Quotes About Redemption

I have placed the keys of the whole universal Church in your hands, and over that which I have redeemed by the spilling of my own blood, I placed you as my vicar.… I, however, who have given you such and so many things, do not find law or justice in your balance, and I depart from your tribunals despised and unavenged.41

And for Christians, the gospel has always been the lens through which Israel's stories are read—which means, for Christians, Jesus, not the Bible, has the final word. The story of God's people has moved on, and so must we.

For Christians, then, the question is not "Who gets the Bible right?" The question is and has always been, "Who gets Jesus right?" The Gospel writers and Paul couldn't have made that any clearer.

Jesus was God's climax to Israel's story, but he was not bound to that story. He pushed at its boundaries, transformed it, and at times left parts of it behind.

If we let the Bible be the Bible, on its own terms—on God's terms—we will see this in-fleshing God at work, not despite the challenges, the unevenness, and ancient strangeness of the Bible, but precisely because of these things. Perhaps not the way we would have written our sacred book, if we had been consulted, but the one that the good and wise God has allowed his people to have.

We should linger here for a moment, for it summarizes a main theme of Paul's letters: God's unexpected move—Jesus's death and resurrection—places Jews and Gentiles on equal footing with God.

If this core mystery of the Christian faith (which I believe can never be truly articulated) is true, and that the Creator not only took part in the human drama, but suffered in that drama, perhaps we have an understanding and compassionate God, not one out to get us?

Following Jesus isn't like a burden we carry on our shoulders. It's an internal process so radical and painful that the best way to describe it for people of that day is as the act of being bound and nailed like a criminal to a piece of wood lifted above the ground where you are left hanging in naked humiliation and intense pain until you suffocate.

This theme has a lot of moving parts. The bottom line is that when God saves Israel, it is an "act of creation"—or perhaps better, "an act of re-creation." To save is to re-create because to be saved is to start anew.

No More Salvation by Society

getting a second chance is the greatest human dream and delusion we have. It even outranks religion.

Why?' he asked. 'Absolution.' He didn't get it, they never did. His death was a duty, ordered by guilt. Greg had learnt all about duty from the Army

Excellence was the best revenge.

How can you kill a man who'd already been dead for years?

God forgives you your sins." I say right back, "And I forgive him his.

So if you find yourself hoping against God, and the thought of everyone being saved isn't good news to you, but bad news to you; if grace burns you like fire – you need to ask yourself why.

Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God's grace might prove to be all too free on this side, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might some day prove to be empty! ~ Karl Barth, God Here and Now

The deepest story is not The Fall. The deepest story is not your sin. The deepest story is that God is making you in His image. Jesus is His image, and you are His Temple, Body, and Bride. The deepest story is that God is making you in His Image and will not fail.

While God did rest from His creative work, since the Fall He has never rested from His redemptive work.

Father forgive me for I have sinned. -Damian

Batman: You can't build a better world by killing criminals--it bankrupts your soul and society's by reinforcing the same cycle of violence.

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”