Quotes & Sayings About Not Believing In Jesus

I am not moved by what I see.
; I am moved by what I believe. What I do believe is greater, stronger and mightier than what I have my eyes on. Deep in my heart I do believe, I shall overcome. — Israelmore Ayivor

A sinner is justified and reconciled with God the moment he truly believes in the person and atoning work of Christ. However, the evidence that he truly believed and was genuinely converted in that moment is that he goes on believing and confessing all the days of his life. This is not to say that the true believer will be immune to doubts, free from failure, or unhindered in his growth to maturity. However, it does mean that the God who began a good work in him will continue perfecting that work until the final day.7 Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.8 However, the evidence of saving faith is a genuine and enduring confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ throughout the believer's life. — Paul David Washer

These three or four scriptures also have been great refreshments in this condition to me: John xiv. 1-4; John xvi. 33; Col. iii. 3, 4; Heb. xii. 22-24. So that sometimes when I have been in the savour of them, I have been able to laugh at destruction, and to fear neither the horse nor his rider. I have had sweet sights of the forgiveness of my sins in this place, and of my being with Jesus in another world: Oh! the mount Sion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and God the Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus, have been sweet unto me in this place: I have seen that here, that I am persuaded I shall never, while in this world, be able to express: I have seen a truth in this scripture, Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now you see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. 1 Pet. i. 8. — John Bunyan

What God is doing today is calling people out of the world for His name. Whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts they need something that they don't have and they turn to the only light they have and I think they're saved and they're going to be with us in heaven. — Billy Graham

A lot of people are fans of John 3:16, but they're not such fans of the verse that comes 20 verses later: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36). It's not merely enough that you know that Jesus Christ died for your sins. You must follow him. Remember, John 3:16 also says "whoever believes in him" will have eternal life. Believing in Christ means more than simply acknowledging that he is the Son of God. Even the demons do that (Mark 5:7). Believing in Jesus also means that you believe the words that he said and you obey them. Jesus said, "If you keep my commandments, you abide in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and abide in his love" (John 15:10). — Gabriel Hughes

According to Jesus, it is not just his resurrection from the dead that will be a reason for believing in him. It is also the inexplicable conversion of the pagan nations of the world - the Gentiles. — Brant Pitre

He that was healed wist not who it was. John 5:13 Years are short to the happy and healthy; but thirty-eight years of disease must have dragged a very weary length along the life of the poor impotent man. When Jesus, therefore, healed him by a word, while he lay at the pool of Bethesda, he was delightfully sensible of a change. Even so the sinner who has for weeks and months been paralysed with despair, and has wearily sighed for salvation, is very conscious of the change when the Lord Jesus speaks the word of power, and gives joy and peace in believing. The evil removed is too great to be removed without our discerning it; the life imparted is too remarkable to be possessed and remain inoperative; and the change wrought is too marvellous not to be perceived. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To the corruptions of christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other. — Thomas Jefferson

How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there? — Blaise Pascal

Naturally all of us don't think we deserve very much. We don't believe that things will go well for us in the future, generally because they may not have in the past. Our natural bent is to expect the worst. Our natural tendency is to be negative and doubtful. It is actually very hard to be positive. It takes faith to be positive and believe that good things are in our future. — Lisa Bedrick

Following Jesus doesn't mean believing outdated creeds or literal understandings of scripture or turning my back on science. I respect my childhood church. But God is so much bigger. I believe God is alive and as real as my next breath. God wants me to grow and explore new ideas. Now I realize that faith is a journey and not a destination, and God is with me with in all my questions and doubts. God's love includes everyone, including people who ask questions and have doubts! — Bruce G. Epperly

Jesus died for our sins" has been understood. Among some Christians, it is seen as an essential doctrinal element in the Christian belief system. Seen this way, it becomes a doctrinal requirement: we are made right with God by believing that Jesus is the sacrifice. The system of requirements remains, and believing in Jesus is the new requirement. Seeing it as a metaphorical proclamation of the radical grace of God leads to a very different understanding. "Jesus died for our sins" means the abolition of the system of requirements, not the establishment of a new system of requirements. — Marcus J. Borg

But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word "hell," what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn't his point. He's often not talking about "beliefs" as we think of them
he's talking about anger and lust and indifference. He's talking about the state of his listeners' hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the world. — Rob Bell

