God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, “I love you.”
– Billy Graham
Salvation | The Cross
God grades on the Cross not on the curve.
– Adrian Rogers
The Cross
Long-lasting victory can never be separated from a long-lasting stand on the foundation of the cross.
– Watchman Nee
Faithful | The Cross | Victory
Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ.
– Andrew Murray
Salvation | The Cross
The Cross is the lightning rod of grace that short-circuited God’s wrath to Christ so that only the light of His love remains for believers.
– A. W. Tozer
The Cross | Grace | God
The cross is the greatest example of humility and devotion in the universe. Jesus put your needs ahead of His own. He considered you more valuable than Himself.
– Chip Ingram
The Cross
Self-pity, self-love, fear of suffering, withdrawal from the cross: these are some of the manifestations of the soul life, for its prime motivation is the self-preservation. It is exceedingly reluctant to endure any loss.
– Watchman Nee
Self-pity | The Cross | Self-love
Only in the Cross of Christ will we receive power when we are powerless. We will find strength when we are weak. We will experience hope when our situation is hopeless. Only in the Cross is there peace for our troubled hearts.
– Michael Youssef
The Cross | Power
Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are thy healings, His agonies thy repose, His conflicts thy conquests, His groans thy songs, His pains thine ease, His shame thy glory, His death thy life, His sufferings thy salvation.
– Matthew Henry
The Cross
His brokenhearted cry on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” shows God’s heart toward sinners.
– John R. Rice
The Cross
Taking up my “cross” means a life voluntarily surrendered to God.
– A. W. Pink
Obedience | The Cross | Surrender
We must wake ourselves up! Or somebody else will take our place, and bear our cross, and thereby rob us of our crown.
– William Booth
Perseverance | The Cross
In Jesus Christ on the Cross there is refuge; there is safety; there is shelter; and all the power of sin upon our track cannot reach us when we have taken shelter under the Cross that atones for our sins.
– A. C. Dixon
The Cross
It was Christ who willingly went to the cross, and it was our sins that took him there.
– Franklin Graham
The Cross
Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.
– Watchman Nee
Eternity | The Cross | Resurrection
As Christ struggled up Calvary’s hill and bled upon it, His aim was to eradicate self-love and implant the love of God in the hearts of men. One can only increase as the other decreases.
– Walter J. Chantry
The Cross
God is looking for broken men who have judged themselves in the light of the cross of Christ. When He wants anything done, He takes up men who have come to the end of themselves, whose confidence is not in themselves, but in God.
– Harry Ironside
Judging | The Cross | Brokenness
If I am perturbed by the reproach and misunderstanding that may follow action taken for the good of souls for whom I must give account; if I cannot commit the matter and go on in peace and in silence, remembering Gethsemane and the cross, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
– Amy Carmichael
Peace | The Cross | Commitment
Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to – because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.
– Phillips Brooks
The Cross
The cross is the center of the world’s history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.
– Alexander MacLaren
The Cross
Christ and His cross are not separable in this life; howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven’s door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.
– Samuel Rutherford
The Cross
When one tries to increase his knowledge by doing mental gymnastics over books without waiting upon God and looking to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, his soul is plainly in full swing. This will deplete his spiritual life. Because the fall of man was occasioned by seeking knowledge, God uses the foolishness of the cross to “destroy the wisdom of the wise.”
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | The Cross | Knowledge
There’s no sight like seeing the light from Calvary kiss a human face as it fills the heart with the assurance of Divine forgiveness.
– Gipsy Smith
The Cross | Assurance
Come all crosses, welcome, welcome! so I may get my heart full of my Lord Jesus.
– Samuel Rutherford
Jesus | The Cross
God’s people must not love their soul life even to the point of death. Unless self-love or self-pity is committed to the cross they shall surely be defeated by the adversary.
– Watchman Nee
Self-pity | The Cross | Self-love
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. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.
– John Stott
Christians | Community | The Cross
There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.
– John Owen
Sin | The Cross
Carry the cross patiently, and with perfect submission; and in the end it shall carry you.
– Thomas a Kempis
Submission | The Cross
All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.
– Oswald Chambers
The Cross
Most Christians are being crucified on a cross between two thieves: Yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s worries.
– Warren Wiersbe
Worry | The Cross
The way to Jesus is not by Cambridge and Oxford, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Socrates, Plato, Shakespeare or the poets–It is over an old-fashioned hill called Calvary.
– Gipsy Smith
The Cross
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
Justice | The Cross
We are bid to take, not to make our cross.
– William Gurnall
Suffering | The Cross
To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.
– John Owen
The Cross
A man who covers up the cross though he may be an intellectual man, and draw large crowds will have no ilk there, and his church will be but a gilded sepulcher.
– Dwight L. Moody
Church | Heresy | The Cross
The cross is a one time, visual representation of God’s grief over sin.
– Assorted Authors
Atonement | The Cross | Grief
Perhaps the greatest act of Christ on the Cross was the very act of the Cross.
– Paul Chappell
The Cross
We must not forget that it wasn’t the Jews that put him on the cross, and it wasn’t the Romans. It was my sins, it was your sins, the sins of this world.
