Quotes from Miroslav Volf

Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.

In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.

For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played.

Out of 3,500 students in my high school, I was the only openly professing Christian kid. Obviously there were challenges. 'Only old and stupid people believe.'

Rules help govern and steer a relationship along, so they're good things. But they become bad things when they become the narrow gate though which the relationship must always pass. When this happens, the rules become the basis for the relationship and, in a sense, become a substitute for the relationship.

To affirm that God is God is to want to live in a particular way.

For any victim, particularly us Americans, it is difficult to see ourselves through the eyes of our offender. But for any victim it is the most salutary thing to do.

Christ came to transform us from never enough people - to more than enough people; that through his poverty we may become rich.

If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.

If you take the 'love your enemy' out of Christianity, you've 'unChristianed' the Christian faith.

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

Whatever the reasons, when forgiveness happens it is always a miracle of grace. The obstacles in its way are immense