quotations about Jesus Christ
Christ is God clothed with human nature.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
attributed, Kierkegaard: The Melancholy Dane (Harold Victor Martin)
Jesus Christ began his ministry by attending a wedding-feast. His first miracle was wrought to prolong its festivities. He repeatedly compared the kingdom of God to a great festival. He accepted all social invitations; declined none. He declared himself that he came eating and drinking, and this was so characteristic of him that his enemies called him a glutton and wine-bibber. He compared himself to a musician piping in the street for the children to dance. Neither he nor his disciples observed the customary fasts of the church to which they belonged. He was a favorite with the children, and they clustered about him and were willing that he should take them in his arms. His last meeting with his disciples was at a social meal, and with such a social meal he asked them ever to associate his memory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Let supercilious, puny mortals, regard with contempt, or cold indifference, the saints of the Most High; but, O! let my delights be with you, ye excellent of the earth. Christ is not ashamed to call you brethren; God is not ashamed to call himself your God. A more exalted honor this, than to wear an imperial crown, and fill the throne of the whole earth!--To you there is no condemnation, nor falling totally away; you are the members of Christ, therefore he knows your wants; you are the body of Christ, therefore he will supply them. Christ is your head, he will cleanse your defilements; Christ is your head, he will cure your diseases. What though you be in poverty?--you are in Christ. What though you be in reproach?--you are in Christ. Let death divide your souls and bodies; let the grave calcine your bones; let the four winds war for your dust; your vital union with Christ shall still remain. When you shall render up the ghost, you die in the Lord; and when you descend into the peaceful grave, your dust shall sleep in Jesus. Can any force, can any fraud, find means to enter into the heaven of heavens; and pluck an eye or tear a limb from the glorified humanity of the exalted Redeemer? And even in the days of his humiliation, the soldiers could not break his bones, because they saw he was already dead. For so it was foretold, in ancient prophecy, a bone of him shall not be broken. But ye are kept as the apple of his eye; and are the members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"The Union Betwixt Christ and Believers", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
That generation is all dead and passed away, yet the Son of Man has not made his appearance in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory, to judge the world, and cause the tribes of the earth to mourn; nor has he sent forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, to gather his elect from one end of heaven to the other. Since all this has not come to pass immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, as he foretold, what character does he deserve but a false prophet, a deceiver, or an enthusiast? It is very unlike a God of truth to deceive the world in this manner. Is it like his Son to be the instrument of it? His words have passed away, but the earth has not, so that these prophecies and sayings have proved to be completely false; but though he prophesied of that day, yet he said that he did not know when it would come; even though him and his Father were one, yet the Father only knew of it!
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew
We are captives, and we cannot hasten to be loosed. Jesus Christ is the merciful Redeemer, who pays the sum we were owing, and says to the prisoners, Go forth.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Christ Dying in the Stead of Sinners", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
We make a great mistake and we do not understand the foundation of our Christian faith, if we regard Christ's life as spent in Palestine and lasting only three short years. The very basis of our Christian discipleship is this: That he rose from the dead, is living, and that here to-day he is doing for us what he did for those of the olden time. He is still here, still pouring into his followers the treasures of his illimitable life. The question is not, What can you do? but, What can you and God together do? Not, What can you do apart from him to win your way to his favor? but, What can you do as the recipient of his favor? Christ in us is the hope of our glory.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
And hence that true Mediator, in so far as, by assuming the form of a servant, He became the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, though in the form of God He received sacrifice together with the Father, with whom He is one God, yet in the form of a servant He chose rather to be than to receive a sacrifice, that not even by this instance any one might have occasion to suppose that sacrifice should be rendered to any creature. Thus He is both the Priest who offers and the Sacrifice offered. And He designed that there should be a daily sign of this in the sacrifice of the Church, which, being His body, learns to offer herself through Him. Of this true Sacrifice the ancient sacrifices of the saints were the various and numerous signs; and it was thus variously figured, just as one thing is signified by a variety of words, that there may be less weariness when we speak of it much. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have given place.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
It is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God incarnate. The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a great prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he were their expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him as their teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were their fellow-countrymen: their prompt desertion of him when attacked by his enemies, their complete hopelessness when they saw him overcome and put to death, are sufficient proofs that though they regarded him--to quote their own words--as a "prophet mighty in word and deed," they never guessed that the teacher they followed, and the friend they lived with in the intimacy of social life was Almighty God Himself.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Christ, comprehending in one the two natures, human and divine, being the union of the relative and the absolute, is therefore the living realization of that Ideal, infinite in itself, and infinite in each of its terms, which marks the phases of His eternal work. Mediator between the create and the uncreate, which are united in Himself, He is, in His Church, which is His body, the eternal harmonizer of all individual reasons in the unity of the Divine reason, or the Word made flesh, conceived and realized by the Spirit of infinite love, in whom all love is also universalized.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Christ is not the world's medicine, but the world's physician; and his prescriptions are various for various disorders. To grow in holiness is to grow in healthiness; and this requires a knowledge of your own nature, that you may know what needs feeding and what needs pruning.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
When Christ is the center of your focus, all else will come into proper perspective.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation.
BRENNAN MANNING
The Furious Longing of God