– Franklin Graham
The CrossSin
To believe Christ’s cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.
– Samuel Rutherford
Faith | Friendship | The Cross
It is hard for anyone who has a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ to accept that the world hates Him, this One whom we love so much… I thought of the Lord of Glory hanging upon the cross on Calvary’s hill, with the mockers about Him. Yet He died for them–and for those who mock Him still.
– T.A. McMahon
The Cross | Hatred
At the heart of the story stands the cross of Christ where evil did its worst and met its match.
– Assorted Authors
Atonement | The Cross
Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: He wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven. This is our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility, and our ultimate destiny.
– Rick Warren
Heaven | The Cross | Responsibility
But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.
– Bono
The Cross
The single most important thread in working through your disappointments is that your heart and mind ponder and grasp what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. There is no pattern without the cross. There is no Good News without it. That is what the gospel is all about.
– Ravi Zacharias
The Heart | The Cross | The Gospel
Christ bears the wounds of the church, his body, just as he bore the wounds of crucifixion. I sometimes wonder which have hurt worse.
– Philip Yancey
The Cross
There is a center to the Bible and its message of grace. It is found in Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected. Grace must therefore be preached in a way that is centered and focused on Jesus Christ Himself, never offering the benefits of the gospel without the Benefactor Himself.
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
The Bible | Grace | The Cross
Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, and of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering.
– Oswald Chambers
Suffering | The Cross
That the sinless Son of God must die upon the Cross to redeem us shouldn’t make us feel good about ourselves but ashamed, for it was our sins that nailed Him there.
– Dave Hunt
The Cross
Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.
– S.D. Gordon
The Cross
As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Cross, we know our sins are forgiven ; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us.
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | The Cross
Without this heart attitude it is exceedingly difficult for us to accept the circumcision of the flesh. Every affection, desire, thought, knowledge, intent, worship, and work of the flesh must go to the cross.
– Watchman Nee
Attitude | Humility | The Cross
The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that I ever bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.
– Samuel Rutherford
Perseverance | The Cross
That strong self-assertive will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give myself over wholly to the Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if we do not give him any cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him have no building material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord to live out His life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live. Without reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do as He pleases with us.
– Watchman Nee
Obedience | The Cross
If he but casts one longing glance it is sufficient to disclose to us that he does not truly recognize where the world stands in relation to the cross. Only after one is actually willing to offer his soul life to death will he be fit to follow the “Sermon on the Mount” without flinching.
– Watchman Nee
Holiness | The Cross
Calvary not merely made possible the salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they would be brought to faith and their salvation made actual.
– J.I. Packer
The Cross
The greatest adventure in life–knowing God–begins at the Cross of Christ and ends with a “Hallelujah!
– David Jeremiah
Life | The Cross
Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross
– Tim Keller
The Cross
The cross is like a walnut whose outer rind is bitter, but the inner kernel is pleasant and invigorating. So the cross does not offer any charm of outward appearance, but to the cross-bearer its true character is revealed, and he finds in it the choicest sweets of spiritual peace.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
The Cross | Peace
If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it.
– Thomas a Kempis
Suffering | Perseverance | The Cross
God walls the sea with sand. God clears the air with storms. God warms the earth with snow. He exalts us to heaven by the stumbling-block of the cross.
– Assorted Authors
Jesus | The Cross
The moment you are redeemed through the atoning death of Christ upon the cross, you receive the Holy Spirit within your human spirit.
– Major Ian Thomas
The Holy Spirit | Atonement | The Cross
No cross, no crown!
– William Tiptaft
The Cross
The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.
– Watchman Nee
Sin | The Cross
The cross stands for definite realities which embody and express the leading characteristics of Christ’s agony.
– A. W. Pink
Salvation | Christ | The Cross
Look at Him at Gethsemane, sweating as it were great drops of blood; look at Him on the cross, crucified between two thieves; hear that piercing cry, “Father, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” And as you look into that face, as you look into those wounds on His feet or His hands, will you say He has not the power to save you? Will you say He has not the power so redeem you?
– Dwight L. Moody
The Cross | Salvation
Historically, Pentecost followed Calvary; experientially, being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit follows the bearing of the cross.
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | The Cross | Power
If a sinner comes into your assembly or you otherwise come into contact with him, remember that he is a human being for whom Christ died. He stands at the foot of the cross, just as you stand at the foot of the cross.
– J. Vernon McGee
Hypocrisy | The Cross
Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.
– Horatius Bonar
Faith | The Cross
If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them – if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it’s going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim – and that is this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them.
– Tim Keller
Christianity | God | Jesus | The cross
Gospellers have much to say about what Christ’s death accomplished for those who believe in Him, but very little is said about what that Death accomplished Godwards. The fact is that the death of Christ glorified God if never a single sinner had been saved by virtue of it.
– A. W. Pink
The Cross
What he needs is not increased spiritual teaching but an obedient heart which is willing to yield his life to the Holy Spirit and go the way of the cross according to the Spirit’s command. Increased spiritual teaching will only strengthen his carnality and serve to deceive him into conceiving himself as spiritual.
– Watchman Nee
Carnality | Obedience | The Cross
The heart of Christ became like a reservoir in the midst of the mountains. All the tributary streams of iniquity, and every drop of the sins of his people, ran down and gathered into one vast lake, deep as hell and shoreless as eternity. All these met, as it were, in Christ’s heart, and he endured them all.
– Charles Spurgeon
The Cross
In Christ alone, and His payment of the penalty for our sins upon the Cross, we find reconciliation to God and ultimate meaning and purpose.
– Dave Hunt
Salvation | Christ | The Cross
We took our sins and drove them like nails through His hands and feet. We lifted Him high up on the cross of our transgressions, and then we pierced His heart through with the spear of our unbelief.
– Charles Spurgeon
The Cross
Weak Christians are afraid of the shadow of the cross.
– Thomas Brooks
Fear | The Cross
No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
– William Penn
Suffering | The Cross
He that hath no cross deserves no crown.
– Francis Quarles
Apathy | The Cross
We may not preach a crucified Savior without being also crucified men and women. It is not enough to wear an ornamental cross as a pretty decoration. The cross that Paul speaks about was burned into his very flesh, was branded into his being, and only the Holy Spirit can burn the true cross into our innermost life.
– A. B. Simpson
The Holy Spirit | Conversion | The Cross
To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Suffering | Endurance | The Cross
Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed his spear into the very heart of the God-man. What a hellish deed! But what was the next thing that took place? Blood covered the spear! Oh! thank God, the blood covers sin. There was the blood covering that spear-the very point of it. The very crowning act of sin brought out the crowning act of love; the crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act of grace.
– Dwight L. Moody
The Cross
The Gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.
– John Stott
The Gospel | Mercy | The Cross
Because the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, I have received forgiveness of sins; because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, I have received new life; because the Lord Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, I have received the outpoured Spirit. All is because of Him; nothing is because of me.
– Watchman Nee
Salvation | The Cross
God makes crosses of great variety; He makes some of iron and lead, that look as if they must crush; some of straw, that seem so light, and yet are no less difficult to carry; some He makes of precious stones and gold, that dazzle the eye and excite the envy of spectators, but in reality are as well able to crucify as those which are so much dreaded.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering | The Cross | Envy
In so obeying Christ as to disregard his natural affection, a believer’s natural love suffers intensely. Such sorrow and pain becomes a practical cross to him. Deep are the heart wounds and many are the tears when one has to forfeit the one he loves.
– Watchman Nee
Selfishness | The Cross
Jesus Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace. Had not we need then provoke ourselves to duty?
– Thomas Watson
The Cross
In any trial, in any bitter situation, you are not alone, you are not helpless, you are not a victim. You have a tree, a cross, shown to you by the Sovereign God of Calvary. Whatever the trial or temptation, it is not more than you can bear. It is bearable. It can be handled. You can know as Joseph knew, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
– Kay Arthur
Trials | Bitterness | The Cross
Sin must indeed be exceeding sinful, when the Father must needs give His only Son to be the sinner’s Friend!
– J. C. Ryle
Sin | The Cross
If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to come to us somehow, vaguely. We are not to hope for anything startling or mysterious. It is a definite opening along certain lines which are definitely marked by God, which begin at the Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him.
– Henry Drummond
The Cross
To be a follower of the Crucified Christ means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.
– Elisabeth Elliot
The Cross
From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
The Cross
When you look at the Cross, what do you see? You see God’s awesome faithfulness. Nothing – not even the instinct to spare His own Son – will turn him back from keeping His word.
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
The Cross
The cross is the center of the world’s history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.
– Alexander MacLaren
The Cross
Worry is the cross which we make for ourselves by over anxiety.
– Francois Fenelon
Anxiety | The Cross
The cross grants us position, the Holy Spirit gives us experience.
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | The Cross
Let us honor the blood of Jesus Christ every moment of our lives, and we will be sweet in our souls.
– William J. Seymour
The Cross
It is said that old Dr. Alexander, of Princeton College, when a young student used to start out to preach, always gave them a piece of advice. The old man would stand with his gray locks and his venerable face and say: “Young man, make much of the blood in your ministry? Now, I have traveled considerable during the past few years, and never met a minister who made much of the blood and much of the atonement but God had blessed his ministry, and souls were born into the light by it.
– Dwight L. Moody
The Cross
All God’s plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them…. But men’s plans ignore the offence of the cross or despise it. Men’s plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world.
– E.M. Bounds
Greed | The Cross
It was not the volume of sin that sent Christ to the cross; it was the fact of sin.
– Ravi Zacharias
Sin | The Cross
Jesus defeated satan in Gethsemane on the cross, not by directly confronting the devil, but by fulfilling the destiny to which He had been called. The greatest battle that was ever won was accomplished by the apparent death of the victor, without even a word of rebuke to His adversary!
– Francis Frangipane
The Cross | Satan
If thou bear the cross cheerfully, it will bear thee.
– Thomas a Kempis
Holiness | Cheerfulness | The Cross