Quotes about Sacrifice

In Christian theology it is God who deals with evil, and he does this on the cross.

For John, the cross reveals God's glory; for Paul, God's "righteousness"; for both, God's love.

Now the thing about Passover — one of the things about Passover! — is that when Israel was enslaved in Egypt nobody ever said it was as a result of their sin.

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook of our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is much, much more.

This is how the cross establishes God's kingdom: by bearing and so removing the weight of sin and death.

In whatever way the New Testament tells the story of the cross, it is always the story of self-giving divine love.

To be baptized was therefore to die and rise with Jesus, to leave behind the old life and to be reborn into the new one.

The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Bible" and its own great narrative. We are not at liberty to replace this with narratives of our own.

Because of the cross, the world as a whole is free to give allegiance to the God who made it.

Jesus's way of life is the path of self-giving love

When Jesus calls, he certainly does demand everything, but only because he has already given everything himself, and has plans in store, for us and the world, that we would never have dreamed of.

How, then, can the Temple be cleansed so that humans, with the polluting smell of death upon them, can nevertheless come into God's Presence? The answer supplied by the levitical rituals is that the sacrificial blood is the sign of God-given life, a life more powerful than death, a life therefore that purifies both sanctuary and worshipper.