quotations about Jesus Christ
The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
preface, Androcles and the Lion
He shall not come to conquest,
The conquest of kings,
But in the bare stable
He shall judge all things.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
A Child is Born
Even yet Christ Jesus has to lie out in waste places very often, because there is no room for him in the inn--no room for him in our hearts, because of our worldliness. There is no room for him even in our politics and religion. There is no room in the inn, and we put him in the manger, and he lies outside our faith, coldly and dimly conceived by us.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
"The words of Jesus," I continued more slowly than before "have changed the life and character of more than half the world, that half which alone possesses modern civilization, that half with which you and I, Mr. Gear, are most concerned. There was wonderful power in the doctrines of Buddha. But Buddhism has relapsed everywhere into the grossest of idolatries. There is a wonderful wealth of moral truth in the ethics of Confucius. But the ethics of Confucius have not saved the Chinese nation from stagnation and death. There is wonderful life-awaking power in the writings of Plato. But they are hid from the common people in a dead language, and when a Prof. Jowett gives them glorious resurrection in our vernacular, they are still hid from the common people by their subtlety. Every philosopher ought to study Plato. Every scholar may profitably study Buddha and Confucius. But every intelligent American ought to study the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
The imitator of Jesus Christ is one who, being interested in him as his propitiation, cannot but choose to follow him as his pattern: for he knows that though it be not the only or principal end why the Son of God was manifested; it is, however, a very considerable part of his errand, in visiting these regions of mortality, to give us a fair transcript, and a living copy of all those graces and duties that are pleasing unto God, and that are commanded in the law.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Imitating Christ", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
They want you to be Jesus
They'll got down on one knee
But they'll want their money back
If you're alive at thirty-three,
And you're turning tricks
With your crucifix.
U2
"Hold Me
Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he has to say, and make fun of it.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Then I sought a way of obtaining strength sufficient to enjoy Thee; and found it not, until I embraced that Mediator betwixt God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for evermore, calling unto me, and saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and mingling that food which I was unable to receive, with our flesh.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Too long have we stood at the foot of the cross or at the door of the tomb, and not seen the stone rolled away and the triumphant Saviour emerging. Too long we have thought of the life of Christ ending with his passion and death. But the greatest part of his life is his post-resurrection life. For the message of the Gospel is not merely that Jesus Christ lived and died eighteen hundred years ago, living here for three short years and then disappearing, to be an absentee Christ; it is that God is always pouring out his life upon men and into their hearts, lifting them up out of their sins, succoring them from their remorse, and making them live again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Personality of God
It is the characteristic heresy of our age to deny the divinity of Christ; but in the early days of the Church the characteristic heresy was to deny his humanity. "In the second century theologians arose who maintained that Christ was a purely celestial being, and that the visible form which appeared on earth and was crucified was no man at all, but a phantom composed of fine particles of air. The first great struggle was to crush that heresy and vindicate the actual humanity of Christ. Had that humanity not been vindicated, no Church could have been formed.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Jesus is the best clue we have as to what God is like and He is consistently gracious and merciful, especially to those who are failures. He is harsh to uptight, judgmental people, but merciful and gracious to the failures. He seems to draw out the smallest kernel of faith in each person that He's with. So, I presume that that's the way God is going to judge humanity.
PHILIP YANCEY
"The High Calling of Journalism: A Candid Interview with Philip Yancey", The High Calling, Jan. 18, 2011
Jesus is eternally right. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations that refused to listen to him.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most.
A. W. TOZER
And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
He who knoweth and understandeth Christ's life, knoweth and understandeth Christ Himself; and in like manner, he who understandeth not His life, doth not understand Christ Himself. And he who believeth on Christ, believeth that His life is the best and noblest life that can be, and if a man believe not this, neither doth he believe on Christ Himself.
MARTIN LUTHER
The Theologia Germanica
But there are other actions of Christ, in which he acted as God: he fasted forty days, he judged the hearts of the Pharisees, he took the ass of another man to ride upon, as if it had been his own; he scourged the buyers and sellers out of the temple; he foretold future events, and performed a great number of miracles. To imitate these in the letter of them, the christian knows very well, is utterly impossible: and to attempt it absolutely unlawful. But, though the matter of them is only proposed to his faith, the spirit of them or the mind with which he did them, is also proposed to his imitation.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Imitating Christ", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity