Jesus Christ Quotes

[You] do not care for the cruder aspect of truth. Christ cared. He drove the money-lenders from the temple. His scourge was a great teller of truths.

“Jesus was the ultimate embracer of chaos.”

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

“They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph.”

The thing was, the Herdmans didn’t know anything about the Christmas story. They knew that Christmas was Jesus’ birthday, but everything else was news to them—the shepherds, the Wise Men, the star, the stable, the crowded inn.

When they got to the part about swaddling clothes and the manger, Imogene asked, “You mean they tied him up and put him in a feedbox? Where was the Child Welfare?”

“I’ve got the baby here,” Imogene barked at the Wise Men. “Don’t touch him! I named him Jesus.”

I heard Alice gasp and she poked me. “I don’t think it’s very nice to burp the baby Jesus,” she whispered, “as if he had colic.”

After all, that was the whole point of Jesus—that he didn’t come down on a cloud like something out of “Amazing Comics,” but that he was born and lived . . . a real person.

Since Gladys was the only one in the pageant who had anything to say she made the most of it: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” she hollered, as if it was, for sure, the best news in the world. And all the shepherds trembled, sore afraid—of Gladys, mainly, but it looked good anyway.

He just reminded everyone that when Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” Jesus meant all the children, including Herdmans.

“Everyone suffers, even the good Lord suffered when he was on Earth.”

“Thou seemest human and divine.”

“Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;”

“The guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the disciples.”

“But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

“Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?”

“There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be “one with”, the Something which is at once the awful haunter of nature and the giver of the moral law. The claim is so shocking—a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking too lightly—that only two views of this man are possible. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was; and is; precisely what He said. There is no middle way. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second. ”

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice”

“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.”

“And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we shall have to go to him, for only he knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.”

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

“Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.”

“No, God and the world, God and its goods are incompatible, because the world and its goods make a bid for our hearts, and only when they have won them do they become what they really are. That is how they thrive, and that is why they are incompatible with allegiance to God. Our hearts have room only for one all-embracing devotion, and we can only cleave to one Lord. ”

“Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.”

“You are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. That is what is preventing you from listening to Christ and believing in his grace. You cannot hear Christ because you are wilfully disobedient. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call. Your difficulty is your sins.”

“It is in this light that the good works of the disciples are meant to be seen. Men are not to see the disciples but their good works, says Jesus. And these works are none other than those which the Lord Jesus himself has created in them by calling them to be the light of the world under the shadow of his cross.”

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: ‘He leads the way, keep close to him.’”

“Where are the people today who will respond to the call of Christ? Have we become so accustomed to “cheap grace” that we instinctively shy away from more demanding calls to obedience? “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.”4 Why has the giving of money, for example, been unquestionably recognized as an element in Christian devotion and fasting so disputed? Certainly we have as much, if not more, evidence from the Bible for fasting as we have for giving. Perhaps in our affluent society fasting involves a far larger sacrifice than the giving of money.”

“We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast in the inner sanctuary of the heart.”

“It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.”

“Jesus stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.”

“If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.”

“I focused on the fact that what God says is indeed best. It doesn’t matter if all the men in the world are against it. So seeing that God prefers his religion, seeing that God prefers a tender conscience, seeing that those who make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest, and that the poor man who loves Christ is richer than the greatest man in the world who hates him, I turned to Shame and said, ‘Depart, you who are an enemy to my salvation. Should I listen to your words which are contrary to my sovereign Lord?‘”

“Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.”

“God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.”

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

“The cross simultaneously stands as a constant reminder of [Jesus’s] willingness to pay the bill, and as an indictment on us when we are unwilling to do the same for others.”

“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.”

“The cross simultaneously stands as a constant reminder of [Jesus’s] willingness to pay the bill, and as an indictment on us when we are unwilling to do the same for others.”

When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,” He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way.

“Here is the secret of Jesus’ life and work for God: He prayerfully waited for His Father’s instructions and for the strength to follow them. Jesus had no divinely-drawn blueprint; He discerned the Father’s will day by day in a life of prayer.”

