Quotes about Redemption

God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He did not need to have his mind changed. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God's side, by God's initiative, from inside human flesh — the human flesh of the Son. The divine hostility, or wrath of God, has always been an aspect of his love.

Christ's recapitulation of the human story does not simply invite us into the divine life. There is an objective reality about it; it has happened over our dead bodies, so to speak.

The Son of God did not come to make good people better but to give life to the dead.

It is the living significance of the death of Jesus, not the factual details concerning it as a historical event, that matters.

All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God's righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his "making right" (verb) all that has been wrong.

In the cross of Christ, we see something revolutionary, something that undercuts not just conventional morality but also religious distinctions across the board. Christ has died for the ungodly, the unrighteous

In other words, God's righteousness involves not only a great reversal ("the first will be last") but also an actual transformation and re-creation.

To summarize, then: the crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance.

Oh villain! Thou art condemned into everlasting redemption. Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing

The gospel is a message of deliverance from the grip of evil and Death.

Life's darker side: that's Advent.

The entire human race is heir to what John Henry Newman called a "vast primordial catastrophe," and that only a stronger power from outside ourselves can repair the breach.