Lesslie Newbigin Quotes

Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.

The church is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God's kingship.

Live in the kingdom of God in such a way that it provokes questions for which the gospel is the answer.

How can this strange story of God made flesh, of a crucified Savior, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it.

It is less important to ask a Christian what he or she believes about the Bible than it is to inquire what he or she does with it.

The business of the church is to tell and embody a story

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

Do things that will get people asking questions, the answer to which is the Gospel.

The victory of the Church over the power which was embodied in the Roman imperial system was not won by seizing the levers of power: it was won when the victims knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the Emperor.

The Church, wherever it is, is not only Christ's witness to its own people and nation, but also the home-base for a mission to the ends of the earth.

The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.

The Church must be seen as the company of pilgrims on the way to the end of the world and the ends of the earth.

The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king - conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.

The living God is a God of justice and mercy and He will be satisfied with nothing less than a people in whom his justice and mercy are alive.

It has never at any time been possible to fit the resurrection of Jesus into any world view except a world view of which it is the basis.

Our confidence...is not in the competence of our own knowing, but in the faithfulness and reliability of the one who is known.

One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed.

To make the improving of our own character our central aim is hardly the highest kind of goodness. True goodness forgets itself and goes out to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is right.

To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God saving purpose for his whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all.

God's grace is not limited by any ecclesiastical barriers.

Christ is the clue to all that is.

...our societies appear to be intent on immediate consumption rather than on investment for the future. We are piling up enormous debts and exploiting the natural environment in a manner which suggests that we have no real sense of any worthwhile future. Just as a society which believes in the future saves in the present in order to invest in the future, so a society without belief spends everything now and piles up debts for future generations to settle. "Spend now and someone else will pay later."

Congregational life wherein each member has his opportunity to contribute to the life of the whole body, those gifts with which the Spirit endows him, is as much of the essence of the Church as are ministry and sacraments.

The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.

The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference . . . . Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility.