149 Quotes About The Cross

To believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.

The cross is like a walnut whose outer rind is bitter, but the inner kernel is pleasant and invigorating. So the cross does not offer any charm of outward appearance, but to the cross-bearer its true character is revealed, and he finds in it the choicest sweets of spiritual peace.

The cross stands for definite realities which embody and express the leading characteristics of Christ's agony.

Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.

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

You shall by faith sustain yourself and comfort yourself in your Lord, and be strong in His power; for you are in the beaten and common way to heaven, when you are under our Lord's crosses. You have reason to rejoice in it, more than in a crown of gold; and rejoice and be glad to bear the reproaches of Christ.

The assurance of His total forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ means we don't have to play defensive games anymore. We don't have to rationalize and excuse our sins. We can call sin exactly what it is, regardless of how ugly and shameful it may be, because we know that Jesus bore that sin in His body on the cross.

But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

Christ bears the wounds of the church, his body, just as he bore the wounds of crucifixion. I sometimes wonder which have hurt worse.

There is a center to the Bible and its message of grace. It is found in Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected. Grace must therefore be preached in a way that is centered and focused on Jesus Christ Himself, never offering the benefits of the gospel without the Benefactor Himself.

Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.

As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Cross, we know our sins are forgiven ; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us.

Without this heart attitude it is exceedingly difficult for us to accept the circumcision of the flesh. Every affection, desire, thought, knowledge, intent, worship, and work of the flesh must go to the cross.

The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that I ever bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.

That strong self-assertive will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give myself over wholly to the Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if we do not give him any cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him have no building material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord to live out His life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live. Without reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do as He pleases with us.

If he but casts one longing glance it is sufficient to disclose to us that he does not truly recognize where the world stands in relation to the cross. Only after one is actually willing to offer his soul life to death will he be fit to follow the "Sermon on the Mount" without flinching.

Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross

If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it.

God walls the sea with sand. God clears the air with storms. God warms the earth with snow. He exalts us to heaven by the stumbling-block of the cross.

The moment you are redeemed through the atoning death of Christ upon the cross, you receive the Holy Spirit within your human spirit.

No cross, no crown!

The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

Look at Him at Gethsemane, sweating as it were great drops of blood; look at Him on the cross, crucified between two thieves; hear that piercing cry, "Father, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." And as you look into that face, as you look into those wounds on His feet or His hands, will you say He has not the power to save you? Will you say He has not the power so redeem you?

Historically, Pentecost followed Calvary; experientially, being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit follows the bearing of the cross.

If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them - if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it's going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim - and that is this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them.

Gospellers have much to say about what Christ's death accomplished for those who believe in Him, but very little is said about what that Death accomplished Godwards. The fact is that the death of Christ glorified God if never a single sinner had been saved by virtue of it.

What he needs is not increased spiritual teaching but an obedient heart which is willing to yield his life to the Holy Spirit and go the way of the cross according to the Spirit's command. Increased spiritual teaching will only strengthen his carnality and serve to deceive him into conceiving himself as spiritual.

The heart of Christ became like a reservoir in the midst of the mountains. All the tributary streams of iniquity, and every drop of the sins of his people, ran down and gathered into one vast lake, deep as hell and shoreless as eternity. All these met, as it were, in Christ's heart, and he endured them all.

In Christ alone, and His payment of the penalty for our sins upon the Cross, we find reconciliation to God and ultimate meaning and purpose.

We took our sins and drove them like nails through His hands and feet. We lifted Him high up on the cross of our transgressions, and then we pierced His heart through with the spear of our unbelief.

Weak Christians are afraid of the shadow of the cross.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

He that hath no cross deserves no crown.

We may not preach a crucified Savior without being also crucified men and women. It is not enough to wear an ornamental cross as a pretty decoration. The cross that Paul speaks about was burned into his very flesh, was branded into his being, and only the Holy Spirit can burn the true cross into our innermost life.

Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed his spear into the very heart of the God-man. What a hellish deed! But what was the next thing that took place? Blood covered the spear! Oh! thank God, the blood covers sin. There was the blood covering that spear-the very point of it. The very crowning act of sin brought out the crowning act of love; the crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act of grace.

The Gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.

Because the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, I have received forgiveness of sins; because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, I have received new life; because the Lord Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, I have received the outpoured Spirit. All is because of Him; nothing is because of me.

God makes crosses of great variety; He makes some of iron and lead, that look as if they must crush; some of straw, that seem so light, and yet are no less difficult to carry; some He makes of precious stones and gold, that dazzle the eye and excite the envy of spectators, but in reality are as well able to crucify as those which are so much dreaded.

In so obeying Christ as to disregard his natural affection, a believer's natural love suffers intensely. Such sorrow and pain becomes a practical cross to him. Deep are the heart wounds and many are the tears when one has to forfeit the one he loves.

Jesus Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace. Had not we need then provoke ourselves to duty?

In any trial, in any bitter situation, you are not alone, you are not helpless, you are not a victim. You have a tree, a cross, shown to you by the Sovereign God of Calvary. Whatever the trial or temptation, it is not more than you can bear. It is bearable. It can be handled. You can know as Joseph knew, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Genesis 50:20).

Sin must indeed be exceeding sinful, when the Father must needs give His only Son to be the sinner's Friend!

If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to come to us somehow, vaguely. We are not to hope for anything startling or mysterious. It is a definite opening along certain lines which are definitely marked by God, which begin at the Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him.

To be a follower of the Crucified Christ means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.

From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.

When you look at the Cross, what do you see? You see God's awesome faithfulness. Nothing - not even the instinct to spare His own Son - will turn him back from keeping His word.

