THE INCARNATION

'God coded himself into humanity.'

John C Lennox, Seven Daus that Divide the World: The beginning according to Genesis and science, p.104.

JESUS'S ANGER

'Jesus isn't angry when he's mistreated; he's angry when others are mistreated. There was nothing selfish or self-serving in his anger.'

Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.140.

HOW MUCH JESUS LOVES US

'Even when we sin, Jesus desires us. Perhaps in our sin he desires us the most, for he longs for us to turn away from the ruin of sin and come back to his grace. When Jesus sees your sin and suffering, his instinct is not to turn away but to turn towards you in love.'

Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.102.

CHRIST'S POWER TO RESURRECT

'No one can as easily awaken another in bed, as Christ can in the tomb.'
Augustine of Hippo in Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus, p.72.

JESUS GETS US

'He is affected with our infirmities, he feels them, he is touched with the feeling of them. He has a sense of them which touches his soul, and makes an impression on it; as one who not only has suffered what others feel, but suffers with them in what they feel.'

David Clarkson in Tim Chester, Enjoying Jesus: Experience the presence and kindess of the Son of God in everyday life, p.38.

THE VERY FACE OF GOD

 'When the Blessed Virgin, having given birth, looked into this face, she enjoyed a privilege no woman or man had known since Adam and Eve before the fall, still robed in glory.'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.143.

INCARNATE INTIMATE LOVE

'Some time ago I read a remarkable book, the Confessions of a Chiropodist. The writer reveals an interesting fact: all her patients (she insists this is a rule without exception) ask, when they first turn up, forgiveness for their feet - for the general state of them, their shape, their relative smallness or largeness. Most of us, it seems, are ashamed of our feet. That explains, perhaps, why so many people are reluctant to take part in foot-washing on Maundy Thursday. It sheds light, too, on what went that night, long ago, in the Upper Room. When Jesus took the feet of the Twelve, one by one, into his hands it was to say: "I know you as you are. I love you as you are."'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.40.

THE BEGINNING OF GOD SETTING EVERYTHING RIGHT AGAIN

'..with the resurrection of Jesus God's new world has begun; in other words, his being raised from the dead is the start, the paradigm case, the foundation, the beginning, of that great setting-right which God will do for the whole cosmos at the end. The risen body of Jesus is the one bit of the physical universe that has already been "set right", Jesus is therefore the one through whom everything else will be "set right".'

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part 2 Chapters 13-28, p.93. 

GOD LEADS THE WAY IN SELF-SACRIFICE

'...the way of renunciation is not alien to God. In Jesus, God has been there ahead of us...'

Gilbert Meilaender, Thy Will Be Done, p.123.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JESUS' RESURRECTION

'The sun rose and set every day. The moon, too. The tides went out and came in. The seasons turned in order. Some of the trees lost their leaves in the autumn and grew them back in the spring. People ate breakfast and supper when they had food and smoked and drank their tea. They had babies and raised them. They worked and slept. They sang and laughed and yelled and wept and fought and coupled. But from the first time she'd heard it, Esther Honey understood that if the man Jesus had died and been buried then really and truly rose, it was the only time such a thing had ever happened and that meant everything else in the world took its real meaning from that young man lying dead in his grave and awakening back to life and rolling the stone away from his tomb and saying goodbye to his friends and helpless not in spirit but actually in that body that had died and come back to life.'

Paul Harding, This Other Eden, p.193.

JESUS' RESURRECTION BODY

'Once incarnate, always incarnate, we might say...'
Wesley Hill, Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus, p.85.

JESUS' PASTORAL CARE

'...with the eye, and the ear, and the heart of a friend, he attends to their sorrows; he counts their sighs, puts their tears in his bottle; and when our spirits are overwhelmed within us, he knows our path, and adjusts the time, the measures of our trials, and every thing that is necessary for our present support and reasonable deliverance, with the same unerring wisdom and accuracy as he weighted the mountains in scales and hills in a balance, and meted out the heavens with a span.'

John Newton in Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p,.202.

THE INCARNATION

'...the omnipotent God becoming an incontinent baby...'
Pete Greig, God on Mute: Engaging the silence of unanswered prayer, p.158.

CAESAR VS. CHRIST

'Caesar occupied a palace Christ a cross, but the same Christ so split history into A.D. and B.C. that even the reign of Caesar was subsequently dated by his name.'

Martin Luther King Jr., 'The Death of Evil upon the Seashore' in The Gift of Love, p.81.

NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME

'It avails nothing that a man is clever, learned, highly gifted, amiable, charitable, kind-hearted, and zealous about some sort of religion. All this will not his soul, if he does not draw near to God by Christ's atonement, and make use of God's own Son as his Mediator and Saviour. God is so holy that all men are guilty and debtors in his sight. Sin is so sinful that no mortal man can make satisfaction for it. There must be a mediator, a ransom-payer, a redeemer, between ourselves and God, or else we can never be saved. There is only one door, one bridge, one ladder, between earth and heaven, - the crucified Son of God. Whosoever will enter in by that door may be saved; but to him who refuses to use that door the Bible holds out no hope at all.'

JC Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John: Volume 3, p.67. 

WHAT GOD LOOKS LIKE

'Do you want to know what God is like, the form in which God reveals himself? Look in the mirror; look at your friends; look at your spouse. Start here: a human being with eyes and ears, hands and feet, eating meals with friends. Walking to the store for a bottle of milk, hiking in the hills and picking wildflowers, catching fish and cooking them on a beach for breakfast with friends.'

Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, p.227.

OUR FRIENDS POINT US TO JESUS

'Christ himself kisses us in the love of our friends.'
Bernard of Clairvaux in John Wyatt, Transforming Friendship, p.155.

TRUE POWER

'To refrain, to put aside power is Godlike.'
Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis, p.217.

THE SELF-INTEREST OF CHRISTIAN SELF-SACRIFICE

'The principle runs through life from top to bottom. Give yourself up and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death or your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.225.

DRESSING UP AS JESUS TO PRAY

'Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of the Son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.187.