Quotable

Let me state the cause of my burden.  It is this: Jesus Christ has today almost no authority among the groups that call themselves by His name....  “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” is the church’s national anthem and the cross is her official flag, but in the week-by-week services of the church and the day-by-day conduct of her members someone else, not Christ, makes the decisions [and] decide[s] the moral standards…objectives and all methods employed to achieve them.  Because of long and meticulous organization it is now possible for the youngest pastor just out of seminary to have more actual authority in a church than Jesus Christ has….

The Lordship of Jesus…has been relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility to it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion….That the Man Christ Jesus has absolute and final authority over the whole church and over all its members in every detail of their lives is simply not now accepted as true by the rank and file of evangelical Christians.

   A.W. Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer, 1978, pp. 88-89

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you...”  John xiii, 34.

“Even as I have loved you…” is the command of Him who asks nothing that He has not provided, and now offers to bestow.  It is the assurance that He expects nothing from us, that He does not work in us. “Even as I have loved you and every moment am pouring out that love upon you through the Holy Spirit, EVEN SO do ye love one another.”  The measure, the strength, and the work of your love you will find in Christ’s love to you.

   Andrew Murray, Like Christ, 1895, p. 127