Quotes about Christian

It is one thing to create a countercultural community or a Christian subculture, but it is a much more difficult thing to live as an incarnational-missional communitas in the midst of a culture and not be bound by its dictates and decrees: to be in it, not of it, but not out of it either.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner.

They get married, but their marriage will look quite different from marriage as the world understands it. Christian marriage will be undertaken "in the Lord" (I Cor. 7.39). It will be sanctified in the service of the Body of Christ and in the discipline of prayer and self-control (I Cor. 7.5). It will be a parable of the self-sacrificing love of Christ for his Church. It will even be itself a part of the Body of Christ, a Church in miniature (Eph. 5.32).

One who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian.

The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire. The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.

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.