Quotes about Jesus

For nearly thirty years, the One who had crafted the universe with His voice crafted furniture with His hands. And He was good at what He did—no crooked table legs ever came out of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth.1 But Jesus was more than a master carpenter. He was also God incognito. His miraculous powers rank as history's best-kept secret for nearly three decades, but all that changed the day water blushed in the face of its Creator.

Jesus proclaimed the favor of God in His very first sermon. Then He sealed the deal with His death and resurrection. Favor is a function of surrender. If we don't hold out on God, God will not hold out on us.

New Testament scholar Dr. Gordon Fee said that life is a wilderness, and a compass doesn't help very much. A map certainly doesn't help because you have to know where you are for starters. What you need in a place you've never been before is a guide. Jesus becomes the Guide to the Father's house.

In working through nonreligious language to explain that journey, the idea of place became very important. Jesus says, "Here's the deal! I'll leave My place. I'll come to your place. I'll take your place. And then we'll go to My place." This simplicity captured me. Everyone understands places. We all have them. It's where we live our lives day to day. Then Jesus walks into our place and redirects us.

You don't have to go looking for adventure. If you follow Jesus, adventure comes looking for you. Jesus didn't carry a cross to Calvary so that we could live a halfway life. He died so that we could come alive in the truest and fullest sense of the word.

The very nature of the gospel is Jesus inviting the disciples on an adventure. To do what they'd never done and go where they'd never gone. Never a dull moment! You cannot follow Jesus and be bored at the same time.

that is how our enemy operates. He prowls around like a roaring lion. But the important word is like. He's an imposter. Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And when He roars, everything is shaken. All authority under heaven and on earth is His. And we are His children. Why don't we live like it, love like it, give like it, serve like it, and pray like it?

God couldn't care less about protocol. If He did, Jesus would have chosen the Pharisees as His disciples. But that isn't who Jesus honored.

I love the way Dorothy Sayers described the wild side of His personality. To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made Him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies.9

Our faith doesn't magically make our assumptions about Jesus and the Bible true. Faith can't turn a falsehood into truth. Rightly understood, it's not a blind belief in the unbelievable; it's a rational belief based on a preponderance of evidence.

Now that Jesus has come and completed his work, he has made all things clean. The rules have changed. Evolved.

Local churches exist to display God's glory to the nations. We do that by fixing our eyes on the gospel of Jesus Christ, trusting him for salvation, and then loving one another with God's own holiness, unity, and love.