Church This Resurrection Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes people ask me how I can be both a Catholic and a scientist, particularly a scientist who, at least for some research, studies evolution. I tell them that they are confusing us with Evangelicals. Catholics don't have anything against evolution. A literal interpretation of the Bible, the kind that says that the earth is six thousand years old, has never been a part of our religion, at least not since the Saint Augustine warned against preaching idiocy to Pagans in 415 AD. He said that if you tell people that they have to believe in things that they know are not true and that do not matter then they will never believe you when you tell them things that are true and that do matter, things about Christ and the resurrection. The Church's friendliness towards science is not to protect science. It is to protect Christianity. — Gina DeMarco

It is important to note that when Mary Magdalene and other women were chosen by Jesus to bring the important news to the men, the men did not believe the women. Today 2,000 years later men still don't believe women when they say "We are also chosen by Jesus to be leaders in the church. — Roy Bourgeois

As long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God's promised new heavens and new earth and of our promised resurrection to share in that new and gloriously embodied reality - what I have called life after life after death - then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence. — N. T. Wright

The resurrection of Christ from the dead, next to the Crucifixion itself, is the most significant event in church history. It isn't a peripheral issue; it's foundational. It's bedrock. It's the bottom line. — Greg Laurie

The task of the Church, I suggest, is not to determine which is the theory of the atonement, or which theory of the atonement has pride of place among others. Rather, following Thomas (who stands clearly in line with the majority position of the history of theology), we ought to witness to the fittingness of the atonement: to demonstrate how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings together a wide array of benefits for the sake of the reconciliation of all things to God, that we might have as full an understanding as possible of the work God accomplished in Christ. — Adam J. Johnson

But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It's not the real thing. — Rachel Held Evans

The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ and are called to live in our baptismal identity in his resurrection. This essential theme of Easter cannot be communicated in a day. It takes a season. — Robert E. Webber

12. To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. 13. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Irenaeus and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views. — Eusebius

Your trials equal the power of God that works in you. If your battles are intense, then what God has deposited in you is deep. — Paul Gitwaza

Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed. — Peter Rollins

Christ is our hope, our cleansing and santification, our resurrection, life and repose. He alone is what we all need, and therefore, the Orthodox Church constantaly pronounces these words aloud so that we may hear them during Holy Services of the Church, and be constantly renewed. For we are inclined to forget the only thing we need. With death all will be taken from us, all earthly goods, riches, beauty of body and raiment, spacious dwellings, etc., but the virtue of the soul, that incorruptible raiment, shall remain with us eternally. — John Of Kronstadt

[Christians] must become, must be known as, the people who don't hold grudges, who don't sulk. We must be the people who know how to say "Sorry," and who know how to respond when other people say it to us. It is remarkable, once more, how difficult this still seems, considering how much time the Christian church has had to think about it and how much energy has been spent on expounding the New Testament, where the advice is all so clear. Perhaps it's because we have tried, if at all, to do it as though it were just a matter of obeying an artificial command
and then, finding it difficult, have stopped trying because nobody else seems to be very good at it either. Perhaps it might be different if we reminded ourselves frequently that we are preparing for life in God's new world, and that the death and resurrection of Jesus, which by baptism constitute our own new identity, offer us both the motivation and the energy to try again in a new way. — N. T. Wright

The radically changed behavior of the disciples after the resurrection is the best evidence of the resurrection," declares Thomas C. Oden of Drew University. "Some hypothesis is necessary to make plausible the transformation of the disciples from grieving followers of a crucified messiah to those whose resurrection preaching turned the world upside down. That change could not have happened, according to the church's testimony, without the risen Lord. — Ravi Zacharias

The same impulse of love that is the life of God, that sent the Son into the world and to his passion, death and resurrection, sends the Church to proclaim the Gospel to the world until Christ returns in glory. The Church participates in the salvific mission of God, and all those gathered into the Church personally participate in that mission to the entire world. — Francis George

I can't tell if you want it to be true," he says in a low voice that I feel as if I'm the only one who can hear. "I don't know either," I tell him honestly. "But if you are, I think I need to go to church tomorrow, because that means impossible things exist like unicorns and the resurrection." He laughs then, a wide mouthed, white teeth flashing. "Tomorrow's Friday." I nod. "I know, but it can't ever be too early to repent. — Jen Frederick

This means that the church, the followers of Jesus Christ, live in the bright interval between Easter and the final great consummation. Let's make no mistake either way. The reason the early Christians were so joyful was because they knew themselves to be living not so much in the last days (that that was true too) as in the first days - the opening days of God's new creation. What Jesus did was not a mere example of something else, not a mere manifestation of some larger truth; it was itself the climatic event and fact of cosmic history. — N. T. Wright

What we preach in church. We believe in the resurrection on the Day of Judgement and in eternal life. The reunion of loved ones is the essence of the Easter message. — Arnaldur Indridason

Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection. — Rachel Held Evans

For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. — Flannery O'Connor

can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, that wonder which has all but fled the Church of God in our day. — A.W. Tozer

He [Peter after the resurrection] now understood that he and the church were to exercise a transcendent power that did not depend upon having a kingdom or government in any human sense, for it was literally a "God government" in which they were participants (Acts 1:6-8). — Dallas Willard

Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church. — John Ortberg

I had a conversation with someone the other day who said he wondered if perhaps LGBT Christians had a special role to play in teaching the church how to more thoughtfully engage issues surrounding gender and sexuality. I told him I didn't think that went far enough, that ever since the Gay Christian Network conference, I've been convinced that LGBT Christians have a special role to play in teaching the church how to be Christian. Christians who tell each other the truth. Christians who confess our sins and forgive our enemies. Christians who embrace our neighbors. Christians who sit together in our pain, and in our healing, and wait for resurrection. — Rachel Held Evans

The same Spirit who moved in Nineveh and in the Great Awakening still fills the church today. The same power that brought Jesus back from the dead still animates our preaching. People are not "more spiritually dead" today than they were in the days of Jonah or the days of the Great Awakening. There are no degrees of deadness, or any such thing as "mostly dead" (apologies to The Princess Bride). Every conversion to Christ requires the same, glorious miracle of resurrection, and God has not lost his ability to raise the dead. We've simply lost confidence that he will do it on a large scale. — J.D. Greear

With the resurrection of Jesus and the salvation of humanity, we are no longer identified by nation, race, gender, or any group dynamic. We don't get to stand behind the shield of church or denomination or political party. There is no "us" and "them" anymore. "Us" is the worldwide assembly of the rescued who have been transformed from hopeless humans to adopted sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus. The end. — Jen Hatmaker

If America is ever going to be saved, it will be through a church flowing both in the message of the cross and the miracle of the resurrection. — Rod Parsley

The church's task in the world is to model genuine humanness as a sign and an invitation to those around. — N. T. Wright

Our living within and enjoyment and use of space, time, and matter must constantly be measured against the story of Jesus, in his sharing of space, time, and matter as the Incarnate Son; in his death, which passes judgment on all idolatry and sin; and in his resurrection, in which space, time, and matter are renewed in his body, anticipating the final renewal of all things. The danger of idolatry and the proper response to it stand as a rubric over what is now to come. The church is called to a mission of implementing Jesus's resurrection and thereby anticipating the final new creation. — N. T. Wright

The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity. — Timothy Radcliffe

No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze. — Peter Kreeft

The task of the Church after Jesus' resurrection and ascension was to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to all nations. — Charles Stanley

I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies ... Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it entirely without its crucial premises of incarnation and resurrection. That required a lot of circular reasoning for me to establish what the text said. I habitually assumed that truth in religion was finally reducible to economics (with Marx) or psychosexual motives (with Freud) or self assertive power (with Nietzsche). It was truly a self-deceptive time for me, but I had no inkling of its insidious dangers. — Thomas C. Oden

[re: I Corinthians 15:34,58] "The present life of the church, in other words, is not about "soul-making," the attempt to produce or train disembodied beings for a future disembodied life. It is about working with fully human beings who will be reembodied at the last, after the model of the Messiah. — N. T. Wright

In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate. — Saint Augustine

The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world. — Richard B. Hays

If one's careful study of the facts shows that the Catholic Church is correct about Jesus-his life, teachings, death, and Resurrection-then why not give the Church the benefit of the doubt and carefully study her reasons for rejecting contraception, homosexual acts, and women's ordination? — Carl E. Olson

As a pastor in a Protestant church, my whole ministry centers on the conviction that by grace we are saved through faith. And it's not our faith that delivers us, as if believing something, anything at all were pleasing to God. It's the object of our faith - Christ's life, death, and resurrection - that saves us. — Kevin DeYoung

I grew up in the church, Resurrection Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was that grandmother at the church, the one always at the church, always putting on the events. It was deeply instilled in me that every action, everything I create, everything I say and do in the world is inexorably bound to the lives of everybody I come in contact with - and it's my responsibility to put things into the world that have a positive influence on humanity. — Will Smith

Until Jesus comes, his resurrection glory in the church is a matter of strength made perfect in suffering. — Richard Gaffin

The crucified but risen Jesus appears in the believing, assembled community of the church. That this sense of the risen, living Jesus has faded in many [churches] can be basically blamed on the fact that our churches are insufficiently 'communities' of God. Where the church of Jesus Christ lives, and lives a liberating life in the footsteps of Jesus, the resurrection faith undergoes no crisis. On the other hand, it is better not to believe in God than to believe in a God who minimizes human beings, holds them under and oppresses them, with a view to a better world to come. — Edward Schillebeeckx