“What is necessary, Luther insisted, was an entirely different mode of thinking, an ad modum scripturae (in the manner of scripture), a fundamental change of the story. As early as his Lectures on Romans he remaks that the biblical story of the exodus had been interpreted (tropologically) to mean the exodus from vice to virtue. Now, however, it must be interpreted as the exodus from virtue to the grace of God! Grace must be the story. It is grace that determines the relationship between God, the creature, creation, and its destiny. Grace is what God is all about. Grace is what God is up to. And a graced creation is what God aims to arrive at.”

“The key to liberation from the power of materialism is not an exodus from culture - abandoning Wall Street or leaving the wealth of the nation to others - but the grace of giving... Givers for God disarm the power of money. They invite God's grace to flow through them.”

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.”

“But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

“The ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace.”

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: 'Ye were bought at a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”