41 quotes
God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.
Discipleship (1937)
The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian.
Discipleship (1937)
Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.
Discipleship (1937)
The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.
Discipleship (1937)
Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.
Discipleship (1937)
The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.
Discipleship (1937)
Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.
Discipleship (1937)
Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil.
Discipleship (1937)
To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in.
Discipleship (1937)
Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it.
Discipleship (1937)
When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience.
Discipleship (1937)
The disciples realized that they too were his enemies, and that he had overcome them by his love. It is this that opens the disciple’s eyes, and enables him to see his enemy as a brother.
Discipleship (1937)
Jesus is no draughtsman of political blueprints, he is the one who vanquished evil through suffering. It looked as though evil had triumphed on the cross, but the real victory belonged to Jesus.
Discipleship (1937)
But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering.
Discipleship (1937)
By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love.
Discipleship (1937)
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which other are just as entitled to as we are.
Discipleship (1937)
Love for the sinner is ominously close to love of the sin. But the love of Christ for the sinner in itself is the condemnation of sin.
Discipleship (1937)
Once again, Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives?
Discipleship (1937)
Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved?
Discipleship (1937)
By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult.
Discipleship (1937)