James Montgomery Boice > Quotes

“The true Calvinist is someone whose whole life is devoted to the glory of God.”
― James Montgomery Boice

“The world's theology

The world's theology is easy to define.
It is the view . . .
that human beings are basically good,
that no one is really lost,
that belief in Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
Romans 1:22
”
― James Montgomery Boice

“I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; It was not I that found, O Savior true; No, I was found of thee.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Mary met Jesus as her son at the manger, but she did not meet Him as her Savior until she met Him at the cross. Mary needed to lose Jesus as a son in order to find Him as a Savior. Mary needed to take her place with the other disciples, standing as a sinner at the foot of the cross. She needed Jesus to die for her own sins.”
― James Montgomery Boice, 14 Words from Jesus

“Religion is your seeking after a god in your own image. Christianity is God’s seeking you and moving to redeem you by the death of His Son.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“People love sin. Sin hardens their hearts. Therefore, they will not receive the gospel of the kingdom of God when it is preached to them.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Never plead your merits before God. Plead mercy. It is mercy we need. We need it from first to last, and we need it every single day.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Psalms: Psalms 42-106

“You are not called to poverty in Christ but to the greatest of spiritual wealth. You are not called to disappointment but to fulfillment. You are not called to sorrow but to joy. How could it be otherwise when the treasure is the only Son of God?”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“To know God as the sovereign God of the universe is to know ourselves as His subjects, in rebellion against Him. To know God in His holiness is to know ourselves as sinners. To know Him as love is to see ourselves as loved though unlovely. To seek God’s wisdom is to see our own foolishness in spiritual things. Since God is the only standard by which any of those things can be measured, we do not know anything properly unless we know Him. Or to put it in other terms, if we do not know God, we consider ourselves to be sovereign over our own lives, holy, loving, wise, and so on, when in reality we are none of those things.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Paul's suffering was neither corrective nor instructive. It was simply permitted by God so that the gospel might spread to others.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Philippians

“Alan Redpath wrote of Caleb and Joshua’s faith: “The majority measured the giants against their own strength; Caleb and Joshua measured the giants against God. The majority trembled; the two triumphed. The majority had great giants but a little God. Caleb had a great God and little giants.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Joshua

“if we are justified we will have that nature of God that will increasingly and inevitably express itself in forgiveness, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us, we will be able to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). The Lutherans says: “We are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith which is alone.” It is always faith and life: first, the life of God within; then faith; then, the expression of the inner, divine life in what we do. The conclusion is: if we do not forgive, we are not forgiven. We are not justified. We are not God’s children, regardless of what our profession may be.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“is the world or the church is actually irrelevant. The point is simply that the devil is going to bring forward people (whether in the church or out of it) so much like true Christians, yet not Christians, that even the servants of God will not be able to tell them apart.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, He came preaching God’s right to rule over the minds and hearts of all people.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“When Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, He came preaching God’s right to rule over the minds and hearts of all people. But that is precisely what the people involved did not want. Adam did not want it. He had great freedom, but he was offended by God’s unreasonable and arbitrary (so he judged) restriction in the case of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“One of the remarkable things about Luke’s history of the two criminals crucified with Jesus is that both of them asked for salvation. Have you ever noticed this? “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at [Jesus]: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” This man met Jesus Christ face to face at the cross; he asked for salvation, and he did not receive it! That fact should terrify us. It is possible to meet Jesus at the cross and fail to receive salvation!”
― James Montgomery Boice, 14 Words from Jesus

“Being wholly given over to God now is the essential and best possible preparation for future service.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Come to the Waters: Daily Bible Devotions for Spiritual Refreshment

“The chief problem with television is that, for those who watch it consistently, it undermines and eventually destroys the ability to think. This is because it communicates primarily images, not by words, and words are necessary if we are to perceive logical connections and make judgments as to what is right and wrong.”
― James Montgomery Boice

“Few are guided by principle any longer, only by what they prefer. “You have to decide what’s right for you,” we are told. In such a climate, the only remaining virtue is tolerance, and the only philosophies that are wrong are those that believe in truth.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace?: Rediscovering the Doctrines That Shook the World

