Sacrificial Life Quotes & Sayings

IT IS YOUR JOB TO PROTECT THE UNITY OF YOUR CHURCH. Unity in the church is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to it than to either heaven or hell. God deeply desires that we experience oneness and harmony with each other. Unity is the soul of fellowship. Destroy it, and you rip the heart out of Christ's Body. It is the essence, the core, of how God intends for us to experience life together in his church. Our supreme model for unity is the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely unified as one. God himself is the highest example of sacrificial love, humble other-centeredness, and perfect harmony. — Rick Warren

But lost in that sea of (valid) criticism is the perhaps subtler critique that in an age of consumerism, economic imperialism and what Martin Luther King Jr. called "jumboism," the sacrificial way of Jesus may be calling us to forsake the supersized life. — C. Christopher Smith

Luce ignored the girls and felt around Ix Caut's own crippling fear. Something was running through her mind-a prayer. But not a prayer of sacrificial preparation. No,Ix Caut was praying for Daniel.
Luce knew that the thought of him made Ix Caut's skin flush and her heart beat faster.Ix Caut had loved him her whole life-but only from afar. He'd grown up a few buildings away from her family's home. Sometimes he traded avocados to her mother at the market. Ix Caut had been trying for years to get up the courage to talk to him.The knowledge that he was at the ball court now tormented her.Ix Caut was praying, Luce realized,that he would lose. Her one prayer was that she did not want to die at his hand. — Lauren Kate

The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable - it is wrong. Jesus' death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid - God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born - God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering. — Timothy Keller

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: "No." Altruism says: "Yes. — Ayn Rand

The foundation, the motivation of a life of humility, is the example of Jesus Christ's humble life and sacrificial death on the cross. — Matt Chandler

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. — Ayn Rand

The world is always waiting for someone to save the day, make things better. We've lost hope in politics, preachers ... As a child of God, I just believe that Jesus is our hero, he is the one that came to save man's life, to save man's soul, to restore people back to themselves with a love that's real - an unconditional sacrificial love. — Kirk Franklin

I suddenly look at the fish and feel horrible all over again, that old death scheme is now back only now I'm gonna put my big healthy Anglosaxon teeth into it and wrench away at the mournful flesh of a little living being that only an hour ago was swimming happily in the sea, in fact even Dave thinking this and saying: 'Ah yes that little muzzling mouth was blindly sucking away in the glad waters of life and now look at it, here's where the fittin head's chopped off, you don't have to look, us big drunken sinners are now going to use it for our sacrificial supper[ ... ] — Jack Kerouac

Never talk about submission without talking about Jesus, and in particular of the cross. Jesus' version of submission is thoughtful, strong, purposeful, and sacrificial. It involves the full and determined embrace of his Father's will (which governs everything Jesus does)3 and the voluntary pouring out of his life to rescue a lost world.4 Submission is both. It is redemptive. It is the gospel. It is a way of showing Jesus to the world. — Carolyn Custis James

Sacrifice is a noun in my vocabulary that should be a verb in my life. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Stated negatively (I John 4:18). "There is no fear in love," wrote John, "but perfect love casteth out fear." Love and fear are incompatible; the one who lives in terror of God's disapproval shows that love is lacking from his life. "Perfect love" should be understood as love brought to completion (cf. 2:5; 4:12). This kind of sacrificial love casts out fear. John's observation that fear lives in torment — Union Gospel Press

The marker of those who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ is that, when they stumble and fall, when they screw up, they run to God and not from him, because they clearly understand that their acceptance before God is not predicated upon their behavior but on the righteous life of Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death. — Matt Chandler

Cultures the world over consider their staple the incarnation of God: Buffalo for the Cheyenne, Corn for the Hopi, Cattle for the Massai, Wheat (bread) for the Christians. What I've seen about hunting and gathering peoples, they are the only ones who can fully grasp and accept the Holy Communion. (Funny how we think we have to cram our little wafers down their throats.) All life forms are the sacrificial victim - there's absolutely no exception; all are food. — Daniel Suelo

The quality of your life was determined by the quality of your service. I'm attracted to characters who have a higher calling, who want to serve in ways where you get beyond the comfortable service and you get into the space of the sacrificial. And I really am attracted to characters who just want to do things that brighten the world. That probably is the central aspect of my personality. — Will Smith

In life, when one gets to the point of a deeper sense of understanding about himself and his purpose, he least explains himself much to people who fail to understand him and his purpose. That must not be interpreted as neither pride nor an uncaring attitude but a great respect for purposefulness — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Jesus doesn't say, "The religion founded in my name is the way, the truth, and the life, [and] what people say about me is the way." "Our way of worship, the Christian structure, is not the way," [he would say,] "I am. I am. If you want to know what life is all about, what it's supposed to be, where it's supposed to go, where it's supposed to derive its strength from, don't look at anything people say about me. Don't look at the faith that's been created. Look at my life, which is a life ultimately of sacrificial love." — Frederick Buechner

There's no doubt that he's heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty--like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window? — Yukio Mishima

But how can we effectively represent Christ, who in sacrificial love gave his life for others, if we don't deeply care about those he died for? And since "God is love" (1 John 4:8), doesn't it follow that the one great distinguishing characteristic of Christians everywhere should be a self-sacrificing love for people? Doctrine, apologetics, spiritual gifts, and prophecy charts are all great, but God is love. Without love, everything becomes meaningless (1 Cor. 13). — Jim Cymbala

We live by faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. — John Greenleaf Whittier

his view of perceiving God in Christ with the notion of looking at a painting and seeing what the artist has been doing in it.27 In Christian faith, the captivating force (the 'subjective evidence') of the artwork which is Christ takes hold of our imaginative powers; we enter into the 'painterly world' which this discloses and, entranced by what we see, come to contemplate the glory of sovereign love of God in Christ (the 'objective evidence') as manifested in the concrete events of his life, death and resurrection.28 So entering his glory, we become absorbed by it, but this very absorption sends us out into the world in sacrificial love like that of Jesus. This is — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I want a better Bible, Adam. I want a Bible in which the Fruit of Knowledge contains the Seeds of Wisdom, and makes life more pleasurable for mankind, not worse. I want a Bible in which Isaac leaps up from the sacrificial stone and chokes the life out of Abraham, to punish him for the abject and bloody sin of Obedience. I want a Bible in which Lazarus is dead and stubborn about it, rather than standing to attention at the beck and call of every passing Messiah. — Robert Charles Wilson

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life. — Ayn Rand

Alzheimer's disease is never an 'accident' in a marriage. It falls under the purview of God's sovereignty. In the case of someone with Alzheimer's, this means God's unconditional and sacrificial love has an opportunity to be even more gloriously displayed in a life together. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Men, let me plead with you: The greatest fight of your life is not lust. You may think it is, but it isn't. The greatest fight of your life will be rejecting the passivity that has infected your heart since the fall. Your natural default, especially as it pertains to sacrificial leadership of your wife, will be to mutely witness. — Matt Chandler

Why don't people ask us about our hope? The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do. Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life. — John Piper

Why don't you want to see your mom? Did she burn your
dolls in a sacrificial fire? Read your e-mail?"
"She wants to run my life," I explain.
"What a bitch. It's like she thinks she's your mother
or something."
"She's a psychopath," I said. "It's complicated."
"Psychopaths can't afford fur coats."
"This one can. — Laurie Halse Anderson

God is the creator of love. He demonstrated His love to you through the sacrificial death of His Son. The closer you draw to God the more you will demonstrate your love for others by becoming a living sacrifice by putting others before yourself. — DeWayne Owens

We see the same scenario all too often today. People are told the good news of salvation by grace alone, only to respond with, That's too simple. Where's the dignity? Where's the effort? If it's all that life changing, surely something sacrificial is required of me! — Charles R. Swindoll

We all know that parents do not make children but that children make parents ... Authentic parenting is one long sacrificial act ... parenting reveals the way that sacrifice at once diminishes our life as we knew it ... while at the same time revealing to us larger and infinitely more fascinating forms of life ... Parents know experientially that the very process which makes them suffer also makes them grow. — Luke Timothy Johnson

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, "Christ's love compels us" (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I'd tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother's beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this. — Gregory A. Boyd

A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g. foxes and dogs. The people walk around the square and must let themselves be bitten by these animals in each of the four corners . If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on to the scene-bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congregation flies out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life-mass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: "These are attempts at being. — David Lindorff

... the worshipers here are not likely to kill one another, they all offer the same sacrifice, and how the fat spits and the carcasses sizzle as God in the sublime heavens inhales the odors of all this carnage with satisfaction. Jesus pressed his lamb to his breast, unable to fathom why God could not be appeased with a cup of milk poured over His altar, that sap of life which passes from one being to another, or with a handful of wheat, the basic substance of immortal bread. Soon he will have to part with the old man's generous gift, his for such a short time, the poor little lamb will not live to see the sun set this day, it is time to mount the stairs of the Temple, to deliver it to the knife and sacrificial fire, as if it were no longer worthy of existence or being punished ... — Jose Saramago

JESUS'S PATH WAS exactly that, a radically unmanageable simplicity - nothing held back, nothing held onto. It was almost too much for his followers to bear. Even within the gospels themselves, we see a tendency to rope him back in again, to turn his teachings into a manageable complexity. Take his radically simple saying: "Those who would lose their life will find it; and those who would keep it will lose it." Very quickly the gospels add a caveat: "Those who would lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will find it." That may be the way you've always heard this teaching, even though most biblical scholars agree that the italicized words are a later addition. But you can see what this little addition has done: it has shifted the ballpark away from the transformation of consciousness (Jesus's original intention) and into martyrdom, a set of sacrificial actions you can perform with your egoic operating system still intact. Right from — Cynthia Bourgeault

Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause-life is not one huge hospital. — Ayn Rand

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

My most earnest of all pleas to singles is abandonment of the self, surrender to Christ of all unfulfilled longings, an unequivocal willingness to receive whatever God assigns, and a determination to practice the sacrificial principle of Isaiah 58:10-11. Life becomes not only far simpler, but surprisingly joyful and free. — Elisabeth Elliot

