Quotes About Transformation

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

Advent creates people, new people.

Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.

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

The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated. Hence there is a need for daily self-discipline.

Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.

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.

When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself—a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man,… when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God… then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.

After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.

In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.

An image needs a living object, and a copy can only be formed from a model. Either man models himself on the god of his own invention, or the true and living God moulds the human form in his image. There must be a complete transformation, a 'metamorphosis' (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18), if man is to be restored to the image of God.

The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen.

Is it not a miracle that where Jesus has really become Lord over people, peace reigns?

Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ.

To be conformed to the one who has become human—that is what being really human means.[77.]

Come now, let us argue it out,      says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet,       they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson,      they shall become like wool. Isaiah 1:18

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs.

Jesus Christ in his word must be our death and our life.

An image needs a living object, and a copy can only be formed from a model. Either man models himself on the god of his own invention, or the true and living God moulds the human form into his image. There must be a complete transformation, a "metamorphosis" (Rom. 12.2; II Cor. 3.18), if man is to be restored to the image of God.

To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal. 4.19), and to be manifested in us. Christ's work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarnate, crucified and glorified.

If we would follow Jesus we must take certain definite steps. The first step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.

It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.

Que Cristo nos ama es el gran secreto, el secreto más íntimo de cada alma. Es la realidad más inconcebible; es una realidad que cambiaría completamente la vida de cualquiera que se diera cuenta de ello plenamente. Pero para darse cuenta de ello no basta un mero conocimiento teórico, sino una vivencia de este amor similar a la que se tiene del amor de la persona amada. (p. 16)

Welcome the view that the things which you think are wrecking your life - like your thoughts and emotions, or illness and death - are actually gifts for your transformation... Whether life presents us with a pleasant sound or an unpleasant sound, a pleasant smell or an unpleasant smell, a pleasant thought or an unpleasant thought, it's sheer delight because instead of identifying with the experience, we simply touch it and let it go.