Christianity is not “Jesus is our example.” Christianity is “Jesus is our substitute.”
What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.
The focus of the Christian faith is not our morality; it is Jesus, who died for our immorality.
My daily sins require daily distribution of God’s grace. In that sense, it never ceases to surprise me because I don’t deserve any of it. I mean, I deserve to be locked in a cage and for God to throw away the key.
Suffering reveals to us the two things that ultimately matter: that we are weak but He is strong.
If your theological convictions are not producing a deeper love for others, then it’s time to rethink some stuff.
As long as I am focusing on the faults of others, then I don’t have to face my own.
People who know they are not good make the best messengers of grace because they are desperately aware of their own need for it.
The Gospel announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep judgment against us once and for all so that we could be free from the judgement of God, others, and ourselves.
Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.
God’s grace is so counterintuitive and everything we do in our life is just based on conditions. You do this for me and I’ll do that for you. Or if you don’t do this for me, I won’t do that for you. And God’s grace works in a completely different direction.
When Martin Luther was asked what we contribute to our salvation, he said, “Sin and resistance”
The gospel is good news to those who know they don’t measure up. It’s offensive to those who think they do.
The way of God’s grace becomes indispensable when we realize that the way of God’s law is inflexible.
In those moments when I’m obsessively counting my sins against me, it is good news to remember that God has counted my sins against Christ.
When you fail to distinguish Law and Gospel, you lose both.
The only thing that frees you from the need to pretend in order to make people believe you are something when you are actually not is the gospel because the gospel tells you that identity, my meaning, my security, and all of those things are in Christ.
There’s nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.
To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible’s radically disproportionate focus on God’s saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.
The best evangelists, the best preachers, the best teachers are desperate people.