Quotes about Christian

Justification is the means whereby we appropriate the saving act of God in the past, and sanctification the promise of God's activity in the present and future... Justification is primarily concerned with the relation between man and the law of God, sanctification with the Christian's separation from the world until the second coming of Christ... Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification is his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ.

In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a "worldly" into a "spiritual" "realm." The practice of the Christian life can be learned only under these four mandates of God.

The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.

This makes it clear that intercession is also a daily service we owe to God and our brother. He who denies his neighbour the service of praying for him denies him the service of a Christian. It is clear, furthermore, that intercession is not general and vague but very concrete: a matter of definite persons and definite difficulties and therefore of definite petitions. The more definite my intercession becomes, the more promising it is.

Only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means—even criminal—to force the victory of their cause.

If I should still be kept in this hole over Christmas, don't worry about it. I'm not really anxious about it. One can keep Christmas as a Christian even in prison - more easily than family occasions, anyhow.

Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christianity community.

self-denial is a necessary aspect of a Christian life; that the cross is central to human understanding; and that, without the atonement, every one of us would stand forever in the role of Judas.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial. Christ is the Lord even of marriage.

Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be.

The Roman church's unmistakable claim is that there is only one church and only one faith and that Christendom needs a visible head, a chief shepherd, to guide the church and to care for the faithful with fatherly care. The longing for a lost Western empire, longing for the corpus christianum in which emperor and pope together are guardians of the unity of the Christian West, cannot fade away as long as there is a papacy.

The existence of any Christian communal life essentially depends on whether or not it succeeds at the right time in promoting the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God's reality, between spiritual and emotional community.