Quotes about Grace

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.

We live in an atmosphere choked with the fumes of ungrace. Grace comes from outside, as a gift and not an achievement.

God's grace is not a grandfatherly display of "niceness," for it cost the exorbitant price of Calvary.

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.

a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.

What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?

God took a great risk by announcing forgiveness in advance, and the scandal of grace involves a transfer of that risk to us.

the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

When God looks upon my life graph, he sees not jagged swerves toward good and bad but rather a steady line of good: the goodness of God's Son captured in a moment of time and applied for all eternity.

Christians tend to be Augustinian in theory but Pelagian in practice. They work obsessively to please other people and even God.

You cannot earn God's acceptance by climbing; you must receive it as a gift.