A place called Calvary

“Every time we look a the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

   ~ John Stott

God's inaccessibility to the sinner

"Our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won for us only after we have first seen God's inaccessibility to the sinner. We can cry 'hallelujah' with authenticity only after we have first cried 'woe is me, for I am lost'"
-John Stott

We were dead

"We must never think of salvation as a kind of transaction between God and us in which He contributes grace and we contribute faith. For we were dead and had to be quickened before we could believe."
-John R.W. Stott

Our preaching is poor

"Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor, and our knowledge of God is poor because our preaching is poor."
-John Stott

Mindless Manipulation

"The request for decision without doctrine is an offense to human beings, for it is little less than a mindless manipulation."
-John Stott

The Cross of Christ

"To sum up, because of our disobedience we were under the curse of the law. Christ redeemed us from it by bearing it in our place. As a result, we receive by faith in Christ the promised blessing of salvation. The sequence is irresistible. It prompts our humble worship that God in Christ, in his holy love for us, was willing to go to such lengths, and that the blessings we enjoy today are due to the curse he bore for us on the cross."
- John Stott