Quotes about crucifixion

Criss Jami -

The legions who attempt to love without Christ, without a new heart, are indeed able to love amongst themselves; however this love is made possible by restraining any anger or hatred deep within the old heart, only to release it all on whichever village idiot(s) they collectively feel a crucifixion would be justified.

Hans Urs von Balthasar - Unless You Become Like This Child

It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.

Lenny Bruce -

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Maybe I don’t have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God’s beginning.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

A god of the ‘possible’ is no God.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God?

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Easter is the invulnerable tale of utter selflessness where at an inestimable cost God did for us what He did not need done for Himself. And that kind of ‘doing’ happens every day.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

If God has the answer to every question, maybe my appreciation for God should be shaped more by the number of questions and less by the wisdom of the answers.

Adelaide Crapsey - Verse by Adelaide Crapsey

And the centurion who stood by said: Truly this was a son of God. Not long ago but everywhere I go There is a hill and a black windy sky. Portent of hill, sky, day's eclipse I know; Hill, sky, the shuddering darkness, these am I. The dying at His right hand, at His left, I am - the thief redeemed and the lost thief; I am the careless folk; I those bereft, The Well-Belov'd, the women bowed in grief. The gathering Presence that in terror cried, In earth's shock in the Temple's veil rent through, I

Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

In allowing the crucifixion to take place, God did the world an incalculable favor. Though infinitely powerful, compassionate, and wise, he could think of no other way to reprieve humanity from punishment for its sins (in particular, for the sin of being descended from a couple who had disobeyed him) than to allow an innocent man (his son no less) to be impaled through the limbs and slowly suffocate in agony. By acknowledging that this sadistic murder was a gift of divine mercy, people could ear

Arthur C. McGill - Dying Unto Life

Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my

Malak El Halabi -

You have the body of a god and the smile of a demon. I walk towards you, barefoot, a believer walking a religious path. I wrap my arms around your neck, a priest hugging his crucifix. I offer you my all. Burn me like incense. Let's make all the church bells in hell ring just for us.

Carlo Michelstaedter - Persuasion and Rhetoric

You do not carry the cross. Instead you are all crucified on the timber of your sufficiency, which is given to you, the more you insist, the more you bleed: it suits you to say you carry the cross like a sacred duty, whereas you are heavy with the weight of your necessities. Have the courage not to admit those necessities and lift yourselves up for your own sakes.

John Steinbeck - East of Eden

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

Charles Williams -

Our crucifixes exhibit the pain, but they veil, perhaps necessarily, the obscenity: but the death of the God-Man was both.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.

Charles R. Swindoll -

[Jesus] tilted His head back, pulled up one last time to draw breath and cried, "Tetelestai!" It was a Greek expression most everyone present would have understood. It was an accounting term. Archaeologists have found papyrus tax receipts with "Tetelestai" written across them, meaning "paid in full." With Jesus' last breath on the cross, He declared the debt of sin cancelled, completely satisfied. Nothing else required. Not good deeds. Not generous donations. Not penance or confession or baptism

Jake Jesser -

How do you give something away with the knowledge that you will get it back in three days, and then claim it to be the 'Ultimate Sacrifice'?

Frederick Buechner - The Magnificent Defeat

Our father. We have killed him, and we will kill him again, and our world will kill him. And yet he is there. It is he who listens at the door. It is he who is coming. It is our father who is about to be born. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty - Heart and Soul

There is no sobornost without crucifixion, because it is through pain that one acquires that deep knowledge that has nothing to do with books and education… that deep knowledge that is given by God and by God alone that builds the foundation of unity. People thus united are transparent, and it is in those depths that one finds, I repeat, the foundation of sobornost… of unity.

Anthony Liccione -

Unto the Cross came death, and unto death came the Cross.

Joyce Rachelle - Sewing Figs

And with the Savior's passing came Satan's sure defeatChrist whispered, "It is finished," for payment was complete.I could not earn salvation, it's been dispensed for freeAnd mercy's gates would open, as He has died for me.

Unarine Ramaru -

Practice mercy and forgiveness throughout as a lesson that symbolizes the love shown through his crucifixion.

Teresa of Ávila -

Reflect carefully on this, for it is so important that I can hardly lay too much stress on it. Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be of much importance to you.

Aaron Riches - Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ

The specific sufferings of Jesus do not amount to redemption: rather, redemption is wrought through the uniqueness of the person who suffered and the perfect charity for which, in which and by which he suffered. The uniqueness of the suffering of Christ, then, lies in the pro knobs, which is bound to the freedom through which the Son endures “every human suffering” on account of love. To say that Jesus endured “every human suffering” does not mean that he specifically suffered every thing that e

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

What would behoove me to instantly declare God not to be God unless He followed my script in some tediously exacting manner? I must confess that I am less likely to believe that it’s a matter of some narcissistic demand that I freely pen my own script. Rather, I think it’s fear that I’m too inadequate to follow God’s.

Israelmore Ayivor - The Great Hand Book of Quotes

His crucifixion is the key His resurrection is the door... it is only by his death that we have the mandate to enter into the gates of eternal life. His doors are open always. Christ is king!

Andrew Murray - Jesus Himself

A dead Christ I must do everything for a living Christ does everything for me.

