Cross John Stott Quotes & Sayings

The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. — John Stott

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross. — John Stott

He would smile at her and welcome her home. — Anthony Jay Cleveland

WINTER: Because I guess I like the idea that maybe someday I can find my place, you know? My niche. Somewhere people will keep me. — T.S. Joyce

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, 'I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.' Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. — John Stott

The cross is not just a badge to identify us ... it is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disoriented world. — John Stott

When we look at the cross we see the justice, love, wisdom and power of God. It is not easy to decide which is the most luminously revealed, whether the justice of God in judging sin, or the love of God in bearing the judgment in our place, or the wisdom of God in perfectly combining the two, or the power of God in saving those who believe. For the cross is equally an act, and therefore a demonstration, of God's justice, love, wisdom and power. The cross assures us that this God is the reality within, behind and beyond the universe. — John Stott

The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin. — John Stott

Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it ... And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you! ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All Christian preachers have to face this issue. Either we preach that human beings are rebels against God, under his just judgment and (if left to themselves) lost, and that Christ crucified who bore their sin and curse is the only available Saviour. Or we emphasize human potential and human ability, with Christ brought in only to boost them, and with no necessity for the cross except to exhibit God's love and so inspire us to greater endeavour. The former is the way to be faithful, the latter the way to be popular. It is not possible to be faithful and popular simultaneously. — John R.W. Stott

I seemed to have only two speeds on problems that hit me emotionally, either putting my fingers in my ears and going la-la-la, or picking up an axe and attacking the issue. — Laurell K. Hamilton

They say a picture tells a thousand words, but photographs reveal only a small part of the real story about a person. — Brownell Landrum

We are not, therefore, to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated. — John R.W. Stott

As we face the cross, then, we can say to ourselves both, "I did it, my sins sent him there," and "He did it, his love took him there. — John R.W. Stott

But even if we remain in our own country, Christians and non-Christians are often widely separated from one another by social sub-cultures and lifestyles as well as by different values, beliefs and moral standards. Only an incarnation can span these divides, for an incarnation means entering other people's worlds, their thought-world, and the worlds of their alienation, loneliness and pain. Moreover, the incarnation led to the cross. Jesus first took our flesh, then bore our sin. This was a depth of penetration into our world in order to reach us, in comparison with which our little attempts to reach people seem amateur and shallow. The cross calls us to a much more radical and costly kind of evangelism than most churches have begun to consider, let alone experience. — John R.W. Stott

Against nature and within nature there is no freedom. — Ludwig Von Mises

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us. — John R.W. Stott

The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales. — John Stott

That we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn't happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. — Haruki Murakami

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life; life will not listen to your logic, it does not bother about your logic. - Osho — Robin S. Sharma

At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. — John R.W. Stott

Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind. — Edward Abbey

Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. — John Stott

If the Romans regarded crucifixion with horror, so did the Jews, though for a different reason. They made no distinction between a 'tree' and a 'cross', and so between a hanging and a crucifixion. They therefore automatically applied to crucified criminals the terrible statement of the law that 'anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse' (Deut. 21:23). They could not bring themselves to believe that God's Messiah would die under his curse, strung up on a tree. — John R.W. Stott

It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size. — John Stott

Is it possible really to love other people? If I'm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief - I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn't a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else's needs that I can't even feel directly? And yet if I can't do this, I'm damned to loneliness, which I definitely don't want ... so I'm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons. — David Foster Wallace

There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center. — John Stott

A marriage that isn't built around the Cross will be devoid of grace, mercy, and humility that come when both husband and wife recognize their need for a savior. — John R.W. Stott

Insistence on security is incompatible with the way of the cross. What daring adventures the incarnation and the atonement were! What a breach of convention and decorum that Almighty God should renounce his privileges in order to take human flesh and bear human sin! Jesus had no security except in his Father. So to follow Jesus is always to accept at least a measure of uncertainty, danger and rejection for his sake. — John R.W. Stott

All he had to do was watch the game and understand how things worked, and then he could use the system, and even excel. — Orson Scott Card

The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross. — John Stott

Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ. — John Stott

There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus. — John Stott

Why is it that some Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, as missionaries? What on earth impels them? It is not in order to commend a civilization, an institution or an ideology, but rather a person, Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be unique. — John R.W. Stott

If I was going to be treated like a child, then I was going to act like one. — Rachel Higginson

For our sake, he made him sin who knew no sin, so that in him we may become righteousness of God ...
As we look at the cross, we begin to understand the terrible implication of these words. At twelve noon, 'there was darkness over the whole land' which continued for three hours until Jesus died. With the darkness came silence, for no eye should see, and no lips could tell, the agony of the soul which the spotless Lamb of God now endured. The accumulated sins of all human history were laid upon him. Voluntarily he bore them in his own body. He made them his own. He shouldered full responsibility for them. — John R.W. Stott

Somebody said the prospect of eminent death has a wonderful clarifying effect on the mind. And I don't know if that's true, but I do think it probably causes some changes, some evolution in the way a person works. But on a day-by-day basis, I just still enjoy doing what I'm doing. — Stephen King

The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us. — John Stott