quotations about Jesus Christ
Jesus is like a perfect diamond. He is multi-faceted. Each facet shows the brilliance of who he is.
J. E. GULBRANDSEN
Who Jesus Is
To Jesus Christ sin was a disease to be cured rather than a crime to be punished. It awakened his pity, not his anger. Condemned for associating with sinners, he replied on one occasion, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." On another occasion he said that he had come to seek and to save that which is lost. And to him a lost soul was a soul not yet found. He compared such a soul to a coin mislaid, which the owner was seeking; to a sheep strayed from the fold, which the shepherd was seeking; to a prodigal son, whose return the father was awaiting. There is no one for whom society has so little hope as a lost woman; but Jesus never despaired of the recovery of even a lost woman. Even the Judas who betrayed him he sought to rescue with reproachful greeting: Friend, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? There was only one character whose destiny he seemed himself unable to avert; the religious man whose religion was a false pretense, who was pious, but not humane; who devoured widows' homes and for a pretense made long prayers. The offal of Jerusalem was carried out of the city into the valley of Gehenna and there thrown upon fires always left burning, and there it was consumed. "Alas! for you hypocrite," cried Jesus, in an outburst of despairing pity, "how can you escape Gehenna?" To him such false pretenses seemed like the offal of the universe, doomed to destruction.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
This is what Jesus Christ came to do. Not to show how we can escape hell and get into heaven, but to show how we can escape from ourselves and become other selves; to show how we may cease to be what we are and become what we desire to be. He came that he might teach us and empower us to be the men we want to be, the men we ought to be.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin, 1854
Reader, if you are out of Christ you are living in the city of Destruction. There is but a hand's-breadth between you and death. But there is deliverance. The mountain of refuge is not far off. A voice, sweeter than that of angels, and far mightier to save, cries out to you, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. It is the voice of the Son of God. The irreparable past he effaces with his blood. The wasted life he makes to bloom again. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners"--not to teach, not to govern, but to save. For he comes not as a pilot to give safe voyage to vessels yet whole and strong; but to those already lying on the rocks and beaten in the angry surf, threatened every moment with engulfment, he conies, to succor, to rescue, to save. There is death in delay. There is safety only in the Savior's arms. "Haste thee; escape thither."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Jesus Christ did not manifest all the qualities of God. There is greater manifestation of power in the earthquake and the tornado than was manifested in the stilling of the tempest; greater mechanical skill manifested in the flower than in anything that Christ wrought; greater affluence of beneficence in every annual harvest than in the feeding of five thousand. But the love, the patience, the fidelity, the truth, the long-suffering, the heart of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, comes to its fruition and its manifestation in this one incomparable life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Like hairs on the head, mortal man is joined to Jesus Christ, the head of all, but they are full of transgressions and sins because of man's delight in the flesh. But the Church regenerates and purifies these from the unclean stench and filth of sin by penitence and confession, just as hair is cleansed from dew and drops, and as dust is shaken out and cleansed from wool.
HILDEGARD OF BINDEN
letter to the Abbot, c. 1166
Lastly, that Christ died in the room and stead of his people, appears from its being called a sacrifice. Who knows not that our Redeemer is often styled a high priest? His human nature was the victim, his divine nature the altar, his body was the tabernacle. Who knows not, that the legal high priests did bear the sins of the people?--And because they could not atone for the people, by laying down their own lives, they offered bullocks, goats, lambs, and sheep. Whatever absurd accounts our ancient and modern socinians have invented of the meaning of sacrifices of expiation, most certainly the language of them was, O Lord, I have sinned; I deserve to die; but, I beseech thee, let thine anger fall on this my victim, or on that which is signified by it; and be merciful to me a sinner.--Thus God was ceremonially appeased, sin was expiated, and the Israelite was forgiven.
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
There's not a child so small and weak
But has his little cross to take,
His little work of love and praise
That he may do for Jesus' sake.
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER
We are but Little Children Weak
The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The light that shines from the Old Testament is that of the Star of Bethlehem, which conducts the reader to the manger of his Incarnate Lord. That star I seek to follow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Down below all the crust of human conceptions, of human ideas, Christ sank an artesian well into a source of happiness so pure and blessed that even yet the world does not believe in it.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The saints were cowards who stood by to see
Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves
Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain--
The grandest death, to die in vain--for love
Greater than sways the forces of the world!
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Jesus Christ did not come into the world merely to be a spectacle, merely to show us who and what God is, and then depart and leave us where we were before. "I am the door," He says. A door is to push open and go through. He is the door; through Him God enters into humanity. He is the door; through Him humanity enters into God. He has come into the world in order that we, coming to some knowledge and apprehension of the divine nature, coming to understand what divine justice, divine truth, divine life, divine purity, divine love are, may the better enter into that life and be ourselves filled with all the fullness of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
And the first thing that Christ says to us is this: Is that the kind of life you want to live? Is that the kind of person you want to be? Do you want to live in this world to see what you can get out of it, or do you want to live in this world to see what you can put into it?
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Christ ransoms, Christ feeds, but, grandest truth of all, Christ frees--frees us from the fetters we have welded on our own wrists.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory,
Of His Flesh, the mystery sing;
Of the Blood, all price exceeding,
Shed by our Immortal King,
Destined, for the world's redemption,
From a noble Womb to spring.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium
The Being who has influenced in the most memorable manner the opinions and the fortunes of the human species, is Jesus Christ. At this day, his name is connected with the devotional feelings of two hundred millions of the race of man. The institutions of the most civilized portions of the globe derive their authority from the sanction of his doctrines; he is the hero, the God, of our popular religion. His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effect of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and benignity, the devoted love borne to him by his adherents, suggested a persuasion to them that he was something divine. The supernatural events which the historians of this wonderful man subsequently asserted to have been connected with every gradation of his career, established the opinion.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
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
A federal union there is in scripture reckoning between the Lord Jesus, and those who are predestinated unto life. An union which commences not only before they are born into the world of grace, but before they were born into the world of nature. Before they were born, did I say? Nay, it is an union ancient as eternity itself; and grace was given them in Christ before the world began. With him they were crucified; with him they died; with him they descended into the grave: when he rose from the dead, they also did arise; when he ascended on high, they also ascended, and sat down with him in heavenly places. Yet still this blessed connection with the glorious Surety is a secret reserved in the breast of God; and they are by nature the children of wrath, even as others, until, in the day of conversion, they are actually united unto Christ by a mystical implantation.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"The Union Betwixt Christ and Believers", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity