When the Christian faith becomes defined by who we are and what we do and not by who Christ is and what he did for us, we miss the gospel - and we, ironically, become more disobedient.
— Tullian Tchividjian
God has hardwired me to thoroughly enjoy and be sharpened by good and friendly theological discussion about the gospel.
The Gospel declares that our guilt has been atoned for, the law has been fulfilled. So we don't need to live under the burden of trying to appease the judgment we feel.
At some level, every relationship is assaulted by an aroma of judgment - this sense that we will never measure up to the expectations and demands of another.
Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.
Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died, and in Christ we have been raised.
There's absolutely no way you can feel the freedom to embarrass and humiliate yourself unless you have finally recognized that your identity is in someone other than yourself.
Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.
Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God's grace reaches farther.
The gospel sets us free to become the romantic leaders of our marriages without fright or hesitation. Because we have been forever wooed by Jesus, we are now free to forever woo our wives.
Christianity affirms that Jesus severed the link between suffering and deserving once for all on Calvary. God put the ledgers away and settled the accounts.
We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out.
The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves - a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom.
Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.
God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations.
When it comes to engaging and influencing culture, too many Christians think too highly of political activism.
I was afraid that if I surrendered my life over to God, God would tell me not to do those things that I desperately wanted to do.
My failure to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles is the direct result of my refusal to die to my natural proclivity toward attaining my own freedom, meaning, value, worth, and righteousness - not believing that, by virtue of my Spirit - wrought union with Christ, everything I need, I already possess.
From the time God saved me at 21 years old, I've always been fascinated by the parables of Jesus.
The Gospel announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep judgment against us once and for all so that we could be free from the judgement of God, others, and ourselves.
Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.
Thankfully, God's restraining grace keeps even the worst of us from being utterly depraved. The worst people who have ever lived could've been worse.
To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.
For years and years, Christians have been singing about their wandering hearts. Our hearts need to be recalibrated and realigned and reoriented by God.
Grace is upside-down, to-do-list wrecking, scandalous and way-too free. It's one-way love.
In 'Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels,' I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God's grace as the sailors and the Ninevites.
I enjoy receiving love from my wife. I'm ecstatic when Kim loves me and expresses affection toward me. Something in me comes alive when she does that. But I've learned this freeing truth: I don't need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need.
The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.
The required cheerfulness that characterizes many of our churches produces a suffocating environment of pat, religious answers to the painful, complex questions that riddle the lives of hurting people.
Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!
The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.
The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.
In the Old Testament, we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament.
When God saved me, He gave me a thirst to learn and to read and to study. I thrived in college. I got a bachelor's degree in philosophy and then went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.
What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root.
The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.
The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.
Because of total depravity, you and I were desperate for God's grace before we were saved. Because of total depravity, you and I remain desperate for God's grace even after we're saved.
Death is the operative device that sets us free in Christ - when we die, we truly live.
The emphasis of the Bible is on the work of the Redeemer, not on the work of the redeemed.
Contrary to what we conclude naturally, the gospel is not too good to be true. It is true! It's the truest truth in the entire universe. No strings attached! No fine print to read. No buts. No conditions. No qualifications. No footnotes. And especially, no need for balance.
We are deeply conditioned against unconditionality because we've been told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment always precedes acceptance, that achievement always precedes approval.
The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.
A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance.
For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you. And in the end, what we discover is that this really is enough.
The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word.
The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours.
There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.
Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of Evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain.
Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.
