John Chrysostom Quotes

Man's maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother's breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.

To restore man, who had been laid low by sin, to the heights of divine glory, the Word of the eternal Father, though containing all things within His immensity, willed to become small. This He did not by putting aside His greatness but by taking to Himself our littleness.

When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the galaxies into being limited all power and, for love of us, came to us in the powerless body of a human baby.

Christ became one of us to redeem all of us.

The Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the manger and went on to the cross. This was the ladder that he placed on earth so that we might ascend to God on it. This is the way you must take.

Jesus, what made You so small? LOVE!

If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ...how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

When God's children pass under the shadow of the cross of Calvary, they know that through that shadow lies their passage to the great white throne. For them Gethsemane is as paradise. God fills it with sacred presences; its solemn silence is broken by the music of tender promises, its awful darkness softened and brightened by the sunlight of Heavenly faces and the music of angel wings.

The incarnation is “a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.

The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross.

Look to the cross, and hate your sin, for sin nailed your Well Beloved to the tree.

... the thing that kept Christ on that cross was love, not the nail.

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

Though our Savior's passion is over, his compassion is not.

The blood that poured from Christ's wounds bought your salvation. If you want to truly value what He did, think of Him hanging on that cross just for you. With that thought in your mind, consider how you should live. He gave Himself freely for you; are you giving yourself fully to Him?

The Cross will be for us as it was for Christ: proof of the greatest love.

Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God.

Weak, feeble and foolish as it may seem to people, the simple story of the Cross is enough for all mankind in every part of the globe.

Christ not only died for all: He died for each.

Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.

Pain is the kiss of Christ.

The cross of Jesus Christ represents the intersection of God's love and God's holiness.

Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.

Jesus humbled himself. He went from commanding angels to sleeping in the straw. From holding stars to clutching Mary's finger. The palm that held the universe took the nail of a soldier. Why? Because that's what love does. It puts the beloved before itself.

No other God have I but thee, born in a manger, died on a tree.