Why I Am A Christian
by John Stott
(London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2003)
In writing this short book entitled Why I Am a Christian, I am not presuming to rebut Earl Russell’s arguments point by point, for I acknowledge his brilliance as mathematician-philosopher, Nobel Prize-winner for literature and champion of logic and liberty. But I also acknowledge that there is a case to be made for Christianity that Bertrand Russell did not make or even consider.
Page 7.
Why I am a Christian is due ultimately neither to the influence of my parents and teachers nor to my own personal decision for Christ, but to ‘the Hound of Heaven’. That is, it is due to Jesus Christ himself, who pursued me relentlessly even when I was running away from him in order to go my own way.
Pages 12-13.
If we love Christ, it is because he loved us first (1 John 4:19). If we are Christians at all, it is not because we have decided for Christ, but because Christ has decided for us.
Page 16.
In speaking to Saul, Jesus was likening himself either to a farmer goading a recalcitrant bullock or to ta horse-trainer breaking in a rather rumbustious young colt. The implication is clear. Jesus was pursuing, prodding and pricking Saul. But Saul was resisting the pressure, and it was hard, it was painful, even futile, for him to kick against the goads.
Page 17.
The very fanaticism with which Saul was persecuting Christ by persecuting the church betrayed his inner uneasiness. So when Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus road, it was the sudden climax of a gradual process. Saul finally surrendered to the one whom he had long been fighting and fleeing.
Page 21.
For some time before his conversion Lewis was aware that God was after him. … First, God was ‘the great Angler’ playing his fish. … Next, he likened God to a cat chasing a mouse. … Thirdly, he likened God to a pack of hounds. … Finally, God was the Divine Chessplayer, gradually manoeuvring him into an impossible position.
Pages 23-25.
Multitudes of ordinary people have testified down the Christian centuries to the same sense of Christ knocking at their door or pricking them with his goads or pursuing them.
Page 26.
Christ had died to turn my estrangement into reconciliation, and had been raised from the dead to turn my defeat into victory. The correspondence between my subjective need and Christ’s objective offer seemed to close to be a coincidence.
Page 27.
Jesus assures us in his parables that, whether or not we are consciously seeking God, he is assuredly seeking us. He is like a woman who sweeps her house in search of a lost coin; like a shepherd who risks the dangers of the desert in search of only one lost sheep.
Page 28.
I am persuaded that at some point in our lives we have felt the pricking and heard the knocking of Jesus Christ, even though we may not have recognized what it was. For there are many different ways in which he seeks us.
Page 28.
The second reason why I am a Christian is not that it is nice but that it is true.
Page 33.
Our postmodern culture, in reaction to the self-confidence of modernity has lost all sense of assurance and affirms that there is no such thing as objective or universal truth. All our understanding is held to be culturally conditioned, is relative, and everybody has his or her own truth. Christians have a different conviction, however, namely that there is such a thing as objective truth.
Page 34.
I have no particular wish to defend ‘Christianity’ as a system or ‘the church’ as an institution. The history of the church has been a bitter-sweet story, combining deeds of heroism with deeds of shame. But we are not ashamed of Jesus Christ, who is the centre and core of Christianity.
Page 35.
Jesus appeals to twenty-first century people like us. He was a fearless critic of the establishment. He championed the cause of the poor and needy. He made friends with the dropouts of society. He had compassion on the very people whom others despised and rejected. And although he was fiercely and unjustly attacked, he never retaliated. He told his disciples that they must love their enemies, and he practised what he preached. There is a great deal about Jesus to admire.
Page 35.
One of the most extraordinary things Jesus did in his teaching (and did it so unobtrusively that many people read the Gospels without even noticing it) was to set himself apart from everybody else. … He put himself in a moral category in which he was alone. Everybody else was in darkness; he was the light of the world. Everybody else was hungry; he was the bread of lie. Everybody else was thirsty; he could quench their thirst. Everybody else was sinful; he could forgive their sins.
Page 42.
The claims of Jesus are either true or false. If they are false, they oud be deliberately false (in which case he was a liar, an impostor) or they could be involuntarily false (in which case he was deluded). Yet, neither possibility appears at all likely. Jesus hated religious pretence or hypocrisy. He was a person of such integrity that it is hard to believe he was a charlatan. As for having a fixed delusion about himself, there certainly are psychotic people who imagine they are the Queen of Sheba, Julius Caesar, the Emperor of Japan or some other VIP. But one thing is fatal to this theory in regard to Jesus. It is that deluded people delude nobody but themselves. You have only to be in their presence for two or three minutes before you know that they are withdrawn from reality and living in a world of fantasy. But not Jesus. He has succeeded in persuading (or deluding) millions of people, for the very good reason that he seems to be what he claimed to be. There is no dichotomy between his character and his claims.
Pages 44-45.
This is the paradox of Jesus. His claims sound like the ravings of a lunatic, but he shows no sign of being a fanatic, a neurotic or, still less, a psychotic. On the contrary, he comes before us in the pages of the Gospels as the most balanced and integrated of human beings.
Page 45.
