A More Christlike God Quotes

“In Romans 5, who is the agent of salvation? Whose love is at work? Who is forgiving and reconciling sinners? God! God is the agent of salvation through Christ. And what is God saving us from? Himself? No. In Romans 5, does God say or even imply, “I love you so much that I will save you from myself?” No. God saves us from ‘the wrath’—period.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“For God so loved that world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.” In other words, Jesus does not come to announce condemnation from the Father, nor even to save us from the condemnation of the Father, but rather to reveal the love of the Father for those already perishing and suffering condemnation. Instead of a punishing Judge, the Father of Jesus waits on, watches for and then runs to those who’ve come to the end of themselves.   The”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Remember, it’s not only the vengeance or violence from which I’m recoiling: the real problem is the portrait of a God whose un-Christlike naked will eclipses love and trumps grace—a coercive force incongruent with Christ’s cruciform revelation of his Father’s love.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“When has shame and guilt ever restored someone’s life? When has punishing the victim ever transformed a heart or life? So it is with sin. As a disease, it cannot be punished out of us! We don’t need a punishing Judge, but rather, a great Physician.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“So while God in his fullness is far beyond our comprehension, who God is can be known through the revelation of the Cross, by which we mean cruciform love, by ‘laying down his life.’ Love is not merely one of God’s attributes. Love is who God is in his very nature. God is Love in a way that exceeds character qualities. God is living love.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Christ commands us to love our enemies and to overcome evil with good. He calls us to make love our first allegiance—and his love frees us to do so. Freedom in Christ, ironically, is freedom from the tyranny of our own paranoia-producing self-will and fear-driven self-preservation, which we’ve tragically mislabeled ‘freedom.’ But”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“What is your most dominant image of God? What does that say about your own belief system? Your own temperament? Your own faith community?   Pausing”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“One word should suffice this evening that is the Cross itself. The Cross is the word through which God has responded to evil in the world …a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness. It also reveals a judgment. Namely, that God, in judging us, loves us. Let us remember this: God judges us by loving us. If I embrace his love then I am saved. If I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but by my own self, because God never condemns, he only loves and saves.[11]”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“God has indeed rendered a decisive judgment through the Cross, and his verdict is “Mercy!”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“To look at Jesus—especially on the Cross, says 1 John—is to behold the clearest depiction of the God who is love (1 John 4:8). I’ve come to believe that Jesus alone is perfect theology.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“The Cross is God’s eternal love, refracted through human sin. What God’s love looks like now, refracted through human sin, is a crucified Jewish man.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“On the other hand, a completely good God, whose nature is pure love, produces people who imitate him by exemplifying love. That God, who willingly laid down his life for others, inspires loving followers who truly are free—free to move beyond the slavery of self-seeking into self-giving, sacrificial love. ”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“The revelation included: a fresh emphasis on God as the merciful and hospitable Father; who wins us by love rather than threats; who accepts and adores us while we’re still a mess; who sees us as we are and heals us with hugs rather than blows.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“the great peril is that we worship ourselves via an image of God we create out of our own temperament.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“What if grace were to generate a love more compelling than even our own freedom? It sounds terribly self-defeating—and it is (sort of) and yet there’s something counter-intuitive that plants self-giving and self-sacrifice as the seeds of human flourishing.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“compare them to our current spiritual state, we never measure up. Some assume if revival isn’t sweeping the land, then someone is to blame and the revival-ist is the heroic prophet called to point the finger and lead the people out of bondage. There’s sin in the land to be opposed or sin in the camp to be exposed. Who shall we scapegoat this time around? Thus, the accuser is given free rein to point the finger at ‘the lukewarm church’ and the hedonism of ‘the world.’ If we can rile ourselves into a weeping lather, perhaps the ‘breakthrough’ will come. Conversions will abound, church buildings will be filled and the city will be transformed. All that stands in our way is the sin that holds back the blessing. But hatred of sin and self-hatred and hatred of the sinner are a very thin line, aren’t they?”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“God consents to our reluctance to consent, resulting in this painfully slow but inexorable transfiguration of our violent world.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“God is Good. God is Love. Life happens but redemption is coming. “The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8).”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“He applies forgiveness to all humankind for all time. How? Why is this death, this blood, this forgiveness universal? I suspect it is because the blood shed is the blood of God, who is himself universal, an eternal storehouse of mercy. This God who is universal love empties himself and pours eternal life into the cosmos through the wounds of that first century Jewish Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“He applies forgiveness to all humankind for all time. How? Why is this death, this blood, this forgiveness universal? I suspect it is because the blood shed is the blood of God, who is himself universal, an eternal storehouse of mercy. This God who is universal love empties himself and pours eternal life into the cosmos through the wounds of that first century Jewish Rabbit, Jesus of Nazareth.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“A consenting heart provides the richest soil for seed, and can actually contribute to the size and impact of the harvest.