Quotes & Sayings About Transformation In Christ

We know God by cultivating a relationship, not by understanding a concept.
The relation constitutes the very subjectivity of of our existence. We participate in existence consciously and rationally, with subjective self-knowledge and identity, because the erotic drive of our nature is transformed into a personal relation when there arises in the space of the Other the first signifier of desire: the maternal presence. The subject is born with love's first leap of joy. — Christos Yannaras

The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation. — Tullian Tchividjian

The transformation of the Nazarean into a divine, preexistent, literal son of God whose death and resurrection launch a new genus of eternal beings responsible for judging the world has no basis in any writings about Jesus that are even remotely contemporary with Paul's (a firm indication that Paul's Christ was likely his own creation). — Reza Aslan

Our truth-allergic, experience-addicted populace wants transformation but doesn't want the loss of freedom and control associated with submitting to authority within a committed community. Many "converts" seem to make decisions for Christ but soon lose their enthusiasm because they are offered quick programs for follow-up and small group fellowship rather than a lifelong, embodied experience of community. Many churches do not even have a process for becoming a member. As a result, converts' lives are often not visibly different from those in the culture around them. The older, more communal processes of traditional churches are better at bringing about a more thorough transformation of life. — Timothy Keller

The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ. — Thomas Merton

Every Christian has their place in the body of Christ — Sunday Adelaja

There are two kinds of prosperity gospels. One promises personal health, wealth, and happiness. Another promises social transformation. In both versions, the results are up to us. We bring God's kingdom to earth, either to ourselves or to society, by following certain spiritual laws or moral and political agendas. Both forget that salvation comes from above, as a gift of God. Both forget that because we are baptized into Christ, the pattern of our lives is suffering leading to glory in that cataclysmic revolution that Christ will bring when he returns. Both miss the point that our lives and the world as they are now are not as good as it gets. We do not have our best life or world now. — Michael S. Horton

You can't live an obedient life and miss an adventure. Following the commands of Christ is not just about behavior. Behavior modification is not an end in itself in the New Testament. Transformation is about knowing the truth and the truth setting you free. — Beth Moore

Christian communal worship is the glorification of God and the sanctification of humanity as a divine-human event where God offers transformation and healing to help people become more fully what God created them to be and do. God breathes (inhales) and gathers in individual Christians to heal, transform, and renew them as the body of Christ to breathe (exhale) them out to continue the ministry of the incarnation that participates in the kingdom of God more fully coming. The consummation of the kingdom will come and God will be all in all. — Brent Peterson

we need to think through issues in terms of the Bible's big story - a biblical worldview. Our social involvement should be set in the framework of a biblical worldview shaped by the story of redemption. We should explore issues by looking at them in the light of creation, humanity's fall into sin, God's redemption - promised in the Old Testament and accomplished through Christ - and the return of Christ and the transformation of all things. Being biblical, then, means ensuring that our actions are related to our biblical framework rather than appending isolated biblical texts to each action. — Tim Chester

Second, the reason to embrace and celebrate these novels as the countercultural event that they are is due largely to the subliminal messages delivered by Harry and friends in their stolen wheelbarrows. Readers walk away, maybe a little softer on the occult than they were, but with story-embedded messages: the importance of a pure soul; love's power even over death; about sacrifice and loyalty; a host of images and shadows about Christ and how essential 'right belief' is for personal transformation and victory over internal and external evils. — John Granger

By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists ... Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We today lack a theology of growth. And so we need to learn how we "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). In particular, we need to learn to cooperate with "the means of grace" that God has ordained for the transformation of the human personality. Our participation in these God-ordained "means" will enable us increasingly to take into ourselves Christ's character and manner of life. — Douglas J. Moo

Once your rights to yourself are surrendered to God, your true personal nature begins responding to God immediately. Jesus Christ brings freedom to your total person, and even your individuality is transformed. The transformation is brought about by love - personal devotion to Jesus. Love is the overflowing result of one person in true fellowship with another. — Oswald Chambers

I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young, but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.
I knew I had to be committed to preaching a transforming message to the people of Rwanda. Jesus did not die for people to be religious. He died so that we might believe in Him and be transformed. I'm engaged in a purpose and strategy that Jesus came to Earth for. My life is set for that divine purpose in Jesus Christ. I was called to that
proclaiming the message of transformation through Jesus Christ. — John Rucyahana

I have seen miracles in my time, my brothers and sisters. The greatest miracle of all, I believe, is the transformation that comes into the life of a man or a woman who accepts the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and tries to live it in his or her life. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The needed transformation is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil (and their corresponding cultures) with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught and with a culture of the kingdom of God. — Dallas Willard

Keeping the gospel in focus, you see, is more than helping our children know forgiveness of sin through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. In the gospel there is the promise of internal transformation and empowerment. — Tedd Tripp

We are living at a time when the Prostestant church is rediscovering the truth that transformation in Christ occurs through the disciplines of formation. Finally, Adele Calhoun has pulled all of these together into one volume, complete with clear definitions and practices of a variety of ways that God uses to grow our lives. No longer do you have to root through scattered pieces of paper, nor a chapter here and there to get the big picture of the tried and true disciplines. This is one resource you will want to have at your fingertips. — Greg Oden

Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living. — Criss Jami

The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications. — David Platt

A gospel which is only about the moment of conversion but does not extend to every moment of life in Christ is too small. A gospel that gets your sins forgiven but offers no power for transformation is too small. A gospel that isolates one of the benefits of union with Christ and ignores all the others is too small. A gospel that must be measured by your own moral conduct, social conscience, or religious experience is too small. A gospel that rearranges the components of your life but does not put you personally in the presence of God is too small. — Fred Sanders

Following Jesus Christ was the sum of their entire existence. At the moment when life itself was on the line, nothing else mattered besides identifying themselves with Him. For these faithful believers, the name "Christian" was much more than a religious designation. It defined everything about them, including how they viewed both themselves and the world around them. The label underscored their love for a crucified Messiah along with their willingness to follow Him no matter the cost. It told of the wholesale transformation God had produced in their hearts, and witnessed to the fact that they had been made completely new in Him. They had died to their old way of life, having been born again into the family of God. Christian was not simply a title, but an entirely new way of thinking - one that had serious implications for how they lived - and ultimately how they died. — Mark Howell

The Holy Spirit accompanies God's Word to bring revelation of Christ, resulting in transformation. — Bob Hoskins

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

Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision. — David Kinnaman

The gospel by which individuals come to personal faith, and so to that radical transformation of life spoken of so often in the new Testament, is the personalizing of the larger challenge just mentioned: the call to every child, woman, and man to submit in faith to the lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus and so to become, through baptism and membership in the body of Christ, a living, breathing anticipation of the final new creation itself — N. T. Wright

false promises of an easy life or indulgence of sins. But in good times, the cost does not seem so high, and people take the name of Christ without undergoing the radical transformation of life that true conversion implies. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. — Sri Aurobindo

Sporadic and shallow dipping in the doctrine of Christ and partial participation in His restored Church cannot produce the spiritual transformation that enables us to walk in a newness of life. Rather, fidelity to covenants, constancy of commitment, and offering our whole soul unto God are required if we are to receive the blessings of eternity. — David A. Bednar

Through adoration, the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the Gospel. Anyone who prays to the Savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God. Those who stand before the Lord are therefore fulfilling an eminent service. They are presenting to Christ all those who do not know him or are far from him: they keep watch in his presence on their behalf. — Pope John Paul II

The transformation of Christ's bodily scars into badges of glory shows us what happens, even in this life, to our souls when we lovingly and trustingly offer our sufferings to Christ and unite them to His. He turns "deformity" into "dignity". — Peter Kreeft

God's people are a hidden people, but when Christ receives his people into heaven, he will touch them with the wand of his own love, and change them into the image of his manifested glory. They were poor and wretched, but what a transformation! They were stained with sin, but one touch of his finger, and they are bright as the sun, and clear as crystal. Oh! what a manifestation! All this proceeds from the exalted Lamb. Whatever there may be of effulgent splendour, Jesus shall be the centre and soul of it all. Oh! to be present and to see him in his own light, the King of kings, and Lord of lords! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Spiritual transformation into Christ-likeness in not going to happen unless we act ... What transforms us is the will to obey Jesus Christ. — Dallas Willard

The word of God is definitely above culture, in terms of what or who should have authority in our lives. However, we must remember that we are within culture, and our calling in Christ is to play our part in the redemption and transformation of individuals and cultures. I believe the recent history of the religious subculture teaches all too clearly that unless we are moving forward in seeking the genuine transformation of culture, then we are standing still and it is transforming us. — Steve Scott

By giving us control, our new technologies tend to enhance existing idols in our lives. Instead of becoming more like Christ through the forming and shaping influence of the church community, we form, and shape, and personalize our community to make it more like us. We take control of things that are not ours to control. Could it be that our desire for control is short-circuiting the process of change and transformation God wants us to experience through the mess of real world, flesh and blood, face-to-face relationships? — Tim Challies

If you accept the belief that baptism incorporates us in the mystical body of Christ, into the divine DNA, then you might say that the Holy Spirit is present in each of us, and thus we have the capacity for the fullness of redemption, of transformation. — Thomas Keating

Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of attempting to control outcomes. The core of alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, smoking and a host of things the world calls addictions is control. The little willingness the Holy Spirit asks is the key to letting go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create. An idea to contemplate from the Course is this: "Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." The requirement is to change your thinking, not to focus on behavior and form. Behavior flows from thought, and transformation of the mind is synonymous with changing thought patterns from ego-based to Spirit-based. — David Hoffmeister

The cross had touched his heart and will. That was all. It had changed his whole being. He is a living illustration of Paul's teaching in this very letter. He is dead with Christ to his old self; he lives with Christ a new life. The gospel can do that. It can and does do so to-day and to us, if we will. Nothing else can; nothing else ever has done it; nothing else ever will. Culture may do much; social reformation may do much; but the radical transformation of the nature is only effected by the "love of God shed abroad in the heart," and by the new life which we receive through our faith in Christ. — Alexander MacLaren

Even if we change practices or behaviors, we are seeking transformed hearts. We must know in our bones God's heart for equality and wholeness in the Body of Christ then live our lives out of that truth, with invitation and joy, as living prophets of God's way of life. — Sarah Bessey

You have before you the task of seeking new ways to announce Christ in situations of rapid and often profound transformation, and of emphasizing the missionary character of all pastoral activity. — Pope Benedict XVI