But be it ever so small in our own eyes, when we sin we also break God's law. And Scripture says, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (James 2:10). God's law is seamless, one complete whole. So when we break any of it, we break the whole law.

When we disobey God we defy His authority and despise His holiness. But when we fail to trust God we doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness.

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

Any form of betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final.

He is performing a work of art and he is playing with death, bringing it closer, closer, closer, to himself, a death that you know is in the horns because you have the canvas-covered bodies of the horses on the sand to prove it. He gives the feeling of his immortality, and, as you watch it, it becomes yours. Then when it belongs to both of you, he proves it with the sword.

Grace is the offer of exactly what we do not deserve. Thus, it cannot be recognized or received until we are aware of precisely how undeserving we really are. It is the knowledge of what we do not deserve that allows us to receive grace for what it is. Unmerited. Unearned. Undeserved. For that reason, grace can only be experienced by those who acknowledge they are undeserving.

God sees your sin as a debt you can't pay. There is no point in asking you to. To think that being good will somehow makes you square with God would be like Allie promising to clean up her room after being confronted with the damage she did to my car. Cleaning up her room doesn't pay me back. It's a nice gesture, but it doesn't fix my car.

The God of Christianity never claims to be fair. He goes beyond fair. The Bible teaches that he decided not to give us what we deserve--that's mercy. In addition, God decided to give us what we don't deserve--we call that grace.

Even though God loves us, we still have a problem: sin. It's important for us to learn how to confront sin and overcome it, because while God loves sinners, He hates sin. And He hates it because of what it does to us and how it keeps us from the abundant life Jesus died to give us.

I can't help but tell people of the greatest story ever told - God's love and our eternal life.

Yes, in Christianity, the gap that our sin creates between us and God is simply insurmountable. Trying to cross it is like jumping off the Newport Beach pier and trying to leap to Hawaii," he said, gesturing in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean.

if God took his hands off this fallen world so that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell. Thus if you allow a whole lot of sinners to live somewhere in a confined place where they're not doing damage to anyone but themselves, what do you get but hell? There's a sense in which they're doing it to themselves, and it's what they want because they still don't repent.