W.H. Auden -

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.

Joe Schreiber - The Unholy Cause

Like crucifixions and pornography, it never got old.

David H. Keller -

Crossing the meadow, he came again to the mouth of the cave where he had stood so undecided only the twilight before. Knowing what he would find, he yet wanted the final confirmation. Pushing the evergreen branches aside from the smooth rock on the right side of the opening he found, deeply carved in the rock, an Ankh, Egyptian symbol of ever-lasting life, made possible only by the union of male and female. Partly covered by lichens, weather-worn by centuries of storm, it remained as he had seen

C.S. Lewis -

The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.

William H. Willimon - Thank God It's Friday: Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross

Despite our earnest efforts, we couldn't climb all the way up to God. So what did God do? In an amazing act of condescension, on Good Friday, God climbed down to us, became one with us. The story of divine condescension begins on Christmas and ends on Good Friday. We thought, if there is to be business between us and God, we must somehow get up to God. Then God came down, down to the level of the cross, all the way down to the depths of hell. He who knew not sin took on our sin so that we might

René Girard - Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre

My hypothesis is mimetic: because humans imitate one another more than animals, they have had to find a means of dealing with contagious similarity, which could lead to the pure and simple disappearance of their society. The mechanism that reintroduces difference into a situation in which everyone has come to resemble everyone else is sacrifice. Humanity results from sacrifice; we are thus the children of religion. What I call after Freud the founding murder, in other words, the immolation of a

William Faulkner -

Pleasure, ecstasy, they cannot seem to bear: their escape from it is in violence, in drinking and fighting and apparently inescapable----And so why should not their religion drive them to crucifixion of themselves and one another? he thinks.

Marina Nemat - After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed

I have tried to understand what crucifixion must feel like. I just know that the pain must be beyond what I have ever experienced. I respect, love, and trust the One who endured all this when He didn't have to. I understand Jesus with my heart, and the rest of the world can think of Him as it will.

Samuel Rutherford - His Lovelyne

We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ’s cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

N.T. Wright - The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

On the seventh day God rested in the darkness of the tomb;Having finished on the sixth day all his work of joy and doom.Now the Word had fallen silent, and the water had run dry,The bread had all been scattered, and the light had left the sky.The flock had lost its shepherd, and the seed was sadly sown,The courtiers had betrayed their king, and nailed him to his throne.O Sabbath rest by Calvary, O calm of tomb below,Where the grave-clothes and the spices cradle him we do not know!Rest you well,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Cost of Discipleship

The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed; in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil 3.10, Rom 6.4) The Christian life is a life of crucifixion (Gal 2.19) In baptism the form of Christ's death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them (Gal 6.14). Anybody living

H. Rider Haggard -

So they crucified their Messiah? Well can I believe it. That He was a Son of the Living Spirit would be naught to them, if indeed He was so.... They would care little for any God if he came not with pomp and power.

Ricky Maye - Barefoot Christianity

Jesus didn’t die to save me from God. Jesus died to save me from myself.

David G. McAfee - Disproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings

Because of Jesus’ supposed predestination, God would have had to choose the people who would kill and betray his son, choose the method by which he would be killed (crucifixion), and the time at which the event would occur. Those guilty of killing Jesus would therefore be simply carrying out God’s wishes without the free will to have chosen a path for themselves.

Twe Stephens - The Universes of God: The Chronicles of the Angels

Intellectualism is a poor master over passion

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

I am wholly deserving of all the consequences that I will in fact never receive simply because God unashamedly stepped in front of me on the cross, unflinchingly spread His arms so as to completely shield me from the retribution that was mine to bear, and repeatedly took the blows. And I stand entirely unwounded, utterly lost in the fact that the while His body was pummeled and bloodied to death by that which was meant for me and me alone, I have not a scratch.

Craig D. Lounsbrough - An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus

The cross unerringly exposes this stunningly marvelous and abruptly exquisite declaration that God will not let this single life of mine, with all of its grotesque maladies and pathetic filth pass into oblivion without unflinchingly declaring that my life carries a value worth the expenditure of His. And if I dare look upon the cross, I am utterly perplexed but wholly enraptured by the immensity of such a love as this.

Hans Urs von Balthasar - Love Alone is Credible

Instead, it is the reality that the God-forsaken one experienced in an eminent way because no one can even approximately experience the abandonment by God as horribly as the Son, who shares the same essence with the Father for all eternity.

Augustine of Hippo -

The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross. But his deformity is our comeliness. In this life, therefore, let us hold fast to the deformed Christ.

Reza Aslan -

Among Romans, crucifixion originated as a deterrence against revolt of slaves, probably as early as 200 B.C.E. By Jesus's time, it was the primary form of punishment for "inciting rebellion" (i.e., treason or sedition) the exact crime which Jesus was charged.[..] The punishment applied solely to non-Roman citizens. Roman citizens could be crucified, however, if the crime was so grave that it essentially forfeited their citizenship.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon -

They bewailed innocence maltreated, goodness persecuted, love bleeding, meekness about to die; but my heart has a deeper and more bitter cause to mourn. My sins were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorn those bleeding brows: my sins cried “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and laid the cross upon His gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity: but my having been His murderer, is more, infinitely more, grief than one poor foun