Quotes about Redemption

If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom.

The psalmist's and the Christian's waiting and watching—that is, hoping—is based on the conviction that God is actively involved in his creation and vigorously at work in redemption.

Real life, the real world, is a vast theater of salvation, directed by our wise and totally involved God.

The exile was the "crucible of Israel's faith". They were pushed to the edge of existence where they thought they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they found that in fact they had been pushed to the center, where God was.

That's the fullness of God's salvation. It's not only deliverance from something but also deliverance to something. He not only delivers us from sin, but he also delivers us into a land of salvation that's flowing with milk and honey.

They'll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They'll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean.

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.

ROMANS 8:28, NKJV One of the most interesting and remarkable things Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.... Joy is what God gives, not what we work up. Laughter is the delight that things are working together for good to those who love God, an overflow of spirits that comes from feeling good not about yourself but about God.

We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ.

JOHN 3:16-18 [Jesus said,] "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.

religion is an inconvenience only to those who are traveling against the grain of creation, at cross-purposes with the way that leads to redemption.