“With a sense of loss we recall the important tasks that have been shunted aside. We realize that we’ve become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent. Is there any escape from this pattern of living? The answer lies in the life of our Lord.”

“Freedom does not come by trying to produce it. Freedom in the spiritual realm comes by an absolute surrender to Jesus and living dependent upon Him.”

“I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn’t want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ.”

“Everywhere and at all times, the love ethic of Jesus is a radiant light revealing the ugliness of our stale conformity.”

“I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughter of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.”

“Mack, that’s because you’re seeing only the institution, a man-made system. That’s not what I came to build. What I see are people and their lives, a living, breathing community of all those who love me, not building and programs.”

“Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove.”

“I love the part when he tells the angel what to say—that’s brilliant,” Mr. Fish said. “And how he throws his mother aside—how he starts right in with the criticism…I mean, you get the idea, right away, that this is no ordinary baby. You know, he’s the Lord! Jesus—from Day One. I mean, he’s born giving orders, telling I had no idea it was so…primitive a ritual, so violent, so barbaric. But it’s very moving,” Mr. Fish added hastily, lest Dan and I be offended to hear our religion described as “primitive” and “barbaric.”

“No. No creature can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature -- the Law of God.”

“The tiger -- yes. The law of his nature is ferocity. The law of his nature is the Law of God. He cannot disobey it.”

“If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.”

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

“Therefore, let anyone who does not now know Christ awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom!! Run for your lives! Don’t look back! Escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed!”

“And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling ... to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the Kingdom of God ... To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart and howl for vexation of spirit!”

“Therefore, let anyone who does not now know Christ awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom!! Run for your lives! Don’t look back! Escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed!”

Jesus is explaining that he is able to control demon spirits and make them obey him because he has already bound the strong man — Satan.

“Lieutenant Kaffee, I believe in God, and in His son, Jesus Christ. And because I do, I can say this: Private Santiago isn’t dead because of a Code Red. He’s dead because he had no honor. He’s dead because he had no Code. And God was watching.”

“All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity.”

“‘Yes,’ said Queen Lucy. ‘In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.‘”

“We can no longer rely on the external teachings of Buddha, Confucius, or Christ. The era of organized religion controlling every aspect of life is over. No single religion has all the answers.”

“I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organization in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practice birth control, for Christ’s sake.”

“For I, too, had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me.”

“The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place.”

“If you don’t understand Jesus, you can’t understand his prayer. ”

“The aim ... is to wake everybody up to the need and benefits of saying the Jesus Prayer.”

“All heroes are shadows of Christ”

“My joy grows with every soul that seeks the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Remember, you have one life. That’s all. You were made for God. Don’t waste it.”

“God without Christ is no God.”

“You get one pass at life. That’s all. Only one. And the lasting measure of that life is Jesus Christ.”

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.”

“Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn’t about money or possessions or even our hopes. It’s about our pride. He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He’s asking us, ‘Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?‘”

“People who follow Jesus, though, are no longer typical - God is constantly inviting them into a life that moves away from typical.”

“Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed.”

“As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.”

“Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love.”

“We know what the bottom looks like, and we know who is waiting there - Jesus Christ.”

“You will get through this. Not because you are strong but because your Brother is. Not because you are good but because your Brother is. Not because you are big but because your big Brother is the Prince, and he has a place prepared for you.”

“Try saying, ‘I trust You, Jesus,’ in response to whatever happens to you.”

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

“Though we are commanded to ‘wash ourselves’, to ‘cleanse ourselves from sins’, to ‘purge ourselves from all our iniquities’, yet to imagine that we can do these things by our own efforts is to trample on the cross and grace of Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus says that all of life, not just marriage, is a showcase of God’s glory.”

″[Marriage is] about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.”

