110+ Timothy Keller Quotes On Prayer, Grace And Marriage

Timothy Keller is an American pastor, theologian, and New York Times bestselling author. He is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, and the author of numerous books, including The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and Making Sense of God. His writing focuses on the intersection of faith, culture, and the modern world. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Timothy Keller on love, prayer, grace.

Top 10 Timothy Keller Quotes

1. The basic purpose of prayer is not to bend God's will to mine, but to mold my will into His.
2. Legalistic remorse says, "I broke God's rules," while real repentance says, "I broke God's heart."
3. Jesus didn't come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer.
4. Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.
5. There are some needs only you can see. There are some hands only you can hold. There are some people only you can reach.
6. If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.
7. In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful.
8. Jesus Christ was treated as we deserved so that when we believe in Jesus, God treats us as Jesus deserves.
9. We need to remember that we are saved by grace when we fail. But we need to remember it much more when we succeed.
10. Religion: 'My identity is built on being a good person.' Gospel: 'My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ's.'

Timothy Keller Short Quotes

• Worry is not believing God will get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.
• Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints.
• When I forget the gospel I become dependent on the smiles and evaluation of others.
• Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.
• Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.
• Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire.
• Think like a prophet, serve like a priest, and plan like a king.
• What you do today is shaped by what you believe about tomorrow.
• Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.
• We should let Scripture interpret us more than we interpret Scripture.

Timothy Keller Quotes About Love

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. — Timothy Keller

I am going to judge my circumstances by Jesus’ love, not Jesus’ love by my circumstances. — Timothy Keller

Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, 'My life for your life. — Timothy Keller

When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods. — Timothy Keller

Jesus experienced homelessness at Christmas so that we could experience a love we could never lose. — Timothy Keller

Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won't matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength. — Timothy Keller

No one is exempt from trials and tribulations. In fact, this is often what happens to people God loves very much, for it is part of God’s often mysterious and good plan for turning us into something great. — Timothy Keller

Jesus cannot be just liked. His claims make us either kill him or crown him. — Timothy Keller

There's nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption . — Timothy Keller

Bad evangelism says: I'm right, you're wrong, and I would love to tell you about it — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Prayer

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life. — Timothy Keller

God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows — Timothy Keller

To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything. — Timothy Keller

It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul's prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. — Timothy Keller

Prayer gives us relief from the melancholy burden of self-absorption . — Timothy Keller

Prayer-though it is often draining, even an agony-is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible. — Timothy Keller

A rich, vibrant, consoling, hard-won prayer life is the one good that makes it possible to receive all other kinds of goods rightly and beneficially. [Paul] does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. — Timothy Keller

We are so quick to tweet, Facebook, and Instagram but we treat prayer with a sense of delay? — Timothy Keller

Prayer is never just an emergency flare or desperate anxious gamble. God's attention is not based on our performance but parental love. — Timothy Keller

Prayer is awe before an infinite force, and yet it's intimacy with a personal friend. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Grace

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. — Timothy Keller

Those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character. — Timothy Keller

When you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly. — Timothy Keller

When we grasp that we are unworthy sinners saved by an infinitely costly grace, it destroys both our self-righteousn ess and our need to ridicule others. — Timothy Keller

As long as we think we are not that bad, the idea of grace will never change us. — Timothy Keller

If you aren't constantly astonished at God's grace in your solitude, there's no way it can happen in public. — Timothy Keller

Grace is humbling and restorative. It pulls you down because Christ had to die for you, but also lifts you up because he wanted to die for you. — Timothy Keller

God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver. — Timothy Keller

Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering the radical grace of God. — Timothy Keller

The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Marriage

While marriage is many things, it is anything but sentimental. Marriage is glorious but hard. It's a burning joy and strength, and yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears; humbling defeats and exhausting victories. — Timothy Keller

