Quotes about Jesus

Peter's Jesus of Nazareth, the one who lived and died and who was raised and ascended and enthroned, is both Messiah of Israel and Lord of the whole world. Those are the terms of the early gospeling in the book of Acts, and if we want to be faithful to the Bible, those should be our terms as well. Those titles for Jesus tell the gospel Story of Jesus.

Jesus thought he was anointed by God to proclaim the gospel to the poor and to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovered sight for the blind and to set the oppressed free. This is why he came.

The question: What is a Christian? My answer: A Christian is someone who follows Jesus* My former answer: A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus, and the Christian life focuses on personal practices of piety.

What does it mean to persevere? It means that we continue to believe, and that we live like believers, which means obediently. It doesn't mean sinlessness; it doesn't mean that we are on some steady and never-failing incline up into pure sanctification; it does not deny stumbling or messy spirituality; it doesn't deny doubt and problems. It simply means that the person continues to walk with Jesus and doesn't walk away from him in a resolute manner.

Hauerwas said it, "The sermon, therefore, is not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and around Jesus."39 Church, then, forms the context for the ethic of Jesus.

There is no kingdom that is not about a just society, as there is no kingdom without redemption under Christ. Yet I'm convinced that both of these approaches to kingdom fall substantially short of what kingdom meant to Jesus, so we need once again to be patient enough to ponder what the Bible teaches.

The church becomes a community called atonement every time it reads the story of Jesus and every time it identifies itself with that story and every time it invites others to listen in to hear that story. Reading Scripture and listening to Scripture and letting Scripture incorporate us into its story is atoning.

The release of souls from this embodied life into a celestial disembodied existence is not a biblical notion. The opposite is the case with Jesus and for the entire Bible.

hold it, then, as an axiom — or else I'd stop writing right now — that our calling is to follow Jesus in our context rather than to retrieve and re-create his context in our world. What

If you want to know how Jesus understands the Christian life, the place to begin is with what he means by kingdom of God.

To reveal what the kingdom of God is like, Jesus tells parables. And these parables usher his listeners and readers into a world he called kingdom.

To those who pursue righteousness Jesus promises "they will be filled," and the word "filled" means "sated," "slaked," "bloated," or "filled to overflowing." The metaphor expresses absolute and utter satisfaction: they will find a kingdom society where love, peace, justice, and holiness shape the entirety of creation.