the world exercises dominion by force and Christ and Christians conquer by service.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?