James Montgomery Boice

“Few are guided by principle any longer, only by what they prefer. “You have to decide what’s right for you,” we are told. In such a climate, the only remaining virtue is tolerance, and the only philosophies that are wrong are those that believe in truth.”

“The chief problem with television is that, for those who watch it consistently, it undermines and eventually destroys the ability to think. This is because it communicates primarily images, not by words, and words are necessary if we are to perceive logical connections and make judgments as to what is right and wrong.”

“Being wholly given over to God now is the essential and best possible preparation for future service.”

“You are not called to poverty in Christ but to the greatest of spiritual wealth. You are not called to disappointment but to fulfillment. You are not called to sorrow but to joy. How could it be otherwise when the treasure is the only Son of God?”

“The thief on the cross had to be the luckiest man alive. He was nothing more than a low-life criminal, a loser. He had committed a crime. He was convicted for it, and he was crucified for it. So he had no future; he was going nowhere; or worse, he was going to hell. Yet of all the criminals, on all the crosses, on all the hills in the Roman Empire, he was crucified next to Jesus Christ.”

“But instead of being con-formed to the world, Christians are to be changed from within to be increasingly like Jesus Christ.”

“if we are to see a new reformation, we will have to break away from these patterns and seek to recover the authentic biblical gospel, learning again to think and act in God’s way.”

“Justification because of Christ alone (solus Christus) means that Jesus has done the necessary work of salvation utterly and completely, so that no merit on the part of man, no merit of the saints, no works of ours performed either here or later in purgatory, can add to his completed work.”

“John 6:44 looks at the matter from the Godward side and declares, quite rightly, that no one ever made the first move toward God. We come to God only because God draws us. On the other hand, as the texts about the open door show, God does not show favoritism. Anyone, regardless of who he or she is or where he or she comes from, may be among that number.”

“The call of God is not restricted by anything you can imagine: race, education, social position, wealth, achievements, good deeds, the lack of them, or anything else. Therefore, there is no reason why you (whoever you are) should not be among the number of those whom God draws to Jesus.”

“To know God as he is, is to love him as he is and to want to be like him.”

“Many who begin early will lose their reward (or not even actually come to a true faith in Christ and salvation) because they are approaching God in a false spirit, on the basis of their merit and not on the basis of His grace.”

“When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, He came preaching God’s right to rule over the minds and hearts of all people.”

“As Christians, we must be on guard against Satan’s tactics. We are warned not only against his infusion of his own people into the Christian community, but also against the visible church’s bureaucratic growth (which confuses size and structure with spiritual fruit) and against the infusion of evil into the lives even of believing people (which confuses a loving and forgiving spirit with treason to Christ’s cause). In other words, we are to beware of the secular church and evangelical secularism as well.”

“The secular church is one dominated by the world, as much of the contemporary church is. It is characterized by the world’s wisdom, the world’s theology, the world’s agenda, and the world’s methods. The evangelical church, when it is secular, is one that seeks to do God’s work but in the world’s way. It looks to the media and money rather than to God and His power, which is unleashed through prayer.”

“By insisting on “grace alone” the Reformers were denying that human methods, techniques, or strategies in themselves could ever bring anyone to faith. It is grace alone expressed through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ, releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from death to spiritual life.”

“What is it that leads such a person to reject the truth of God in the first place? According to Paul, it is a determined opposition to the nature of God Himself, which the apostle describes as human “ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).”

“When we read something that requires us to think, there is distance between ourselves and the printed page. We are not necessarily swept along by the words. We can analyze, ponder, weigh, compare, contrast, and disagree. We can reread a paragraph if we do not understand the argument. We may look up vocabulary we do not know. We may challenge the conclusions. Because there is a distance between ourselves and written words, we do not cheer a well-written sentence or applaud a powerful paragraph, though we may appreciate how well the work is done. Written words promote thinking. Moreover, the better people read and the more they read, the better and longer they can think.”