“God is the one to be praised, not our transformation.”

“God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin; while our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. It's a message revealing the radical contrast between the sinful heart of mankind and the gracious heart of mankind's Creator.”

“God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.”

“The God of the Bible is a holy and righteous God. Which is another way of saying that to relate to Him on His own terms, or to receive His blessing, requires perfection. God articulates this perfection in His Law ("Thou shalt" and "Though shalt not"). The problem is that we are anything but perfect! We are only human, as the saying goes. And the divine standard makes it painfully clear just how significant our limitations are. The person who takes the Law seriously is immediately humbled, if not demolished completely.”

“We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.”

“Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.”

“The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.”