All men -- lost or saved -- are great in their significance. Having been made in the image of God, man is magnificent even in ruin. God made man to be responsible for his thoughts and his actions, and man fashions a significant history. This is true of both Christians and non-Christians, both men with the Bible and men without the Bible. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 88

...man is distinguished from both animals and machines on the basis of his moral motions, his need for love, his fear of non-being and his longings for beauty and for meaning. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 95

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.

Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.

We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We live in a time, it seems, in which man, already fallen, will not be satisfied until he has obliterated any trace of the image in which he was made.

The perfect victory is to triumph over ourselves.

God is the same God in heaven as on earth, but I shall not be the same man.

If you want a significant man, with absolutes, morality, and meaning, then you must have what the Bible insists upon -- that God will judge men justly, and they will not be able to raise their voices because of the base upon which He judges them. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 116

Progress is a farce because man's head and hand have created wonders that stun the imagination, but his heart does not keep step and his morals undo all that his mind has wrought.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself. What good then, in being a man, if one has neither himself nor a neighbor nor God.

We are all like pictures that must not be looked at too near. They that come near us find more faults and badness in us than others at a distance know.

The difference between Christian thinking and the non-Christian philosopher has always been at this point. The non-Christian philosopher has always said that man is normal now, but biblical Christianity says he is abnormal now.

We still carry the marks of Adam's fall, and our bifocals and bridges and baldness and all our frailties bear witness that we are his offspring.

A Christian is the gentlest of men; but then he is a man.

A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unaquainted with it by taking the Beattitudes, turning them wrong side out and saying, "Here is your human race." For the exact opposite of the virtues in the Beattitudes are the very qualities which distinguish human life and conduct.

We were made to be neither cerebral nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men - things at once rational and animal.

We are modern men, and modern men, though they cherish great thoughts of man, have as a rule small thoughts of God.

For to work out one's own life under the authority of God himself is what it means to be a human being.

The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life.

God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.

Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled; man is divinely controlled, though he is also a responsible moral agent.

The true Christian's nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.

The Lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no Platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.

Truly it is a misery even to live upon the earth. The more spiritual a man desires to be, the more bitter does his present life become to him; because he sees more clearly and perceives more sensibly the defects of human corruption.

If we look into the world, and view the disquiets and troubles of human life, we shall find that they are all owing to our violent and irreligious passions.

Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.

The human genome will not help us to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is or what love is. The well-heeled couple who decide they want to use genetics to have a child that is a gifted musician may end up with a sullen adolescent who smokes marijuana and doesn’t talk to them.

If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just "dogmatically" true or "doctrinally" true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.

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