Quotes about Grace

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.

the gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform. In all the talk of voting blocs and culture wars, the message of grace—the main distinctive Christians have to offer—tends to fall aside. It is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate the message of grace from the corridors of power.

Grace is Christianity's best gift to the world, a spiritual nova in our midst exerting a force stronger than vengeance, stronger than racism, stronger than hate. Sadly, to a world desperate for this grace the church sometimes presents one more form of ungrace.

God does some of God's best work with people who are truly, seriously lost.

Dr. Paul Tournier expresses this pattern in the language of psychiatry: "God blots out conscious guilt, but He brings to consciousness repressed guilt.

grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less—no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

I can only advance in the kingdom if I become like that woman: trembling, humbled, without excuse, my palms open to receive God's grace.

grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less.

That stance of openness to receive is what I call the "catch" to grace. It must be received, and the Christian term for that act is repentance, the doorway to grace.