In many respects I find an unresurrected Jesus easier to accept. Easter makes him dangerous. Because of Easter I have to listen to his extravagant claims and can no longer pick and choose from his sayings. Moreover, Easter means he must be loose out there somewhere.

All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass -- Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Christ is not valued at all unless he be valued above all.

A man who can read the New Testament and not see that Christ claims to be more than a man, can look all over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not see the sun.

Jesus Christ demands more complete allegiance than any dictator who ever lived. The difference is, He has a right to it.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool; you can spit at him and kill him for a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

God is not a sadist who hopes his creatures are miserable. Jesus was so fond of dinner parties that his detractors called him "a glutton and a drunkard" (Luke 7:34). Jesus turned water into wine to keep a party going.

Carols stir us. Holy words inspire us. The golden glow from the manger warms us. A little religion at Christmas is fine. But that glow in the manger comes from the Light of the world. It exposes evil and either redeems it or destroys it. The babe in the manger is far more than an object for sentimental sighs. He is the Son of God who must be accepted as ruler - or confronted as rival.

Jesus cannot be our Saviour unless his first our Lord.

God had one Son without sin; but He has no son without temptation.

O what is He providing for me? What entertainment with Him shall I shortly find? Not such as He found with man, when He came to seek us. It is not a manger, a crown of thorns, a cross, that He is preparing for me: when I have had my part of these in following Him. I shall have my place in the glorious Jerusalem.

No matter how far back we may press our researches into the roots of the gospel story, no matter how we classify the gospel material, we never arrive at a non-supernatural Jesus.

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires; but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.

Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.

If Shakespeare should come into this room, we would all rise; but if Jesus Christ should come in, we would all kneel.

The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared.

Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death. God is Jesus.

Christ was willing to suffer and be despised, and darest thou complain of anything?

Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything -- they have changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything.

God had only one Son, and he was a missionary and a physician.

As Christ is the end of the Law and the Gospel and has within himself all the treasures of wisdom and understanding, so also is he the mark at which all heretics aim and direct their arrows.

There are many in the Church as well as out of it who need to learn that Christianity is neither creed nor a ceremonial, but a life vitaly connected with a loving Christ.

Christ will remain a priest and king, though He was never consecrated by any papist bishop or greased by any of those shavelings; but He was ordained and consecrated by God Himself, and by Him annointed.

It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men.

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet, distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.

When Christ came into my life, I came about like a well handled ship.

...what God has done in Christ exhausts all that God has to do for us.

Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.

Tolerance is, no doubt, a virtue without which none of us can live; but we must, nevertheless, at least understand that it is, strictly speaking, destructive of fellowship, for it is a gesture by which the divine disturbance is rejected. The ONE in whom we are veritably united is Himself the great intolerance. He willeth to rule, to be victorious, to be - everything. He it is who disturbs every family gathering, every scheme for the reunion of Christendom, every human co-peration. And He disturbs, because He is the Peace that is above every estrangement and cleavage and faction.

The heaviest end of the cross lies ever on His shoulders. If He bids us carry a burden, He carries it also.

When we would consider the love of God in Christ, we are as one approaching the ocean: he casts a glance on the surface, but the depths he cannot sound.

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved.

A God on the cross! That is all my theology.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and beautiful; but I never read in either of them: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden."

The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake.

In his own lifetime Jesus made no impact on history. This is something that I cannot but regard as a special dispensation on God's part, and, I like to think, yet another example of the ironical humour which informs so many of His purposes.

If Christ seldom makes offers without demands, He also seldom makes demands without offers. He offers His strength to enable us to meet His demands. What Christ Thinks of the Church: An Exposition of Revelation 1 - 3 (Grand Rapids, Baker: 2003) 43