Read & Study the Bible Online - Bible Portal
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind.
9 likes
J.C. Ryle
Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.
9 likes
John C. Maxwell
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.
topics: bible , jesus  
9 likes
Rick Warren
Your call is clear, cold centuries across; You bid me follow you, and take my cross, And daily lose myself, myself deny, And stern against myself shout ‘Crucify’. My stubborn nature rises to rebel Against your call. Proud choruses of hell Unite to magnify my restless hate Of servitude, lest I capitulate. The world, to see my cross, would pause and jeer. I have no choice, but still to persevere To save myself – and follow you from far, More slow than Magi-for I have no star. And yet you call me still. Your cross Eclipses mine, transforms the bitter loss I thought that I would suffer if I came To you- into immeasurable gain. I kneel before you, Jesus, crucified, My cross is shouldered and my self denied; I’ll follow daily, closely, not refuse For love of you and man myself to lose.
topics: christianity , jesus  
9 likes
G.K. Chesterton
In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.
9 likes
J.B. Phillips
It is refreshing, and salutary, to study the poise and quietness of Christ. His task and responsibility might well have driven a man out of his mind. But He was never in a hurry, never impressed by numbers, never a slave of the clock.
9 likes
Augustine
Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God.
Augustine  
8 likes
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It is only when one knows the unutterability of the name of God that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ; it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection and a new world; it is only when one submits to God's law that one may speak of grace; and it is only when God's wrath and vengeance are hanging as grim realities over the heads of one's enemies that something of what it means to love and forgive them can touch our hearts.
8 likes
Peter Kreeft
If one Egyptian tailor hadn’t cheated on the threads of Joseph’s mantle, Potiphar’s wife would never have been able to tear it, present it as evidence to Potiphar that Joseph attacked her, gotten him thrown in prison, and let him be in a position to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, win his confidence, advise him to store seven years of grain, and save his family, the seventy original Jews from whom Jesus came. We owe our salvation to a cheap Egyptian tailor.
8 likes
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ
topics: jesus , upside-down  
8 likes
Frederick Buechner
Once we have seen Him in a stable, we can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of men.
8 likes
George MacDonald
Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation; and faith, essential as it is, is only an important part of the machinery which grace employs. We are saved 'through faith,' but salvation is 'by grace'.
topics: faith , grace , jesus  
8 likes
Thomas Merton
It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.
8 likes
John Piper
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5–6)
topics: confidence , jesus , peace , rock  
8 likes
Peter Kreeft
No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze.
7 likes
Ravi Zacharias
The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life's twin realities, love and hate.
topics: christ , jesus  
7 likes
A.W. Pink
...Our Lord Jesus Christ added nothing to God in his essential being and glory, either by what He did or suffered. True, blessedly and gloriously true. He manifested the glory of God to us, but he added nought to God... Christ's goodness and rightousness reached unto His saints in the earth but God was high above and beyond it all....
topics: god , good , jesus , salvation , trinity  
7 likes
Richard Sibbes
Heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him. All delicacies without Christ are but as a funeral banquet. Where the master of the feast is away, there is nothing but solemnness. What is all without Christ? I say the joys of heaven are not the joys of heaven without Christ; he is the very heaven of heaven.
topics: glory , heaven , jesus , joy  
7 likes
Thomas Merton
It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.
topics: holy-spirit , jesus , love  
7 likes
Frederick Buechner
God knows we have our own demons to be cast out, our own uncleanness to be cleansed. Neurotic anxiety happens to be my own particular demon, a floating sense of doom that has ruined many of what could have been, should have been, the happiest days of my life, and more than a few times in my life I have been raised from such ruins, which is another way of saying that more than a few times in my life I have been raised from death - death of the spirit anyway, death of the heart - by the healing power that Jesus calls us both to heal with and to be healed by.
topics: anxiety , demons , jesus  
7 likes

Grupo de Marcas