TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN

Death is the operative device that sets us free in Christ - when we die, we truly live.

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.

Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.

I never had an intellectual struggle with the Bible, with the gospel, with the claims of Christ.

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

God has hardwired me to thoroughly enjoy and be sharpened by good and friendly theological discussion about the gospel.

A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance.

My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.

The Gospel announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep judgment against us once and for all so that we could be free from the judgement of God, others, and ourselves.

To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.

In 'Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels,' I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God's grace as the sailors and the Ninevites.

Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance and accomplishments.

Because of total depravity, you and I were desperate for God's grace before we were saved. Because of total depravity, you and I remain desperate for God's grace even after we're saved.

When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God's love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done.

In the Old Testament, we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament.

Rest assured: Before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we need; before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we have.

God loves us too much to leave us in the hell of unhappiness that comes from trying to do his job. Into the slavish misery of our ladder-defined lives, God condescends.

I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand why some Christians get mad when we say that the ultimate hero in the Bible is not Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc... but Jesus.

Believe it or not, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours.

The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves - a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom.

My failure to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles is the direct result of my refusal to die to my natural proclivity toward attaining my own freedom, meaning, value, worth, and righteousness - not believing that, by virtue of my Spirit - wrought union with Christ, everything I need, I already possess.

The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

Christianity affirms that Jesus severed the link between suffering and deserving once for all on Calvary. God put the ledgers away and settled the accounts.