Quotes About Jesus

The Pharisees had an ethic of avoidance, and Jesus had an ethic of involvement.

Given our disagreements over some points of the Bible, denominations are good, not bad, because they allow each church to follow Jesus according to conscience, and they keep strife between Christians of different convictions at bay. But if those denominations become the ultimate focus of our loyalty, then they are terrible idols. Keep clear fences but keep them low, and shake hands over them often.

When you understand that evangelism isn't converting people, but that it is telling them the wonderful truth about God, the great news about Jesus Christ, then obedience to the call to evangelize can become certain and joyful. Understanding this increases evangelism, as it moves away from being a guilt-driven burden to being a joyful privilege.

Can we say anything further about what discipling is? I've said it's helping others follow Jesus. It's doing them spiritual good. But to fill all that out, discipling is initiating a relationship in which you teach, correct, model, and love. It takes great humility.

The absolute worst place to begin constructing an identity is you, which is precisely where most counseling begins. The absolute best place to begin constructing an identity is Jesus Christ, which is precisely where Scripture begins. Knowing Jesus and being saved by him in faith is the key to your identity and the defeat of your idolatry. It's not about you. It's all about Jesus.

a reporter asked Barth what was the single most important theological discovery he'd made. After stopping to consider his answer carefully, Barth said, "Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so." Indeed, we can never outgrow that one great, majestic, and simple transforming truth.

The church was custom built by Jesus, and we are all works in progress. We do not expect people to get their sin in order before attending church any more than a hospital expects people to get healed before they show up.

Indeed, the world is our mission field, and Jesus is our model incarnational missionary who went before us and now goes with us as we continue in his work by his Spirit as his church for his glory to our joy.

I cannot think of any Christian person, family, church, ministry, or tribe that would not benefit from more Jesus!

The truth is that everyone but the sinless Jesus merits the active wrath of God. None of us deserves love, grace, or mercy from God.

We believe that the local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord, and that the universal church is all of God's people in all times and places.

Moralizing is reading the Bible not to learn about Jesus but only to learn principles for how to live life as a good person by following the good examples of some people and avoiding the bad examples of others. That kind of approach to the Scriptures is not Christian, because it treats the Bible like any other book with moral lessons that are utterly disconnected from faith in and salvation from Jesus.

Now more than ever God's people must be committed to being gospel centered. Jesus can no longer be out there somewhere on the horizon as we look to culture, religion, politics, spirituality, or morality for our true north.

we want non-Christians to understand the essentials of our faith so that whether they receive or reject Jesus

Second, an incarnational missional life is evangelistic. Just as Jesus did not merely come only to do good works for the needy but primarily to save lost people, Jesus' people are likewise to pursue lost people for evangelistic friendships.174

the Bible as God's perfect and authoritative Word one God in three persons (Trinity) human sinfulness by nature and by choice Jesus as fully God and fully man who lived without sin, died in our place for our sins, and rose from the dead salvation bestowed by the grace of God when a sinner turns from sin and trusts in Jesus alone through faith new birth through the Holy Spirit eternal heaven for believers and eternal hell for unbelievers

The book of Luke is the account of the Spirit-empowered ministry of Jesus on the earth, and Acts is the account of the Spirit-empowered ministry of Jesus' people on the earth, the extension of Jesus' ministry through his people by the Spirit's power.

Mad as a fucking hatter. Jesus

If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. This has happened numerous times, but the first prominent example was a Jew named Jesus.

Jesus was seen as dangerous because he rejected not only warfare and killing but any kind of force. Those in authority saw this as a challenge. How could there be authority without force?

The socialism. The alternative lifestyle. The rebellion against authority. I like that side of the Jesus story, but all the biggest Christians I know prefer him silent, dying or a little baby.

When the King and His kingdom are the focus, the church happens. When the church is the focus, the King and His kingdom get relegated to second place. Jesus' admonition to seek first the kingdom is central to what it means to build kingdom churches.

Jesus died (was murdered) not as a divine sacrifice but because he threatened both "church" and "state." He threatened religion by making it superfluous. He pointed to the one-ness that already exists between the divine and the material worlds (us). Temple structures and priesthoods that perpetuate a "separated universe" need to remember this.

La madera de la cruz hace dulce la amargura de los humanos. Cuando, en medio de un amargo sufrimiento, contemplamos el amor de Jesús, patente en la cruz, la amargura interior se convierte en dulzura.