There have been lots of arrogant people, but they have all behaved like it. There have also been humble people, but they have not made great claims for themselves. It is the combination of egocentricity and humility that is so startling - the egocentricity of his teaching and the humility of his behaviour.
Page 46.
Anybody who investigates Christianity for the first time will be struck by the extraordinary stress his followers put on his death. In the case of all other great spiritual leaders their death is lamented as terminating their career. It is of no importance in itself; what matters is their life, their teaching and the inspiration of their example.
With Jesus, however, it is the other way round. His teaching and example were indeed incomparable, but from the beginning his followers laid their emphasis on his death.
Pages 49-50.
The choice of the cross as the supreme Christian symbol was all the more remarkable because in Greco-Roman culture the dross was an emblem of shame.
Page 53.
The death of Christ was an atonement, a revelation and a conquest - an atonement for sin, a revelation of God and a conquest of evil.
Page 54.
To draw an analogy between our forgiveness of each other and God’s forgiveness of us is very superficial. We are not God but private individuals, while he is the maker of heaven and earth, creator of the very laws we break. Our sins are not purely personal injuries but a wilful rebellion against him.
Page 55.
Why may forgiveness be described as a ‘problem’ to God? Because of who he is in his innermost being. Of course he is love (1 John 4:8,16), but his love is not sentimental love; it is holy love. How then could God punish sin (as in justice he must) without contradicting his love? Or how could God pardon sin (as in love he yearned to do) without compromising his justice? How, confronted by human evil, could God be true to himself as holy love? How could he at simultaneously to express his holiness and his love?
Page 55.
On the cross divine love and justice were reconciled.
Page 56.
The reason for God’s previous inaction in the face of evil was not his moral indifference but his patient forbearance until Christ should come and deal with it by his death. No-one can now accuse God of condoning evil and so of injustice.
Page 58.
The cross does not explain calamity, but it gives us a vantage ground from which to view it and bear it.
Pages 58-59.
God, in giving his Son, gave himself to die for his enemies. He gave everything for those who deserve nothing from him. And that is God’s own proof of his love for us. So what we have been given in the sin-bearing death of Jesus Christ is not a solution to the problem of pain, but sure and solid evidence of both the justice and the love of God, in the light of which we may learn to live and love, to serve, to suffer and to die.
Page 60.
Victory, conquest, triumph, overcoming - this was the vocabulary of those first followers of Jesus. They attributed this victory to the cross.
Page 61.
This theme of victory through the cross, which the ancient Greek fathers and later Latin fathers celebrated, was lost by some medieval theologians gut recovered by Martin Luther at the Reformation.
Page 62.
In any balanced understanding of the cross, we shall confess Christ as saviour (atoning for our sins), as teacher (disclosing the character of God) and as victor (overcoming the powers of evil).
Page 63.
I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. It is the cross that gives God his credibility. … In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?
Page 63.
The crucified one is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us, dying in our place in order that we might be forgiven. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his.
Page 64.
Until we have discovered ourselves we cannot easily discover anything else.
Page 68.
The Christian critique of much modern philosophy and ideology is that it is either too naïve in its optimism about the human condition or too negative in its pessimism, whereas we dare to add that only the Bible keeps the balance.
Page 70.
When God created us in his own image, he made us creative like himself.
Page 73.
Love is not just a disturbance in the endocrine glands! Everybody knows that love is the greatest thing in the world. Living is loving, and without love the human personality disintegrates and dies.
Page 74.
Materialism cannot satisfy the human spirit either in its communistic or in its capitalistic form. We know instinctively that there is a transcendent reality beyond the material order, and people are seeking it everywhere.
Page 74.
We are most truly human when we are worshipping God.
Page 74.
Here then, are five human capacities (to think, choose, create, love and worship) that set us apart from animals and that together constitute the image of God in us.
Page 75.
Human evil is universal in its ext5ent, self-centred in its nature, inward in its origin and defiling in its effect.
Page 77.
Human beings are a strange and tragic paradox. We are capable of both the loftiest nobility and the basest cruelty. We are able to behave at one moment like God, in whose image we were made, and in the next moment like the beasts, from whom we were meant to be for ever distinct.
Page 78.
The human paradox or ambiguity makes democracy the best form of government yet developed. For ideally democracy recognizes both the dignity and the depravity of our human being. On the other hand, it recognizes our human dignity, because it refuses to push people around or to govern us without our consent. Instead, it gives us a share in the decision-making process. It treats us with respect as responsible adults.
Page 79.
The fifth reason why I am a Christian is that I have found Jesus Christ to be the key to freedom.
Page 85.
Freedom is a good modern word for ‘salvation’. To be save by Jesus Christ is to be set free.
Page 86.
The fact that we have been saved frees us from guilt and from God’s judgment. The fact that we are being saved frees us from bondage to our own self-centredness. And the fact that we shall be saved frees us from all fear about the future.
Page 87.
Nobody is free who is unforgiven.
Page 88.
Sin is the rebellious assertion of myself against the loge and authority of God, and against the welfare of my neighbour. God’s order is that we put him first, our neighbour next and self last. Sin is precisely the reversal of the order - me first, neighbour next (when it suits my convenience), and God somewhere (if anywhere) in the distant background.
Page 89.
Education and superstition do not seem to exclude each other.
Page 91.
No-one who is afraid is free. And Jesus Christ holds the key to freedom, because he died to free us from guilt, rose to free us from self and was exalted to free us from fear.
Page 92.
We believe that Jesus Christ is going to return in a cosmic event of spectacular magnificence. He will not only raise the dead but regenerate the universe; he will make all things new.
Page 93.
God is the only being who enjoys perfect freedom.
Page 94.
Absolute freedom, freedom unlimited, is an illusion, an impossibility.
Pages 94-95.
Human beings were made for love, for loving God and loving our neighbour. Love is the element in which humans find their distinctive humanness.
Page 95.
An authentically human existence is impossible without love.
Page 96.
Freedom is the exact opposite of what most people think it is.
Page 96.
True freedom is … liberation from a preoccupation with my silly little self in order to be free to love God and my neighbour.
Page 96.
All human beings have a number of basic aspirations or longings, which (I am persuaded) only Jesus Christ can fulfil.
Page 101.
All human beings are lame, sick, hungry and thirsty. They only difference between us is not that some are needy, while others are not. It is rather than some know and acknowledge their need, while others either don’t through ignorance or won’t through pride.
Page 102.
To be a Christian … is not to be an oddity, condemned to perpetual eccentricity; it is rather to be truly and fully human.
Pages 103-104.
‘Transcendence’ (meaning ‘God above us’) and ‘immanence’ (meaning ‘God with and among us’).
Page 104.
The quest for transcendence is the search for a Reality that is above and beyond the material order.
Page 104.
Most remarkable of all recent religious trends is perhaps the rise of the New Age movement in the West. It is a bizarre assortment of diverse beliefs, including religion and science, physics and metaphysics, ancient pantheism and evolutionary optimism, astrology, spiritism, reincarnation, ecology and alternative medicine.
Page 106.
Once reconciled to God through Christ, everything changes. We walk each day with God. We live in his presence. It becomes natural to listen to his voice as he speaks to us through the Bible, and it becomes equally natural to speak to him in prayer. For basic to our Christian discipleship is the cultivation of a personal relationship with God. God becomes the great reality of our lives.
Page 107.
As we come to meet him, he comes to meet us.
Page 107.
When worship is real, our hearts and minds are transported beyond time and space to join the whole church on earth and in heaven in the worship of God.
Page 108.
Significance is basic to survival.
Page 110.
Human beings are God-like beings and the divine image in us, although it has been married, has not been destroyed.
Page 113.
Christian teaching on the dignity and worth of human beings is of the utmost importance today, not only for our own self-image and self-respect, but also for the welfare of society. When human beings are devalued, everything in society tends to turn sour there is no freedom, no dignity, no carefree joy.
Page 113.
We all know instinctively that love is indispensable to our humanness. Love is what life is all about.
Page 116.
God’s purpose is not just to save isolate individuals, and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build a new society, a new family, even a new human race, that lives a new life and a new lifestyle.
Page 117.
Every enquiry into the truth of Christianity must begin with the historic person of Jesus.
Page 127.
‘Babies’ in the vocabulary of Jesus are sincere and humble seekers; from everybody else, Jesus said, God actively hides himself.
Page 128.
Our little, finite mind, capable as it is of remarkable achievements in the empirical sciences, is utterly incapable of discovering God.
Page 128.
God hides himself from intellectual dilettantes, but reveals himself in Christ to those who humbly seek him.
Page 129.
The very first step to becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is the humble admission that we need him. Nothing keeps us out of the kingdom of God more surely than our pride and self-sufficiency.
Page 131.
Salvation is a gift that is absolutely free and utterly undeserved.
Page 134.
Some people become engrossed in the externals of religion. They come to church. They come to be baptized and confirmed. They come to a pastor to seek his counsel. They come to the Bible and read it, together with other religious literature. But it is possible to engage in all these ‘comings’ without ever coming to Jesus Christ himself.
Page 135.
I constantly marvel at the balance of the Bible. The Christian life is not just taking it easy and enjoying ‘rest’. No; when we come to Jesus, a marvellous exchange takes place. He first eases our yoke and then fits his upon us instead. He first lifts our burden and then lays his upon us instead. But too many people, influenced by the ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ mentality of postmodernism, want the rest without the yoke; they want to lose their burden but not to gain Christ’s. yet the two invitations of Jesus belong together; we have no liberty to pick and choose between them.
Page 136.
The burden we lose when we come to Christ is heavy, whereas his burden, he said, is ‘light’.
Page 137.
The only authority under which our mind is genuinely free is the authority of truth. So-called ‘free thought’, which claims licence to believe anything, including lies, is not authentic intellectual freedom; it is bondage to illusion and falsehood.
Page 137.
The reason freedom is found in obedience to God’s commandments is that there is a fundamental correspondence between God’s law and our moral nature.
Page 138.
It is under Christ’s yoke that we find rest, and in his service that ww find freedom. It is when we lose ourselves that we find ourselves, and when we die to our self-centredness that we begin to live.
Page 139.