Quotes by Kevin DeYoung
Kevin DeYoung (b. 1977) — Theologe, Pastor und Autor · reformiert · USA
Kevin DeYoung (* 1977) ist ein US-amerikanischer reformierter Theologe, Pastor der Presbyterian Church in America und Buchautor. Er gilt als prominente Stimme des zeitgenössischen Neo-Calvinismus, engagiert sich bei The Gospel Coalition und vertritt ein komplementaristisches Rollenverständnis sowie eine traditionelle Sexualethik. Bibellesern vermittelt er theologische Fragen und Themen der christlichen Lebensführung aus klassisch-reformierter Perspektive, stößt mit seinen konservativen Positionen jedoch auch auf inner- und außerkirchliche Kritik.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Growth & Character, Discipleship, Grace & Redemption, Church & Congregation, Ethical Questions, Faith & Trust, Work & Vocation, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit
Quotes by Kevin DeYoung
Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.
Kevin DeYoung
The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us.
Kevin DeYoung
The secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.
Kevin DeYoung
Prayer (this side of heaven) will always be hard and will always take discipline, but when I see it as a means to communion with God, it feels more like a “get to” than a “have to.”
Kevin DeYoung
There is simply no biblical teaching to indicate that church size is the measure of success.
Kevin DeYoung
We see Christlikeness as something we are royally screwing up, when we should it as something we already possess but need to grow into.
Kevin DeYoung
You can borrow time, but you can’t steal it… And the longer you try to borrow against sleep, the more your body (or God) will force you to pay for those hours – plus interest.
Kevin DeYoung
It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it’s not biblical. From top to bottom the Bible is full of commands. They aren’t meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it.
Kevin DeYoung
It’s the testimony of almost all saints that as they get closer to God they see more of their ungodliness. It’s normal to feel less holy as you become more holy. Being more aware of sin in your life is usually a sign of the Spirit’s sanctifying work, not of His withdrawal.
Kevin DeYoung
[Jesus] was busy, but never in a way that made Him frantic, anxious, irritable, proud, envious, or distracted by lesser things… Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things He could do were not necessarily the things He ought to do.
Kevin DeYoung
The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.
Kevin DeYoung
Your enemies are fellow human beings, made in the image of God, and even if they hate you, they need your help.
Kevin DeYoung
If we don't care to help the weak, we're not in touch with our own helplessness.
Kevin DeYoung
Busyness kills more Christians than bullets. How many sermons are stripped of their power by lavish dinner preparations and professional football? How many moments of pain are wasted because we never sat still enough to learn from them? How many times of private and family worship have been crowded out by soccer and school projects? We need to guard our hearts. The seed of God’s Word won’t grow to fruitfulness without pruning for rest, quiet, and calm.
Kevin DeYoung
We should rest in Christ alone for our salvation. But along with that there is still an abiding principle that we ought to worship on the Lord’s Day and trust God enough to have a weekly routine where we cease from our normal labors… He made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). God gives us Sabbath as a gift; it’s an island of get-to in a sea of have-to. He also offers us Sabbath as a test; it’s an opportunity to trust God’s work more than our own. When I go weeks without taking adequate time off, I may or may not be disobeying the fourth commandment, but I’m certainly too convinced of my own importance and more than a little foolish. If my goal is God-glorifying productivity over a lifetime of hard work, there are few things I need more than a regular rhythm of rest.
Kevin DeYoung
God is against anyone or anything that rigs the system against the weak.
Kevin DeYoung
God’s people [are] not redeemed by observing the law, but they were redeemed so they might obey the law.
Kevin DeYoung
Sanctification is a gift just as justification is (a double grace, or duplex gratia, as Calvin called it). Both are the gift of God, ours by virtue of union with Christ. Both are found in Christ alone. Both are necessary for salvation – justification being the root and sanctification being the fruit. As is often said: faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone. So we must never separate justification and sanctification. The former can’t help but produce the latter, and the latter must flow from the former. And yet we should not be afraid to talk about justification in a different way than we talk about sanctification. One calls us to rest; the other to fight. One reckons us righteous; the other makes us righteous. One allows for no increase or degrees; the other expects progress and growth. One is a declaration of God about us, the other a work of God in us.
Kevin DeYoung
The presence of extreme busyness in our lives may point to deeper problems – a pervasive people pleasing, a restless ambition, a malaise of meaninglessness. “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness,” writes Tim Kreider in his widely read article for The New York Times. “Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.” The greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider.
Kevin DeYoung
When it comes to growth in godliness, trusting does not put an end to trying.
Kevin DeYoung
In seeking after holiness we are not so much seeking after a thing as we are seeking a Person. The blessings of the gospel – election, justification, sanctification, glorification, and all the rest – have been deposited in no other treasury but Christ. We don’t just want holiness. We want the Holy One in whom we have been counted holy and are now being made holy. To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God.
Kevin DeYoung
We must always remember that union with Christ is possible because of the Son’s descent to earth, not because of our ascent into heaven. The basis of our union with Christ is Christ’s union with us in the incarnation. He became one with us so that we might become one with Him.
Kevin DeYoung
God’s commands are given as a means of grace so that we might grow in godliness and show that we love Him.
Kevin DeYoung
We must be careful [with the spiritual disciplines] that we don’t insist on a certain standard of practice when the Bible merely insists on a general principle.
Kevin DeYoung
[This] is not about the culture out there. It’s about those of us here—about what we as Christians are doing, what we are seeing, and what we may not know we are doing and seeing. I’m afraid we (including I) don’t have the eyes to see how much the world has squeezed us into its mold. If we could transport Christians from almost any other century to any of today’s “Christian” countries in the West, I believe what would surprise them most (besides our phenomenal affluence) is how at home Christians are with sexual impurity. It doesn’t shock us. It doesn’t upset us. It doesn’t offend our consciences. In fact, unless it’s really bad, sexual impurity seems normal, just a way of life, and downright entertaining.
Kevin DeYoung
Far too much ministry today is undertaken without any concern for holiness. We’ve found that changing the way we do church is easier than changing the way we are. We’ve found that we are not sufficiently unlike anyone else to garner notice, so we’ve attempted to become just like everyone else instead.
Kevin DeYoung
Sexuality in the context of heterosexual marriage is not only good, but exclusively good. Only heterosexual marriage relationships can show forth the complementary design of men and women. According to the apostle Paul, one of the purposes of marriage is to show forth the mystery of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32). If marriage can be construed as a man and a man or a woman and a woman, what is left of the glorious mystery of Christ and the church? We are left with only Christ and Christ or church and church.
Kevin DeYoung
God’s law is an expression of His grace because it is also an expression of His character. Commands show us what God is like, what He prizes, what He detests, what it means to be holy as God is holy. To hate all rules is to hate God Himself who ordained His rules to reflect His nature. The law is God’s plan for His sanctified people to enjoy communion with Him.
Kevin DeYoung
The union isn’t physical, but theological. Union with Christ implies three things: solidarity (Christ as the second Adam is our representative), transformation (Christ by the Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out), and communion (Christ abides with us as our God). Union with Christ is like wedlock, where we are joined to Christ in a covenant of love. It is like a body where we as members are joined to our living Head. Or you might say union with Christ is like a building, where we are the house and Christ dwells within us.
Kevin DeYoung
Here’s the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I’m Osama bin Hitler in God’s eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-and-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Land’s End catalog shouldn’t dare exercise church discipline on the young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we’ve cheapened God’s goodness. If our own legal system does not treat all infractions in the same way, surely God knows that some sins are more heinous than others. If we can spot the difference, we’ll be especially eager to put to death those sins which are most offensive to God.
Kevin DeYoung
If you want to be Christlike you need to have communion with Christ, and if you want communion with Christ you need to do it on His terms with the channels of grace He’s provided [prayer, Bible reading, church fellowship, Lord’s table]. And that means the only way to extraordinary holiness is through ordinary means.
Kevin DeYoung
Because we understand our worth as image-bearers and our identity as children of God, we will not look to the Internet to prove that we are important, valuable, and loved. And because we accept the presence of indwelling sin, we will not be blind to the potential idolatries and temptations we can succumb to online. And because we know ourselves to be fallen creatures, we will accept the limits of our human condition. We cannot have meaningful relationships with thousands of people. We cannot really know what is going on in the world. We cannot be truly here and there at the same time. The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. We cannot be any of these things. We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance – and choose wisely. The sooner we embrace this finitude, the sooner we can be free.
Kevin DeYoung
Busyness, as I’ve been diagnosing it, is as much a mind-set and a heart sickness as it is a failure in time management. It’s possible to live your days in a flurry of hard work, serving, and bearing burdens, and to do so with the right character and a right dependence on God so that it doesn’t feel crazy busy. By the same token, it’s possible to feel amazingly stressed and frenzied while actually accomplishing very little. The antidote to busyness of soul is not sloth and indifference. The antidote is rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God.
Kevin DeYoung
God wants you to be holy. Through faith He already counts you holy in Christ. Now He intends to make you holy with Christ. This is no optional plan, no small potatoes. God saved you to sanctify you. God is in the beautification business, washing away spots and smoothing out wrinkles. He will have a blameless bride. He promised to work in you; He also calls you to work out. “The beauty of holiness” is first of all the Lord’s (Ps. 29:2, KJV). But by His grace it can also be yours.
Kevin DeYoung
The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart.
Kevin DeYoung
As Christians, our lives should be marked by joy (Phil. 4:4), taste like joy (Gal 5:22), and be filled with the fullness of joy (John 15:11). Busyness attacks all of that. One study found that commuters experience greater levels of stress than fighter pilots and riot police. That’s what we are facing. When our lives are frantic and frenzied, we are prone to anxiety, resentment, impatience, and irritability.
Kevin DeYoung
Genuine repentance is not a convenient escape hatch after a weekend or a life of folly. It means admitting specific wrong, recognizing your offensiveness to God, changing course, turning to Christ, and wishing with all your heart you had never made the mistake you now despise.
Kevin DeYoung
No matter what you profess, if you show disregard for Christ by giving yourself over to sin – impenitently and habitually – then heaven is not your home.
Kevin DeYoung
Hell is not the North Star. That is, divine wrath is not our guiding light. It does not set the direction for everything in the Christian faith like, say, the glory of God in the face of Christ. Neither is hell the faith-wheel which steers the ship, nor the wind that powers us along, nor the sails that capture the Spirit’s breeze. Yet hell is not incidental to this vessel we call the church. It’s our ballast, and we throw it overboard at great peril to ourselves and to everyone drowning far out at sea.
Kevin DeYoung
There is no righteousness that makes us right with God except for the righteousness of Christ. But for those who have been made right with God by grace alone through faith alone and therefore have been adopted into God’s family, many of our righteous deeds are not only not filthy in God’s eyes, they are exceedingly sweet, precious, and pleasing to Him.
Kevin DeYoung
60 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: christcovenant.org, thegospelcoalition.org, bcsmn.edu, desiringgod.org
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