George MacDonald Quotes

Jesus is hungry but feeds others; He grows weary but offers others rest; He is the King Messiah but pays tribute; He is called the devil but casts out demons; He dies the death of a sinner but comes to save His people from their sins; He is sold for thirty pieces of silver but gives His life a ransom for many; He will not turn stones to bread for Himself but gives His own body as bread for people.

Out of love for His Father and for us, He allowed Himself to suffer beyond the capacity of mortal man. He told us some of what that infinite sacrifice required of Him.

My salvation was a free gift. I didn't have to work for it and it's better than any gold medal that I've ever won.

God always wants what's best for us, just as you want what's best for someone you really love. You put them before you, and God does that too. God puts us before His Son, who He sacrificed for our salvation. But the Son did it voluntarily because He has the love of the Father before us.

Our Saviour would love at no less rate than death; and from the supereminent height of glory, stooped and debased Himself to the sufferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk himself to the bottom of abjectness, to exalt our condition to the contrary extreme.

Because Jesus was someone, you’re free to be no one.

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

Nature, reason, and Christianity recognize no other. Pride may say Nay; but Pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth.

I went to a great church here in L.A., gave my heart to the Lord and felt freedom from things I've carried throughout my life that I just thought, 'I don't have to carry them any more.'

To be able to love and live in freedom means to be able to make godly decisions. To make godly decisions we have to surrender our egos and all the falsity and shame that goes with it.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

I am God's wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ.

I groan daily under a body of sin and corruption. Oh for the time when I shall drop this flesh, and be free from sin!

I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion, but I sold my noble rank - I blush not to state it, nor am I sorry - for the profit of others. In short, I am a slave in Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

Husbands are not Christ. But they are called to be like him. And the specific point of likeness is the husband's readiness to suffer for his wife's good without threatening or abusing her. This includes suffering to protect her from any outside forces that would harm her, as well as suffering disappointments of abuses even from her. This kind of love is possible because Christ died for both husband and wife. Their sins are forgiven. Neither needs to make the other suffer for sins. Christ has borne that suffering. Now as two sinful and forgiven people we can return good for evil.

Humility is that simple, inner life of real greatness, which is indifferent to magnificence, and, surrounded by it all, lives far away in the distant country of a Father's home, with the cross borne silently and self-sacrificingly in the heart of hearts.

He left His Father's throne above, (So free, so infinite His grace!) Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for Adam's helpless race.

God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.

He is truly great that is great in charity. He is truly great that is little in himself, and maketh no account of any height of honor. And he is truly learned that doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.

What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.

Go to the cross of Christ, all you that want to be delivered from the power of selfishness.

Praised be the Lord, who has redeemed me from myself.

Though the cross of Christ has been beautified by the poet and the artist, the avid seeker after God is likely to find it the same savage implement of destruction it was in the days of old. The way of the cross is still the pain-wracked path to spiritual power and fruitfulness.