Tullian tchividjian quotes

To focus on how I'm doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism

The gospel is good news to those who know they don't measure up. It's offensive to those who think they do.

The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage.

The bad news that we are all guilty is met with the best news that God loves and forgives guilty people.

Because Jesus was strong for us we are free to be weak.

There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.

Mt. Sinai says, 'You must do. Mt. Calvary says, 'Because you couldn't, Jesus did.' Don't run to the wrong mountain for your hiding place

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

Once God saves us He doesn't move us beyond the gospel, but He moves us more deeply into the gospel.

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

Whatever we may mean by 'Christian growth,' it is ultimately this: less faith in me, more faith in God.

From the time God saved me at 21 years old, I've always been fascinated by the parables of Jesus.

The Gospel is not ultimately a defense from pain, it is the message of God's rescue through pain. In fact, it allows us to drop our defenses, to escape not from pain but from the prison of "How" and "Why" to the freedom of "Who?"

It's better to feel sorry for doing something bad than to feel superior for doing something good.

There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.

If the depths of everyone's sin was made public, we would all be much more gracious to each other.

Grace could not have done it’s curing work if the law had not first done its crushing work.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.

God loves broken people because broken people are all that there are.

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been on to more dearly than Him.

You can be sure that your deepest desires reveal important truths about your spiritual condition.

The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.

Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.

Our hearts are continuously rebellious. Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way." If this goes on day after day after day, year after year, month after month, it would understandable for God to say, "I've given you ten trillion tries. You're finished." But it's not. So in that sense, His grace is always surprising, never ceases to be amazing and His mercy is remarkably outrageous.

Job's unraveling wasn't wrong or sinful; rather, it was emotionally realistic.

Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top.

The emphasis of the Bible is on the work of the Redeemer, not on the work of the redeemed.

If you feel compelled to respond every time you're criticized it reveals just how much you've built your identity on being right.

We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

Sometimes God has to remind you that you're weak so that you can be set free from your "self-sufficiency."

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak; because Jesus won for me, I am free to lose; because Jesus was someone, I am free to be no one; because Jesus was extraordinary, I am free to be ordinary; because Jesus succeeded for me, I am free to fail.

You see, the secret of the gospel is that we become more spiritually mature when we focus less on what we need to do for God and focus more on all that God has already done for us. The irony of the gospel is that we actually perform better as we grow in our understanding that our relationship with God is based on Christ's performance for us, not our performance for him.

I wish I could say that everything I do is for God’s glory but I can’t. And neither can you. What I can say is Jesus’ blood covers all my efforts to glorify myself.

Self-righteousness is the fruit of a low view of God's law and a lite view of your own sin.

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.

The gospel doesn't make bad people good, it makes dead people alive.

My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.

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

If you look at the gospel, it just doesn't break things apart. The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation.

When the Christian faith becomes defined by who we are and what we do and not by who Christ is and what he did for us, we miss the gospel - and we, ironically, become more disobedient.

The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.

Christianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute."

The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me.

The deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.

Whether it's a Christian or a non-Christian, there's nothing like suffering to show us how small, needy, and not in control we are. Suffering has a way of sobering us up to the realization that we can't make it on our own, that we need help, that we're broken.

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

A biblical understanding of the Christian life is not 'let go and let God,' it's 'trust God and get going.'

God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin; while our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. It's a message revealing the radical contrast between the sinful heart of mankind and the gracious heart of mankind's Creator.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical.

Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other.

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.

Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of Evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain.

Remember on your best day that Jesus had to die for you. Remember on your worst day that he did.

Rest assured: Before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we need; before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we have.

I was always in places where I was widely accepted, approved and loved and I was finally in a place where people did not approve of me, did not accept me and did not love me. It was killing me.

When we reduce the notion of “calling” to work inside the church, we fail to equip our people to apply their Christian faith to everything they do, everywhere they are.

Suffering reveals to us the two things that ultimately matter: that we are weak but He is strong.

Grace doesn't lead us into destructive behavior. Sin does. And grace is the only remedy for sin. The kindness of God leads to repentance.

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.

Walking with God doesn't lead to God's favor; God's favor leads to walking with God.

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.

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

Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died, and in Christ we have been raised.

In the Old Testament, we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament.

Real, pure, unadulterated freedom happens when the resources of the gospel smash any sense of need to secure for myself anything beyond what Christ has already secured for me.

The law demands that we do it all; the gospel declares that Jesus paid it all.

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

The grace of God sets us free from a life of perfection, performing, and pretending.

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make good people good; it makes dead people alive. That's the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and every other world religion. All the others exhort their followers to save themselves by being good, by conforming their lives to whatever their worshiped deity is. But the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.

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

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

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you have construct for yourself, or that others have construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative.

Graciousness is the fruit of someone who knows how badly they themselves need grace.

Because Jesus was someone, you’re free to be no one.

I never realized how much I've become dependent on human approval until God took it away. I didn't even realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of. God showed me Jesus plus nothing equals everything. And everything minus Jesus equals nothing. That set me free.

We often read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us: our improvement, our life, our triumph, our victory, our faith, our holiness, our godliness.

The good news of the gospel [for sufferers] is not an exhortation from above to 'hang on at all costs,' or 'grin and bear it' in the midst of hardship. No, the good news is that God is hanging on to you, and in the end, when all is said and done, the power of God will triumph over every pain and loss.

There is no better news than that the God who makes the demand for perfection also meets the demand for perfection on our behalf.

Jesus has done everything for you.

Grace frees you to be honest about what you've always known to be true about yourself: that you're weaker & more afraid than you want to be.

People who know they are not good make the best messengers of grace because they are desperately aware of their own need for it.

The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation.

The cross [is] the ultimate statement of God's involvement in the world on this side of heaven.

The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. Thats not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; its a witness to God making it down to the worst people.

I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.

The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation. I've got friends who are surfers, doctors, lawyers, artists and entertainers. Some people are cool and some people are geeky. I look around at my friends and I think, only the gospel has the power to put together a friendship like this.

The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

What I'm most deeply grateful for is that God's love for us, approval of us, and commitment to us does not ride on our resolve but on Jesus' resolve for us. The gospel is the good news announcing Jesus' infallible devotion to us despite our inconsistent devotion to Him. The gospel is not a command to hang on to Jesus; it's a promise that no matter how weak and unsuccessful our faith and efforts may be, God is always holding on to us.

If your theological convictions are not producing a deeper love for others, then it's time to rethink some stuff.

The people who have taught me the most about grace are those who have blown it so bad that they know how much they need it.

God wants every local church to be the first place people think to go when they've really messed up...not the last.

What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.

Christian growth doesn't happen by first behaving better, but by believing better--believi ng in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.

God does everything through people who understand they're nothing. And God does nothing through those who think they're everything.

Information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.

If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.

In those moments when I'm obsessively counting my sins against me, it is good news to remember that God has counted my sins against Christ.

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

If we're not reaching the same people Jesus reached, then we're not preaching the same message Jesus preached.

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.

We are broken people living in a broken world with other broken people. We all need grace.

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

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

Jesus plus nothing equals everything; everything minus Jesus equals nothing.

God did not rescue me out of the pain, He rescued me through the pain!

Only when you realize that the gospel has nothing to do with your obedience but with Christ's obedience for you, will you start to obey. The only Christians who end up getting better are those who realize that if they don't get better, God will love them anyway.

The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.

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

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.

Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.

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

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.

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

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.

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.

Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.

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.