Quotes about Victory

You don't lose when you get knocked down. You lose when you stay down.

As for me, I know no fighter can survive if he feels sorry for himself when he's defeated. When I accept a fight, I accept the consequences. I do everything to make the fight come out my way, but if I'm defeated I have to get up and come back again, no matter how humiliating the loss.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Deliverance is not the same as freedom. Deliverance is release from the oppressor, but freedom is deliverance from oppression.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

The only reason the death of Jesus was ever thought of as good news was because of what happened next.

The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.

Death is the last weapon of the tyrant; the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated.

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is the reason for the Colossians' gratitude. The battle has been won.

So what does Paul mean here? Doing it declares it: breaking the bread and sharing the cup in Jesus's name declares his victory to the principalities and powers.

We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety, the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience, and Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself.

This meant, inevitably, that the victory would have to be implemented in the same way, proceeding by the slow road of love rather than the quick road of sudden conquest. That is part of what the Sermon on the Mount was all about.