How Religion Works: If I obey, then God will love and accept me. The Gospel: I'm loved and accepted, therefore I wish to obey.

Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.

If you want God's grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing.

Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.

The essence of forgiveness is absorbing pain instead of giving it.

Grace is to be let into a place that you don't have a right to be.

When we worry we are saying, 'I know the way my life is supposed to go, and God's not getting it right'.