Romans

“Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has
been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause . . . The novelist with Christian concerns will
find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions
to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his
vision across to this hostile audience . . . Writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times,
the sharpest eye for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable…. To the hard of hearing you shout, and
for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Flannery O’Connor

“The way to God is wide open. There is nothing standing between the sinner and his God. He has immediate and
unimpeded access to the Savior. There is nothing to hinder. No sin can hold him back because God offers justification
to the ungodly. Nothing can keep him from Christ but his delusion that he has good works of his own that can satisfy
God. All he needs is need. All he needs is nothing. But, alas, sinners cannot part with their ‘virtues.’”
John Gerstner

“Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song; The joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue.
Thy free grace alone from the first to the last; Hath won my affections and bound my soul fast.”
John Stocker

“Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made
into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. We who have been embraced by the outstretched arms of the
crucified God open our arms even for the enemies … so that together we may rejoice in the eternal embrace of the
triune God.”
Miroslav Volf

“No matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it. It is just too …
indiscriminate. It lets rotten sons and crooked tax farmers and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose
at really good people. And it does that, gallingly, for no more reason than the Gospel’s shabby exaltation of dumb trust
over worthy works.”
Robert Capon

“No one will leave an addiction or compulsion unless a competing passion is offered that gives a taste of what the soul
is meant to endure. Only Heaven is a big enough passion to draw us away from petty distractions and cheap addictions
of this sorry world.”
Dan Allender

“The fire of lust’s pleasures must be fought with the fire of God’s pleasures. If we try to fight the fire of lust with
prohibitions and threats alone – even the terrible warnings of Jesus – we will fail. We must fight it with a massive
promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy
satisfaction.”
John Piper

“Whatever our attractions, following Jesus means denying ourselves and taking up our cross. But if Jesus’ people are
truly living in his ways, there’s room and joy and love enough for all.”
Rebecca McLaughlin

“My identity is in Christ and not my sexuality.”
Sean Doherty

“No room remains empty for long. If God is driven out, the gods come trooping in.”
Lesslie Newbigin

“Idols are non-gods and as such are much more congenial to us than God, for we not only have the pleasure of making them, using our wonderful imaginations and skills in creative ways, but also of controlling them. They are gods with all the God taken out so that we can continue to be our own gods.”
Eugene Peterson

“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. … Salvation belongs to the LORD!”
Jonah 2:8, 9c

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
Richard Neibuhr’s famous definition of American liberal Christianity

“The picture of Jesus as the coming Judge is the central feature of another absolutely vital and non-negotiable
Christian belief: that there will indeed be a judgment in which the creator God will set the world right once and for all. The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.”
N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope

“In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied –
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.”
Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty, “In Christ Alone”

“I never wanted to follow Jesus.
I never wanted to follow Jesus.
I never wanted to follow Jesus.
He rescued me, He rescued me.
No turning back, no turning back.” – Red Mountain Music

“There’s a direct correlation between the accuracy of our memory and the effectiveness of our mission. If we’re not teaching people how to be saved, it’s perhaps because we’ve forgotten the tragedy of being lost. If we’re not teaching the message of forgiveness, it may be because we don’t remember what it was like to be guilty. And if we’re not preaching the cross, it could be that we’ve subconsciously decided that—God forbid—somehow we don’t need it.” – Max Lucado

“It is very common in Christian circles to assume that “the gospel” is something just for non-Christians. We presume that the gospel is a set of basic “A-B-C” doctrines that Christians do not need to hear or study once they are converted . . . Belief in the gospel is not just the way to enter the kingdom of God; it is the way to address every obstacle and grow in every aspect. The gospel is not just the “ABCs” but the “A-to-Z” of the Christian life. The gospel is the way that anything is renewed and transformed by Christ — whether a heart, a relationship, a church, or a community. All our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel. Put positively, the gospel transforms our hearts, our thinking and our approach to absolutely everything.” – Tim Keller