Quotes About Grace

Heaven] is not something other than this world; it is this world as it is perfectly offered now in the land of the Trinity. It is all the moments of time and all the conjunctions of space as Christ holds them reconciled for the praise of the glory of the Father's grace. And it is all of them held for our endless exploration of their depths - depths which we, even at our best, even at the moment of seeing the beloved's eyes, have only just begun to suspect.

The kingdom grows, he says, because the kingdom is already planted. It grows of itself and in its own good time. Above all, it grows we know not how.

He does not come to see if we are good: he comes to disturb the caked conventions by which we pretend to be good. He does not come to see if we are sorry: he knows our repentance isn't worth the hot air we put into it. He does not come to count anything. Unlike the lord in the parable, he cares not even a fig for any part of our record, good or bad. He comes only to forgive. For free. For nothing. On no basis, because like the fig tree, we are too far gone to have a basis.

The wickedness of the church can be one thing and one only: turning the Good News of Jesus into the bad news of religion.

it is precisely our sins, and not our goodnesses, that most commend us to the grace of God.

We are saved gratis, by grace. We do nothing and we deserve nothing; it is all, absolutely and without qualification, one huge, hilarious gift.

It is us he saves, not our lives. It is the person he dies for, not the suit of clothes in which the person hides from the bare truth about himself. He does not save you or me as we dress ourselves up at high noon on a good day; he saves us only as we stumble naked and uncombed from lumpy mattress to cold shower after a long, hard night - as, that is, we limp in faith from the bed of our death, through the blood of the cross, to the joy of his resurrection.

God in Jesus didn't prevent sinners from sinning, he went around forgiving them right and left.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He has taken the cleanup entirely into his own hands. He has just gone and done it without waiting for us; and he invites us simply to trust that he has it all accomplished for us in Jesus—and to proclaim that trust by acting as if we really believed it.

Onions die quietly, Cabbages shed no blood; All plants forgive: By the waters that comprise them They wash man's hands And let him walk away.

Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.

Well, if you find yourself living by something that can't forgive ... then you die to it and look around for something that can.

In Jesus' death and resurrection, God has declared that he isn't the least interested in examining anybody's books ever again, not even his own: he's nailed them all to the cross. Accountability, however much it may be a buzzword now, is not one of his eschatological categories.

judgment falls not on the unacceptable but only on those who will not accept acceptance

In the Bible, as a matter of fact, God does so many ungodly things - like not remembering our sins, erasing the quite correct handwriting against us, and becoming sin for us - that the only safe course is to come to Scripture with as few stipulations as possible.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things To yield with a grace to reason And bow and accept at the end Of a love or a season.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.

A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

Yes please," Strike said, on the principle that all friendly gestures should be accepted in such situations.

It is the tenderness that breaks our hearts. The loveliness that leaves us stranded on the shore, watching the boats sail away. It is the sweetness that makes us want to reach out and touch the soft skin of another person. And it is the grace that comes to us, undeserving though we may be.

There is a loveliness to life that does not fade. Even in the terrors of the night, there is a tendency toward grace that does not fail us.