My struggle isn't believing my performance can earn God's favor; my struggle is believing my performance can keep God's favor

Only when we see that the way of God's law is absolutely inflexible will we see that God's grace is absolutely indispensable. A high view of the law reminds us that God accepts us on the basis of Christ's perfection, not our progress. Grace, properly understood, is the movement of a holy God toward an unholy people. He doesn't cheapen the law or ease its requirements. He fulfills them in his Son, who then gives his righteousness to us. That's the gospel. Pure and simple.

The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us.

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.

God is the one to be praised, not our transformation.

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished"