Quotes About Redemption

Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent

grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.

Will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me becuase it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting

Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.

Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.

The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

My past life is abundantly full of God's mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands.

The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ

Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.

The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).[...] Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us.

Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates in him the Easter faith.

Be glad. Celebrate! Lose your mindless fear, and take courage today. No, don't ever be afraid, no matter what's happened to you before. That's right, don't be afraid, no matter what you may see coming. Take courage because Christ was crucified for you."2 Catherine of Siena, Letters

And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.

A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a rather strange kingdom. Only those who understand the profound paradox of the cross can also understand the whole meaning of Jesus' assertion: my kingdom is not of this world. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Lectures to the Congregation in Barcelona

The day will come … when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus's language, so that people will be alarmed, and yet overcome by its power—the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God's kingdom is drawing near."[56]

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.

There is always a danger that in our asceticism we shall be tempted to imitate the sufferings of Christ. This is a pious but godless ambition, for beneath it there always lurks the notion that it is possible for us to step into Christ's shoes and suffer as he did and kill the old Adam. We are then presuming to undertake that bitter work of eternal redemption which Christ himself wrought for us. The motive of asceticism was more limited--to equip us for better service and deeper humiliation.

No one can become a new man except by entering the Church, and becoming a member of the body of Christ. It is impossible to become a new man as a solitary individual. The new man means more than the individual believer after he has been justified and sanctified. It means the Church, the Body of Christ, in fact it means Christ himself.