Timothy Keller
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Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which he started in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and three young sons. For 28 years he led a diverse congregation of young professionals that grew to a weekly attendance of over 5,000.
He is also the Chairman & Co-Founder of Redeemer City to City (CTC), which starts new churches in New York and other global cities, and publishes books and resources for ministry in an urban environment. In 2017 Dr. Keller transitioned to CTC full time to teach and mentor church planters and seminary students through a joint venture with Reformed Theological Seminary's (RTS), the City Ministry Program. He also works with CTC's global affiliates to launch church planting movements. Christianity Today has said, “Fifty years from now, if evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love of their neighbors, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.” |
Quotes
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“When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
-Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 95) “Nearly everyone thinks that the Bible’s directive to “love your neighbor” is wise, right, and good. But notice that it is a command, and emotions cannot be commanded. The Bible does not call us to like our neighbors, to have affection and warm feelings toward him or her. No, the call is to love your neighbor, and that must primarily mean displaying a set of behaviors. The feelings of affection, of course, is a natural part of love, and it can enable us to better perform the actions of love. We are never more satisfied and fulfilled that when affection and action are joined in us, when we are serving someone we delight in. nevertheless, if we don’t distinguish between feelings and actions, it can put huge barriers in the way of loving people. One reason we need to make this distinction is because of the sheer inconsistency of our feelings. They are tied to complex physical, psychological, and social factors. They wax and then wane, often in infuriating ways. Our emotions are not under our control, but our actions are. Most of our likes and dislikes are neither sins nor virtues—no more than our tastes in food or music. What matters is what we do with them. If, as our culture encourages us, we go so far as to define love as “likings” –if we only feel that actions of love are “authentic” if there are strong feelings of love present—we will inevitably be bad friends and even more terrible family members and spouses. It is a mistake to think that you must feel love to give it… -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 99) “Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love. Love between two people must not, in the end, be identified simply with emotion or merely with dutiful action. Married love is a symbiotic, complex mixture of both. Having said this, it is important to observe that of the two—emotion and action—it is the latter that we have the most control over. It is the action of love that we can promise to maintain every day.” -Timothy Keller ( The Meaning of Marriage 101) “Many people hear this and say, “I’m sorry, I cant give love if I don’t feel it! I cant fake it. That’s too mechanical for me.” I can understand that reaction, but Paul doesn’t simply call us to a naked action; he also commands us to think as we act. “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” This means we must say to ourselves something like this: “Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn’t think, ‘I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.’ No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us—denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him—and in the greatest act of love in history, he stayed. He said, ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.’ He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.” Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 108-9) “What, then, is marriage for? It is for helping each other to become our future glory-selves, the new creations God will eventually make us.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 120) “Romance, sex, laughter, and plain fun are the by-products of this process of sanctification, refinement, glorification. Those things are important, but they cant keep the marriage going through the years of ordinary life. What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse’s holiness. You’re committed to his or her beauty. You’re committed to his greatness and perfection. You’re committed to her honesty and passion for the things of God. That’s your job as a spouse. Any lesser goal than that, any smaller purpose, and your just playing at being married.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 123) “The simple fact is that only if I love Jesus more than my wife will I be able to serve her needs ahead of my own. Only if my emotional tank is filled with love from God will I be able to be patient, faithful, tender, and open with y wife when things are not going well in life our in the relationship. And the more joy I get from my relationship with Christ, the more I can share that joy with my wife and my family.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 124) “Marriage by its very nature has the “power of truth” –the power to show you the truth about who you are. People are appalled when they get sharp, far-reaching criticisms from their spouses. They immediately begin to think they married the wrong person. But you must realize that it isn’t ultimately your spouse who is exposing the sinfulness of your heart—it’s marriage itself. Marriage does not so much bring you into confrontation with your spouse as confront you with yourself. Marriage shows you a realistic, unflattering picture of who you are and then takes you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to pay attention to it.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 140) “Martin Luther was reputed to say about sexual desires, “You can’t stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making nests in our hair.” By that he meant that we can’t stop sexual thoughts from occurring to us—they are natural and unavoidable. However, we are responsible for what we do with those thoughts. We must not entertain and dwell on them. And if we do something sexually that is wrong, we should use the gospel of grace on our consciences. That gospel will neither take the sin lightly nor lead you to flagellate yourself and wallow in guilt indefinitely. It is important to get the gospel’s pardon and cleansing for wrongdoing. Often it is unresolved shame for past offenses that stir up present, obsessive fantasies.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage p. 228-9) “Genesis 1-2 shows us a God with his hands dirty, creating the world and deliberately putting a spirit in a body. In addition, the incarnation of Christ and the resurrection of the body make Christianity perhaps the most pro-physical faith. Even our future is a physical one! No other religion envisions matter and spirit living together in integrity forever. It can be argued that Jews and Christians were stricter about sexual ethics than pagan society because they saw the body as more important and therefore sex as a greater good.” -Timothy Keller (The Meaning of Marriage Notes Chp 4) “There is a direct relationship between a person’s grasp and experience of God’s grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.” -Tim Keller “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.” -Timothy Keller "Religion is growing around the world and in this country, especially among non-white people. Global Christianity is now primarily non-white. The new, multi-ethnic evangelicalism and Pentecostalism will not fit into neat American ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ categories. It will probably look ‘liberal’ in its commitment to racial and economic justice, but ‘conservative’ when it comes to issues like abortion and gay marriage. In other words, the evangelicalism of the future will disappoint both Democrats and Republicans.” -Timothy Keller Unless you believe the gospel, everything you do will be driven by either pride or fear. -Timothy Keller “The gospel says you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, but more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope.” -Timothy Keller “While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.” -Tim Keller |
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