Quotes & Sayings About Christlikeness

Many have made the mistake of thinking that Christians are to be the heads of all corporations, governments, and departments. As good as that may sound, it's actually a fruit of the true goal. Christlikeness - excellence with humility - is the real goal. Promotion comes from the Lord. If we spent more time developing a Kingdom heart, we'd have more people in key places of leadership. — Bill Johnson

God ... Please keep my eyes focused on the only target worth hitting - Christlikeness! — Johnny Hunt

Every Christian has a capacity for the most magnificent Christlikeness. Yet, every Christian also has the potential to commit the most disgusting and horrible acts of the flesh. — Stephen Mansfield

Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead. — John Stott

Christlikeness means to live and act as Christ lived and acted. — Jim George

Our weaknesses are not as negative as we may believe. They make us rely upon God's grace and power for greater Christlikeness and ministry. — Paul Washer

Remember that you are not called to produce successful, upwardly mobile, highly educated, athletically talented machines ... Givi ng your children great opportunities is good; it is not, however, the goal of parenting. Christlikeness is. Above all, seek to raise children who look and act a lot like Jesus. — Chip Ingram

Men, if we are to serve our wives with a purposeful love that moves them steadily toward Christlikeness, we must be men of grace - men who revel in God's grace, speak of God's grace, model God's grace. — Larry McCall

Christlikeness is possible, but not by merely working with Jesus or simply imitating his example. Only by knowing our position in Jesus can we begin to live like Jesus. — Kevin DeYoung

God's will for you is to make you more like Jesus. Christlikeness is your target, your goal, your vision, and the reason you were created. You are set apart to be like Jesus. That goal will take the rest of your life to accomplish." (Life Hacks, p.61) — Jon Morrison

You can believe in Christ and not reflect Christlikeness — Sunday Adelaja

Within the church, it is possible for believers to possess a profound unity based on a shared commitment to Biblical truth, an intimate knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and a deep level of spiritual maturity. Paul also adds "sound doctrine" and "growing in Christlikeness" as additional benefits that result from the saints being properly equipped to build up the body of Christ."(Comments on Ephesians 4 vs 11-13) — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Prayer is about steeping in the Spirit of a God so loving that He totally changes you. — Jared Brock

Most of us stumble into the kingdom with nary a clue how to do this. So we thrash about, make reckless attempts, arm ourselves with slogans, goad ourselves with guilt, fail and fail and fail, and finally settle for spiritual mediocrity. Our inner lives remain cramped and musty. We resort to mere conformity, to a masquerade of piety to cover up for our lack of real Christlikeness. — Stephen A. Macchia

Now it is the blood of Jesus which saves, and it is the same blood which cleanses and sanctifies; and as we had to come lo Jesus to be plunged into the fountain, so we have to abide in Jesus by fellowship, to grow up into Christlikeness. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

When I forget that the only way that God could stand to have me in his family was by crushing the Son he loves-that without the perfect record of someone else I could not stand before his judicious holiness, that on my own I do not have within me either the desire or the power to please God-I am tempted to believe that I'm really pretty good. And although I might need a nip or tuck, if I try hard enough, I can accomplish all he has called me to. It's when we forget the gospel, when we think we're not really all that bad, not so much in need, not so far from Christlikeness, that pride, arrogance, and the inevitable guilt crush hope and faith. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. — A.W. Tozer

Discipleship is developing a personal, lifelong, obedient relationship with Jesus Christ in which He transforms your character into Christlikeness; changes your values to Kingdom values; and involves you in His mission in the home, in the church, and in the world. — Avery T. Willis Jr.

The way we go about handling our email, making appointments, running meetings, attending classes, and running the kids to where they need to go are not distinct from the everyday life of sanctification that God calls us to but are themselves a fundamental part of it. We are to "be wise" in them just as we are to be wise in the things that directly pertain to salvation; indeed, the way we go about them is an expression of our Christlikeness and sanctification. — Matt Perman

Patience is part of true Christlikeness, something we so often admire in others without demanding it of ourselves. — Billy Graham

Christianity is more than just a belief; it is a life of discipline, a firm determination to live a life of prayer and contemplation, a life of self-denial and Christlikeness. — Ramon M. Torres

