A man becomes a Christian; he is not born one.

The cross-carrying Christian, furthermore, is both a confirmed pessimist and optimist the like of which is to be found nowhere else on earth.

All the church is to be made up of tellers. Not everyone is to be a missionary, not everyone a minister, but there is no Christian that's really become a Christian who doesn't have laid upon him the admonition of Paul to be a debtor. Everyone is bound to be a teller in his own place, in his own calling, according to the individual vocation which God has given him. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 122

A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within.

There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow -- especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.

The countries far north are cold and frozen, because they are distant from the sun. What makes such frozen, uncomfortable Christians, but their living so far from heaven? And what makes others so warm in comforts, but their living higher, and having nearer access to God?

Christianity is not just a mental assent that certain doctrines are true -- not even that the right doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, "I believe the food exists; I believe it is real," and yet never eating it. It is not enough merely to say, "I am a Christian," and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice -- once when they are justified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act as though they were sitting in the materialist's chair. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 134

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he lives, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

Christians sometimes live as practical atheists, professing belief in Christ but without any real conviction that God exists as a person.

God knows His own. It is well that He does, for sometimes it would be difficult for us to determine who are His!

How very hard it is to be a Christian!

To accept the idea that there is any part of life that Christianity should not affect, whether it be the family, politics, the law, the media, or the arts, is to make a tacit admission that Christianity is not true.

The only truly happy men I have ever known were Christians.

The average Christian is so cold and contented with his wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.

The followers of Jesus are to be different — different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships — all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian Counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.

The Christians are unhappy men who are persuaded that they will survive death and live forever; in consequence, they despise death and are willing to sacrifice their lives to their faith..

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

Every Christian is a priest, not offering a sacrifice for sins - since that has been done once and for all - but offering his person, praise and possessions.

Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.

You now have, Christian, the armour of God; but take heed thou forgettest not to engage the God of this armour by humble prayer for your assistance, lest for all this you be worsted in the fight.

A church membership does not make a Christian any more than owning a piano makes a musician.

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.

If you are what you've always been, you are not a Christian. A Christian is a new creation.

When a man becomes a Christian, he becomes industrious, trustworthy and prosperous. Now, if that man when he gets all he can and saves all he can, does not give all he can, I have more hope for Judas Iscariot than for that man!

Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent, but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the highest level of our personality and in all the parts and portions of life... There is nothing Platonic in Christianity... The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 26