Few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain. And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life: Try harder; feel worse.

There is hope of freedom because of what Christ has done. Now you have an option. But you do have to stop presenting yourself over to sin as best you can. Your choices matter. You need to renounce the ways you have presented yourself to sin, and represent yourself to Christ.

Except for the grace of God, I would be nobody - and that grace is the opposite of merit - human labour, education or human wisdom.

Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.

If it were left to us, we would all fall away from the faith and perish.

Faith is not a means to something further. It is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive.

Regarding the debate about faith and works: It's like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important.

It is not saving faith to confess Christ as true. Saving faith receives Christ as a Treasure.

It is faith alone that justifies, but faith that justifies can never be alone.

It is faith alone that justifies, but faith that justifies can never be alone, though one is justified by faith alone, the faith which justifies is never in fact alone.

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.

The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications.