An identity based in the one-way love of God does not take into account public opinion or, thankfully, even personal opinion.

Here's one way I can know that I've forgotten the gospel of grace: when your sin bothers me more than my sin.

My job is not to show my children that I'm the man, but to show them that Christ is the man.

Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.