Sacrifice.
This word comes up again and again throughout this
film. The firefighters sacrifice for each other, for their families,
and for the people they are trying to rescue. Sometimes, this happens
in a very literal way, as in “a life for a life.” At
other times, it is less blatant. A missed soccer game here, a surrendering
of the ego there. Sure, some people will say this film lionizes
a group of men and women who are no more or less heroic than the
rest of us. Not every firefighter is as pure-hearted as Jack Morrison.
But at the heart of this film is a tremendous sense of honor and
loyalty that is thoroughly admirable, whether or not it is completely
accurate.
--Kevin Miller
ON
SACRIFICE
For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price
is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice—no paper currency,
no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.
--JOHN BURROUGHS (1837–1921)
Self-sacrifice is never entirely unselfish, for the giver never
fails to receive.
--DOLORES E. MCGUIRE
That which one sacrifices is never lost.
--GERMAN PROVERB
Christians are often accused of being morbid when they talk of the
joy of sacrificing. I think it is one of the deepest truths of the
Christian religion. Far from being a source of sadness, sacrifice
is a great joy and source of illumination—perhaps the greatest
of all. I also think that to live modestly is always a richer experience
because you are living like the majority of people.
--MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE (1903–1990)
ON
SACRIFICE
I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of sacrifice when
we remember the great sacrifice that he made who left his Father’s
throne on high to give himself for us.
--DAVID LIVINGSTONE (1813–1873)
If Jesus Christ is God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be
too great for me to make for him.
--CHARLES THOMAS STUDD (1862–1931)
Romans
3:25-26 (Message Bible)
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world
of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on
this course of action in full view of the public—to set the
world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus,
finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This
is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God
sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his
rightness.
Romans
4:3-8 (Message Bible)
What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God
was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God
to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."
If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay;
we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is
too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust
him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter
how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it
is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who
trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting
on having a say in it is one fortunate man:
Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off,
whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
whom the Lord does not keep score.
Hebrews
9:11-15 (Message Bible)
But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things
of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings
in this created world and went straight into heaven's "tent"—the
true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices
consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as
the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood
and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning
up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much
more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out.
Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice,
freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable,
so that we can live all out for God.
Hebrews
10:11 (Message Bible)
Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same
old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the
sin problem.
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