Jesus, I'm sorry. I have wasted your time with a fake deal. I acknowledge that this means you are of the case, and that I am now totally on my own in saving the family from destruction. I shall go back to not believing in you again. We will revert to our former positions. Sorry about all that. Take care. Lots of love to God. Amen. — Caitlin Moran

All the historians agree that the arrest of Jesus took place in the Garden of Gethsemane at a late hour on the evening immediately preceding the day of the Crucifixion, and there is strong justification for believing that it could not possibly have been earlier than eleven-thirty. — Frank Morrison

The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour ... But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own ... He returned to His own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position. — Albert Schweitzer

We are not saved by denying self, or taking up our cross, or doing anything else, we are saved by simply believing in Jesus. — R.A. Torrey

Whatever it was that people experience in Jesus has today come to be identified with medieval doctrines based on premodern assumptions that are no longer believable. That identification means that serious theological discussion seems to accomplish little more than to erect a division between the shouters and the disinterested. Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me neither option is worth pursuing. Yet even understanding these things, I am still attracted to this Jesus and I will pursue him both relentlessly and passionately. I will not surrender the truth I believe I find in him either to those who seek to defend the indefensible or to those who want to be freed finally from premodern ideas that no longer make any sense. — John Shelby Spong

Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted do not bother coming to our churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.2 — Tullian Tchividjian

But how could he explain anything to them, when they understood good but not goodness, strong but not strength, black but not blackness?
Give us bread! the Savages cried. Heal us!
They were frightened by the consecrated wine, believing that the Black-Gowns drank human blood.
This is the blood of JESUS, said Pere Masse.
Was that a man? they asked.
He was the SON OF GOD, but He became a man to die for us. In memory of his sacrifice, we drink His blood.
At this they drew back and whispered in their language, with many terrified glances. — William T. Vollmann

O turn to Him [Jesus Christ], turn in a sense of your own unworthiness, and be not faithless, but believing. — George Whitefield

Because of his sinless life, Jesus walked in perfect dominion. God did whatever he asked, NOT because he was God's son, but because he held the position of a righteous man. But that was Jesus, you say. But the Bible says that through our believing on Him, we have been given the same position of righteousness with God that Jesus has. — Kenneth Copeland

'Believing' cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgement about whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, but my believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether or not he really did do it. So also with the story of Jesus walking on water: Believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether he really did do it. 'Belief' cannot be the basis for historical conclusions; it has no direct relevance. — Marcus Borg

It is no accident that faith in Jesus Christ - not only believing in Him but believing Him - is the first principle of the gospel. — Sheri L. Dew

18 Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping - believing that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, "That's how many descendants you will have!"* 19 And Abraham's faith did not weaken, even though, at about 100 years of age, he figured his body was as good as dead - and so was Sarah's womb. 20 Abraham never wavered in believing God's promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. 21 He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises. 22 And because of Abraham's faith, God counted him as righteous. 23 And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn't just for Abraham's benefit. It was recorded 24 for our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God. — Anonymous

Learn that urgency in prayer does not so much consist in vehement pleading, as in vehement believing. He that believes most the love and power of Jesus will obtain the most in prayer. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

He imagined the future I could have before I even wanted it for myself, and he was the one to push me toward it. That's faith. Growing up, I thought faith was about believing Jesus died for us, and that if I held on to that, I'd get to meet him when I died too. But faith doesn't mean that to me anymore. Now it means someone seeing something in you that you don't, and not giving up until you see it too. I want that. I miss that. — Jessica Knoll

There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god then they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus. — Dan Barker

Islam requires us to believe that Jesus was so incompetent as a teacher and prophet that he was not able to instill this most simple fact in his followers' minds: that he was merely a human. Given that Islam's central proclamation is tawhid, this means Jesus was an abject failure. In fact, he was worse than a total failure, since he left his disciples believing the exact opposite of tawhid. — Nabeel Qureshi

This quarrel over the messianic status of Jesus within first-century Judaism had profound effects on Christianity and prompted it towards a fateful turning point that switched the emphasis from following the way of Jesus to believing things about Jesus. Gradually a Christian came to be thought of not as one who lives and acts in a certain way, but as one who holds certain convictions or theories. The trouble with religious convictions or beliefs is that, since we can rarely prove or disprove them, we get anxious about them and start quarrelling with people whose convictions or theories differ from our own. — Richard Holloway

The way of Jesus is thus not a set of beliefs about Jesus. That people ever thought it was is strange, when we think about it - as if one entered new life by believing certain things to be true, or as if the only people who can be saved are those who know the word "Jesus". Thinking that way virtually amounts to salvation by syllables.
Rather, the way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection - the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being. To use the language of incarnation that is so central to John, Jesus incarnates the way. Incarnation means embodiment. Jesus is what the way embodied in a human life looks like. — Marcus J. Borg

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. — Timothy Keller

For true conversion doth not consist in putting away great and outward sins only, but in descending deeply into your own self, searching into the inmost recesses of the heart, the secrets and closets, all the windings and turnings thereof; changing and renewing them throughout, with the grace that is given you: and so, by faith, you are converted from self-love to Divine love; from the world and all worldly concupiscences, to a spiritual and heavenly life; and from a participation of the pomps and pleasures thereof, to participating the merits and virtues of Christ, by believing his word, and walking in his steps. — Johann Arndt

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. — Howard Thurman

Of all sights in the church of Christ, I know none more painful to my own eyes, than a Christian contented and satisfied with a little grace, a little repentance, a little faith, a little knowledge, a little charity and a little holiness. I do beseech and entreat every believing soul that reads this tract not to be that kind of man. If you have any desires after usefulness, if you have any wishes to promote your Lord's glory, if you have any longings after much inward peace, be not content with a little religion. Let us rather seek, every year we live, to make more spiritual progress than we have done, to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus; to grow in humility and self-acquaintance; to grow in spirituality and heavenly-mindedness; to grow in conformity to the image of our Lord. — J.C. Ryle

15-2 See, your faith anchors you in Christ. That's intellectual. You believe it. You accept it. You say that it's right. You recognize it to be the truth, and you're a Christian. And you've got Everlasting Life by believing it. You've entered to God. You're on the campgrounds. Manna's falling, and you're eating it.
And did you notice: the strange thing, there was a mixed multitude eating the same manna? People who are sinners, who does not accept the Lord Jesus can still enjoy the--seeing the moving of the miracle of God, healing the sick; can rejoice in people doing right; can open their hearts and rejoice in a sermon that's preached under the anointing. And that's the same type of manna that the Christian is eating. You see it? ( See "Why are people so tossed about ?" Preached on Sunday, 1st January 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A. - Paragraph 15:2 ) — William Marrion Branham

Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. And if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go further, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those that deny Him. — George MacDonald

Believing the right things about Jesus isn't enough. You're not adopted as God's child until you confess and turn away from your wrongdoing and receive the freely offered gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased with his death on the cross. Until you do that, you'll always be on the outside looking in. — Lee Strobel

Moreover, knowing the "right answers" - knowing which ones they are, being able to identify them - does not mean we believe them. To believe them, like believing anything else, means that we are set to act as if they (the right answers) are true and that we will do so in appropriate circumstances. And acting as if the right answers are true means, in turn, that we intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus the Anointed. What else would we intend if we believed he is who his people through the ages have declared him to be? — Dallas Willard

Not to abide in Jesus' love would mean that we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. We look at our circumstances - perhaps persecution or disease or abandonment - and we conclude that we are not loved by Jesus anymore. That's the opposite of abiding in the love of Jesus. So abiding in his love means continuing to believe, moment by moment, that we are loved. — John Piper

We may not make sure that the Lord will at once remove all disease from those we love, but we may know that believing prayer for the sick is far more likely to be followed by restoration than anything else in the world; and where this avails not, we must meekly bow to His will by whom life and death are determined. The tender heart of Jesus waits to hear our griefs, let us pour them into His patient ear. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

My plea is simply this: every theological idea which makes an impression upon you must be regarded as a challenge to your faith. Do not assume as a matter of course that you believe whatever impresses you theologically and enlightens you intellectually. Otherwise suddenly you are believing no longer in Jesus Christ, but in Luther, or in one of your other theological teachers. — Helmut Thielicke

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

Believing in the second coming itself is anything but arrogant. The whole point of it is to insist, over against not only the wider pagan world, but against all self-delusion or pretension within the church, that Jesus remains sovereign and will return at last to put everything right. This putting right (the biblical word for it is "justice") is the sort of sigh-of-relief event that the whole world, at its best and at many other times too, longs for most deeply. All sorts of things are out of joint, both on a large and a small scale, in the world; and God the creator will put them straight. All sorts of things are still going wrong, corrupting the lives of human beings and the larger life of the environment, the planet itself; God the creator will put them right. All sorts of things are still wrong with us, Jesus's followers; Jesus, when he comes, will put us right as well. That may not be comfortable, but it's what we need. — N. T. Wright