The Grammar of Grace

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10

“Sin is a breach of trust, the illicit reach of unbelief, an assertion of autonomy.”

—Bruce Waltke

“Grace doesn’t sell well; you can hardly even give it away, because it works only for losers and no one wants to stand in their line.”

—Robert Farrar Capon

“Come with thy heart hard, dead, cold, full of wickedness; come as a blood-red sinner; this is the way to come to Christ!”

—John Bunyan

“When God pardons, he does not say he understands our weakness or makes allowances for our errors; rather he disposes of, he finishes with, the whole of our dead life and raises us up with a new one. He does not so much deal with our derelictions as he does drop them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. He forgets our sins in the darkness of the tomb. He remembers our iniquities no more in the oblivion of Jesus’ expiration. He finds us, in short, in the desert of death, not in the garden of improvement; and in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home . . . The work of redemption is done entirely by the redeemer, and not at all by the redeemed.”

—Robert Farrar Capon