John (First Century)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.—John 1:1–5

Council Of Nicea (325)

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made: who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead: whose kingdom shall have no end.—The Nicene Creed.

Selected by Peter Beyerhaus

Augustine (354–430)

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.—Confessions.

Selected by David Kucharsky

John Milton(1608–74)

This is the month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the son of heaven’s eternal king,

Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing,

That he our deadly forfeit should release,

And with his father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith he wont at heaven’s high council-table,

To sit the midst of trinal unity,

He laid aside, and here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

—“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.”

Selected by Thomas Howard

Jeremy Taylor(1613–67)

He died not by a single or sudden death, but He was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world; for He was massacred in Abel; He was tossed upon the sea in Noah; it was He that went out of his country when Abraham was called from Charran, and wandered from his native soil; He was offered up in Isaac, persecuted in Jacob, betrayed in Joseph, blinded in Samson, affronted in Moses, sawed in Isaiah, imprisoned with Jeremiah. His Passion continued after His resurrection, for it is He that endures the contradiction of sinners, and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of His servants, and sins and defiances of rebels and apostates and renegades and tyrants. He is stoned in Stephen, flayed in Bartholomew, roasted in Lawrence, exposed to lions in Ignatius, burnt in Polycarp, frozen in the lake where stood the forty martyrs of Cappadocia. The sacrament of Christ’s death cannot be accomplished, said Hilary, but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity.

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Selected by J. D. Douglas

John Banyan(1628–88)

Mr. Stand-fast: “I see myself now at the end of my Journey, my toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with Thorns, and that Face that was spit upon for me.

I have formerly lived by Hear-say and Faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with him in whose Company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his Shoe in the Earth, there I have coveted to set my Foot too. His Name has been to me as a Civet-box, yea, sweeter than all Perfumes. His Voice to me has been most sweet, and his Countenance I have more desired than they that have most desired the Light of the Sun. His Word I did use to gather for my Food, and for Antidotes against my Faintings. He has held me, and I have kept me from mine iniquities, yea, my Steps he hath strengthened.”

Now while he was thus in Discourse, his Countenance changed, his strong man bowed under him … and he ceased to be seen of them.—Pilgrim’s Progress.

Selected by Calvin D. Linton

Frederic W. Farrar(1831–1903)

But while even the unbeliever must see what the life and death of Jesus have effected in the world, to the believer that life and death are something deeper still; to him they are nothing less than a resurrection from the dead. He sees in the cross of Christ something which far transcends its historical significance. He sees in it the fulfillment of all prophecy as well as the consummation of all history; he sees in it the explanation of the mystery of birth, and the conquest over the mystery of the grave. In that Life he finds a perfect example; in that Death an infinite redemption. As he contemplates the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, he no longer feels that God is far away, and that this earth is but a disregarded speck in the infinite azure, and he himself but an insignificant atom chance-thrown amid the thousand million living souls of an innumerable race, but he exclaims in faith and hope and love, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; yea, He will be their God, and they shall be His people.” “Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”—The Life of Christ.

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Selected by Edwin Yamauchi

James Orr(1844–1913)

Christianity is … distinctively a religion of Redemption—a great Divine economy for the recovery of men from the guilt and power of sin—from a state of estrangement and hostility to God—to a state of holiness and blessedness in the favour of God, and of fitness for the attainment of their true destination.… We may, therefore, set aside at once as alien to the true Christian view, or at least as inadequate and defective, all such representations of Christianity as see in its Founder only a great religious teacher and preacher of righteousness; or a great religious and social reformer, such as has often appeared in the history of the world; or a great philanthropist, caring for the bodies and souls of men; or one whose main business it was to inoculate men with a new “enthusiasm for humanity”; or a teacher with a new ethical secret to impart to mankind; or even such representations as see in Him only a new spiritual Head of humanity, whose work it is to complete the old creation, and lift the race to a higher platform of spiritual attainment, or help it a stage further onwards to the goal of its perfection. Christ is all this, but He is infinitely more. God’s end in His creation indeed stands, as also His purpose to realize it; but, under the conditions in which humanity exists, that end can only be realized through a Redemption, and it is this Redemption which Christ pre-eminently came into the world to effect.—The Christian View of God and the World.

