Quotes about Jesus

Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.

What practically defines the evangelical church today is an emphasis on two issues that Jesus did not even mention.

Because of Jesus we need never question God's desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it.

The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. Jesus left his followers the command to make disciples from all nations. We have no charge to "Christianize" the United States or any other country — ?an impossible goal in any case.

Thielicke gently turned his parishioners to the example of Jesus who saw like no one else the anguish and injustice, the terror, of this planet. Shouldn't such awareness have filled his every waking hour and robbed him of sleep at night? Shouldn't it have shaken his very soul?

If it's not setting you free and enlarging life, then it's not Jesus' message. If it doesn't sound like good news, it's not the gospel.

Our faith rests not just on Jesus' example but on his resurrection.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem [...] how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." The disciples had proposed that Jesus call down fire on unrepentant cities; in contrast, Jesus uttered a cry of helplessness, an astonishing "if only" from the lips of the Son of God. He would not force himself on those who were not willing.

The sufferings of Jesus show us that pain comes to us not as punishment but rather as a testing ground for faith that transcends pain. In truth, pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.

Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics.

I yearn for a grace-abounding church that rewards rather than punishes honesty, and that, in Jesus' words, exists for the sinners and not the righteous, the sick and not the healthy.

Jesus says in effect, 'Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of those two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I just reclaimed my most valuable possession, which I had given up for lost.' To God himself, it feels like the discovery of a lifetime.