Quotes about Christ

Begin with Christ. He came down to earth, lived among men, suffered, was crucified, and then He died, standing clearly before us, so that our hearts and eyes may fasten upon Him. Thus we shall be kept from climbing into heaven in a curious and futile search after the nature of God.

In everything we do or experience we should have a happy heart and know that for Christ's sake we are in grace and that everything we do pleases God, even the fact that out of the needs of the body we eat and drink and do our work.

The gospel also is not a law book that contains many good teachings, as has been thought in the past. It doesn't tell us to do good works to become virtuous but announces God's grace to us, given freely and without our merit. It tells us how Christ stood as our representative. He paid for our sins and wiped them out so that we can become faithful and blessed through his work.

we shouldn't attribute the power of justification to something formed in us that makes us pleasing to God. We must attribute it to faith, which takes hold of Christ the Savior and keeps him in our hearts. This faith justifies us apart from love and prior to love. We concede that we must also teach about good works and love. But we only teach these at the proper time and place—when the question deals with how we should live, not how we are justified.

For the world does not discern what faith is and what power faith has, such a hidden and unknown thing is faith to reason. According to the statement of Christ (cf. John 14:17), "The world cannot receive the Holy Spirit"; it neither sees nor hears nor perceives Him by any sense.

Whenever you are being praised, remember it is not you who is being praised but Christ, to whom all praise belongs.

We despise the grace of God when we observe the Law for the purpose of being justified. The Law is good, holy, and profitable, but it does not justify. To keep the Law in order to be justified means to reject grace, to deny Christ, to despise His sacrifice, and to be lost.

So also in the terrors of sin and death, I do not exchange death with life, and Christ with the devil, although in the midst of temptation it seems like this.

So the salvation of Christ is called "salvations" and "mercies" (cf. Ps. 28:8; 17:7; 25:6), because it saves many and ascribes a manifold salvation to all.

Therefore, beware of such misleading, shameful, and deceptive prattle, which represents Christ solely as a Teacher of works, as though He had taught and showed us nothing but proper conduct and behavior. In that capacity He could not be called the Way; then He would be no more than a cross or a votive picture on the wayside. This indeed directs the wayfarer correctly, but it itself does not bear him along.

The vicious character of sin is brought out by the words "who gave himself for our sins." So vicious is sin that only the sacrifice of Christ could atone for sin.

Let us seek the sprinkling of the Spirit and the inward washing which Peter (1 Peter 1:2) calls "sprinkling with Christ's blood," by which all of us who hear and believe the Gospel of Christ are cleansed.