God Is on the Cross

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

The price of freedom is responsibility, but it’s a bargain, because freedom is priceless.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

The cross is not accidental but necessary suffering.

Prayer can never be a conjuring up of God… It is neither the formula nor the number of words but faith that reaches God in His fatherly heart.

Only in the complete dedication of one’s own life to other people is there vicarious living and responsibility.

God leaves human beings alone in temptation. . . . What must remain incomprehensible to all human, ethical, and religious thought is that in temptation God does not reveal himself as the one who is gracious and near.

As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.