christian living on Divisions

Jesus is a reconciler of people, not a divider. He wants to bring people together, not finalize separations.

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself: for every man has need to be forgiven.

Grace is God’s part, faith ours.

The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation. . . The vast disproportion existing between our work and God’s rewar...

Like me, maybe you set aside much of your normal work for the Christmas break and this week you have a lot to do! There’s a gravitational pull to “Hurry and catch up!” But that’s not the best way. ...

We are forbidden to take sin more seriously than grace, or even as seriously as grace.

Evangelicals believe they are saved by grace through faith but then add a man-made waiver that you have to work as hard as you can meet middle-class behavioral patterns to hang onto it.

Leader: Blessed Lord Jesus, before your cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused you to be made a curse, the evil that provokes divine wrath. All: Show me the enormit...

Forgiving the unforgivable is hard. So was the cross: hard words, hard wood, hard nails.

We sometimes find God’s forgiveness to be offensive: “It reveals us to be distressingly like everyone else!” (And we are so special.)

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded ...

Living by grace inspires a growing consciousness that I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothing more.

Every time your enemy fires a curse, you must fire a blessing, and so you are to bombard back and forth with this kind of artillery. The mother grace of all graces is Christian good-will.

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification exc...

Hope is reliance upon grace in the face of death: the issue is that of receiving life as a gift, not as a reward and not as a punishment; hope is living constantly, patiently, expectantly, resiliently...

The greatest and most powerful Christian distinctive is not the exercise of power; it is the offer of grace.

What, as Christians, can we say to those who face death, either their own or that of their loved ones? We certainly can give them the hope of Christ’s resurrection, if they or their loved one has trus...

We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

Forgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it is the profoundest of problems.

“Would I rather be feared or loved? That’s easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”

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

Dear Jesus, Thank you for loving me. I have sinned. I have disobeyed my parents. I have lied. I have been selfish. I have not listened to you. Please forgive me. Please help me. Please change...

Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it; it is the petition for forgiveness.

“What happens here may be expressed by the quite simple and yet unfathomable word, ‘forgive.’ What occurs when I forgive another person? It does not mean . . . that I can ‘forget’ what he did to me. I...

Forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you for hurting me.

We can't save ourselves by pulling on our bootstraps, even when the bootstraps are made of the finest religious leather.

The motive of grace is the infinite, compassionate love of a merciful God, but the work of grace was the death of Christ on the cross.

A book can teach you, a conversation can assure you, a poem can seduce you, a genius can inspire you, but only you can save yourself.

Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.