Several times Bonhoeffer used Barth's image of the Tower of Babel as a picture of "religion," of man trying to reach heaven through his own efforts, which always failed.

Whitefield came to a realization that would have far-reaching effects. He saw that the Bible didn't teach that we must work harder at becoming perfect and holy, but that we must instead throw ourselves on God's mercy. Moral perfection wasn't the answer: Jesus was the answer. Jesus had been morally perfect and we weren't supposed to save ourselves—we were supposed to ask him to save us.

In 1933, one student said, "Among the public, there spread the expectation that the salvation of the German people would now come from Hitler. But in the lectures we were told that salvation comes only from Jesus Christ.

He's already done that for us. We need only accept his free gift. And if we see the magnitude of that gift, we are moved to do good things. But it is as gratitude for what God has already done in saving us, not as a way of earning our own salvation. Once we receive God's free gift of love in Jesus, we are properly moved to want to love him back and to love our fellow man.

German culture was inescapably Christian. This was a result of the legacy of Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who invented Protestantism. Looming over the German culture and nation like both a father and a mother, Luther was to Germany something like what Moses was to Israel;

Religion to other religions. Then he came to his main point: the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ.

After his own experience in Oxford, he knew that the Christian faith was not about how one behaved but about what one believed, and if one truly believed one could do nothing to achieve salvation but believe in Jesus, one's behavior would follow.

Like the prodigal's father, God accepts us as we are. But He doesn't want to leave us that way. God will change us.

The extent to which we experience our freedom from condemnation in Christ is the extent to which we will realize there is no life in performing.

When New Testament authors stress that salvation is not arrived at by works, as first-century Jews, these authors are referring to works of the law. They are saying that God's righteousness does not come by external obedience to the law, as some Jews of their day supposed.

The sinner... while retaining the ability to imagine, has forfeited the basis on which to imagine God.

The picture of God that I embraced could get me to feel shame for my sinful deeds, but it could not empower me to rise above them.