Quotes About Redemption

Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him—as nothing else can—and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.

It is interesting that whenever the evangelists Mark, Luke, or John mention the apostles, they call the author of the first Gospel either Levi or Matthew. But in his own Gospel, he always refers to himself as "Matthew the publican," never wanting to forget who he was and always wanting to remember how low Jesus stooped to pick him up. We are publicans just like Matthew.

Freedom is the cornerstone of Christianity.

The disciple living by grace rather than law has undergone a decisive conversion—a turning from mistrust to trust. The foremost characteristic of living by grace is trust in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

Trappist monk Thomas Keating once said, "The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It's all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you've inflicted on others.

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.

Over a hundred years ago in the Deep South, a phrase commonplace in our Christian culture today, born again, was seldom used. Rather, the words used to describe the breakthrough into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ were: "I was seized by the power of a great affection.

the old Russian proverb, "Those who have the disease called Jesus will never be cured.

If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.

That in the end, my sin will never outweigh God's love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins.

Jesus comes in the way of weakness, giving us the chance to love him and making us feel that we have something to give him.

No one, it seems to me, who has fully grasped the Crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering, or seemingly formidable. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

The spiritual future of ragamuffins consists not in disavowing that we are sinners but in accepting that truth with growing clarity, rejoicing in God's incredible longing to rescue us in spite of everything

In his landmark work The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann says, "We have made the bitterness of the Cross tolerable to ourselves by learning to understand it as a theological necessity for the process of salvation."3 Of course, theological necessities do not sweat blood in the night.

Someone is reckoned as upright not by practicing the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16)?

Morton Kelsey wrote, "The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.

The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.

Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb.

As I drained the cup of grief, a remarkable thing happened: In the distance I heard music and dancing. I was the prodigal son limping home—not a spectator but a participant. The impostor faded, and I was in touch with my true self as the returned child of God. My yearning for praise and affirmation receded.

Whatever past achievements might bring us honor, whatever past disgraces might make us blush, all have been crucified with Christ and exist no more except in the deep recesses of eternity, where "good is enhanced into glory and evil miraculously established as part of the greater good."2

We cannot claim to have the mind of Christ and remain insensitive to the oppression of our brothers and sisters. We cannot stay oblivious to the world's struggle for redemption, freedom, and peace. We know that the good done to the poor—the least of our brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40)—is done to Jesus himself. We know that we must commit ourselves to concrete action on behalf of liberation. There are things to be done.

More than three hundred years ago, Claude de la Columbiere, commenting on the dinner Jesus attended in the home of Simon the Pharisee, wrote, "It is certain that of all those present, the one who most honors the Lord is Magdalene, who is so persuaded of the infinite mercy of God that all her sins appear to her as but an atom in the presence of this mercy.

Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace.

There's only one healer in the New Israel of God and that is Jesus the Christ. The only question is will she allow the healing spirit of the risen Jesus to flow through her; will she reach out, and touch Him?