An identity based in the one-way love of God does not take into account public opinion or, thankfully, even personal opinion. It is a gift from Someone who is not you.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1599
Those who are born anew are no longer entangled with themselves. They are solidly free from this entanglement, from self-reflection that always seeks what belongs to itself. This is not a deadening of self. No, it is the gift of self-forgetfulness. The passive righteousness of faith tells us: You do not concern yourself at all! In that God does what is decisive in us, we may live outside ourselves and solely in him. Thus, we are hidden from our selves, and removed from the judgment of others or the judgment of ourselves as a final judgment. “Who am I?” Such self-reflection never finds peace in itself.
– Oswald Bayer
as quoted by Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1628
In fact, you might say that the biggest difference between the practical effect of sin and the practical effect of the Gospel is that sin turns us inward while the Gospel turns us outward, as it did with Zacchaeus. Any version of “the Gospel” or “Grace”, therefore, that encourages you to think about yourself and your performance will inevitably be co-opted by what Martin Luther called our curved-in nature (incurvatus in se) – whether its your failures or your bad works; your strengths or your weaknesses; your obedience or your disobedience.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1482
There’s a great story about an old Lutheran pastor, who on his deathbed, voiced his confidence that he would be received in heaven, because he could not remember having done one truly good work.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1467
Compassion for others – the desire to serve and sacrifice – flows out of the honest recognition of who we are and God’s love for us in the midst of that.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1467
Under the spell of a sense of entitlement, we turn the Gospel into just another narcissistic self-help program. We attend and promulgate churches that preach “humanity and it improved” rather than “Christ and him crucified” (I Corinthians 2:2).
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1439
Where disobedience flourishes, it is not the fault of too much grace but rather of our failure to grasp the depth of God’s one-way love for us in the midst of our transgressions and greed. Grace and obedience are not enemies, not by a long shot.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1410
A grateful heart is a generous heart, and a generous heart is a liberated heart. It is no coincidence that the very thing to which Zacchaeus was most enslaved – money – is the very thing that he was inspired to give away.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1395
Indeed, the story of Zacchaeus gives us a window not only into Christ’s love for sinners but the fruit it can bear in a person’s life, not to mention the resistance it often encounters from those who witness it. It is a study in the fruit of grace.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1338
Grace alone produces conditions that induce change, but grace is not conditional on change. It is pure gift – independent of outcomes. We must be careful here about turning grace into a strategy (or law) – a means by which we can get certain things, control certain things, guarantee certain things.
– Tchividian, Tullian; One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World; David Cook Publishers; copyright 2013; Kindle Edition; Location 1338
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