Quotes About Sacrifice

If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.

The temptation that Jesus resisted in the wildreness [a crown without a cross; worldly glory], many of us, His followers, still long for.

we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." And "he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Ya era gran cosa que el hombre hubiera sido hecho antes como Dios, pero que Dios se hiciera como el hombre, fue mucho más. —John Donne, Holy Sonnet 15 [Soneto Santo 15]

The deepest longings we feel on earth, as parents, as lovers, are mere flickers of the hungering desire God feels for us. It is a desire that cost him the Incarnation and the Crucifixion.

sacrificial love is one of the most powerful weapons in the Christian's arsenal of grace.

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.

What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.

The essence of Christian faith has come to us in story form, the story of a God who will go to any lengths to get his family back.

Imposition stands starkly at odds with the basic character of the Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving—God's self-giving and human self-giving—and not about self-imposing.

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.

Modern humanity does not perceive the world as worth God dying for. We Christians must demonstrate it.

Fulfillment comes not in pursuit of happiness, but rather in pursuit of service.

Happiness recedes from those who pursue her." Happiness will come upon me unexpectedly as a by-product, a surprising bonus for something I have invested myself in. And, most likely, that investment will include pain. It is hard to imagine pleasure without it.

grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.

we in the body of Christ are called to show love when God seems not to.

20Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[35] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

The One who had the right to destroy the world—and had nearly done so once in Noah's day—chose instead to love the world, at any cost.

Why are we here? God wants us to flourish, and paradoxically we flourish best by obeying rather than rebelling, by giving more than receiving, by serving rather than being served.

God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them.

Allen Yuan had served a term of twenty-two years at hard labor for holding unauthorized church meetings in China.

Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.

God's grace is not a grandfatherly display of "niceness," for it cost the exorbitant price of Calvary.

As Christ's body on earth we are compelled to move, as he did, toward those who hurt. That has been God's consistent movement in all history.