“Prayer, at its most basic level, was surrender. Like Jesus in the garden, saying, “Not My will, but Yours, be done.” The ironic thing was, when a person surrendered their will, they got God’s, and then they received what they were really looking for all along. This was what she believed.”

“I am so sick of you stealing my joy. But that’s changing too. My joy doesn’t come from my friends, it doesn’t come from my job, it doesn’t even come from my husband. My joy is found in Jesus, and just in case you forgot, He has already defeated you. So go back to hell where you belong and leave my family alone!”

“People are always leaving Jesus out and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in.”

“I would rather have a man chasing Jesus than a house full of stuff.”

“Lord Jesus, You know the struggle that Tony has. You know the indecision, the shame, the pain of his choices. I pray You would remind him right now of whose child he is. And that when You look at him, You see the perfection of Your Son, Jesus. Thank You that You have conquered sin. Thank You that the evil one is not in control. Give Tony the courage to do what You’re asking him to do, in Your timing.”

“At one of the most painful times of his life, Jesus prayed three times without any noticeable response from God (Matthew 26:39–44). It is as if God is helping us to truly own our pleas, wishes, and desires—to want them deeply, from the heart, rather than casually or offhandedly.”

“Jesus doesn’t participate in the rat race. He’s into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling—all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace. Words used to describe us being with Him.”

“Ask Jesus to show you your beauty. Ask him what he thinks of you as a woman. His words to us let us rest and unveil our beauty.”

“Even though Jesus put the enemy under His feet and won the victory for us, we still must move into that victory. There are still battles to be fought in prayer.”

“Jesus is the Commander of two armies. One is an army of angels in heaven and one is the army of prayer warriors on earth. ”

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“If Jesus ever comes back to earth again, I’m thinking, he’ll come as a dog, because there isn’t anything as humble or patient or loving or loyal as the dog I have in my arms right now

″‘Jesus,’ I whisper finally, ‘which do you want me to do? Be one hundred percent honest and carry that dog back to Judd so that one of your creatures can be kicked and starved all over again, or keep him here and fatten him up to glorify your creation?‘”

“During His earthly ministry, Jesus was always moved with compassion and healed all them that had need of healing, and He is our faithful and merciful high priest today.”

“Christ commissioned the twelve disciples to heal (Matt. 10:7-8). Later, He commissioned the seventy. His commission was given to all who believe (Mark 16:17-18). It was given to the church (James 5:14-16). These commissions have never been revoked.”

“Wherever and whenever Jesus Christ is proclaimed as our sacrifice for sin and sickness, physical healing as well as spiritual salvation will result.”

“Of those who were bitten by the fiery serpents, the Bible says that as many as looked to the brazen serpent lived (Num. 21:9). Even now, as many as look to Christ as redeemer are saved -are healed.”

“St. Paul says that “the love of Christ compels us,” but this “compels us” can also be translated as “possesses us.” And so it is: love attracts us and sends us; it draws us in and gives us to others.”

“Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members.”

“I think this is truly the most wonderful experience we can have: to belong to a people walking, journeying through history together with our Lord, who walks among us! We are not alone; we do not walk alone. We are part of the one flock of Christ that walks together.”

“If we—all of us—accept the grace of Jesus Christ, he changes our heart and from sinners makes us saints. To become holy we do not need to turn our eyes away and look somewhere else, or have as it were the face on a holy card! No, no, that is not necessary. To become saints only one thing is necessary: to accept the grace that the Father gives us in Jesus Christ. There, this grace changes our heart. We continue to be sinners for we are weak, but with this grace which makes us feel that the Lord is good, that the Lord is merciful, that the Lord waits for us, that the Lord pardons us—this immense grace that changes our heart.”

“Ralph, my dearest child, always remember in the hour of danger to look to your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He alone is both able and willing to save your body and your soul.”

Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters religious.

“But I wish the artist hadn’t painted Him so sorrowful looking. All His pictures are like that, if you’ve noticed. But I don’t believe He could really have looked so sad or the children would have been afraid of Him.”