Quotes About Grace

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks. A good night's sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace.

Grace has to be the loveliest word in the English language. It embodies almost every attractive quality we hope to find in others. Grace is a gift of the humble to the humiliated. Grace acknowledges the ugliness of sin by choosing to see beyond it. Grace accepts a person as someone worthy of kindness despite whatever grime or hard-shell casing keeps him or her separated from the rest of the world. Grace is a gift of tender mercy when it makes the least sense.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.

Sam:"Okay, what words would you use then?" I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn't work with words very well- at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. Grace:"Sensitive" I tried. Sam translated: "Squishy" Grace:"Creative" Sam:"Dangerously emo" Grace:"Thoughtful" Sam:"Feng shui." I laughed so hard I snorted. Grace:"How did you get feng shui out of thoughtful?" Sam:"You know, because in feng shui, you arrange funiture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.

We could not take one step in the pursuit of holiness if God in His grace had not first delivered us from the dominion of sin and brought us into union with His risen Son. Salvation is by grace and sanctification is by grace.

Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.

Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable sinning is not biblical grace. God's grace never encourages us to live in sin, on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth.

The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it... The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them.

Because I have no boobs. My ears stand out, and I have freckles all over me. (Grace) Boobs? (Julian) Breasts. (Grace) You have very nice breasts. (Julian) Thanks. What about you? (Grace) I have no breasts. (Julian)

You were born into a state of grace. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot fall out of grace, nor can it be taken from you. You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive you own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.

The ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace.

I need not torment myself with the fear that my faith may fail; as grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace (Phil 1:29).

Grace alone makes the elect gracious; grace alone keeps them gracious; and the same grace alone will render them everlastingly glorious in the heaven of heavens.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

Grace is more than mercy and love. It super-adds to them. It denotes, not simply love, but the love of a sovereign, transcendent Superior. One that may do what He will. That may wholly choose whether He will love or no. Now God, who is an infinite Sovereign, who might have chosen whether ever He would love us or no; for Him to love us, this is Grace.

Faith is the champion of Grace, and Love the nurse; but Humility is the beauty of Grace.

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.

Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.

And just as there are no crimes so detestable that they can prevent the gift of grace, so too there can be no works so eminent that they are owed in condign [deserved] judgment that which is given freely. Would it not be a debasement of redemption in Christ’s blood, and would not God’s mercy be made secondary to human works, if justification, which is through grace, were owed in view of preceding merits, so that it were not the gift of a Donor, but the wages of a laborer?

All good things come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

To do evil for good is human corruption; to do good for good is civil retribution; but to do good for evil is Christian perfection. Though this be not the grace of nature, it is the nature of grace.

Family education and order are some of the chief means of grace; if these are duly maintained, all the means of grace are likely to prosper and become effectual.

Grace is the seed of glory, the dawning of glory in the heart, and therefore grace is the earnest of the future inheritance.

Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit.

If I said I wouldn’t toss him out of my bed for eating crackers, would you leave me alone? (Grace) Maybe. What else wouldn’t you toss him out of bed for? (Selena) Eating greasy grimy gopher guts? (Grace)

Whatever hinders us from receiving a blessing that God is willing to bestow upon us is not humility, but the mockery of it. A genuine humility will ever feel the need of the largest measures of grace, and will be perfected just in the degree in which that grace is bestowed. The truly humble man will seek to be filled with all the fullness of God, knowing that when so filled there is not the slightest place for pride or for self.

Nor did I need anyone's pity, but I would accept it with grace, because I have been well trained. Rudeness was a sign of weakness. Grace stemmed from power, the powere to accept anything and move on.

Grace comes immediately to meet some of those who strive, giving them assurance of the earnest of their inheritance (cf. Eph. 1:14), letting them taste the promised prizes, as if stretching out a loving hand to welcome them and anointing them for further struggles. With others, however, grace waits for the end of the struggle, and prepares for them the crown of patience as well. As one of the God-bearing Fathers says, 'Some receive holy rewards before their labours, some during labours, and some when they depart' (St. John Climacus).

When I hear Christians say, "I don't do this, and I don't do that, and I am following a set of rules," I immediately recognize that they know very little about the grace of God. They are trying to live the Christian life in their own strength. But Paul says, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus."

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.

Like her [Mary], let us be full of zeal to go in haste to give Jesus to others. She was full of grace when, at the Annunciation, she received Jesus. Like her. we too become full of grace every time we receive Holy Communion. It is the same Jesus whom she received and whom we receive at Mass. As soon as she received Him. she went with haste to give Him to John. For us also. As soon as we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, let us go in haste to give Him to our sisters, to our poor, to the sick, to the dying, to the lepers, to the unwanted, and the unloved. By this we make Jesus present in the world today.

Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.

It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.

Though we are commanded to 'wash ourselves', to 'cleanse ourselves from sins', to 'purge ourselves from all our iniquities', yet to imagine that we can do these things by our own efforts is to trample on the cross and grace of Jesus Christ. Whatever God works in us by his grace, he commands us to do as our duty. God works all in us and by us.

Religion does a lot of good, especially the loving kind, like at Grace Church. I know people who went to a more liberal kind of Christianity and were happy with that. The problem is, for me, there was a process involved in moving from Pentecostalism to a more liberal theology, like Grace Church. What makes me different is that process didn't stop, and it took me all the way. In the end, I couldn't help feeling that all religion, even the most loving kind, is just a speed bump in the progress of the human race.

Aunt Mercy put down her tiles, one at a time. I-T-C-H-I-N. Aunt Grace leaned closer to the board, squinting. "Mercy Lynne, you're cheatin' again! What kinda word is that? Use it in a sentence." "I'm itchin' ta have some a that white cake." "That's not how you spell it." At least one of them could spell. Aunt Grace pulled one of the tiles off the board. "There's no T in itchin'." Or not.

The apostle Paul never seemed to exhaust the topic of grace - what makes us think we can? He just kept coming at it and coming at it from another angle. That's the thing about grace. It's like springtime. You can't put it in a single sentence definition, and you can't exhaust it.

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

God decreed to save and damn certain particular persons. This decree has its foundation in the foreknowledge of God, by which he knew from all eternity those individuals who would, through his preventing [going before] grace, believe, and, through his subsequent grace would persevere by which foreknowledge, he likewise knew those who would not believe and persevere.

For here we are so blind and foolish that we never seek God until he, of his goodness, shows himself to us. It is when we do see something of him by his grace that we are stirred by that same grace to seek him, and with earnest longing to see still more of his blessedness. So I saw him and sought him; I had him and wanted him. It seems to me that this is and should be an experience common to us all.

God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.

I hope to work through disappointment and frustration with as much grace as [Georgia] O'Keeffe did, and I hope to have the same confidence in my own vision.

It is better that great peoples should seek out glory, or even vanity, in their deeds, than that they should remain indifferent . For even if they are not incited to act upon virtuous principles, at least there is the saving grace that they will do things they might not have done had not vanity prompted their actions.

And the dream we were conceived in will reveal a joyful face... and the world we once believed in will shine again in grace. Then why do we keep strangling life wound this Earth, crucify its soul. Though it's plain to see, this world is heavenly. We could be God's glow... Heal the world.

Imagination, devotion, perseverance, together with divine grace, will assure your success.