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“A consenting heart provides the richest soil for seed, and can actually contribute to the size and impact of the harvest. Pg 205”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“We were trained to obsess in indignation over all sorts of ‘sins’—even ones that aren’t found anywhere in our Bibles. According to Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, moral outrage at others’ sin is often a confession of one’s own deeply repressed cravings.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Whenever we teach the beautiful gospel, we remind audiences of two cardinal Christian truths: 1. God does not change. 2. God is perfectly revealed in Christ. The basic script[101] of The Beautiful Gospel summarizes so well the arc of this entire book: Christ did not come to change the Father, or to appease the wrath of an angry judge, but to reveal the Father. God is like Jesus, exactly like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. We did not know that, but now we do. Paul said God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. It’s not the Father that needed to be reconciled to the world. It’s the world that needed to be reconciled to the Father. Jesus, perfectly revealing the heart of the Father, confronts the sin of the world this way: I forgive you. Even when we turn away from God, he is always there, confronting us with his love. God is always toward us. Always for us. He comes, not as a condemning judge, but as a great physician. Jesus was saving us from Satan, sin and death; not saving us from God. God never turns away from humanity. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus. When did Jesus ever turn away from sinful humanity and say, “I am too holy and perfect to look on your sin?” Did Jesus ever do anything like that? No. The Pharisees did that. They were too holy and turned away. God is like Jesus, not like a Pharisee. The gospel is this: when we turn away, he turns toward us. When we run away, he confronts us with his love. When we murder God, he confronts us with his mercy and forgiveness.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Some preachers imply that Jesus saved us from God. But if the Father doesn’t need to be appeased or paid, but rather, God-in-Christ incurred the cost, how might that affect your image of God?”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“If God is good, then really: what the hell? Where do we start? What did we miss? What elements of theological rubble are scraped clear and what truth remains as bedrock?”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Remember the Incarnation? The almighty Creator God who both pre-existed and birthed our whole universe had already come. Christ already established his kingdom. Remember also how he arrived. It was no military parade! Remember, the royal proclamation of the angels indicate a trudging journey, a smelly donkey, a tiny village. Recall the “No Vacancy” sign and of course, the crowded manger-cave. God, bursting into this dimension, crowning from between a virgin’s legs! God, a helpless newborn, wailing for momma’s milk. God, filling his first swaddling diaper with meconium! God, whisked away at night by a refugee family, barely ducking Herod’s sword, hunkering in Egypt. God came to earth, this way, on purpose! And how God came is itself an essential revelation of his true nature”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“Jesus showed us in the Gospels what fatherhood meant to him: extravagant love, affirmation, affection and belonging. It meant scandalous forgiveness and inclusion. Jesus showed us this supernaturally safe, welcoming Father-love, extended to very messy people before they repented and before they had faith. Or better, he was actually redefining repentance and faith as simply coming to him, baggage and all, to taste his goodness and mercy. He didn’t seem to appreciate our self-loathing. The repentance he wanted was that we would welcome his kindness into our deepest needs and wounds.”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“I’ve also been pleasantly surprised how this proposition—the message that Jesus shows us what God is like—is often well received by those who don’t profess Christian faith. If I say, “God is love and Jesus was love incarnate,” no problem! Jesus is seldom the issue, even for a rabid, self-avowed ‘non-Christian’ such as satirist Bill Maher. His primary attacks are not against Jesus at all, but against Christians whose religion does violence in the name of the Prince of Peace. He castigates: If you’re a Christian that supports killing your enemy and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself. …‘Capping thy enemy’ is not exactly what Jesus would do. For almost two thousand years, Christians have been lawyering the Bible to try to figure out how ‘Love thy neighbor’ can mean ‘Hate thy neighbor.’ … Martin Luther King Jr. gets to call himself a Christian, because he actually practiced loving his enemies. And Gandhi was so f-ing Christian, he was Hindu. But if you’re endorsing revenge, torture or war, …you cannot say you’re a follower of the guy who explicitly said, ‘Love your enemy’ and ‘Do good to those who hate you.’ … And not to put too fine a point on it, but nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark—kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace and hating whales. There’s interpreting, and then there’s just ignoring. It’s just ignoring if you’re for torture—as are more Evangelical* Christians than any other religion. You’re supposed to look at that figure of Christ on the Cross and think, “how could a man suffer like that and forgive?” … I’m a non-Christian. Just like most Christians. If you ignore every single thing Jesus commanded you to do, you’re not a Christian—you’re just auditing. You’re not Christ’s followers, you’re just fans. And if you believe the Earth was given to you to kick ass on while gloating, you’re not really a Christian—you’re a Texan.[3]”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel

“This,” says John, “is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16), for our neighbors (Mark 12:31) and our enemies (Matt. 5:44). For disciples of the Lamb, laying down our lives means laying down the sword of coercion and lethal force, and picking up the Cross of self-giving, radically forgiving love. This ‘ought’ sounds like law and obligation—and yes, Jesus calls it a commandment—but this is not a new religious ladder to climb. Rather, it is what you become when Love comes to live inside of you. What Christ asks is that we willingly receive God’s transforming grace and surrender to the impulses of Christ’s love in our hearts. Once we let go of the willful ‘No!’ in our hearts, this naturally supernatural process of grace simply unfolds.   Pausing”
― Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel