Quotes About Jesus

AS ANDREW GREELEY SAID, If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one's life, there is no point  in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth.7-9 I grew up expecting that a relationship with God would bring order, certainty, and a calm rationality to life. Instead, I have discovered that living in faith involves much dynamic tension.

That is the kind of shocking accessibility conveyed in Jesus' word Abba. God may be the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, but through his Son, God has made himself as approachable as any doting human father.

Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace.

Any Greek scholar will tell you the word blessed is far too sedate and beatific to carry the percussive force Jesus intended. The Greek word conveys something like a short cry of joy, Oh, you lucky person!

Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.

En cambio, Jesucristo nunca obligó a nadie a creer en él. Prefería actuar por medio de la atracción, sacando a los humanos de sí mismos para atraerlos hacia él.

What practically defines the evangelical church today is an emphasis on two issues that Jesus did not even mention.

Because of Jesus we need never question God's desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it.

Thielicke gently turned his parishioners to the example of Jesus who saw like no one else the anguish and injustice, the terror, of this planet. Shouldn't such awareness have filled his every waking hour and robbed him of sleep at night? Shouldn't it have shaken his very soul?

If it's not setting you free and enlarging life, then it's not Jesus' message. If it doesn't sound like good news, it's not the gospel.

When I betray the love and grace God has shown me, I fall back on the promise that Jesus prays for me... not that I would never face testing, nor ever fail, but that in the end I will allow God to use the testing and failure to mold me into someone more useful to the kingdom, someone more like Jesus.

Our faith rests not just on Jesus' example but on his resurrection.

Jesus extended the privileges of God's chosen family to the whole world, regardless of race or nation. Thus an obscure Jewish sect became a new global faith, Christianity, open to all.

The resurrection and its victory over death brought a decisive new word to the vocabulary of pain and suffering: temporary. Jesus Christ holds out the startling promise of an afterlife without pain. Whatever anguish we feel now will not last.

The sufferings of Jesus show us that pain comes to us not as punishment but rather as a testing ground for faith that transcends pain. In truth, pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.

Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics.

I yearn for a grace-abounding church that rewards rather than punishes honesty, and that, in Jesus' words, exists for the sinners and not the righteous, the sick and not the healthy.

Jesus says in effect, 'Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of those two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I just reclaimed my most valuable possession, which I had given up for lost.' To God himself, it feels like the discovery of a lifetime.

Instead, in a stunning reversal, Jesus instructed us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." At the center of the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus taught us to recite, lurks the unnatural act of forgiveness.

Jesus requires—no, demands—a response of forgiveness.

Although Jesus' prayers do not offer a foolproof formula, they do give clues as to how God works — and does not work — on this planet. Especially when trouble strikes, we want God to intervene more decisively, but Jesus' prayers underscore God's style of restraint out of respect for human freedom.

Jesus' prayers for Peter — and perhaps for Judas as well — express God's unfathomable respect for human freedom.

si alguna vez me llego a preguntar cuál será la respuesta «espiritual" adecuada al dolor y el sufrimiento, puedo observar cómo reaccionó Jesús ante sus propios sufrimientos: con temor y temblor, con gritos y lágrimas.

It has taken me years to distill the Gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it. Sadly, many of my friends gave up on the effort, never getting to Jesus because the pettiness of the church blocked the way.