As a military man, I have been willing to lay down my life to follow my commanding officer, a mere man. How repulsed do you think someone like me is by Christians who aren't willing to lay down their lives for the Commander in Chief of the universe? "Instead, we argue over whether we have to tithe pre- or post-tax income. We complain if we are called on to go to too many meetings. We're not called to anything glorious, and so we make no glorious sacrifices. We have robbed our faith of our call to sacrificial commitment! We're not real community, we're not real people, and we're not real significant in this world! — Steve Smith

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends. — George Santayana

Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2) — Steven James

My friend, I am "jealous" for you to enjoy God. I want God to be the greatest reality in your life. I want you to be more assured of His presence than any other you can see or touch. This can be your reality. This is your right as a child of God. We were destined for this kind of relationship with God, but the enemy tries to convince us that the Christian life is sacrificial at best and artificial at worst. — Beth Moore

In his person, life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is the 'form of God'. As presented in the New Testament writings, the words, actions and sufferings of Jesus form an aesthetic unity, held together by the 'style' of unconditional love. Love is always beautiful, because it expresses the self-diffusiveness of being, and so is touched by being's radiance, the pulchrum. But the unconditional, gracious, sacrificial love of Jesus Christ expresses not just the mystery of being - finite being - but the mystery of the Source of being, the transcendent communion of love which we call the Trinity.25 Thus through the Gestalt Christi, the love which God is shines through to the world. This is Balthasar's basic intuition. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I believe being a 'gentleman' goes well beyond holding the door for a girl and letting her go before you. It's about being vulnerable for her. I think that when it comes to the way we treat women, it's a good idea to look to the way Jesus treated women.

He laid His life down for His bride,

He sacrificed for her,

He lowered Himself for her,

He was vulnerable for her.

We must love women vulnerably in the same way that Jesus loved His bride vulnerably. Being a gentleman is far more than being caring and thoughtful, it's about possessing sacrificial and vulnerable Christ-like characteristics. I don't know if it's possible to be a gentleman without knowing and representing the character of Jesus. — Cole Ryan

Because marriage is meant to reflect the great sacrificial and sanctifying love Christ has for his church, it makes sense to connect your married life to a local Christian congregation. — Matt Chandler

We operate under the notion that America actually belongs to us Christians, and that we belong to it. We believe that the church and the state can make beautiful music together if only they would cooperate. We believe that the preaching of the Kingdom of God and the rallying around the red, white, and blue are always compatible. We believe the lie of the Serpent that we can hold to the sacrificial, life-giving, peace-pursuing, cheek-turning way of Christ and hold to the poisonous, domineering, power-hungry, least-of-these-abusing systems of the Empire. But this is impossible. — Ronnie McBrayer

To make a choice not to sacrifice is to decide that I am better off allowing a life to perish than release the resources I possess that might allow it to thrive. And because of choices such as these, the life that I am really allowing to perish is mine. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

We are not capable of foreseeing the creative possibilities that this kind of deconstruction - the deconstruction of the old sacrificial system - produces. I think that we must examine our history and try to see whether, beneath what has already occurred, there are not additional layers of phenomena waiting to be revealed; whether some aspects of life that used to be constrained by the old sacrificial system are not going to flourish, other domains of knowledge, other ways of living. Everything that the Passion undid in the cultural sphere might well be an opening, an extraordinary source of enrichment. I am certain it is. One must also keep in mind what Jesus called the "signs of the times."4 — Rene Girard

To be "in Christ" is to place one's trust in Him for salvation from sin. To be "in Christ" is to trust His goodness, not our own; to trust that His sacrificial death on the cross paid the complete debt of death we owe for our sin; to trust that His resurrection gives us eternal life instead of relying upon our own ability to please God. To be "in Christ" is to claim, by faith, the free gift of salvation. To be "in Christ" is to enjoy a completely restored relationship with our Father in heaven by virtue of His Son's righteous standing. — Charles R. Swindoll

Grace unfolds on every page [of Scripture]: God's long march through the history of human rebellion and ruin to reach us with the love of his Son; the Savior's humble service, sinless life, sacrificial death, victorious resurrection, and promised return; the Holy Spirit's indwelling witness, power, and advocacy - all unswerving despite our wayward ways and hard hearts. — Bryan Chapell

If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time ... What happens in the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is something for which all religions of mankind have exressed longing, dimly sensed was coming, and as a rule even prefigured- the physical presence of the divine Logos made man, and the presence of his sacrificial death, in the midst of the congregation celebrating the mysteries. — Josef Pieper

In His wisdom, our God formed us out of the dirt. In His empathy, He spent a life walking through our dirt. In His grace, He let His sacrificial blood fall to the dirt. Then in His love, he picks us up from that dirt. — Jeremy Stephens

I often think about Christ having all power, but He abdicated the power to live a sacrificial life for His children. In His own words he told his disciples that His meat was to do the will of the Father. — Monica Johnson