most people live their life as if their justification depends on their sanctification: if I do and become all that I must do and become, God will love me and accept me.

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.

The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need grace

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.

God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures.

God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.

The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.

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

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.

Nothing makes me want to obey more than knowing that God unconditionally loves me and forgives me even when I disobey.

There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.

Up here it seems we have only the stars, but even they seem small in the midst of that terrifying night sky...I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.

The one-child policy was based on some faulty science and had, as an ambition, reining in Chinese population growth, so as to enhance the per capita wealth of the country.

Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.

The White man pays Reverend Martin Luther King so that Martin Luther King can keep the Negro defenseless.

The death sentence is a barbaric act . . . It is a reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.

If it makes you feel any better, this isn't my first apocalypse. There is hope.