t make me thin, then make my friends look fat,” humorist Erma Bombeck once prayed.”

— Philip Yancey

318. “What does the world learn about God by watching us his followers on earth?”

— Philip Yancey

319. “When the church has occasion to set the rules for all society, it often veers toward the extremism.”

— Philip Yancey

320. “In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how ‘pure’ you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.”

— Philip Yancey

321. “The Bible contains 365 commands to “fear not” – the most reiterated command in the Bible – as if to remind us daily that we will face difficulties that might naturally provoke fear.”

— Philip Yancey

322. “Even the greatest of miracles do not resolve the problems of this earth: all people who find physical healing eventually die. We need more than miracle. We need a new heaven and a new earth, and until we have those, unfairness will not disappear.”

— Philip Yancey

323. “All through the Bible, especially in the Prophets, we see a conflict raging within God. On the one hand God passionately loved the people he had made; on the other hand, God had a terrible urge to destroy the evil that enslaved them. On the cross, God resolved that inner conflict, for there God’s Son absorbed the destructive force and transformed it into love. Disappointment with God.”

— Philip Yancey

324. “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love,” said Augustine.”

— Philip Yancey

325. “Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.”

— Philip Yancey

326. “Virtually every passage on suffering in the New Testament deflects the emphasis from cause to response.”

— Philip Yancey

327. “Theologian Hart goes on to note a secret irony hidden in the arguments of the skeptics: “They would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture.”

— Philip Yancey

328. “We may be abominations, but we are still God’s pride and joy. All of us in the church need “grace-healed eyes” to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us.”

— Philip Yancey

329. “Who is my enemy? The abortionist? The Hollywood producer polluting our culture? The politician threatening my moral principles? The drug lord ruling my inner city? If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.”

— Philip Yancey

330. “We must continually ask ourselves: Is our first aim to change our government or to see lives in and out of government changed for Christ?”

— Philip Yancey

331. “The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.”

— Philip Yancey

332. “G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe.”

— Philip Yancey

333. “The redemptive way goes through pain, not around it.”

— Philip Yancey

334. “In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands – the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth – I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrines were less ambiguous.”

— Philip Yancey

335. “Any Greek scholar will tell you the word “blessed” is far too sedate and beatific to carry the percussive force Jesus intended. The Greek word conveys something like a short cry of joy, “Oh, you lucky person!”

— Philip Yancey

336. “Jesus was able to love men because he loved them right through the layer of mud.”

— Philip Yancey

337. “Always, no matter the circumstances, we have the assurance of “Immanuel,” which simply means “God with us.”

— Philip Yancey

338. “Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.”

— Philip Yancey

339. “Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.”

— Philip Yancey

340. “Love deems this world worth rescuing.”

— Philip Yancey