...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well. — Timothy Keller

It takes both spouses to say, "My self-centeredness is the main problem in my marriage" to have a great marriage. — Timothy Keller

Friendship is a deep oneness that develops when two people, speaking the truth in love to one another, journey together to the same horizon. — Timothy Keller

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways. — Timothy Keller

While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage. — Timothy Keller

Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence. — Timothy Keller

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. — Timothy Keller

Marriage is so much like salvation and our relationship with Christ that you can’t understand marriage w/o looking at the gospel. — Timothy Keller

Marriage is two broken people having little broken people. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Work

Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God. — Timothy Keller

If you say: I believed in God, I trusted God and He didn't come through - You only trusted God to meet your agenda. — Timothy Keller

No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career — something will inevitably ruin it. — Timothy Keller

Grace is the free, unmerited favor of God, working powerfully on the mind and heart to change lives. — Timothy Keller

How Religion Works: If I obey, then God will love and accept me. The Gospel: I'm loved and accepted, therefore I wish to obey. — Timothy Keller

To say doctrine doesn't matter, only how you live matters, is itself a doctrine. It's the doctrine of salvation by works. — Timothy Keller

Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever. — Timothy Keller

I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ - therefore I obey — Timothy Keller

A sense of Jesus’ absence might be a sign of his presence- a sign that he’s working already in your life. — Timothy Keller

If we say, 'I believe in Jesus,' but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus at all. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Death

The only love that won’t disappoint you is one that can’t change, that can’t be lost, that is not based on the ups and downs of life or of how well you live. It is something that not even death can take away from you. God’s love is the only thing like that. — Timothy Keller

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. — Timothy Keller

Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be. — Timothy Keller

Jesus took the tree of death so you could have the tree of life. — Timothy Keller

The Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died. — Timothy Keller

If the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak, then these things are perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust? — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Hope

Because of Jesus-there is always hope, even in the darkest moments of your life. — Timothy Keller

God's reckless grace is our greatest hope. — Timothy Keller

The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person. — Timothy Keller

We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life. — Timothy Keller

Christ's resurrection not only gives you hope for the future; it gives you hope to handle your scars right now. — Timothy Keller

Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, but it does provide deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair — Timothy Keller

Your feelings come from where you find your hope. Where is your happiness and your significance? — Timothy Keller

You are more sinful than you could dare imagine and you are more loved and accepted than you could ever dare hope. — Timothy Keller

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. — Timothy Keller

Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Forgiveness

If we have not seen our sin and sought radical forgiveness from God, we will be unable to forgive and to seek the good of those who have wronged us. — Timothy Keller

When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. — Timothy Keller

The more you rejoice in your own forgiveness, the quicker you will be to forgive others. — Timothy Keller

To stand in the presence of God, that is what the Gospel is. The Gospel is not primarily about forgiveness. It’s not primarily about good feelings. It’s not primarily about power. All those things are byproducts, sparks. It’s primarily about the presence of God. — Timothy Keller

The essence of forgiveness is absorbing pain instead of giving it. — Timothy Keller

Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. — Timothy Keller

Forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. To not retaliate is to absorb the cost. — Timothy Keller

It is impossible to forgive someone if you feel superior to him or her. — Timothy Keller

Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Quotes About Identity

The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus. — Timothy Keller

Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. — Timothy Keller

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning of life, and identity then it is an idol. — Timothy Keller

Paul sees all kinds of sins in himself and all kinds of accomplishments too, but he refuses to connect them with his identity. — Timothy Keller

Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious. — Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller Famous Quotes And Sayings

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 or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. — Timothy Keller

Secularism and Religion are both all about your personal performance. The Gospel is the performance of another applied to you. — Timothy Keller

Many times people think if God has called you to something, he's promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure. — Timothy Keller

...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less. — Timothy Keller

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice. — Timothy Keller

We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them. — Timothy Keller

We must have a strong inner life of fellowship and intimacy with Jesus if we are going to have a strong outer life of ministry — Timothy Keller

Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you. — Timothy Keller

We would say homosexuality is not the original design for sexuality. Therefore, it’s not good for human flourishing. We want people to do things that are good for human flourishing. But that’s not what sends you to heaven or Hell. — Timothy Keller

The great basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us. — Timothy Keller

In the church we have to deliberately let ourselves be transparent and accountable to others. We're a family. — Timothy Keller

Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity. — Timothy Keller

There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back... No other religion-whethe r secularism, Greco-Roman paganism, Eastern religion, Judaism, or Islam-believes God became breakable or suffered or had a body. — Timothy Keller

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved it — moved to tears and moved to laughter — moved by who God is and what he has done for you. — Timothy Keller

A life of gratitude to God for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self-righteousness over being good. — Timothy Keller

People only get in the afterlife what they have most wanted-either to have God as Savior and Master or to be their own Saviors and Masters. — Timothy Keller

You can't live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find a place. — Timothy Keller

In the original language, 'Fear the Lord' doesn't mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him. — Timothy Keller

We only fully grasp the gospel when we understand, as Paul did, that we are the worst sinner we know — Timothy Keller

Trust is accepting what God sends into your life whether you understand it or not. — Timothy Keller

Discipleship is not an option. Jesus says that if anyone would come after me, he must follow me. — Timothy 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 Keller

We can only grasp the gospel's sweetness if we first grapple with its offense- you can't save yourself. — Timothy Keller

If God is not at the center of your life, something else is. — Timothy Keller

Out of the cross comes the resurrection. Out of weakness comes real strength. — Timothy Keller

Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change. — Timothy Keller

How do you change your behavior? Change what you worship — Timothy Keller

Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study. — Timothy Keller

Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance? — Timothy Keller

Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you. — Timothy Keller

I hate the moment when suddenly my anger turns into tears — Timothy Keller

The cross is the place where we find the freedom to accept ourselves without being proud and to challenge ourselves without being crushed. — Timothy Keller

The human heart is an idol factory that takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them. — Timothy Keller

Revival occurs as a group of people who, on the whole, think they already know the gospel discover they do not really or fully know it, and by embracing the gospel they cross over into living faith. — Timothy Keller

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking. — Timothy Keller

We deserve to be forgotten because we forget Him. But because Jesus died on the cross, we will never, ever be forgotten by God. — Timothy Keller

Christians need the gospel as much as non-Christians do. — Timothy Keller

Not everyone is your brother or sister in the faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor. — Timothy Keller

How does Satan accuse us? By causing us to look at our sin rather than our Savior. — Timothy Keller

To the degree you experience God's love towards you - seeing you as beautiful and radiant - to that degree sex won't ruin your life. — Timothy Keller

Reason can get you to probability, but only commitment can get you to certainty. — Timothy Keller

When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone… two thinkers, you become confused… ten thinkers, you’ll begin developing your own voice… two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise and develop your voice. — Timothy Keller

The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it. — Timothy Keller

No one is too bad for Jesus. A lot of people think they are too good for Jesus. — Timothy Keller

There is no evil that the father’s love cannot pardon and cover, there is no sin that is a match for his grace. — Timothy Keller

Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you. — Timothy Keller

How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed non of the religions have? — Timothy Keller

Jesus says, "I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look weak by comparison" — Timothy Keller

Life changing repentance begins where blame shifting ends. — Timothy Keller

Putting our faith in Christ is not about trying harder; it means transferring our trust away from ourselves and resting in him. — Timothy Keller

Life Lessons by Timothy Keller

1. Timothy Keller encourages us to examine our lives and beliefs in light of the Bible and to think critically about how our faith can be applied to our daily lives.
2. He emphasizes the importance of living a life of purpose and service to others, as well as the need to be humble and open to learning from others.
3. He encourages us to be active in our faith, to be generous and to always seek to understand God's will for our lives.