There is only one explanation for God's sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is "the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, a great cost with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty.

Our believing does not cause new birth. The new birth causes our belief.

C. J. Mahaney, are a good reminder: "Your greatest need is not a spouse. Your greatest need is to be delivered from the wrath of God—and that has already been accomplished for you through the death and resurrection of Christ. So why doubt that God will provide a much, much lesser need? Trust His sovereignty, trust His wisdom, trust His love.

I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself

The faith that justifies gives rise to lives of obedience—not perfection, but growing holiness.

Now there was only one hope, the sovereign grace of God. God would have to transform my heart to do what a heart cannot make itself do, namely, want what it ought to want. Only God can make the depraved heart desire God.

Therefore every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now, a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement.

In fact the astonishing thing is that every good deed we do in dependence on Him to "pay Him back" does just the opposite; it puts us ever deeper in debt to His grace.

How is it more for the glory of God to save man irresistibly, than to save him as a free agent, by such grace as he may either concur or resist?

No outward practices will stand in the place of the new birth. Nothing under heaven will stand in its place.

none can trust in the merits of Christ, till he has utterly renounced his own.

Is it sinless? It is not worth while tocontend for a term It is "salvation from sin.