God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'--that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world.

— Timothy J. Keller

God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.

— Timothy J. Keller

... God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver.... From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who is seriously wronged can "just forgive" the perpetrator.... But when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.

— Timothy J. Keller

God's grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior

— Timothy J. Keller

Gratitude is what you feel. Thanksgiving is what you do.

— Timothy J. Keller

Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.

— Timothy J. Keller

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty, and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace -- at God's infinite cost -- then there's nothing he cannot ask of me.

— Timothy J. Keller

Idolatry means turning a good thing into the ultimate thing.

— Timothy J. Keller

If believers in God don't honor the cries and claims of the poor, we don't honor him, whatever we profess, because we hide his beauty from the eyes of the world. When we pour ourselves out for the poor—that gets the world's notice.

— Timothy J. Keller

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like his teaching but whether he rose from the dead.

— Timothy J. Keller