New Testament Quotes
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The Bible understands mercy as God’s own justice. Mercy is the heart of the biblical message, not by undercutting justice, but by surpassing it. The Old Testament speaks of God as a gracious and merciful God (Exod 34:6; Ps 86:15; etc.) and the New Testament calls God “the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation” (2 Cor 1:3; cf. Eph 2:4).
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When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible's idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
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We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.
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The New Testament is a commentary on the Old Testament, in the light of the new revelation given by Christ and the Holy Spirit.
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The New Testament tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to deal with them in terms of God's law. We owe them such fair dealing.
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THE VIEW THAT THE earliest Christians understood Jesus to have become the Son of God at his resurrection is not revolutionary among scholars of the New Testament. One of the greatest scholars of the second half of the twentieth century was Raymond Brown.
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The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions.
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In the whole of the New Testament there is not one joke, that fact alone would invalidate any book.
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Peace should be a hallmark of the godly person, first because it is a Godlike trait: God is called the God of peace several times in the New Testament. He took the initiative to establish peace with rebellious men, and He is the author of both personal peace as well as peace among men. Peace should be part of our character also because God has promised us His peace, because He has commanded us to let peace rule in our lives and relationships, and because peace is a fruit of the Spirit and therefore an evidence of His working in our lives.
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In one of my earlier books, Misquoting Jesus, I discuss the fact that we do not have the original copy of Luke, or Mark, or Paul’s writings, or any of the early Christian texts that make up the New Testament.
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What we think of as the twenty-seven books of “the” New Testament emerged out of these conflicts, and it was the side that won the debates over what to believe that decided which books were to be included in the canon of scripture.
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MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE tell the story of Jesus in ways similar to one another which is why they’re often called the synoptic gospels—with a similar optic, or viewpoint. Many details differ and the differences are quite fascinating, but it’s clear the three compositions share common sources. The Fourth Gospel tells the story quite differently. These differences might disturb people who don’t understand that storytelling in the ancient world was driven less by a duty to convey true details accurately and more by a desire to proclaim true meaning powerfully. The ancient editors who put the New Testament together let the differences stand as they were, so each story can convey its intended meanings in its own unique ways.
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One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses not to speak of the "wisdom of this world," which an impudent wind bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of preaching."
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Any student of the New Testament eager to understand its Greco-Roman setting will profit greatly from this excellent book. I commend it highly for its up-to-date perspectives and usefulness. Jeffers writes with a breadth of expertise on the Greco-Roman world that few New Testament specialists can match.
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One key and defining attribute of God that does not appear in any other world religion or system is the biblical use of the term "Father." Over 70 times in the New Testament alone, God is described as "Father" to His children. No major world religion describes the relationship between its creator and its adherents in terms of a father.
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Even though the orthodox claimed that this kind of manipulation of texts was a heretical activity, in the manuscripts of the New Testament that survive today almost all the evidence points in the other direction, showing that it was precisely orthodox scribes who modified their texts in order to make them conform more closely with orthodox theological interests.
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As long as Christian life remains our life we will not understand the Christ of the New Testament. You are not your own.
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To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.
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The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.
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The most casual reader of the New Testament can scarcely fail to see the commanding position the resurrection of Christ holds in Christianity. It is the creator of its new and brighter hopes, of its richer and stronger faith, of its deeper and more exalted experience.
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However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!
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Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.
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Contrary to Western evangelicalism’s obsession with the individual, discipleship is and always was a group project. No one in the New Testament followed independent of other followers.
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Many Christians today may think that the canon of the New Testament simply appeared on the scene one day, soon after the death of Jesus, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
