Incarnation Quotes

• The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

  J. I. Packer

  Christmas, Baby, Children

  J. I. Packer, Carolyn Nystrom (2009). “Knowing God Devotional Journal: A One-Year Guide”, p.20, InterVarsity Press

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• 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.

  Saint Augustine

  Mother, Teacher, Stars

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• What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself

  R. C. Sproul

  Baby, Birth, Celebrate

  Twitter post from Dec 22, 2015

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• The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Men, Reason Why, Divorced

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2015). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.81, SCM Press

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• Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

  Karen Armstrong

  Christian, Jesus, Sin

  "Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science". Book by Steve Paulson. Oxford University Press, p. 63, October 5, 2010.

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• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the incarnation. They say that God became man.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Men, Miracle

  C. S. Lewis (2011). “Miracles”, HarperCollins UK

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• It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the most profound unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. God became man; Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation.

  J. I. Packer

  Christian, Lying, Men

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• The incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.

  J. I. Packer

  Mystery, New Testament, Make Sense

  J. I. Packer, Carolyn Nystrom (2009). “Knowing God Devotional Journal: A One-Year Guide”, p.21, InterVarsity Press

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• Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Men, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “The World's Last Night: And Other Essays”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. "Be nice to one another" is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope.

  Michael Spencer

  Nice, Mean, Dark

  "Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality". Book by Michael Spencer, June 1, 2010.

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• We are on earth as extensions of God to finish the work He began. We are the essence of God, His on-going incarnation in the world.

  Earl Paulk

  Essence, World, Earth

  Earl Paulk (1986). “Thrust in the sickle and reap”

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• The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation - This story begins and ends in joy.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Joy, Stories, Resurrection

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “Tales from the Perilous Realm”, p.388, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Disguise is central to God's way of dealing with us human beings. Not because God is playing games with us but because the God who is beyond our knowing makes himself known in the disguise of what we can know. The Christian word for this is revelation, and the ultimate revelation came by incarnation. ... God is the master of disguises, in order that we might see.

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Christian, Playing Games, Order

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• The missionary spirit is the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of the incarnation and the cross.

  Hudson Taylor

  Jesus, Missionary, Spirit

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• In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure , although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience. God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Self, And Love, Atonement

  Aiden Wilson Tozer (1965). “The Knowledge of the Holy”, p.12, Fig

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• Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.

  J. I. Packer

  Fiction, Christian Christmas, Religious Christmas

  J. I. Packer, Carolyn Nystrom (2009). “Knowing God Devotional Journal: A One-Year Guide”, p.20, InterVarsity Press

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• 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.

  Frederick Buechner

  Taken, Men, Ideas

  Frederick Buechner, Lee Boltin (1974). “The life of Jesus”, Gramercy

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• The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.

  Peter Abelard

  Christmas, Might, Causes

  "Doctrine And Development". Book by Hastings Rashdall, 1898.

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• Because of the Incarnation, I salute all remaining matter with reverence.

  John of Damascus

  Environmental, Matter, Reverence

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• Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the sentimental air is never thicker than at Christmas. The Incarnation is messy, dirty, and resonates with the crucifixion. We need a new wave of carol writing that can gradually swill out the nonsense and catch the piercing, joy-through-pain refrains of the New Testament.

  Jeremy Begbie

  Pain, Dirty, Writing

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• The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it.

  Athanasius of Alexandria

  Men, Suffering, Dazzle

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• Jesus loved the will of His Father. He embraced the limitations, the necessities, the conditions, the very chains of His humanity as He walked and worked here on earth, fulfilling moment by moment His divine commission and the stern demands of His incarnation. Never was there a word or even a look of complaint.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Jesus, Father, Humanity

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• Christianity is, above all other religions ever known, a religion of sacrifice. It is a religion founded on the greatest of all sacrifices, the sacrifice of the Incarnation, culminating in the sacrifice on Calvary.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Sacrifice, Christianity, Calvary

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 133), 1895.

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• The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Men, People, Mind

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2014). “The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers Vol II: 1937-1943: From Novelist to Playwright”, p.43, St. Martin's Press

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• The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.

  James Martineau

  Men, Christ

  James Martineau (1891). “Essays, Reviews, and Addresses”

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