Quotes About Jesus

An older Franciscan brother said to Brennan Manning on the day he joined the order, "Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world will seem as beautiful or desirable.

The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another.

The most constant "whim," historically, has been the disastrous idea just mentioned: that Jesus is here giving laws. For if that is all he is doing, they will certainly be laws that are impossible to keep. The keeping of law turns out to be an inherently self-refuting aim; rather, the inner self must be changed. Trying merely to keep the law is not wholly unlike trying to make an apple tree bear peaches by tying peaches to its branches.

confident (con-fide, literally acting "with faith") about who we are and what we are doing. To be with Jesus is to have both.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer forcefully states, "The only proper response to this word which Jesus brings with him from eternity is simply to do it."6

The life and words that Jesus brought into the world came in the form of information and reality.

The secret to this blessed life is God being with them in the here-and-now of their real lives. Spending a day with Jesus is an opportunity to live in acknowledgement that this is so.

Jesus referred to him as "a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44 NRSV). Indeed, his whole kingdom is based on lies; he works by deceiving.

Does Jesus only enable me to "make the cut" when I die? Or to know what to protest, or how to vote or agitate and organize? It is good to know that when I die all will be well, but is there any good news for life? If I had to choose, I would rather have a car that runs than good insurance on one that doesn't. Can I not have both?

From Jesus' perspective, there is no greater calling than to be a servant.*

JESUS' TEMPTATION EVE'S TEMPTATION THE WORLD Turning stones into bread Good for food Desire of the flesh Jumping off the temple Pleasant to the eyes Desire of the eyes Political power and glory Desirable to make one wise The pride of life

we get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from the kingdom of the heavens now—the eternal kind of life—as the target. The words and acts of Jesus naturally suggest that this is indeed salvation, with discipleship, forgiveness, and heaven to come as natural parts. And

So the kingdom of the heavens, from the practical point of view in which we all must live, is simply our experience of Jesus' continual interaction with us in history and throughout the days, hours, and moments of our earthly existence. This

And of course it is discipleship, real-life apprenticeship to Jesus, that is the passageway within The Kingdom Among Us from initial faith in Jesus to a life of fulfillment and routine obedience. That

The eternal life of which Jesus speaks is not knowledge about God but an intimately interactive relationship with him.

There is no indication anywhere in the Scriptures that Jesus was afraid to suffer and die. He was not trying to avoid the cross. He was overcoming Satan.

Jesus' basic idea about this world—with all its evil, pushed to the limit in what he went through going toward and nailed upon the cross—is that this world is a perfectly good and safe place for anyone to be, no matter the circumstances, if they have placed their lives in the hands of Jesus and his Father.

No wonder he has no real idea of who he will be; and he must content himself with the mere identity: "apprentice of Jesus." That is the starting point from which his new identity will emerge, and it is in fact powerful enough to bear the load.

The discipline of secrecy will help us break the grip of human opinion over our souls and our actions. A discipline is an activity in our power that we do to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort. Jesus

The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him. For

Many, many of the people who are identified as Christians have never been invited to become a disciple of Jesus. We don't have discipleship evangelism, but we need to have it because of the multitudes of people who are ready to go, who just need to understand and see and have the invitation to become disciples of Jesus. That's the way we have to go forward.

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, nondiscipleship costs you exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).

Very few people today find Jesus interesting as a person or of vital relevance to the course of their actual lives. He is not generally regarded as a real-life personality who deals with real-life issues but is thought to be concerned with some feathery realm other than the one we must deal with, and must deal with now. And frankly, he is not taken to be a person of much ability.

Anger and condemnation like vengeance, are safely left to God. We must beware of believing that it is okay for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things. It is not so simple as all that. I can trust Jesus to go into the temple and drive out those who were profiting from religion, beating them with a rope. I cannot trust myself to do so.