Inspiring Quotes about JESUS
Adrian Plass, The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass. Canterbury, 1987, pp. 102-103:
‘He was a nuisance then,’ said Braddock, ‘and he’s a nuisance now. He won’t let you work out cosy little systems and call ‘em “churches”, and he won’t let you get away with having four meetings a week to discuss what you’re going to do in next week’s meetings. If that’s what you want, you’ll find Jesus a real pain in the neck. He says awkward, difficult things, like “Love your enemies”, and “Invite the people who really need it to dinner”, and “Love God before anything else”. He’s terrible like that. They couldn’t pin him down then, and you can’t pin him down now, but I’ll tell you something … if you want to pay the cost, there’s no one else worth following, and nothing else worth doing!’
Larry Lea in C. Peter Wagner, Territorial Spirits. Sovereign World, 1991, p. 84:
Jesus was controversial. Not just a little. Not just occasionally. He was thoroughly, persistently controversial throughout most of His ministry.
Folks today who think they will follow Jesus, say the things He said, and do the things He did without encountering opposition are in for a rude awakening. Jesus was controversial in His day, and we who express His life and His teachings will be controversial today as well. Jesus even said so. He said to His apostles, ‘If they treat the master of the house as if he’s the devil, how do you think they’ll treat you?’
John Stott, Christ the Controversialist. Tyndale, 1970, p. 49:
The popular image of Christ as ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ simply will not do. It is a false image. To be sure, He was full of love, compassion and tenderness. But He was also uninhibited in exposing error and denouncing sin, especially hypocrisy. Christ was a controversialist. The Evangelists portray Him as constantly debating with the leaders of contemporary Judaism.
Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew. Hodder & Stoughton, 1965, pp. 90, 94:
In the beginning, Christianity was anything but a respectable creed. Its founder moved among the outcasts of society – among the prostitutes, racial minorities, political traitors, misfits, vagrants, and thieves; among “the hungry, the naked, the homeless and the prisoner.” He himself was considered a religious heretic and a traitor to his nation, an enemy of the status quo, a man who broke the Sabbath, a dangerous radical, a disturber and a malcontent who fought the establishment and whose constant companions were the sort of people who are to be found in the skid-row areas of the big cities. When he stood trial, there was an element of truth in the charge under which he was found guilty: “He stirs up the people.”
It has been said, with truth (and by a Christian minister), that none of the twelve apostles would feel at home today in a modern church. Nor is it likely that a modern church would welcome the kind of people with whom its founder associated…
Philip Yancey. 1995. The Jesus I Never Knew. Sydney: Strand, pp. 22-23.
What would it have been like to hang on the edges of the crowd? How would I have responded to this man? Would I have invited him over for dinner like Zacchaeus? Turned away in sadness, like the rich young ruler? Betrayed him, like Judas and Peter?
Jesus, I found, bore little resemblance to the figure I had met in Sunday school, and was remarkably unlike the person I had studied in Bible college. For one thing, he was far less tame. In my prior image, I realized, Jesus’ personality matched that of a Star Trek Vulcan: he remained calm, cool, and collected as he strode like a robot among excitable human beings on spaceship earth. That is not what I found portrayed in the Gospels and in the better films. Other people affected Jesus deeply: obstinacy frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him. Indeed, he seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less. More passionate, not less.
The more I studied Jesus, the more difficult it became to pigeonhole him. He said little about the Roman occupation, the main topic of conversation among his countrymen, and yet he took up a whip to drive petty profiteers from the Jewish temple. He urged obedience to the Mosaic law while acquiring the reputation as a lawbreaker. He could be stabbed by sympathy for a stranger, yet turn on his best friend with the flinty rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” He had uncompromising views on rich men and loose women, yet both types enjoyed his company.
His extravagant claims about himself kept him at the centre of controversy, but when he did something truly miraculous he tended to hush it up. As Waiter Wink has said, if Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.
Two words one could never think of applying to the Jesus of the Gospels: boring and predictable. How is it, then, that the church has tamed such a character – has, in Dorothy Sayers’ words, “very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies”?
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