But we know that true grace comes to us by costly sacrifice. And if God was willing to go to the cross and endure such pain and absorb such a cost in order to save us, then we must live sacrificially as we serve others. Anyone who truly understands how God's grace comes to us will have a changed life. That's the gospel, not salvation by law, or by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace changes you from the inside out. Neither law nor cheap grace can do that.

The church can challenge society, but society also challenges the church. That's good. We should be humble enough to be able to accept that.

I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.

If only it were possible to love without injury—fidelity isn't enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation.

The question that wins the world is not, how can we get our "morally superior" way enforced in the world? The question that wins the world, and the question that must define the individual and collective life of kingdom-of-God citizens is, how do we take up the cross for the world? How do we best communicate to others their unsurpassable worth before God? How do we serve and wash the feet of the oppressed and despised?

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Our net worth is ultimately defined not by dollars but rather by how well we serve others.

Patting mother Theresa on the back, someone said to her: 'i wouldn't do what you do for a million dollars.' She said with a grin: 'me neither.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.

The way of Jesus is not a proposal for how to take over the nation-state and make it Christian. It is, rather, a lesson in learning not to take over--to be a community where we find a new way of life by giving ourselves for others.

The essence of leadership is relationship; influencing people to achieve things together that can't be achieved alone.

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. . . . [Man-worshipers are] those dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth.