Quotes About Jesus

We live in a world of evaluations, assessments, and measurements, but Jesus turns his gaze deeper because he knows that what is measurable can be faked.

The Jesus Creed teaches us that a disciple's responsibility is to love God by following Jesus. You only follow someone else when your own lights or sense of direction are not good enough.

the way to inscribe the will of God on the hearts of people in this world is not by way of law or vote but by way of redemption through Jesus. Jesus' kingdom vision is for his redeemed people and for them alone.

A Christian is someone who follows Jesus by devoting his or her One. Life to the kingdom vision of Jesus.

we need to learn to tell the story that makes sense of Jesus. Not a story that we ask Jesus to fit into.

Yes, the church is part of the good news of Jesus. And the church proclaims the good news of Jesus. But when men and women have only seen churches formed by unhealthy power, celebrity, competitiveness, secrecy, and self-protection, our corporate ecclesial life belies the truth of the gospel. The church can only witness to the truth of Jesus by seeking justice, serving with humility, operating transparently, and confessing and lamenting failures.

Many think Jesus came to earth so you and I can have a special kind of spiritual experience and then go merrily along, as long as we pray and read our Bibles and develop intimacy with the unseen God but ignore the others-oriented life of justice and love and peace that Jesus embodied.

Peter's Jesus of Nazareth, the one who lived and died and who was raised and ascended and enthroned, is both Messiah of Israel and Lord of the whole world. Those are the terms of the early gospeling in the book of Acts, and if we want to be faithful to the Bible, those should be our terms as well. Those titles for Jesus tell the gospel Story of Jesus.

Jesus thought he was anointed by God to proclaim the gospel to the poor and to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovered sight for the blind and to set the oppressed free. This is why he came.

The question: What is a Christian? My answer: A Christian is someone who follows Jesus* My former answer: A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus, and the Christian life focuses on personal practices of piety.

What does it mean to persevere? It means that we continue to believe, and that we live like believers, which means obediently. It doesn't mean sinlessness; it doesn't mean that we are on some steady and never-failing incline up into pure sanctification; it does not deny stumbling or messy spirituality; it doesn't deny doubt and problems. It simply means that the person continues to walk with Jesus and doesn't walk away from him in a resolute manner.

Hauerwas said it, "The sermon, therefore, is not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and around Jesus."39 Church, then, forms the context for the ethic of Jesus.

The church becomes a community called atonement every time it reads the story of Jesus and every time it identifies itself with that story and every time it invites others to listen in to hear that story. Reading Scripture and listening to Scripture and letting Scripture incorporate us into its story is atoning.

The release of souls from this embodied life into a celestial disembodied existence is not a biblical notion. The opposite is the case with Jesus and for the entire Bible.

hold it, then, as an axiom — or else I'd stop writing right now — that our calling is to follow Jesus in our context rather than to retrieve and re-create his context in our world. What

If you want to know how Jesus understands the Christian life, the place to begin is with what he means by kingdom of God.

To reveal what the kingdom of God is like, Jesus tells parables. And these parables usher his listeners and readers into a world he called kingdom.

To those who pursue righteousness Jesus promises "they will be filled," and the word "filled" means "sated," "slaked," "bloated," or "filled to overflowing." The metaphor expresses absolute and utter satisfaction: they will find a kingdom society where love, peace, justice, and holiness shape the entirety of creation.

These changes reflect the Jesus Creed: Because Jesus loves others (us), he offers himself for us to replace the lamb. Thus, the Lord's Supper is Passover morphed by the Jesus Creed. The Passover lamb becomes the Lamb of God, and the Lamb of God leaves us a rhythm by which to remember what he has done for us.

our pain, we are invited to join Jesus so he can share our pain.

This both/and interpretation makes sense in the Jewish context. Jesus has in mind the Anawim, a group of economically disadvantaged Jews (Ps 149:4; Isa 49:13; 61:1–2; 66:2).27 Historians of Jewish history now mostly agree that the Anawim had three features: they were economically poor and yet trusted in God, they found their way to the temple as a meeting place, and they longed for the Messiah, who would finally bring justice.

Calling God "Father" (Abba) is not unique to Jesus,15 and neither is it a revelation of a religious profundity that Judaism had not yet comprehended (what can be more intimate than Hosea 1–2 or 11:1–4?). Instead of its being unique, "Father" is characteristic of Jesus but would not have been at all offensive in Judaism.

These common approaches fail the words of Jesus because in the Sermon Jesus calls his followers to do what he teaches. Those who don't do what he says, in fact, are condemned as foolish.

That is, until we find the story that leads us to the gospel claim that Jesus is the Messiah, we don't have the Bible's story right.