Grace is not about finishing last or first; it is about not counting.

Ungrace plays like the background static of life for families, nations, and institutions. It is, sadly, our natural human state.

Then the question becomes, "How do we treat sinners?

Our only option, then, is honesty that leads to repentance. As the Bible shows, God's grace can cover any sin, including murder, infidelity, or betrayal. Yet by definition grace must be received, and hypocrisy disguises our need to receive grace. When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

Because of Jesus, I can never say about a person, "She must be suffering because of some sin she committed"; Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.

Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.

None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.

Jesus proclaimed unmistakably that God's law is so perfect and absolute that no one can achieve righteousness. Yet God's grace is so great that we do not have to.

Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.

Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.

I fight the tentacular grip of ungrace in my own life. Although I may not perpetuate the strictness of my upbringing, I battle daily against pride, judgmentalism, and a feeling that I must somehow earn God's approval.

if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved.