Quotes by Ray Ortlund
Ray Ortlund (b. 1949) — Pastor, Theologe und Autor · Evangelikal / Reformiert / Anglikanisch · USA
Ray Ortlund (* 1949) ist ein US-amerikanischer Theologe, Alttestamentler und Pastor im reformiert-evangelikalen sowie anglikanischen Raum, der unter anderem am Trinity Evangelical Divinity School lehrte und die Immanuel Church in Nashville gründete. Er steht für die theologische Verbindung von biblischer Lehre mit einer gelebten Gemeindekultur der Gnade, Barmherzigkeit und geistlichen Erneuerung. Für Bibelleser verknüpfen seine Auslegungen und Schriften theologische Reflexion mit einer seelsorglichen, auf Christus zentrierten Alltagspraxis.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Humility & Pride, Guilt & Forgiveness, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Discipleship, Church & Congregation, Faith & Trust, Courage & Strength, Grace & Redemption
Quotes by Ray Ortlund
What is the curse of the law? It is the or-else-ness of the law: “Do this, or else.” Christ took the or-else-ness of the law onto Himself at the cross, so that there is no more or-else for anyone in Christ, as God looks upon us now. Or-else is gone forever from your relationship with God.
Ray Ortlund
If God finds incentives for grace within Himself, then nothing in us can disqualify us from His grace – nothing except a proud unwillingness to be loved on terms of grace alone.
Ray Ortlund
Busyness can be a drug. It makes us feel important and needed. Fruitfulness is another matter. It is a miracle of God’s grace through His Word, imparted to a heart that stays quiet and low before Him, set upon doing His will only.
Ray Ortlund
I have never met anyone too encouraged. Never once.
Ray Ortlund
God Most High is attentive to us all every moment of every day. He always will be. Not one promise of His will fail. Not in the slightest detail. Instead, His promises will prove to be better than we expect, better by far.
Ray Ortlund
The religious flesh relishes theology, because it requires no death of ego, no surrender of control, no apologies. Theological disputation can feed a spirit of superiority. But because it’s about truth and right, our smugness can go undiscerned.
Ray Ortlund
For any sinner, moral fervor is a dangerous emotion.
Ray Ortlund
The Lord has more ways of confronting me than I have ways of evading Him.
Ray Ortlund
The obvious is sometimes worth saying, namely, that our futures lie out ahead of us, in the future, not behind us. Out there in the unfamiliar, the demanding, not back in the safe and the predictable. Out there – in the promises of God calling for our faith.
Ray Ortlund
You know the perfect storm? Not when you fail, but when you succeed and you finally get your perfect life, with you at the center. It’s the poison of your kingdom coming and your will being done.
Ray Ortlund
The Bible is my oxygen. “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). How could I live a single day in this world of illusion without God’s inerrant Word?
Ray Ortlund
There is only one way to live: all-out, go-for-broke, risk-taking enthusiasm for Christ. Halfway Christianity is the most miserable existence of all. Halfhearted Christians know enough about their sin to feel guilty about themselves, but they haven’t given themselves enough to the Savior to become happy in Him.
Ray Ortlund
A promise must be kept, even when it turns out to cost us more than we expected. Inconvenience does not dissolve obligation. Inconvenience makes promise-keeping all the more beautiful, even God-like. God is a promise-maker and a promise-keeper. He made us covenantal beings living in a covenantal universe. Our lives unfold with his beauty as we receive, believe, make and keep promises. It costs us. But it cost God too. His cross inspires in us the depth of personal character that doesn’t go with the flow but keeps a promise even when unforeseeable eventualities make it hard. The unforeseeableness of the future is the very reason why we make promises. It’s why promises are valuable. In a world of contingencies, promise-keeping is the glue that holds us together… Let’s cheerfully and wholeheartedly keep our word, no matter what. It’s the Christlike thing to do.
Ray Ortlund
If Jesus is a wonderful Savior in every way except where we are the most hypocritical, then He is no Savior for us.
Ray Ortlund
Let’s never be intimidated or depressed by our ordinariness and inadequacy and unimpressiveness. Most of us are quite ordinary. All of us can improve our preaching, and we will. But the sacred given is the message of the cross, which the Holy Spirit empowers in men of the cross. Let’s not disempower it. Let’s trust God’s strategy. God Himself entered into His own strategy through an egoless nobody named Jesus Christ, whom this brilliant world crucified. That Christ is sending us out to preach His message by His power. We are fully equipped in every essential with the testimony of God, the message of Christ crucified, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Will you decide to stake your whole ministry there?
Ray Ortlund
In some churches, nobody admits anything. Confession would be foolhardy, because it would be used as evidence against, rather than for, a person. If not dead already, such a church eventually will be. But God welcomes all of us sinners to confess and get free forever. It’s like being born again again.
Ray Ortlund
A man can preach the word, but still the word is not in him. It has not yet become interior to him, experientialized to him, a part of him. Such preaching is mere wind. True preaching is brewed within, as the gospel enters into a man, floods his awareness, rearranges his own interiority, and surges out of him as something divine and yet still his own.
Ray Ortlund
Biblical confession also includes a horizontal dimension – confession to one another, where we find powerful healing. Confession to God alone often does not lift us into the freedom we desire. With God alone, confession can be too easy. It is too easy to save face, and there is no healing, no release, in saving face, however earnest the confession to God might seem to be. Confession to God alone can be a way of not really facing ourselves and our sins. James 5:16 shows us where freedom can be found: “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Ray Ortlund
Obedience that doesn’t cost us anything may be more natural and glib than Christian. After all, self-righteousness “obeys” — and wonders impatiently what’s wrong with everyone else.
Ray Ortlund
There is an in-between-ness to this life. God gives us great promises in the gospel. Then He calls us to wait for their fulfillment. He doesn’t give us everything right away. He calls us to wait. In between the giving and the fulfilling of God’s promises, the waiting can be hard. Sometimes it can seem impossible to endure, because what we’re stuck in for now doesn’t just fall short of God’s great promises. Our experience can be the opposite of God’s great promises. Living in-between is not easy. But God’s greatest gift is not always what we think. God’s greatest gift is Himself. And He does give Himself right now. His own reality and presence and nearness and immediacy and smile: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18), “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Psalm 145:18). That is not a consolation prize, not something we have to settle for. There is nothing greater in all this world. We don’t understand how God draws near and we can’t control Him. But this is real, very real, very wonderful. As we stumble forward, God’s real presence gives us strength to wait without self-pity but with resilient good cheer.
Ray Ortlund
Gossip is our dark moral fervor eagerly seeking gratification. Gossip makes us feel important and needed as we declare our judgments. It makes us feel included to know the inside scoop. It makes us feel powerful to cut someone else down to size, especially someone we are jealous of. It makes us feel righteous, even responsible, to pronounce someone else guilty. Gossip can feel good in multiple ways. But it is of the flesh, not of the Spirit.
Ray Ortlund
Horizontally, death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). The temptation is to think, “But I’m not doing anything. It’s only words.” But words alone can bring a government down or establish peace, destroy a marriage or renew hope, crush a child’s sense of worth or lift him to confidence and joy, unify a church or splinter it into angry factions, send a soul to hell or to heaven. When we observe carefully the impact of our words, we see why God cares so intensely about them.
Ray Ortlund
How can I tell the difference between the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit and the accusing attacks of Satan? Some thoughts: 1. The Holy Spirit puts His finger on a specific sin I have committed, something concrete I can own and confess, but the accusations of Satan are vague and simply demoralizing. 2. The Holy Spirit shows me Christ, the mighty Friend of sinners, but the devil wants me spiraling down into negative self-focus. 3. The Holy Spirit leads me to a threshold of new life, but the devil wants to paralyze me where I am. 4. The Holy Spirit brings peace of heart along with a new hatred of sin, so that I bow before Jesus in reconsecration, but the devil offers peace of mind with smug relief, so that I fold my arms and say, “There, that’s over with.” 5. The Holy Spirit helps me to be so open to God that I allow Him to control the conversation, but the devil tempts me to take off the table certain questions I just don’t want God to talk to me about. We are thankful for our dear Friend, the Holy Spirit.
