Nov. 19, 2024, 3:45 a.m.
In a world filled with challenges and uncertainties, many find solace and strength in the timeless teachings of Christ. His words and deeds have inspired countless individuals across generations, offering guidance, hope, and a profound sense of purpose. Whether you're seeking comfort during difficult times or looking to deepen your spiritual journey, exploring inspirational quotes about Christ can be a source of immense encouragement. In this curated collection of 136 quotes, you'll find wisdom that transcends time and speaks to the heart, reminding us of the enduring power of faith, love, and compassion. Let these insights from Christ and those who have drawn inspiration from His teachings illuminate your path and uplift your soul.
1. “He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.” - Abraham Kuyper
2. “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ would take the slums out of people, and then they would take themselves out of the slums.The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.” - Ezra Taft Benson
3. “Hatred seems to work on the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?” - Graham Greene
4. “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” - Augustine of Hippo
5. “Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. “In his life Christ is an example showingus how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest.” - Martin Luther
7. “I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. ” - David Livingstone
8. “Go make your mark on the world. Be a world changer! Live bold for Christ no matter the cost.” - Crystal Woodman Miller
9. “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.” - C.S. Lewis
10. “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
11. “Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
12. “When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.” - Simone Weil
13. “Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.” - Jerry Bridges
14. “Stop comparing or boast at your victories. He was referring to enormous vitality and strength of God of Jesus seeking union with us. The living acts of a Christian become somehow the acts of Christ.” - Brennan Manning
15. “If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the imitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. (p. 145)” - Robin R. Meyers
16. “One night I dreamed a dream.I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma. "Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me."He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.” - Margaret Fishback Powers
17. “Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.” - Seraphim Rose
18. “In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought—His Father. “Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.” This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night—together.” - Jeffrey R. Holland
19. “The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.” - Paul David Tripp
20. “...stooping very low, He engraves with careHis Name, indelible, upon our dust;And from the ashes of our self-despair,Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust.He seeks no second site on which to build,But on the old foundation, stone by stone,Cementing sad experience with grace,Fashions a stronger temple of His own.” - Patricia St. John
21. “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and show Myself to him.” - Anonymous
22. “Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
23. “The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love, to swing the whole world back into the beat of the Music of Eternal Life.” - Caryll Houselander
24. “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.” - Stephen Colbert
25. “Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith. Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life?” - Augustine of Hippo
26. “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the centre - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake...what Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they 'could be like Gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters - invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come...the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” - C.S. Lewis
27. “CONCERNED BUT NOT CONSUMED!” - Ron Sanders
28. “He gains the farthest reaches where the ache of our most ancient absence lay.” - Scott Cairns
29. “In Christ, for the first time, we see that in God himself there exists--within his inseparable unity--the distinction between the Father who gives and the Gift which is given (the Son), but only in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” - Hans Urs von Balthasar
30. “There are no real personalities apart from God. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints.But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality; but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him...Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” - C.S. Lewis
31. “Man cannot measure the bounds nor fathom the depths of divine forgiveness...” - James Talmage
32. “How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.” - Graham Greene
33. “A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.” - Victor Hugo
34. “I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” - Flannery O'Connor
35. “The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has not beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.” - C.S. Lewis
36. “What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other.” - Hans Urs von Balthasar
37. “It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.” - Hans Urs von Balthasar
38. “Sin is the handle by which I get Christ,...” - John Duncan
39. “The ingenerating of a principle of grace in the soul seems in Scripture to be compared to the conceiving of Christ in the womb... And the conception of Christ in the womb of the blessed virgin by the power of the Holy Ghost, seems to be a designed resemblance of the conception of Christ in the soul of a believer by the power of the same Holy Ghost.” - Jonathan Edwards
40. “The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)” - Yevgeny Zamyatin
41. “The all-victorious Christ is like a great rock in a weary land, to whose shelter we may flee in every time of sorrow or trial, finding quiet refuge and peace in him.” - J.R. Miller
42. “He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest.” - Pearl S. Buck
43. “If a man cannot serve two masters, neither can Christianity, or several thousand of them as the case may be.” - E.A. Bucchianeri
44. “In the soul where Christ savingly is, there He lives. He not only lives without it, so as violently to actuate it, but He lives in it, so that the soul also is alive. Grace in the soul is as much from Christ, as the light in a glass, held out in the sunbeams, is from the sun. But this represents the manner of the communication of grace to the soul only in part; because the glass remains as it was, the nature of it not being at all changed; it is as much without any lightsomeness in its nature as ever. But the soul of a saint receives light from the Sun of Righteousness, in such a manner that its nature is changed, and it becomes properly a luminous thing; not only does the sun shine in the saints, but they also become little suns, partaking of the nature of the Fountain of their light. In this respect, the manner of their derivation of light is like that of the lamps in the tabernacle, rather than that of a reflecting glass; which, though they were lit up by fire from heaven, yet thereby became themselves burning shining things.” - Jonathan Edwards
45. “The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.” - Geerhardus Vos
46. “I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?” - Ray Bradbury
47. “In 30 years Christians will have baptized their picture of Christ. He won't be a nice, banal, meek, and bearded man with softly permed hair. Instead, he will fill our imaginations more solidly, more invasively , more unexpectedly. Christ will become That Man who changes people, someone who jumps off a bumper sticker and mediocre praise songs and into lives.” - Jonalyn Fincher
48. “It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
49. “You and I are part of the colony of heaven. Right now, we may reside here on earth, but our passport indicates that our citizenship is in heaven. We are on the earth, but not of the earth.” - Allen R. Hunt
50. “I am ready. I have repented my sins and soon I will be in heaven with Christ my savior. Now I must die like a man.” - Charles Portis
51. “We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs. Liberation that raises a cry against others is no true liberation. Liberation that means revolutions of hate and violence and takes away lives of others or abases the dignity of others cannot be true liberty. True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others.” - Oscar A. Romero
52. “It is ignorance or at least lack of consideration of heavenly things that make the temporal things of this world, whether good or evil, greater than they really are.” - Tom Patton
53. “Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.” - Allen R. Hunt
54. “Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes.” - Criss Jami
55. “All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.” - Criss Jami
56. “Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.” - John Stott
57. “Christ is the Lesson as well as the Teacher.” - Darvin Pruitt
58. “We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.” - Peter Kreeft
59. “The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.” - Peter Kreeft
60. “One of the things that Christmas reminds us is that Jesus Christ was once a child.” - Hark Herald Sarmiento
61. “Lord, forgive us for the times we have read about Gethsemane with dry eyes.” - Frederick S. Leahy
62. “Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive—listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff—a lean, mean fighting machine.” - Craig Olson
63. “The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.” - John Piper
64. “Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of Beauty, man would pine away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as Christ, the ideal of Beauty in Himself and his Word, he decided it was better to implant the ideal of Beauty in the soul. If it exists in the soul, each would be the brother of everyone else and then, of course, working for each other, all would also be rich. Whereas if you give them bread, they might become enemies to each other out of boredom.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
65. “The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.” - Peter Kreeft
66. “There is no humility in calling yourself a Christian; placing Christ in the role of colleague. The humility lies in the truth of your imperfection and a more accurate description as a student of Christianity; placing Christ back in the role as head teacher.” - Steve Maraboli
67. “A shining star will never lose it's luster, because Christ causes it to shine!” - Anita R. Sneed-Carter
68. “Fellow-Christians, do let us study the Bible portrait of the humble man. And let us ask our brethren, and ask the world, whether they recognize in us the likeness to the original.” - Andrew Murray
69. “After Daskalos returned to his armchair and was getting ready to continue our discussion I asked him whether the affliction of that man was due to karmic debts.“ ‘All illnesses are due to Karma,’ Daskalos replied. ‘It is either the result of your own debts or the debts of others you love.’“ ‘I can understand paying for one’s own Karma but what does it mean paying the Karma of someone you love?’ I asked.“ ‘What do you think Christ meant,’ Daskalos said, ‘when he urged us to bear one another’s burdens?’“ ‘Karma,’ Daskalos explained, ‘has to be paid off in one way or another. This is the universal law of balance. So when we love someone, we may assist him in paying part of his debt. But this,’ he said, ‘is possible only after that person has received his ‘lesson’ and therefore it would not be necessary to pay his debt in full. When most of the Karma has been paid off someone else can assume the remaining burden and relieve the subject from the pain. When we are willing to do that,’ Daskalos continued, ‘the Logos will assume nine-tenths of the remaining debt and we would actually assume only one-tenth. Thus the final debt that will have to be paid would be much less and the necessary pain would be considerably reduced. These are not arbitrary percentages,’ Daskalos insisted, ‘but part of the nature of things.” - Kyriacos C. Markides
70. “You win over people just like you win over a dog. You see a dog passing down the street with an old bone in his mouth. You don't grab the bone from him and tell him it's not good for him. He'll growl at you. It's the only thing he has. But you throw a big fat lamb chop in front of him, and he's going to drop that bone and pick up the lamb chop, his tail wagging to beat the band. And you've got a friend. Instead of going around grabbing bones from people... I'm going to throw them some lamb chops. Something with real meat and life in it. I'm going to tell them about New Beginnings.” - David Wilkerson
71. “[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world...The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, bothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.But since we are bound to abhor any deception which hides the truth from our sight, we must of necessity repudiate any direct relationship with the things of this world--and that for the sake of Christ. Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanctions of Christian principles.,,There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
72. “If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.” - Peter Kreeft
73. “Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart’s truth.” - Elisabeth Elliot
74. “To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.” - Criss Jami
75. “Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ!” - Eric Liddell
76. “Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia” - Max Lucado
77. “The very first evidence of awakening grace is dissatisfaction with one's self and self-effort and a longing for deliverance from chains of sin that have bound the soul. To own frankly that I am lost and guilty is the prelude to life and peace. It is not a question of a certain depth of grief and sorrow, but simply the recognition and acknowledgment of need that lead one to turn to Christ for refuge. None can perish who put their trust in Him. His grace superabounds above all our sin, and His expiatory work on the cross is so infinitely precious to God that it fully meets all our uncleanness and guilt.” - Harry Ironside
78. “May the Father be gracious according to your needs.Dear Father preserve their life,relieve them of pain,restore them to good health and strengh.Put them in your fatherly care.Forgive them all their sins. So they may be at peace with you.” - Shelley E Williams
79. “When one takes into account also His reiterated assertions about His Divinity - such as asking us to love Him above parents, to believe in Him even in the face of persecution, to be ready to sacrifice our bodies in order to save our souls in union with Him - to call Him just a good man ignores the facts. No man is good unless he is humble; and humility is a recognition of truth concerning oneself. A man who thinks he is greater than he actually is is not humble, but a vain and boastful fool. How can any man claim prerogatives over conscience, and over history, and over society and the world and still claim he is 'meek and humble of heart'? But if He is God as well as man, His language falls into place and everything that He says is intelligible. But if He is not what He claimed to be, then some of His most precious sayings are nothing but bombastic outburts of self-adulation that breathe rather the spirit of Lucifer than the spirit of a good man. What avails Him to proclam the law of self-renouncement, if He Himself renounces truth to call Himself God? Even His sacrifice on the Cross becomes a suspect and dated thing, when it goes hand in hand with delusions of grandeur and infernal conceit. He could not be called even a sincere teacher, for no sincere teacher would allow anyone to construe his claims to share the rank and the name of the Great God in heaven.” - Fulton J. Sheen
80. “Wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him--this is all!” - Elizabeth Prentiss
81. “What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, for eternity.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
82. “Pilate's skeptical sneer "What is truth?" was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world's stupidest question was three words; God's profoundest answer was one Word.” - Peter Kreeft
