Quotes about Grace

It occurs to me, in fact, that laughter has much in common with prayer. In both acts, we stand on equal ground, freely acknowledging ourselves as fallen creatures. We take ourselves less seriously. We think of our creatureliness. Work divides and ranks; laughter and prayer unite. Finding God in Unexpected Places(245

We in the body of Christ are called to show love when God seems not to.

Our only option, then, is honesty that leads to repentance. As the Bible shows, God's grace can cover any sin, including murder, infidelity, or betrayal. Yet by definition grace must be received, and hypocrisy disguises our need to receive grace. When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

If God's kingdom had a "No Oddballs Allowed" sign posted, none of us could get in.

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

Indeed, how could we experience grace at all except through our defects?

The gospel is not at all what we would come up with on our own.

The One who had the right to destroy the world—and had nearly done so once in Noah's day—chose instead to love the world, at any cost.

Jesus' kingdom calls us to another way, one that depends not on our performance but his own. We do not have to achieve but merely follow.

To gain the hearing of a post-Christian society already skeptical about religion will require careful strategy. We must, in Jesus' words, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I fear that our clumsy pronouncements, our name-calling, our stridency — ?in short, our lack of grace — ?has proved so damaging that society will no longer look to us for the guidance it needs.

What greater gift could Christians give to the world than the forming of a culture that upholds grace and forgiveness?

Jesus' prayers for Peter — and perhaps for Judas as well — express God's unfathomable respect for human freedom.