Quotes about God

The place where the questions about the reality of God and about the reality of the world are answered at the same time is characterized solely by the name: Jesus Christ. God and the world are enclosed in this name . . . we cannot speak rightly of either God or the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. All concepts of reality that ignore Jesus Christ are abstractions.

Newton didn't tell him what he had expected—that to follow God he would have to leave politics. On the contrary, Newton encouraged Wilberforce to stay where he was, saying that God could use him there.

Every once in a great while, the hand of God is easy to see, and for a brief moment, fairy tales and history are the same thing. This story is about one of those times.

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also was and is his God. In him we know our brothers and in him is the biding fellowship of those who have overcome and those who still await their hour. God be praised for our dead brother and be merciful to us all at our end.

Bonhoeffer's theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew "the world," but that saw it as God's good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended.

May God make his Word find a hearing in all the world.

Nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.

One must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible:

Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

Religion was a dead, man-made thing, and at the heart of Christianity was something else entirely—God himself, alive.

Even if you were to knock my head off, God would still exist.

For Luther the Bible was not a book like Aristotle's Ethics or like a volume of Livy or Cicero. It was something entirely apart from every book in the world. It was the living Word of God and therefore could not be read like any other book. It was inspired by God, and when one read it, one must do so in such a way—with such closeness and intimacy—that one fully intended to feel and smell the breezes of heaven.