Inspirational Quotes on Crucifixion

“A dead Christ I must do everything for; a living Christ does everything for me.”

“[Jesus] tilted His head back, pulled up one last time to draw breath and cried, "Tetelestai!" It was a Greek expression most everyone present would have understood. It was an accounting term. Archaeologists have found papyrus tax receipts with "Tetelestai" written across them, meaning "paid in full." With Jesus' last breath on the cross, He declared the debt of sin cancelled, completely satisfied. Nothing else required. Not good deeds. Not generous donations. Not penance or confession or baptism or...or...or...nothing. The penalty for sin is death, and we were all born hopelessly in debt. He paid our debt in full by giving His life so that we might live forever.”

“The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed; in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil 3.10, Rom 6.4) The Christian life is a life of crucifixion (Gal 2.19) In baptism the form of Christ's death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them (Gal 6.14). Anybody living in the strength of Christ's baptism lives in the strength of Christ's death.”

“Our father. We have killed him, and we will kill him again, and our world will kill him. And yet he is there. It is he who listens at the door. It is he who is coming. It is our father who is about to be born. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Remember only that I smiled. I do not atone-nor sacrifice-nor wish for glory; and I have nothing to forgive. I thirsted-and I besought you to give me my blood to drink. For what is there can quench a madman’s thirst but his own blood? I was dumb-and I asked wounds of you for mouths. I was imprisoned in your days and nights-and I sought a door into larger days and nights. And now I go-as others already crucified have gone. And think not we are weary of crucifixion. For we must be crucified by larger and yet larger men, between greater earths and greater heavens.”

“The deformity of Christ forms you. If he had not willed to be deformed, you would not have recovered the form which you had lost. Therefore he was deformed when he hung on the cross. But his deformity is our comeliness. In this life, therefore, let us hold fast to the deformed Christ.”

“Twelve legions girded with angelic sword Were at his beck, the scorned and buffeted: He healed another's scratch; his own side bled, Side, feet, and hands, with cruel piercings gored. Oh wonderful the wonders left undone! And scarce less wonderful than those he wrought; Oh self-restraint, passing human thought, To have all power, and be as having none; Oh self-denying love, which felt alone For needs of others, never for its own.”

“The real truth is that while He came to preach the Gospel, His chief object in coming was that there might be a Gospel to preach.”

“They bewailed innocence maltreated, goodness persecuted, love bleeding, meekness about to die; but my heart has a deeper and more bitter cause to mourn. My sins were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorn those bleeding brows: my sins cried “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and laid the cross upon His gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity: but my having been His murderer, is more, infinitely more, grief than one poor fountain of tears can express.”

“We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ’s cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.”

“The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

“Consider, finally, what it meant to Him to do this for us. “I go,” He says. Where is He going? He is going to the Garden of Gethsemane to sweat drops of blood. Where is He going? He is going to be arrested, to be tried in court, to be mocked and jeered and laughed at. He is going to be spat upon, to have His holy body scourged. He is going to have a crown of thorns placed upon His head. They will take Him and drive cruel nails into His blessed hands and feet. He is going to be nailed to a tree. Can you picture it happening to you, with nails being hammered in through hands and feet? That is what He is going to. And, too, He is going to endure the mockery and the spitting and the jeering of the cruel mob; they did not know who He was or what He was doing. He is going to die and to be laid in a grace, He who is the eternal Son of God through whom the world was made and by whom all things consist. He is going deliberately to all that because that is the only way whereby the door and the gate of heaven can be opened for us. “I go to prepare a place in heaven with God, a mansion for you. Beloved friend, have you realised that the Lord Jesus Christ has done all that for you? If you see it, if you believe it, you will agree with Paul when he says that you are not your own, you “are bought with a price,” therefore you must give yourself and your life to Him (1 Cor. 6:20). If you believe Him, you can know for certain that He has prepared a place for you and will come again and received you unto Himself so that where He is, you shall be also.”

“People sometimes say, indeed, that it makes little difference what theory of the atonement we may hold. Ah, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world. When you contemplate the cross of Christ, do you say merely, with modern theorists, ‘What a noble example of self-sacrifice; I am going to attain favour with God by sacrificing myself as well as He.’ Or do you say with the Bible, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me; He took my place; He bore my curse; He bought me with His own most precious blood.’ That is the most momentous question that can come to any human soul.”

“El marido debe amar a la esposa como Cristo amó a su Iglesia y —sigamos leyendo— «dio la vida por ella» (Efesios 5, 25). Así pues, esta autoridad está más plenamente personificada no en el marido que todos quisiéramos ser, sino en Aquel cuyo matrimonio más se parece a una crucifixión, cuya esposa recibe más y da menos, es menos digna que él, es —por su misma naturaleza— menos amable. Porque la Iglesia no tiene más belleza que la que el Esposo le da; Él no la encuentra amable, pero la hace tal. Hay que mirar el crisma de esta terrible coronación no en las alegrías del matrimonio de cualquier hombre, sino en sus penas, en la enfermedad y sufrimientos de una buena esposa, o en las faltas de una mala esposa, en la perseverante (y nunca ostentosa) solicitud o inextinguible capacidad de perdón de ese hombre, perdón, no aceptación. Así como Cristo ve en la imperfecta, orgullosa, fanática o tibia Iglesia terrena a la Esposa que un día estará «sin mancha ni arruga», y se esfuerza para que llegue a serlo, así el esposo, cuya autoridad es como la de Cristo (y no se le ha concedido ninguna de otra clase), jamás debe desesperar. Por tanto, en esos matrimonios desgraciados, la «autoridad» del marido, si es que puede mantenerla, es más semejante a la de Cristo.”