“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 enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.”

“He [Jesus] knew no sin. Do you realize this? There has never been one moment in your life— not one moment in your life that wasn’t tainted by sin. And yet, there never was a moment in His life that was tainted by sin! Someone asked me a long time ago, "What is the greatest sin you can commit?" And all of a sudden it just popped in my head so I said it— I said, “Well, I suppose the greatest sin you could commit is to break the greatest commandment that’s ever been given: to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Do you realize there’s never been one moment in your life that you have loved God as God ought to be loved? To even suggest that you have is paramount to blasphemy. You have never loved God in a way that God deserves to be loved. But there was never one moment in the life of the man Jesus Christ that He did not love God as God deserves to be loved! You think Jesus is great? He’s greater than you know...”

“Say you are at the brink of killing yourself and someone tries to talk you out of it. You’ve already thought about it and your life is not worth living. Someone else comes along and tries to convince you not to kill yourself. Is there someone out there that can convince you not to kill yourself? What can they possibly say to convince you that your life, the one you have firsthand knowledge of, is worth living? There is that one answer. No one! There is that other answer. Nothing!”

“But then I realize there is never going to be a day when I stand before God and He looks at me and says, 'I wish you would have kept more for yourself.' I'm confident that God will take care of me.”

“God beckons storm clouds and they come. He tells the wind to blow and the rain to fall, and they obey immediately. He speaks to the mountains, 'You go there,' and He says to the seas, 'You stop here, and they do it. Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator...until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, 'No.”

“We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical.”

“If we conclude that people can get to heaven apart from faith in Christ, then this would mean there is something else they can do to get to heaven. Such a conclusion would not only undercut the proven truth we saw in Romans; it would also be tantamount to saying to Jesus, "Thank you for what you did on the cross, but we could have gotten to God another way.”