I can never know beforehand how God’s image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that comes solely from God’s free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it.

Every Christian must be fully Christian by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some spiritual realm.

God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

If you want my goodness to stay with you then serve your neighbour, for in him God comes to you himself; such a man sees in his neighbour the material and spiritual need he is called to meet.