christian living on Savior

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

In the novel, Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley, Buddy Crawford, a horse trainer, has a “born again experience but things don’t go according to plan. This is his prayer: “One night, when he was praying...

Christianity is a rescue religion. It declares that God has taken the initiative in Jesus Christ to rescue us from our sins. This is the main theme of the Bible. You are to give him the name Jesus, be...

God of power, love and wisdom: you’ve known us and loved us from before we even were, and extended your grace to us before we knew your name. You save us from ourselves – from our arrogance, rebell...

Your grace, O God, has appeared for the salvation of all, calling us to renounce false gods and irresponsible love. In the midst of our sin, Christ has appeared as a sign of our hope, redeeming us and...

If you’re not stunned by the thought of grace, then you aren’t grasping what grace offers you, or what it cost Jesus. In 1987, eighteen-month-old “Baby Jessica” fell twenty-two feet into a Texas well....

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

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...

In the story of Jesus and the demon-possessed man in Mark 5:14-20, Jesus gives new life to that man. When the townspeople saw the result of Jesus’ healing – an entirely new man, almost unrecognizable ...

Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.

To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the i...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

Creator Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit every pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on humankind; From sin and sorrow set us free, And make thy temples worthy t...

Pastor: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! People: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, Pastor: who forgives all your iniquity, who h...

Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, “Be good.” Jesus’ stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, “Help!”

In his insightful book, Delighting in the Trinity , Michael Reeves shares an interesting point of connection between the Protestant understanding of sola grati discovered by Francis Xavier during...

Al Capone, the most notorious gangster in American History, had these three words etched on his tombstone: “My Jesus Mercy”

One of the most powerful illustrations of grace and mercy in all of western literature has to be the great scene between Monseigneur Bienvenu and Jean Valjean in the stirring epic Les Miserables by Vi...

The piling on of grace upon grace is incredible. God had given us his Son. We killed him. In response God says, “I want to forgive you and offer another ‘family member,’ so to speak.” It was a case of...

The modern-day gospel says, 'God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.' Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, 'You are an en...

The Lord our God is rich in mercy, slow to anger, and abounds in steadfast love. He does not pay us back what we deserve, but even while we were his enemies he sent his son to die for us. Christ died ...

Dear God, we confess that we have sinned and need Your forgiveness. We want to do things on our own, without You. We have been distracted from Your Word and behave as if Your instructions were vague. ...

J. R. R. Tolkien coined the term "eucatastrophe" to refer to the unexpected happy ending at the end of a fairy tale, achieved by grace rather than effort. The consolation of fairy-stories,...

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...

Al Capone, the most notorious gangster in American History, had these three words etched on his tombstone: “My Jesus Mercy”

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives.

It’s remarkable that when the Father declares at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” Jesus hasn’t yet done much of anything that many would find impressive. He hasn’...