On May 19, 2023 Tim Keller died. In the Salvation Army they would say he was “promoted to glory.”

Keller was a best-selling author, pastor, apologist, co-founder of The Gospel Coalition, and fellow Presbyterian. He spoke to millions, met with Presidents, but was ever down-to-earth.

On the occasion of his death I wanted to share some of his quotes that I have found particularly insightful and inspiring. I have selected sentences which are succinct, and which give evidence not only of his wisdom but of his deliberate and often poetic use of words.

I never met Keller personally. My only direct interaction with him was digital. In 2013 I quoted a line from Darth Vader as it appeared in one of his books. “I find your lack of faith—disturbing.” Keller re-tweeted it. So, you know, that basically makes us pals.

More seriously, my first real introduction to his thinking was through his best-selling book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. People were talking about it. I was compelled. I bought it at the now-closed Crux Books on the University of Toronto campus. His writing gave evidence of a genuine, biblical faith undergirded by a vigorous intelligence.

He tackled many of the questions and issues that people were (and are) wrestling with. ‘How could a good God allow suffering? Has science disproved Christianity? Is there really just one true religion?’ The book not only included defenses against popular objections to the faith, but compelling and rational reasons to believe.

In that book—and in his life in general—Keller advocated a Christian faith which was theologically robust, gracious, and sensitive to the questions and experiences of modern people.

This appealed to my Reformed Protestant heritage which has always taken education and learning seriously. Professor John Leith has said that in the Reformed tradition, a life of the mind is a part of our service to God. Using the brains God gave us is a vital and life-giving way to glorify and serve God. This impetus is directly connected to what Jesus said in Mark 12:30—that we are to love the Lord with all our minds. I don’t necessarily agree with everything Keller taught. But he embodied this principle well. And he did so without being cutting, condescending or contemptuous—a pitfall which can be unfortunately common for those with big platforms.

Here are forty-five quotes from twelve of his books. I’ll organize them by book title and let the quotes speak for themselves. If you find any of them compelling, I encourage you to get the books, read the longer sections of which they are a part, and engage the muscles of your mind alongside the affections of your heart.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Riverhead Books, 2008)

1. “Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires.” (73) –a critique of the times in which we live.

2. “In short, hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity.” (80)

3. “When you lose all humility, you are out of touch with reality.” (81)

Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Riverhead Books, 2008)

4. “The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches [i.e. dividing the world into two categories—the moral “good guys” and the immoral “bad guys”]: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change.” (52)

5. “When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink.” (88)

Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes us Just (Riverhead Books, 2010)

6. “To my surprise, there is a direct relationship between a person’s grasp and experience of God’s grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.” (xxi)

7. “The three causes of poverty, according to the Bible, are oppression, calamity, and personal moral failure.” (38)

The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God – with Kathy Keller (Dutton, 2011)

8. “Until God has the proper place in my life, I will always be complaining that my spouse is not loving me well enough, not respecting me enough, not supporting me enough.” (72-73)

9. “Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.”

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path to True Christian Joy (10 Publishing, 2012)

10. “the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.” (32) -Keller points out that this statement is based on an insight by C.S. Lewis, one of his favourite authors

11. “Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance?” (39) -Keller is highlighting the fact that as we stand before God, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (see Romans 8:1). We are declared righteous before God not based on what we have done (i.e. based on our personal moral track record) but on what Christ has done on our behalf. We “perform” (do) works of love and service, but this is not to earn anything. It is a part of our grateful and faithful response to what God has already done for us in Christ.

Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions (Dutton, 2013)

12. “Jesus did not come with a sword in his hands; he came with nails in his hands.” (54)

13. “Be skeptical of your own skepticism.” (87)

14. “Our self-image rests in a love we can’t lose.” (118)

15. “But in general, Satan doesn’t control us with fang marks on the flesh, but with lies in the heart.” (122)

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (Dutton, 2013)

16. “We are free only to the extent that we do what God built us to do—to serve him.” (92)

17. “We are so instinctively and profoundly self-centred that we don’t believe we are.” (123)

18. “it is through the suffering of God that the suffering of humankind will eventually be overcome and undone.” (163)

19. “Our sufferings, if handled properly, bring the Lord glory.” (167)

20. “Happiness is a by-product of wanting something more than happiness—to be rightly related to God and our neighbor.” (187)

21. “If you believe in Jesus and you rest in him, then suffering will relate to your character like fire relates to gold.” (234)

22. “Evil and suffering are not God’s original intent for the world, and therefore only a temporary condition until its renewal.” (276)

23. “the peace of God is not the absence of negative thoughts, it is the presence of God himself.” (297)

24. “If you live for and love anything more than God then your life is always going to be like a tossing sea.” (310)

25. “Suffering will only make us better (rather than worse) if, during it, we teach ourselves to love God better than before.” (322)

Galatians For You (The Good Book Company, 2013)

26. “We are saved by faith; but we are not saved by fruitless faith.” (152)

27. “We should not be consumers, who come to a church to plunder the benefits of it.” (174)

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (Dutton, 2014)

28. “We cannot look directly at the sun with our eyes. The glory of it would immediately overwhelm and destroy our sight. We have to look at it through a filter, and then we can see the great flames and colors of it. When we look at Jesus Christ as he is shown to us in the Scriptures, we are looking at the glory of God through the filter of a human nature.” (49)

29. “When the Holy Spirit comes down on you in fullness, you can sense your Father’s arms beneath you.” (172)

The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms – with Kathy Keller (Viking, 2015)

30. “Recognize and tell of God’s daily, wonderful deeds, and you will have a note of grateful joy as the background music to your life.” (13)

31. “So do the work in me that can happen only when I trust in you as I weep.” (54)

32. “Lord, I need to learn how to preach to my own heart, rather t...