83. “Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.” - Larry Crabb
84. “A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
85. “As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
86. “He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, 'How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?' If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill.” - Fulton J. Sheen
87. “How different our standard is from Christ's. We ask how much a man gives. Christ asks how much he keeps.” - Andrew Murray
88. “It is not great faith, but true faith, that saves; and the salvation lies not in the faith, but in the Christ in whom faith trusts...It is not the measure of faith, but the sincerity of faith, which is the point to be considered.” - Charles H. Spurgeon
89. “Some religions draw by force of arms; He would draw by force of love. The attraction would not be His words, but Himself. It was His Person around which His teaching centered; not His teaching around which He would be remembered. 'Greater love than this no man hath' - that was the secret of His magnetism.” - Fulton J. Sheen
90. “As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.” - Christine de Pizan
91. “He told them therefore that He was not a Teacher asking for a disciple who would parrot His sayings; He was a Saviour Who first disturbed a conscience and then purified it. But many would never get beyond hating the disturber. The Light is no boon, except to those who are men of good will; their lives may be evil, but at least they want to be good. His Presence, He said, was a threat to sensuality, avarice, and lust. When a man has lived in a dark cave for years, his eyes cannot stand the light of the sun; so the man who refuses to repent turns against mercy. No one can prevent the sun from shining, but every man can pull down the blinds and shut it out.” - Fulton J. Sheen
92. “But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.No, said Tolkien, they are not....just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.” - Humphrey Carpenter
93. “Neglected but Undefeated I stand today living the life I was told I would never live all because my faith grew.” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett
94. “If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.” - Tullian Tchividjian
95. “My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.” - J.D. Greear
96. “To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life.” - Major W. Ian Thomas
97. “To be in Christ -- that is redemption; but for Christ to be in you -- that is sanctification!” - Major W. Ian Thomas
98. “... challenge the church to do better, be more of who Christ wants us to be ...” - Justin Lee
99. “I have sometimes wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people he healed, many of whom must have been unattractive, obviously diseased, unsanitary, smelly. With his power, he easily could have waved a magic wand. In fact, a wand would have reached more people than a touch. He could have divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized his miracles--paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, people with leprosy there--raising his hands to heal each group efficiently, en masse. But he chose not to. Jesus' mission was not chiefly a crusade against disease (if so, why did he leave so many unhealed in the world and tell followers to hush up details of healings?), but rather a ministry to individual people, some of whom happened to have a disease. He wanted those people, one by one, to feel his love and warmth and his full identification with them. Jesus knew he could not readily demonstrate love to a crowd, for love usually involves touching.” - Paul Brand
100. “God draws near to the brokenhearted. He leans toward those who are suffering. He knows what it feels like to be wounded and abandoned.” - John D. Richardson
101. “True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!” - Sinclair B. Ferguson
102. “It is the most sweet and comfortable knowledge; to be studying Jesus Christ, what is it but to be digging among all the veins and springs of comfort? And the deeper you dig, the more do these springs flow upon you. How are hearts ravished with the discoveries of Christ in the gospel? what ecstasies, meltings, transports, do gracious souls meet there? Doubtless, Philip’s ecstasy, John 1: 25. 'eurekamen Iesoun,' 'We have found Jesus,' was far beyond that of Archimedes. A believer could sit from morning to night, to hear discourses of Christ; 'His mouth is most sweet', Cant. [i.e., Song of Solomon] 5: 16.” - John Flavel
103. “If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
104. “Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body.” - Dejan Stojanovic
105. “I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don’t want the reputation that I love God, I don’t want to write songs about loving God, I don’t want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it’s real.” - Misty Edwards
106. “Unfortunately, the ten-cent-store Jesus being preached now by many men is not the Jesus that will come to judge the world. This plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice, but is a soft and pliant friend to everybody, if He is the only Christ, then we might as well close our books, bar our doors and make a bakery or garage out of our church buildings. The popular Christ being preached now is not the Christ of God nor the Christ of the Bible nor the Christ we must deal with finally. For the Christ that we deal with has eyes as a flame of fire. And His feet are like burnished brass; and out of His mouth cometh a sharp two-edged sword (see Rev. 1:14-16). He will be the judge of humanity. You can leave your loved ones in His hands knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known... Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge with the flaming eyes, is the one with whom we must deal. We cannot escape it.” - A.W. Tozer
107. “Those in the West who have adopted Christ as their own should remember that he was an Oriental. Love and sympathy for Jesus should be expanded into love and sympathy for all Orientals, and for all the world.” - Paramahansa Yogananda
108. “Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.” - J.I. Packer
109. “Friend who has fired the kingfishers and flamed the dragonflies – they catch your light however they move and beam it out of their eyes.” - Bryana Johnson
110. “After attainment of Supreme knowledge a man lives but he does not lead an ordinary man’s life. He lives, he eats, he sleeps and by God’s commandment he becomes a ‘man-catcher’ as Christ told Peter.” - Jibankrishna
111. “Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.” - Marsha Norman
112. “Love is not only pure joy, and delight, but also great and deep heaviness of heart and sorrow. But love too is full of joy and sweetness even in bitter sorrow, because it regards the misery and injury of others as its own. So also Christ was glowing with burning love in His last and greatest agony. According to St. Hilary, it was Christ's greatest joy that He endured the greatest woe. Thus God "giveth strength and power unto His people" (Ps. 68:15). While they experience the greatest sorrow, their hearts overflow with joy.” - Martin Luther
113. “Did You wrap yourself inside the unexpected so we might know that Love would go that far?” - Francesca Battistelli
114. “The love of Christ both wounds and heals, it fascinates and frightens, it kills and makes alive, it draws and repulses. There can be nothing more terrible or wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart.” - A.W. Tozer
115. “True worship leaders worship the Lord at all times and use songs only when necessary.” - Gangai Victor
116. “May our eyes focus rightly on Christ ... before the need to please others, before church, and before the busyness of Christian life. Those things will surely have their place, but they will be most valuable if put in their proper position.” - Traci LaRussa
117. “But we had ceased to hate. Belsen had some way cured us of all hate, at least all hate of any human creature. We had learned what evil there is in the world or beyond the world, what happens to a man or a group of men-call them a nation if you will- when they have given themselves over to the powers of evil, when they have denied the Christ.” - Robert Collis
118. “Is it not by learning to read the book of nature with the eyes of faith that we come to recognize the drop of divinity that resides in our own souls though hidden, master? In the end is this not faith; to seek the light that takes us further, the light of Christ that brings that to which reason and knowledge alone can never raise itself? This is truth!” - Adriana Koulias
119. “In Jesus Christ there is no isolation of man from God or of God from man. Rather, in Him we encounter the history, the dialogue, in which God and man meet together and are together, the reality of the covenant MUTUALLY contracted, preserved, and fulfilled by them. Jesus Christ is in His one Person, as true GOD, MAN'S loyal partner, and as true MAN, GOD'S. He is the Lord humbled for communion with man and likewise the Servant exalted to communion with God.” - Karl Barth
120. “Thus in this oneness Jesus Christ is the Mediator, the Reconciler, between God and man. Thus He comes forward to MAN on behalf of GOD calling for and awakening faith, love and hope, and to GOD on behalf of MAN, representing man, making satisfaction and interceding. Thus He attests and guarantees to God's free GRACE and at the same time attests and guarantees to God man's free GRATITUDE.” - Karl Barth
121. “He wants in His freedom actually not to be without man but WITH him and in the same freedom not against him but FOR him, and that apart from or even counter to what man deserves. He wants in fact to be man's partner, his almighty and compassionate Saviour. He chooses to give man the benefit of His power, which encompasses not only the high and the distant but also the deep and the near, in order to maintain communion with him in the realm guaranteed by His deity. He determines to love him, to be his God, his Lord, his compassionate Preserver and Saviour to eternal life, and to desire his praise and service.” - Karl Barth
122. “Only God can give us a selfless love for others, as the Holy Spirit changes us from within. This is one reason we must receive Christ, for apart from His Spirit we can never be freed from the chains of selfishness, jealousy, and indifference. Will others see Christ's love in your life today?” - Billy Graham
123. “The profundity of Christianity is that Christ is both our redeemer and our judge, not that one is our redeemer and another is our judge, for then we certainly come under judgement, but that the redeemer and the judge are the same.” - Søren Kierkegaard
124. “Now, it is of course well known that Christ continually uses the expression 'imitators.' He never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression 'follower' he always explains it in such a way that one perceives that 'imitators' is meant by it, that is not adherents of a teaching but imitators of a life....” - Søren Kierkegaard