Selected by Cart F. H. Henry

Ian Maclaren(1850–1907)

Three years or less was the measure of Jesus’ public career, from the day the Baptist declared Him the Lamb of God spoken of by ancient prophecy, to the day when He was offered on the cross as the Passover Lamb according to the prophets. He was born of a nation which had been scattered and peeled—without a king, without liberty, without a voice; a nation suspected, discredited, hated. The son of a peasant mother, he was a carpenter by trade, and a poor man all His days; as soon as He became known to His people He was persecuted, and in the end condemned to death as a blasphemer. He lived all His days in an obscure province of the Roman empire, about the size of the principality of Wales or the state of New Jersey in the American Union, and was careful not to pass beyond its borders. During His ministry He never wrote a word, and He left no book behind Him; He had no office, no standing, no sword. Was there ever a life so lowly, was there ever one so helpless, as that of Jesus? One had expected that He would hardly have been noticed in His own day, and one had been certain that beyond it none would ever hear His name. With Jesus it is the unexpected which ever happens, and this obscure Man agitated society in His own time as when a great ship passes through a quiet land-locked bay, so that to this day the swell can be felt in the Gospels. No sooner was He born than wise men from the East came to worship Him and Herod at His own door sent soldiers to murder Him. His own family was divided over Him—His mother, with some fears and doubts, clinging to Him, His brothers refusing to believe in Him. When he had preached for the first time in the synagogue of Nazareth, where He had lived from infancy and every one knew Him, His neighbours were first amazed at His grace, and then in a sudden fury would have flung Him down a precipice. The Council of the nation was divided about Him, certain leaning to His side, and others declaring that no prophet could come out of Galilee; and the people were torn in twain, so many holding that Jesus was a good man, so many that He was a deceiver. If a family was rent in those days, you might be sure Jesus was the cause; and if two people argued in a heat at the corner of a street, the contention would be Jesus. A Roman judge condemned Him, but not before his own wife had interceded for Him; if Roman soldiers nailed Him to the Cross, a Roman officer bore witness to His righteousness; and if the thief crucified on one side insulted Jesus, the thief on the other side believed in Him. None could be neutral, none could disregard Him.—The Life of the Master.

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Selected by John Warwick Montgomery

P. T. Forsyth(1848–1921)

The world finds its consummation not in finding itself but in finding its Master; not in coming to its true self but in meeting its true Lord and Saviour; not in overcoming but in being overcome. We are more than conquerors: we are redeemed.

That is the Word of the Christian Gospel. The great Word of Gospel is not God is love. That is too stationary, too little energetic. It produces a religion unable to cope with crises. But the Word is this—Love is omnipotent for ever because it is holy. That is the voice of Christ—raised from the midst of time, and its chaos, and its convulsions, yet coming from the depths of eternity, where the Son dwells in the bosom of the Father, the Son to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth because He overcame the world in a Cross holier than love itself, more tragic, more solemn, more dynamic than all earth’s wars. The key to history is the historic Christ above history and in command of it, and there is no other.—The Justification of God.

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Selected by Leon Morris

C. S. Lewis(1898–1963)

The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.—From Mere Christianity.

Selected by Cheryl Forbes

A. E. Whitham

If you knew that there was One greater than yourself, who knows you better than you can know yourself, and loves you better than you can love self, who can make you all you ought to be, steadier than your squally nature, able to save you from squandering your glorious life, who searches you beyond the standards of earth; … if He were a youthful God who would understand you because He is ever young, yet with the wealth of the ages and eternities so that you would be always learning and never exhausting the store; One who gathered into Himself all great and good things and causes, blending in His beauty all the enduring color of life, who could turn your dreams into visions, and make real the things you hoped were true; and if that One had ever done one unmistakable thing to prove, even at the price of blood—His own blood—that you could come to Him, and having failed come again, would you not fall at His feet with the treasure of your years, your powers, service and love? And is there not One such, and does He not call you from His cross to His cross? Is there any excuse of divided churches, inconsistent Christians or intellectual difficulty that can withstand His steady inviting gaze?—Original source unknown; quoted in The Man in the Mirror by Alexander Miller.

Selected by Sherwood E. Wirt

Malcolm Muggeridge(1903–)

With the Incarnation came the Man, and the addition of a new spiritual dimension to the cosmic scene. The universe provides a stage; Jesus is the play.—Jesus: The Man Who Lives.

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