“Our obedience has its origin in God's prior action, and forgetting that truth results in self-righteousness, pride, and despair.”

“Legalism is when we try to obtain the result of obedience by our own means and strength. It is self-righteousness, as opposed to God's righteousness covering us, and the two are as different as spirit and flesh.”

“When God's righteousness is mentioned in the gospel, it is God's action of declaring righteous the unrighteous sinner who has faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness by which a person is justified (declared righteous) is not his own but that of another, Christ.”

“Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray.”

“By salvation I mean not barely according to the vulgar notion deliverance from hell or going to heaven but a present deliverance from sin a restoration of the soul to its primitive health its original purity a recovery of the divine nature the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness in justice mercy and truth.”

“The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.”