The Perfect Human

“Far from being invulnerable and superhuman, Jesus is truly and deeply human. He is vulnerable to hunger and weariness. He is vulnerable to fear and anxiety, as the blood, sweat, and tears of Gethsemane demonstrate. He is perfect not because he never tires of the crowd and the work of ministry but because he rightly responds to weariness, withdrawing to desolate places to rest and pray. This is the hidden ground from which his ministry arises.” -Mike Cosper, Recapturing Wonder

 

The Cross as Victory

“At the cross, triumph at last outruns, outspends, outstrips tragedy. But it does so at painful cost.” -Michael Horton

Not Being, But Becoming

“This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way; the process is not yet finished, but it has begun; this is not the goal, but it is road; at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being purified.” -Martin Luther, A Defense and Explanation of All Articles

As quoted at: http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/100-quotes-from-you-on-sanctification

Great Blessing & Also Something about Etymological Fallacies

“When my father found his father at Mount Pleasant after the war ended, he was shocked at first to see how he had been wounded. In fact, he was speechless. So my grandfather’s first words to his son were “I am confident that I will find great blessing in it.” And that is what he said about everything that happened to him for the rest of his life, all of which tended to be more or less drastic. I remember at least two sprained wrists and a cracked rib. He told me once that being blessed meant being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English–but not in Greek or Hebrew. So whatever understanding might be based on that derivation has no scriptural authority behind it. ” -Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

God Secretly Revealed

“What we take to darkness is really light because it comes from God our eyes are at fault, that is all God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, help in abandonment no evil can befall us, whatever men may do to us they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christmas: A Theology of the Cross

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-manger

What If God Was One Of Us?

“First of all, we are looking at a true baby. He is not an idea or a religious experience. He is a newborn infant who makes noises and cries when he gets hungry. What we are looking at is real, simple, definite, complete. We are looking at a true baby. There is no reason to think that the baby shows any special manifestations. An artist such as Rembrandt can paint him with light emanating from his body, and if we understand the light as symbolic, it is safe enough. But if we think of it as more than that, it is harmful. There is no halo about the baby’s head. Certainly there is no halo around Mary’s head. What we see is a young Jewish mother, probably seventeen or eighteen years old. She may be pretty or she may not be. We see her husband, and we see a little baby who does not show any marks that would distinguish him from any other infant. And yet this little baby we see lying here is the second person of the Trinity. He himself has been God forever. This baby is God who has taken on flesh.” -Francis Schaeffer

Calvin: Sometimes It’s Better to Limp Than to Sprint

“For we should so reason that the splendor of the divine countenance, which even the apostle calls ‘unapproachable’, is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside it.” -John Calvin

Incarnation & Hardship

“For the Son of God to empty himself and become poor meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony— spiritual, even more than physical— that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who “through his poverty, might become rich.” This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity— hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory— because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.” -J. I. Packer

He Played Fair

“For whatever reason, God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death— he [God] had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace, and thought it was worthwhile.” -Dorothy Sayers