Quotes about Disciples

The book of Revelation is for modern-day disciples who have eyes to see the power of the empire in our world and in our churches and in our lives and yours.

The Sermon on the Mount crystallizes what Jesus gave to his disciples as the new way of life, the kingdom way of life in a world surrounded by the power brokers of empire.

When Jesus calls his disciples 'the salt,' instead of himself, this transfers his efficacy on earth to them. He brings them into his work." But he adds the warning of Jesus: "The call of Jesus Christ means being salt of the earth or being destroyed.

10 Then the disciples came and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" 11And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Hence was the different effect that Christ's miracles had to convince the disciples from what they had to convince the Scribes and Pharisees. Not that they had a stronger reason, or had their reason more improved; but their reason was sanctified, and those blinding prejudices, that the Scribes and Pharisees were under, were removed by the sense they had of the excellency of Christ and his doctrine. 2.

Jesus did not only communicate ideas and concepts and rules and principles for living. He lived. And by living with his disciples, he showed them what life was supposed to look like, what God had intended it to look like. It was not merely intellectual or merely spiritual. It was all these things together; it was something more. Bonhoeffer aimed to model the Christian life for his students. This led him to the idea that, to be a Christian, one must live with Christians.

In short, apostolic movement involves a radical community of disciples, centered on the lordship of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, built squarely on a fivefold ministry, organized around mission where everyone (not just professionals) is considered an empowered agent, and tends to be decentralized in organizational structure.

How impossible, how utterly absurd it would be for the disciples-- these disciples, such men as these!--to try and become the light of the world! No, they are already the light, and the call has made them so.

It is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless.

Jesus does not enjoin his disciples to marry, but he does sanctify marriage according to the law by affirming its indissolubility and by prohibiting the innocent party from remarrying when the guilty partner has broken the marriage by adultery.

Here we have another instance of an Old Testament law finding its truest fulfilment in the crucified body of Jesus Christ. As they contemplate this body which was given for them, and as they share its life, the disciples receive strength for the chastity which Jesus requires.

Judging others makes us blind, but love gives us sight. When I judge, I am blind to my own evil and to the grace granted the other person. But in the love of Christ, disciples know about every imaginable kind of guilt and sin, because they know of the suffering of Jesus Christ.