The cross is the center of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.

Worry is the cross which we make for ourselves by over anxiety.

The cross grants us position, the Holy Spirit gives us experience.

Let us honor the blood of Jesus Christ every moment of our lives, and we will be sweet in our souls.

It is said that old Dr. Alexander, of Princeton College, when a young student used to start out to preach, always gave them a piece of advice. The old man would stand with his gray locks and his venerable face and say: "Young man, make much of the blood in your ministry? Now, I have traveled considerable during the past few years, and never met a minister who made much of the blood and much of the atonement but God had blessed his ministry, and souls were born into the light by it.

All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them.... But men's plans ignore the offence of the cross or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world.

It was not the volume of sin that sent Christ to the cross; it was the fact of sin.

Jesus defeated satan in Gethsemane on the cross, not by directly confronting the devil, but by fulfilling the destiny to which He had been called. The greatest battle that was ever won was accomplished by the apparent death of the victor, without even a word of rebuke to His adversary!

If thou bear the cross cheerfully, it will bear thee.

The purpose of Jesus' death was to glorify the Father. To be willing as the Son of God to suffer the loss of so much glory Himself in order to repair the injury done to God's glory by our sin showed how infinitely valuable the glory of God is. To be sure, the death of Christ also shows God's love for us. But we are not at the center.

Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.

The Cross is the ultimate evidence that there is no length the love of God will refuse to go in effecting reconciliation.

Christ bears the wounds of the church, his body, just as he bore the wounds of crucifixion. I sometimes wonder which have hurt worse.

Christ died to save this lost world; he did not come to destroy, maim or pour out wrath.

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

Sin to a believer is horrible, because it crucified the Saviour; he sees in every iniquity the nails and spear.

Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them.

Look to the cross, and hate your sin, for sin nailed your Well Beloved to the tree. Look up to the cross, and you will kill sin, for the strength of Jesus' love will make you strong to put down your tendencies to sin.

To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.

If Christ had not gone to the cross and suffered in our stead, the just for the unjust, there would not have been a spark of hope for us. There would have been a mighty gulf between ourselves and God, which no man ever could have passed.

"Out, damned spot!" That is the true cry of human nature. That stain cannot be removed without blood and that which is infinitely more, and deeper, and profounder, and more terrible than blood, of which blood is but the symbol - the suffering of Deity.

If Christ thought the soul was worth the shedding of His blood, well may we think it worth spending our sweat.

Unless self love is abandoned the believer shall forever shrink back when called actually to take up the cross for Christ.

Believe in Him and not trust in Him? You might as well say the Jews did love Him when they nailed Him to the cross.

Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book.

Let us gaze upon our Lord Jesus Who "endured the cross, despising the shame." The race set before us is none other than that of His despising the shame and enduring the cross.

Can we wish, if it were possible, to walk in a path strewed with flowers when His was strewed with thorns?

Gaining spiritual life is conditional on suffering loss. We cannot measure our lives in terms of "gain"; they must be measured in terms of "loss." Our real capacity lies not in how much we retain but in how much has been poured out. The power of love is attested by love's sacrifice. If our hearts are not separated from the love of the world, our soul life has yet to go through the cross.

To achieve the divine purpose of becoming the Savior, the divine glory needed to be veiled. Christ voluntarily, moment by moment, submitted to human limitations apart from sin. The humiliation was temporary. The incarnation was everlasting.

Such was God's original love for man that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Savior was the mere expression of that love.

It is tragic for our God, Who gave us His Son to die on the cross, to beg us to love Him.

There is an infinite distance between God and His creatures, and it is an act of sheer grace for Him to take notice of earthly things. Christ, as God, is completely self-sufficient in His own eternal blessedness. How great, then, is the glory of His self-humiliation in taking our nature that He might bring us to God! Such humiliation was not forced on Him; He freely chose to do it.

God saw in the cross of His Son the only door by which he could enter to give blessing to sinners.

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

There is no man that goeth to heaven but he must go by the cross. The cross is the standing way-mark which all they that go to glory must pass by.

We must never forget - if we are to grow in grace, and therefore grow like Christ - that the One we trust, love, and serve is a crucified Savior. To follow Him means taking up the cross, as well as denying ourselves. It means a crucified life.

The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled... It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.

The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.

Such was God's original love for man that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Savior was the mere expression of that love.

That cross has separated me from the world that crucified my Lord, just as much as if His body were now on the cross, marred and wounded by the world.

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

Source: The Jesus I Never Knew

God makes appointments with us in our disappointments. To see the pattern we must take three steps involving the heart, the mind, and the cross.

If we verily bear the cross we shall be neither controlled nor influenced by soulical affection but shall be fit to love in the power of the Holy Spirit. Even so did the Lord Jesus love His family while on earth.

The cross is not a mere event in history; it's a way of life! Take up your cross DAILY, Jesus said!

The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself: the greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all.

I have had to make a cross of two logs, and lie down on it, to show the Indians what it means to crucify a man.

Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

The deep undertone of the world is sadness - a solemn bass, occurring at measured intervals and heard through all other tones. Ultimately, all the strains of this world's music resolve themselves into that tone; and I believe that, rightly felt, the cross, and the cross alone, interprets the mournful mystery of life, the sorrow of the Highest - the Lord of Life, the result of error and sin, but ultimately remedial, purifying and exalting.

There is no mystery in heaven or earth so great as this - a suffering Deity, an almighty Savior nailed to a Cross.

Do not be taken in or flattered by your own success or fame. Take not only as to whether or not the old creation, including everything which comes by birth, has gone through the cross.