Ray Ortlund
Let’s confess our sins to one another and pray for one another. No one grows in isolation. We grow in safe community. Sadly, such an experience is rare in our churches. It should be common among us gospel people. It should be our lifestyle. We should be obvious, even scandalous, as friends of sinners. But so often, someone must break the ice. I see no revival in our future without a new culture of confession. Personally, I have found a good way to measure my own honesty is the level of my embarrassment. If I’m not embarrassed by my confession, I’m still holding out. But it is freeing to come clean with a brother or sister and receive the ministry of prayer (James 5:16).
Ray Ortlund
The grace of Christ is not an excuse for weakness; He is an endless resource for strength.
Ray Ortlund
A crucified Savior can be preached in divine power only by crucified preachers.
Ray Ortlund
One measure of humane, sustainable, biblical wisdom is not to take oneself so seriously that one becomes grimly self-focused but, instead, so to trust God that one retains a lifelong personal capacity for childlike fun, youthful play, hilarious frivolity, uncontrollable laughter to the point of tears and goofing off with a clear conscience. I believe this.
Ray Ortlund
Humility listens. Humility cultivates courtesy and restraint in speech and manner. Humility looks for win-win outcomes. Humility watches the other guy’s back. Humility values self-awareness and is open to gentle correction. Humility esteems others highly and looks for their strengths and talks them up warmly and sincerely. Where gospel humility is, God is.
Ray Ortlund
Gossip leaves a wide trail of devastation wherever and however it goes – word of mouth, email, blogging, YouTube. It erodes trust and destroys morale. It creates a social environment of suspicion where everyone must wonder what is being said behind their backs and whether appearances of friendship are sincere. It ruins hard-won reputations with cowardly but effective weapons of misrepresentation. It manipulates people into taking sides when no such action is necessary or beneficial. It unleashes the dark powers of psychological transference, doing violence to the gossiper, to the one receiving the gossip and to the person being spoken against. It makes the Body of Christ look like the Body of Antichrist – destroyers rather than healers. It exhausts the energies we would otherwise devote to positive witness. It robs our Lord of the Church he deserves. It exposes the hostility in our hearts and discredits the gospel in the eyes of the world. Then we wonder why we don’t see more conversions, why “the ground is so hard.”
Ray Ortlund
Hearing a sermon is not like hearing a lecture. It is your meeting with the living Christ. It is you seeing His glory, so that you can feel it and be changed by it. Let’s pay attention to Him and what He means a sermon to be, lest we miss Him.
Ray Ortlund
The gospel being what it is and always will be, “the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19), our churches should be the most reconciling, peaceable, relaxed, happy places in town. We are so open to enemies, so meek in the face of insults and injuries, so forgiving toward the undeserving — if we do make people angry, let this be the reason. We refuse to join in their selfish battles. We’re following a higher call. We are the peacemakers, the true sons of God (Matthew 5:9).
Ray Ortlund
The jealousy of Yahweh is His profoundly intense drive within to protect the interest of His own glory (Exodus 20:4-6; Ezekiel 39:25), for He will admit no derogation from His majesty.
Ray Ortlund
In every generation we who confess the Lord Jesus are confronted with well-established offenses against Him, testing our courage. If we man up, some people will inevitably say we are moving too quickly and causing unnecessary provocation. That might be true. The moral nobility of a cause elevates no one above self-judgment, and crusaders can be the most self-righteous of all. But the lordship of Christ judges everything, including both the offenses He calls us to challenge and our own excuses for not doing so.
Ray Ortlund
A sin is a clear violation of the Bible, chapter and verse. An act that is truly sinful – not just a disappointment to me but an offense to God – warrants discipline in some cases. But “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Honesty compels us to hold back before we go so far as to accuse anyone of a sin. Is it a sin? Really? In God’s sight?
Ray Ortlund
If your brother sins — chapter-and-verse disobedience to the Bible — and the sin is against you, rebuke him. Not a demeaning humiliation. Just sit down with him and say, “Brother, here in [biblical text], God says… But last Tuesday, you and I were in that meeting and, as I recall, you said/did… Brother, I can’t see how that behavior lines up with this verse. How do you see it?” No vague generalities, but verifiable facts, clearly addressed by the Bible. We need to have the freedom to rebuke one another’s sinful and foolish behavior. But let’s be gentle and respectful. Let’s offer the brother an opportunity to explain himself. After all, there might be more to it than one realizes. And let’s avoid the verb “to be” (“You are…”) or “always” and “never” (“You always/never…”). Those categories are too absolute to be fair. They blast the brother to smithereens, with no dignity left.
Ray Ortlund
The very concept of “the weekend” is unbiblical. It turns Sunday into a second Saturday. Home Depot may gain, but we lose. It turns Sunday into the day we catch up on the stuff we were too lazy or disorganized to do on Saturday. It also turns Sunday into a day to ramp up for work or school on Monday. It hollows out not only Sunday but our whole week, because it marginalizes God and church and sermons and all the other vital things that happen in our lives only when we make the vital things also the central things. If we accept the world’s concept of “the weekend,” we inevitably end up “fitting God in” rather than centering the practical reality of our every week around Him. We trivialize Him, even as we allow secondary things to hijack the sacred place of centrality, we live soul-exhausted lives, and then we wonder why God isn’t more real to us, why church isn’t “working” for us, why we’re grumpy, and so forth.
Ray Ortlund
God wants us to follow a recurring pattern of intense work and then rest, intense work and then rest, and so forth. Whatever view one takes of the Sabbath, surely the six days of work and the one day of rest embedded in the creation remain relevant in some sense. Any routine of life that is unsustainable long-term cannot be of God. He calls us to work. But he also calls us to rest, in order to work most fruitfully. What sets us apart is this. We rest, in order to work; we do not work, in order to rest. We who believe the gospel are not living for the weekend, but for The End. In the meantime, we figure out rhythms of life that make fruitful labor sustainable.
Ray Ortlund
How should we repent when rightly rebuked? In four ways: 1. “I was wrong.” Plain, honest, no evasions. 2. “I am sorry.” Brokenhearted, realizing the damage done. 3. “It won’t happen again.” Rebuilding trust for the future. 4. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” Performing deeds in keeping with repentance (Acts 26:20; Matthew 3:8).
Ray Ortlund
Deep in our timid hearts is a desire to be loved mildly, nothing more. That way, we retain control, we set the terms, we avoid risk. Our loving God, in His ferocious intensity, will have none of it. He defines the meaning of our lives, and we are saved from our anemic loves and brought by degrees into intense loves, like His own.
Ray Ortlund
How can I tell if my trust in the Lord is wholehearted? One way is this. Do I let the Bible overrule my own thinking? It says, “Do not lean on your own understanding” [Pr. 3:5]. So, do I agree with the Bible, or do I obey the Bible? If I merely agree with the Bible, then my positive response is not obedience but coincidence. The Bible just happens to line up with the prejudices I’ve soaked up from my background. But what do I do when the Bible contradicts what I want to be true — especially when, on top of that, it seems culturally remote and perplexing? If I’m reading the Bible for excuses for what I want anyway, my heart has already drifted from the Lord. But if I trust Him wholeheartedly, I will let the Bible challenge my most cherished thoughts and feelings.
Ray Ortlund
67 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: wikipedia.org, thegospelcoalition.org, erlc.com, crossway.org
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