Quotes about Jesus

Heaven, for Jesus, wasn't less real, but more real.

One of the only violent images Jesus ever uses is when he speaks about those who cause children to stumble. With a shockingly hyperbolic flourish, he declares that the only fitting punishment is to tie a giant stone around their neck and throw them into the sea (Matt. 18). Death by drowning—Jesus's idea of punishment for those who lead children astray. A haunting warning if there ever was one about the spongelike nature of a child's psyche.

Jesus is said to be a priest in the order of Melchizedek, a priest of God Most High who is a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.

When the man asks about getting "eternal life," he isn't asking about how to go to heaven when he dies. This wasn't a concern for the man or Jesus. This is why Jesus doesn't tell people how to "go to heaven." It wasn't what Jesus came to do. Heaven, for Jesus, was deeply connected with what he called "this age" and "the age to come.

simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him. And so the passage is exclusive, deeply so, insisting on Jesus alone as the way to God. But it is an exclusivity on the other side on inclusivity.

So according to Jesus there is this age, this aion— the one they, and we, are living in— and then a coming age, also called "the world to come" or simply "eternal life.

And then, most of all, I hope you see Jesus's invitation to be a force for good in the world, to wake up to our calling, to be saved in all of the ways that matter most. —Rob Bell     November 2011

When we talk about heaven, then, or eternal life, or the afterlife—any of that—it's important that we begin with the categories and claims that people were familiar with in Jesus's first-century Jewish world. They did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth.

The actual word "hell" is used roughly twelve times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus himself. The Greek word that gets translated as "hell" in English is the word "Gehenna." Ge means "valley," and henna means "Hinnom." Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was an actual valley on the south and west side of the city of Jerusalem. Gehenna, in Jesus's day, was the city dump.

No deity that ruled with fear and torment could win the hearts of its followers. They became animals themselves, thinking of baser and baser modes of worship until they threw their very infants to the flames. Only in Jesus was submission perfected, God made man. And through Jesus, man committed his heart to the only entity worthy of service—

Ask God to show you any changes you need to make in your relationships. And make sure your closest relationship continues to be with Jesus Himself.

We've got to have a deep, intimate relationship with the Father if we're going to lead like Jesus.