There’s nothing like suffering to reveal how small and needy you are. Pain has the remarkable capacity to reveal the weakness of the things you’re leaning on to make life worth living.
The bad news that we are all guilty is met with the best news that God loves and forgives guilty people.
It’s better to feel sorry for doing something bad than to feel superior for doing something good.
Christianity is not “Jesus is our example.” Christianity is “Jesus is our substitute.”
Even one who has been to God a million times with the same problem need not fear exhausting the grace of God.
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.