“ten thousand talents. It is hard to estimate exactly what that was worth, and it may in fact only mean the largest debt conceivable, “ten thousand” being one of the largest common numbers and a “talent” being the largest denomination of currency. However, if we do estimate it in dollars, we derive some interesting results. A talent was seventy-five pounds, so ten thousand talents would be 750,000 pounds. We do not know whether they were talents of gold or silver. But since Jesus is trying to exaggerate the contrast between this great debt and the relatively small debt of verse 28, we may suppose that He was thinking of the greater of the two talents, namely, gold. In troy weight there are twelve ounces to a pound. So we are now dealing with 750,000 times 12, or 9 million ounces of gold. Assuming that gold is selling at about $400 an ounce, we come to a figure of $3,600 million (three trillion six hundred million dollars). That is beyond our comprehension, which is precisely Christ’s point. It is an astronomical debt, entirely beyond this servant’s or anybody else’s capacity to pay.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“No one should take comfort in sin. The church is impure; we cannot always distinguish between the wheat and tares in this age. But a day is coming when that distinction will be made. The harvest will come. The wheat will be gathered into God’s barn, and the tares will be burned. As a result, we should examine ourselves as to whether we are true children of God or not. And we should be careful to “confirm [our] calling and election,” as Peter indicates (2 Pet. 1:10).”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The thief on the cross had to be the luckiest man alive. He was nothing more than a low-life criminal, a loser. He had committed a crime. He was convicted for it, and he was crucified for it. So he had no future; he was going nowhere; or worse, he was going to hell. Yet of all the criminals, on all the crosses, on all the hills in the Roman Empire, he was crucified next to Jesus Christ.”
― James Montgomery Boice, 14 Words from Jesus

“Think again about 2 Timothy 3. Paul encouraged Timothy to continue on the path of ministry he had been walking because “from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (v.15). Why is the Bible able to do that? It is able to do that because it is “God-breathed” (v. 16). That is, it is the very Word of God and therefore carries within it the authority and very power of God. Yes, and it is useful too. It is useful for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (vv. 16-17).”
― James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace?: Rediscovering the Doctrines That Shook the World

“Mary was still thinking in terms of a dead body when Jesus confronted her with His living presence.”
― James Montgomery Boice, 14 Words from Jesus

“What is it that leads such a person to reject the truth of God in the first place? According to Paul, it is a determined opposition to the nature of God Himself, which the apostle describes as human “ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“Many who begin early will lose their reward (or not even actually come to a true faith in Christ and salvation) because they are approaching God in a false spirit, on the basis of their merit and not on the basis of His grace.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“No one finds God in mere pious thoughts or religion, either. That is, we will not find God in the mere performance of religious duties, whether the fourfold or sevenfold path to Nirvana, a life of meditation, the “religion” of drugs, or even the ceremonial aspects of Christianity. God has written no overall human efforts to be religious in order that He might write a yes over all who abandon religion and turn to Him in Christ. Religion is your seeking after a god in your own image. Christianity is God’s seeking you and moving to redeem you by the death of His Son.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The call of God is not restricted by anything you can imagine: race, education, social position, wealth, achievements, good deeds, the lack of them, or anything else. Therefore, there is no reason why you (whoever you are) should not be among the number of those whom God draws to Jesus.”
― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus

“The Christian counter to relativism is absolute truth, the kind of truth that Paul commended in Philippians 4:8: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, what-ever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” In making this list, Paul deliberately chose pagan rather than Christian virtues. This is because the virtues themselves are universal absolutes. Paul is not telling us to reflect on what we think is lovely or what we feel is admirable, as if the measure of value depended on our personal assessment of it. He is appealing to moral and aesthetic absolutes, saying that it is our duty as Christians to seek out such virtues and to be formed by them. 4.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace?: Rediscovering the Doctrines That Shook the World

“So the verse means, “Do not let the age in which you live force you into its scheme of thinking and behaving.”
― James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace?: Rediscovering the Doctrines That Shook the World