But the decision to become human, and to go all the way along the road of obedience, obedience to the divine plan of salvation, yes, all the way to the cross — this decision was not a decision to stop being divine. It was a decision about what it really means to be divine. Jesus, the eternal son of God, the one who became human in and as Jesus of Nazareth, regarded his equality with God as committing him to the course he took: of becoming human, of becoming Israel’s anointed representative, of dying under the weight of the world’s evil. This is what it meant to be equal with God. As you look at the incarnate son of God dying on the cross the most powerful thought you should think is: this is the true meaning of who God is. He is the God of self-giving love. And his progression through incarnation to death must be seen, not as something which required him as it were to stop being God for a while, but as the perfect self-expression of the true God.
– Tom Wright, from
Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters

What we have lost… is a full sense of the power of God — to recuit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hopeless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them up side the head with Glory.
– Barbara Brown Taylor, from
Home By Another Way

Gratitude… is a response to grace. The compassionate life is a grateful life, and actions born out of gratefulness are not compulsive but free, not somber but joyful, not fanatical but liberating.
– Henri Nouwen

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature; either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be in the one kind of creature is heaven: that is it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be in the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, importence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
– C.S. Lewis

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Many people suffer because of the false supposition on which they have based their lives. That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt. But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human condition. Therefore ministry is a very confronting service. It does no allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.” George MacDonald put it with epigrammatic force when he wrote, “The Song of God suffered unto the death, not that we might no suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”
– Eugene Peterson, from
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

A moment of conscious triumph makes one feel that after this nothing will really matter; a moment of realized diaster makes one feel that this is the end of everything. But neither feeling is realistic, for neither event is really what it is felt to be. The circumstances of triumph will not last, and the moment of triumph will sooner or later give way to moments of disappointment, strain, frustration, and grief, while the circumstances of disaster will prove to have in them seeds of recovery and new hope. Life in this world under God’s providence is like that; it always has been, and always will be; it is so in the Bible, and it remains so as the twentieth century gives way to the twenty-first. The mature person, who is mentally and emotionally an adult as distinct from a child, knows this and does not forget it.
– J.I. Packer, from
A Passion for Faithfulness

The stories in John of Jesus offering living water, of those following him never being hungry or thirsty, only heightens our sens of horror and awe, as we get the full impact of what John is saying, at the thought of Jesus himself being….thirsty. Had the water of life failed? Had the wine run out for good? He saved others; could he not save himself? As with the crown of thorns and the mocking purple robe, this (John is saying) is part of the truth of it all. This is how Jesus must do what only he can do. He must come to the place where everyone else is, the place of thirst, shame and death. That, too, is a fulfillment of scripture (Psalm 69:21). That is his glory and, yes, his joy.
– N.T. Wright, from
John for Everyone

To speak of sin by itself…is to forget the resolve of God…. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly–to say to the world “I have some bad news and I have some bad news”–is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior. To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.
But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better. To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ…. What had we thought the ripping and writhing on Golgotha were all about? … In short, for the Christian church…to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.
– Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world…. Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services…. For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.
– Rodney Stark
The Rise of Christianity

Whoever heard of a suffering God? The idea is plain daft. God is up in heaven, and there he will stay. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true? If God came to visit us, like a great king visiting his subjects? Or, even better, if he came among us as one of us, sharing our way of life, with all its tragedy, sorrows and grief?
– Alister E. McGrath
What Was God Doing on the Cross?