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Am I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don’t seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little slower, harder to move, a little more sedentary and set in my ways. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I’m getting tired! It’s just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn’t think so! One should not, I expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification! But can it be, perhaps, that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all that? I hope so. The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness.

Donald Alexander, ed., Christian Spirituality: Five Views on Sanctification (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1988), 32.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Jesus + Nothing = Everything.

The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It’s for those who long to be freed from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to “become a better you.”

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 604-606). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

Contrary to what I had thought, I did not need easing circumstances, relief from difficulty, and distance from pain in order to be free. I was learning that the freedom Jesus secured for me is not freedom from pain and suffering here and now. Rather, it’s freedom from bitterness, anger, fear, resentment, self-pity, offense, and hopelessness in the crucible of present pain and suffering; it is freedom from my burdensome sense of “I deserve better,” the encumbrance of entitlement. I was realizing that only the gospel can free us from the enslaving pressure to defend ourselves. That’s real freedom—God-sized freedom!

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 927-931). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

Grace’s good news—always welcome, always refreshing for us—is that for freedom Christ has set us free, and he intends to keep us free. His amazing grace has loosened our chains; our shackles no longer hold us back. We must lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us, the sin of “submitting again to a yoke of slavery,” the enslaving stress of having to make something out of ourselves. When we transfer trust from our success to Christ’s success for us, we experience the abundant freedoms that come from not having to measure up. And this indeed we can do, but only in the light of the gospel.

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 1300-1304). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

My greatest need and yours is to look at Christ more than we look at ourselves. The gospel empowers us to escape our predicament of being curved in on ourselves. In the gospel, God comes after us because we need him, not because he needs us.

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 1587-1589). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

The world isn’t captivated by people trying to give the impression they have it all together. That’s not what draws them. What captures their attention is the sight of humble, desperate, dependent people who acknowledge their sin and who point to their Savior as the only one who can rescue us. The world, in other words, needs our confession, not our competence.

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 1601-1604). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

One of the reasons we experience so much failure in the Christian life is that we think more about obligations then we do gospel declarations. We focus on the imperatives, but we pass over the indicatives. We fail in our doing because we fail to grasp first what Christ has already done. This leaves us powerless—running on our own steam. Only when you realize that the gospel has nothing to do with your obedience but with Christ’s obedience for you, will you start to obey. The only Christians who end up getting better are those who realize that if they don’t get better, God will love them anyway.

Tullian Tchividjian (2011-10-03). Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Kindle Locations 2043-2047). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

Photo Courtesy of africa at freedigitalphotos.net

If I can do enough of the right things, I will have established my worth. Identity is the sum of my achievements. Hence, if I can satisfy the boss, meet the needs of my spouse and children, and still do justice to my inner aspirations, then I will have proven my worth. There are infinite ways to prove our worth along these lines. The basic equation is this: I am what I do. It is a religious position in life because it tries to answer in practical terms the question, Who am I and what is my niche in the universe? On this reading, my niche is in proportion to my deeds. In Christian theology, such a position is called justification by works. It assumes that my worth is measured by my performance. Conversely, it conceals, thinly, a dark and ghastly fear: If I do not perform, I will be judged unworthy. To myself I will cease to exist.

Paul F. M. Zahl, Who Will Deliver Us: The Present Power of the Death of Christ (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 11.

Can you be proud while you believe that your Savior was clothed with flesh, and lived in modesty, and made himself of no reputation, and was despised and scorned and spat upon by sinners, and shamefully treated and nailed as a common criminal to a cross?

Did Christ take upon himself the form of a servant so that you could domineer and have the highest place of honor? Did Christ not have a place to lay his head so that you could insist upon a home with luxurious furnishings?

Must you brave it out in your most fantastic outfits instead of your Savior’s seamless coat?

Did he pray for his murders so that you could demand vengeance for petty words and wrongs?

Did he patiently endure being spit upon and pummeled so that you could, with impatient pride, abuse others?

- Richard Baxter

Pride is an insidious thing. Just when you are convinced that you have one of its tentacles under control, another one snakes out to grab you. Oh, it has probably been there all along, but you never saw it before. So off you to to try to bring it under the Spirit’s control, and in time, by God’s grace, you do. Then, just as you’re thinking you’ve got it under control, out wriggles another one. Pride is like a garment with a million secret pockets that you’re constantly discovering.

Lou Priolo, Pleasing People: How not to be an “approval junkie”, page 113

Uncertainty is everywhere. But I am living in the midst of the uncertainty and risk, amid things that can and do bring physical destruction, because I am running from things that can destroy my soul: complacency, comfort, and ignorance. I am much more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self-serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy.

Clark, Beth; Davis, Katie J. (2011-10-04). Kisses from Katie (Kindle Locations 244-247). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.