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.

Sadly, Jesus' followers tend to take the reverse approach. Some churches gradually lower the ideals, accommodating moral standards to a changing culture. Others raise the bar of grace so that needy people feel unwelcome: "We don't want that kind of person in our church." Either way we fail to communicate the spectacular good news that everyone fails and yet a gracious God offers forgiveness to all.

God shattered the inexorable law of sin and retribution by invading earth, absorbing the worst we had to offer, crucifixion, and then fashioning from that cruel deed the remedy for the human condition. Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults," said Pascal, "but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them.

That stance of openness to receive is what I call the "catch" to grace. It must be received, and the Christian term for that act is repentance, the doorway to grace.

The Bible's many fierce passages on sin appear in a new light once I understand God's desire to press me toward repentance, the doorway to grace.

The glory our God receives, and will eternally receive, from having saved our souls doesn't come from all the good things we do for Him. His glory comes from creating people of purity and spiritual passion who once did things like that. Like we've done. Like you've done. Like I've done.

God (Isa. 59:1—2).

But none of us can claim an innate spiritual advantage. In reality, we are all equally disadvantaged. None of us naturally seeks after God, none is inherently righteous, none instinctively does good (cf. Romans 3:9-18). Therefore, as children of grace, our spiritual discipline is everything — everything! I repeat . . . discipline is everything!

Sometimes you just have to extend a little grace to people. Not because they deserve it - but because we don't deserve it either.