The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Philip YanceyRead
If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Activism should not replace love; true understanding of faith emphasizes grace over law.
Philip Yancey suggests that if one's activism comes at the expense of love, it indicates a misunderstanding of the fundamental teachings of Jesus, which focus on grace and compassion rather than rigid adherence to law. He emphasizes that true spirituality should be rooted in love and grace, reflecting the core message of the gospel.
Themes
ActivismLoveGraceLawJesusGospel
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon discussing the challenges of social justice, this quote can remind the congregation of the importance of love.
More from Philip Yancey
All quotes →In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Philip YanceyRead
Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Philip YanceyRead
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
Philip YanceyRead
We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
Philip YanceyRead
I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.
Philip YanceyRead
Similar quotes
To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.
Erich Maria RemarqueRead
Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.
Ernest HemingwayRead
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
VoltaireRead
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
Simone WeilRead
Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.
Alfred BinetRead