The commandment to imitate Jesus does not appear suddenly in a world exempt from imitation; rather it is addressed to everyone that mimetic rivalry has affected. Non-Christians imagine that to be converted they must renounce an autonomy that all people possess naturally, a freedom and independence that Jesus would like to take away from them. In reality, once we imitate Jesus, we discover that our aspiration to autonomy has always made us bow down before individuals who may not be worse than we are but who are nonetheless bad models because we cannot imitate them without falling with them into the trap of rivalries in which we are ensnarled more and more. — Rene Girard

To summarize, then, it appears that Christian holiness is a number of things together. It has both outward and inward aspects. Holiness is a matter of both action and motivation, conduct and character, divine grace and human effort, obedience and creativity, submission and initiative, consecration to God and commitment to people, self-discipline and self-giving, righteousness and love. It is a matter of Spirit-led law-keeping, a walk, or course of life, in the Spirit that displays the fruit of the Spirit (Christlikeness of attitude and disposition). It is a matter of seeking to imitate Jesus' way of behaving, through depending on Jesus for deliverance from carnal self-absorption and for discernment of spiritual needs and possibilities. — J.I. Packer

Therefore, let us put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering; and let us prove our Christlikeness not only in our zeal for saving the lost but also in our relationships with others - forbearing and forgiving one another, even as the Lord forgave us. Let — Andrew Murray

But if believers are to grow in Christlikeness, they must be continually filled with the Spirit - allowing His power to permeate their lives so that all they think, say, and do reflects His divine presence. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

For our Christian groups and their leaders, it means that there is a simple, straightforward way in which congregations of Jesus' people can, without exception, fulfill his call to be an ecclesia, his "called out" ones: a touch point between heaven and earth, where the healing of the Cross and the Resurrection can save the lost and grow the saved into the fullness of human beings in Christ. No special facilities, programs, talents, or techniques are required. It doesn't even require a budget. Just faithfulness to the process of spiritual formation in Christlikeness exposed in the Scriptures and in the lives of his "peculiar people" through the ages (Titus 2:14, KJV). — Dallas Willard

The second primary objective of a curriculum for Christlikeness is to remove our automatic responses against the kingdom of God, to free the apprentices of domination, of "enslavement" (John 8:34; Rom. 6:6), to their old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action. These are the "automatic" patterns of response that were ground into the embodied social self during its long life outside The Kingdom Among Us. They make up "the sin that is in my members" which, as Paul so brilliantly understood, brings it about that "wishing to do the good is mine, but the doing of it is not" (Rom. 7:18). — Dallas Willard

Ancient worship ... does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people today are now adding ancient elements to their worship ... This recovery of ancient practices is not the mere restoration of ritual but a deep, profound, and passionate engagement with truth - truth that forms and shapes the spiritual life into a Christlikeness that issues forth in the call to a godly and holy life and into a deep commitment to justice and to the needs of the poor. — Robert E. Webber

A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. The age may be a better age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer. — E. M. Bounds

Putting on Christ' ... is not one among many jobs a Christian has to do; and it is not a sort of special exercise for the top class. It is the whole of Christianity. Christianity offers nothing else at all. — C.S. Lewis

Without a passion to disciple believers to Christlikeness through the ministries of the church, the church will focus merely on perpetuating its programs, and the sheep will grow sickly and unfruitful. — Jim Berg

Manhood and Christlikeness are synonymous. — Edwin Louis Cole

Christlikeness is your eventual destination, but your journey will last a lifetime. — Rick Warren

When I understand that everything happening to me is to make me more Christlike, it resolves a great deal of anxiety. — A.W. Tozer

The preacher must have, bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, independent bearing, with the simplicity and sweetness of a child. — E. M. Bounds

The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi. — Brennan Manning

Christlikeness is a journey, not a destination. The joy is in the journey. — Charles R. Swindoll

Christlikeness is not produced by imitation, but by inhabitation. — Rick Warren

The fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness, peace, humility and love. And, the root of it is faith in Christ as the manifested wisdom of God — J.I. Packer

Holiness is the object of our new creation. We are born again so that we may grow up into Christlikeness. — J.I. Packer

Genuine holiness is genuine Christlikeness, and genuine Christlikeness is genuine humanness - the only genuine humanness there is. — J.I. Packer