quotations about Jesus Christ
Jesus is like a perfect diamond. He is multi-faceted. Each facet shows the brilliance of who he is.
J. E. GULBRANDSEN
Who Jesus Is
Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory,
Of His Flesh, the mystery sing;
Of the Blood, all price exceeding,
Shed by our Immortal King,
Destined, for the world's redemption,
From a noble Womb to spring.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium
This is what Jesus Christ came to do. Not to show how we can escape hell and get into heaven, but to show how we can escape from ourselves and become other selves; to show how we may cease to be what we are and become what we desire to be. He came that he might teach us and empower us to be the men we want to be, the men we ought to be.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
Jesus Christ did not come into the world merely to be a spectacle, merely to show us who and what God is, and then depart and leave us where we were before. "I am the door," He says. A door is to push open and go through. He is the door; through Him God enters into humanity. He is the door; through Him humanity enters into God. He has come into the world in order that we, coming to some knowledge and apprehension of the divine nature, coming to understand what divine justice, divine truth, divine life, divine purity, divine love are, may the better enter into that life and be ourselves filled with all the fullness of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Reader, if you are out of Christ you are living in the city of Destruction. There is but a hand's-breadth between you and death. But there is deliverance. The mountain of refuge is not far off. A voice, sweeter than that of angels, and far mightier to save, cries out to you, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. It is the voice of the Son of God. The irreparable past he effaces with his blood. The wasted life he makes to bloom again. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners"--not to teach, not to govern, but to save. For he comes not as a pilot to give safe voyage to vessels yet whole and strong; but to those already lying on the rocks and beaten in the angry surf, threatened every moment with engulfment, he conies, to succor, to rescue, to save. There is death in delay. There is safety only in the Savior's arms. "Haste thee; escape thither."
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
Like hairs on the head, mortal man is joined to Jesus Christ, the head of all, but they are full of transgressions and sins because of man's delight in the flesh. But the Church regenerates and purifies these from the unclean stench and filth of sin by penitence and confession, just as hair is cleansed from dew and drops, and as dust is shaken out and cleansed from wool.
HILDEGARD OF BINDEN
letter to the Abbot, c. 1166
Jesus Christ did not manifest all the qualities of God. There is greater manifestation of power in the earthquake and the tornado than was manifested in the stilling of the tempest; greater mechanical skill manifested in the flower than in anything that Christ wrought; greater affluence of beneficence in every annual harvest than in the feeding of five thousand. But the love, the patience, the fidelity, the truth, the long-suffering, the heart of the Infinite and Eternal Energy, comes to its fruition and its manifestation in this one incomparable life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
There's not a child so small and weak
But has his little cross to take,
His little work of love and praise
That he may do for Jesus' sake.
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER
We are but Little Children Weak
Jesus is eternally right. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations that refused to listen to him.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
A federal union there is in scripture reckoning between the Lord Jesus, and those who are predestinated unto life. An union which commences not only before they are born into the world of grace, but before they were born into the world of nature. Before they were born, did I say? Nay, it is an union ancient as eternity itself; and grace was given them in Christ before the world began. With him they were crucified; with him they died; with him they descended into the grave: when he rose from the dead, they also did arise; when he ascended on high, they also ascended, and sat down with him in heavenly places. Yet still this blessed connection with the glorious Surety is a secret reserved in the breast of God; and they are by nature the children of wrath, even as others, until, in the day of conversion, they are actually united unto Christ by a mystical implantation.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"The Union Betwixt Christ and Believers", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Too long have we stood at the foot of the cross or at the door of the tomb, and not seen the stone rolled away and the triumphant Saviour emerging. Too long we have thought of the life of Christ ending with his passion and death. But the greatest part of his life is his post-resurrection life. For the message of the Gospel is not merely that Jesus Christ lived and died eighteen hundred years ago, living here for three short years and then disappearing, to be an absentee Christ; it is that God is always pouring out his life upon men and into their hearts, lifting them up out of their sins, succoring them from their remorse, and making them live again.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Personality of God
They want you to be Jesus
They'll got down on one knee
But they'll want their money back
If you're alive at thirty-three,
And you're turning tricks
With your crucifix.
U2
"Hold Me
Christ ransoms, Christ feeds, but, grandest truth of all, Christ frees--frees us from the fetters we have welded on our own wrists.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The light that shines from the Old Testament is that of the Star of Bethlehem, which conducts the reader to the manger of his Incarnate Lord. That star I seek to follow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
The Being who has influenced in the most memorable manner the opinions and the fortunes of the human species, is Jesus Christ. At this day, his name is connected with the devotional feelings of two hundred millions of the race of man. The institutions of the most civilized portions of the globe derive their authority from the sanction of his doctrines; he is the hero, the God, of our popular religion. His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effect of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and benignity, the devoted love borne to him by his adherents, suggested a persuasion to them that he was something divine. The supernatural events which the historians of this wonderful man subsequently asserted to have been connected with every gradation of his career, established the opinion.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
Like every man who appears at an epoch which is historical and rendered famous by his works, Jesus Christ has a history, a history which the church and the world possess, and which, surrounded by countless memorials, has at least the same authenticity as any other history formed in the same countries, amidst the same peoples and in the same times. As, then, if I would study the lives of Brutus and Cassius, I should calmly open Plutarch, I open the Gospel to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the same composure.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Jesus Christ: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
Then I sought a way of obtaining strength sufficient to enjoy Thee; and found it not, until I embraced that Mediator betwixt God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for evermore, calling unto me, and saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and mingling that food which I was unable to receive, with our flesh.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Take away the personal Christ from the gospels, leaving the same precepts and doctrines, and the whole aspect of Christianity would change, as the aspect of the earth changes when the sun goes down. The same eternal mountains lift their heads to heaven; the same rivers flow onward. But their animation is gone; they are cold, and gray, and dark. Thus would Christianity be without that central personage, around which all its glories cluster--from which they stream.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words