Dallas Willard Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Reality is what you can count on.”

“What you present as the gospel will determine what you present as discipleship. If you present as the gospel what is essentially a theory of the atonement, and you say, 'If you accept this theory of the atonement, your sins are forgiven, and when you die you will be received into heaven,' there is no basis for discipleship.”

“When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it.”

“The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very heart of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant.”

“We Christians should be aware that there's something at stake in cultural participation that we wouldn't have been concerned about if all we did was worry about the messages in culture.”

“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to Heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'”

“If you have a group of people come together around a vision for real discipleship, people who are committed to grow, committed to change, committed to learn, then a spiritual assessment tool can work.”

“The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.”

“I think that when I die, it might be some time until I know it.”

“'Discipleship' as a term has lost its content, and this is one reason why it has been moved aside. I've tried to redeem the idea of discipleship, and I think it can be done; you have to get it out of the contemporary mode.”