Happy Monday! Here are my favorite quotes from a book I finished reading that really lives up to it’s title. I haven’t read a long book for quite sometime now and I’m venturing on reading Gentle and Lowly after this amazing book stoked me. These quotes are from the book, Suprised by Jesus, authored by Dane Ortlund published by 10 Publishing. You can get the book on physical and digital format by following this link.
“The fundamental distinction between churches is not that some of them have sinners and others do not. The fundamental distinction is that some churches have honest sinners and other churches have self-protecting sinners. The question is not whether we are sinful or not, but whether or not we are honest about it.”
“Christianity is the unreligion. It turns all our religious instincts on their head. Jesus’ parable is not an attempt to show us which religion is the right one; it is meant to show us that religion itself is not the answer.”
“In our moments of spiritual sanity, you and I know that we are no different. We tend to assume that in order for God to approve of us — really approve of us — we need to qualify. And at that moment, the gospel has shifted out of the burning fireplace of our heart and into the cold and dusty attic of self-contribution.”
“…the strange key to participation in the joys of God’s kingdom is not qualifying ourselves for it, but frankly acknowledging our disqualification — a disqualification that manifests itself not only in rule-breaking, but also in rule-keeping.”
“Spiritual stagnancy results from forgetting the very gospel that brought us into the kingdom. Spiritual growth, cultivation of virtue, results from remembering the gospel.”
“Disobedience is not healed with obedience. Morality can reform, but never transform, immorality. Immorality is transformed only by the free grace of God — grace so free that it will be misheard by some as a license to sin with impunity.”
“Jesus did not come to start a new religion. He did not come to offer the best religion of all. He came to end all religion. The religious ethos currently inhaled by today’s Westerners, to be nice and follow enough of the rules to appease God and others — what sociologist Christian Smith called ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’ — could not be further from the gospel.”
“Our culture tells us that the problem is outside us and the solution is inside us. The gospel tells us that the problem is inside us and the solution is outside us.”
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Delighting Grace 