Quotes about Christ

When I am asked what my vision for the Brooklyn Tabernacle is, I always respond, "I don't have one. Last time I read my Bible, it said it was Christ's church, not mine.

As a preacher myself, let me be blunt here. Preaching itself can easily become just a subtle form of entertainment. When I stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ, he is not going to ask me if I was a clever orator. He is not going to ask me how many books I wrote. He is only going to ask whether I continued in the line of men and women, starting way back in the time of Adam's grandchildren, who led others to call upon God.

One of the ways the Spirit glorifies Christ is to build up his body for the common good. That is how God strengthens his church. Since the church is a spiritual organism, it needs spiritual ministry to build it up. Spiritual ministry can only come by the Holy Spirit showing himself through human beings. His power flows through human vessels.

But how can we effectively represent Christ, who in sacrificial love gave his life for others, if we don't deeply care about those he died for? And since "God is love" (1 John 4:8), doesn't it follow that the one great distinguishing characteristic of Christians everywhere should be a self-sacrificing love for people? Doctrine, apologetics, spiritual gifts, and prophecy charts are all great, but God is love. Without love, everything becomes meaningless (1 Cor. 13).

If I were to look at the church of Jesus Christ in America today, I would say our greatest problem is not that we lack the resources to do things, not that we lack the models, the programs, and the plans, but that we lack conformity to the image of Jesus Christ.

As a pastor in a Protestant church, my whole ministry centers on the conviction that by grace we are saved through faith. And it's not our faith that delivers us, as if believing something, anything at all were pleasing to God. It's the object of our faith - Christ's life, death, and resurrection - that saves us.

Christ was God in human flesh, and He proved it by rising from the dead.

Should be clear by now that this making-right, or rectification, is not a process. It is already true, in Christ; but it is true eschatologically, from the perspective of the End. The now—not yet dynamic is operative here, as always.

The imagery of rescue and victory places the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness into another context altogether, where they are brought in under the heading of God acting to make right what has been wrong (rectification). Then, and only then, can the whole complex of ideas and images be located where it belongs, on the battlefield of Christ against the Powers. This is the overarching panorama against which to place the imagery of the Great Assize, or Last Judgment.

In the cross of Christ, we see something revolutionary, something that undercuts not just conventional morality but also religious distinctions across the board. Christ has died for the ungodly, the unrighteous

The truest way to receive the gospel of Christ crucified is to cultivate a deep appreciation of the way the biblical motifs interact with each other and enlarge one another.

Only God can execute a regime change in which the tyrannical Powers are displaced and overthrown. This is the story of the purpose of God, "which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:9-10).