125. “Christ is born, my wise Solomon, my wretched pen-pusher! Don´t go picking things over with a needle! Is He born or isn´t He? Of course He is born, don´t be daft. If you take a magnifying glass and look at your drinking water-an engineer told me this, one day – you´ll see, he said, the water´s full of little worms you couldn´t see with your naked eye. You´ll see the worms and you won´t drink. You won´t drink and you´ll curl up with thirst. Smash your glass, boss, and the little worms´ll vanish and you can drink and be refreshed!” - Kazantsakis Nikos
126. “Christ awareness is imperative."~R. Alan Woods [2013]” - R. Alan Woods
127. “It is precisely this refusal of the Cartesian paradigm that characterizes Radical Orthodoxy, which seeks to reanimate the account of knowledge offered by Augustine and Aquinas. On this ancient-medieval-properly-postmodern model, we rightly give up pretensions to absolute knowledge or certainty, but we do not thereby give up on knowledge altogether. Rather, we can properly confess that we know God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but such knowledge rests on the gift of (particular, special) revelation, is not universally objective or demonstrable, and remains a matter of interpretation and perspective (with a significant appreciation for the role of the Spirit's regeneration and illumination as a condition for knowledge). We confess knowledge without certainty, truth without objectivity.” - James K.A. Smith
128. “Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence. Too often the love which is proclaimed in the churches suppresses this element of loss and need and death in activity. As a Christian, I often speak of love as helping others, but I ignore what this does to the person who loves. I ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending and losing and deterioration of the self. I speak of love as if the person loving had no problems, no needs, no limits. In other words, I speak of love as if the affluent dream were true. This kind of proclamation is heard everywhere. We hear it said: 'Since you have no unanswered needs, why don’t you go out and help those other people who are in need?' But we never hear people go on and add: 'If you do this, you too will be driven into need.' And by not stating this conclusion, people give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia, where we can reach to everybody’s needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves. Believe me, there are grown-up persons who speak this kind of nonsense. And when people try to live out this illusory love, they become terrified when the self-expending begins to take its toll. Terror of relationship is [that] we eat each other. But note this very carefully: like Jesus, we too can only live to give our received selves away freely because we know our being is not thereby ended, but still and always lies in the Parenting of our God....Those who love in the name of Jesus Christ... serve the needs of others willingly, even to the point of being exposed in their own neediness.... They do not cope with their own needs. They do not anguish over how their own needs may be met by the twists and turns of their circumstances, by the whims of their society, or by the strategies of their own egos. At the center of their life—the very innermost center—they are grateful to God, because... they do not fear neediness. That is what frees them to serve the needy, to companion the needy, to become and be one of the needy.” - Arthur C. McGill
129. “The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life's twin realities, love and hate.” - Ravi Zacharias
130. “Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? . . . But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and--to repeat once again--Love, desires to justify Himself to mankind. He is not the Absolute that remains outside of the world, indifferent to human suffering. he is Emmanuel, God-with-us, a God who shares man's lot and participates in his destiny.” - Pope John Paul II
131. “If you want to be an honorable man, then be what you pretend to be.” - Shannon L. Alder
132. “I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one's shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley.” - Criss Jami
133. “The primary purpose of a home is to reflect and to distribute the love of Christ. Anything that usurps that is idolatrous.” - Ravi Zacharias
134. “In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is.” - Ravi Zacharias
135. “Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you.” - J.C. Ryle
136. “I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. With bread you were given an indisputable banner: give man bread and he will bow down to you, for there is nothing more indisputable than bread. But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience - oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. That is so, but what came of it? Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it still more for them! Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. And so, instead of a firm foundation for appeasing human conscience once and for all, you chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men's strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all - and who did this? He who came to give his life for them! Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely. seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law, men had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide - but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov