Quotes about Salvation
Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way
— Karl Barth
On the basis of the eternal will of God we have to think of EVERY HUMAN BEING, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable, as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does no know it yet or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this knowledge to him.
— Karl Barth
True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.
— Karl Barth
Are you saved?" asks the fundamentalist. "I am redeemed," answers the Catholic, "and like the apostle Paul I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling, with hopeful confidence—but not with a false assurance—and I do all this as the Church has taught, unchanged, from the time of Christ.
— Karl Keating
In Scripture the election of God ... does not come out of works but out of grace. God's electing plan prepares the way of salvation in which man learns that salvation is obtained only as a divine gift an never as an acquisiton because of good works.
— GC Berkouwer
The jubilation of God's salvation corresponds to man's very real condition of lostness ... In Scripture, there is never any mention of a relativizing of sin since any such relativizing of sin would also automatically relativize the unspeakably wonderful nature of salvation.
— GC Berkouwer
Salvation ... has its eternal foundation in the love of God.
— GC Berkouwer
In the Gospels, being a sinner means being lost ... There is no way for man to escape the condition of being lost ... The lost can only be sought and found.
— GC Berkouwer
In the New Testament, the concept of myth is not simply a harmless feature of a primitive world-view, requiring only to be reinterpreted for modern man ... Myth is that which "diminishes the truth of salvation."
— GC Berkouwer
Man, in and by the salvation of God, is delivered from the tenacity of the egocentric and commences to sing of the glory of God. It is this salvation that opens doors and windows toward God's handiwork.
— GC Berkouwer
The sanctification ... demanded is always an implicate of the sanctification that originates in God's mercy. Hence the sanctification of believers is never an independent area of human activity ... we can speak truly of sanctification only when we have understood the exceptionally great significance of the bond between Sola-fide and sanctification ... the Sola-fide ... a confession of 'By grace alone we are saved' ... is the only sound foundation for sanctification.
— GC Berkouwer
Everything is really said in an unobtrusive phrase, in Christ ...Faith is not added as a second, independent ingredient which makes its own contribution to justification in Christ... faith does nothing but accept, or come to rest in the sovereignty of His benefit ... we are not acceptable to God because of the worthiness of our faith. Grace is exclusively and totally God's.
— GC Berkouwer