Tullian Tchividjian famous quotes

The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need grace
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#People #Grace #Needs

Our hearts are continuously rebellious. Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way." If this goes on day after day after day, year after year, month after month, it would understandable for God to say, "I've given you ten trillion tries. You're finished." But it's not. So in that sense, His grace is always surprising, never ceases to be amazing and His mercy is remarkably outrageous.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Heart #Years #Grace

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Accomplishment #Victory #Identity

I never realized how much I've become dependent on human approval until God took it away. I didn't even realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of. God showed me Jesus plus nothing equals everything. And everything minus Jesus equals nothing. That set me free.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Acceptance #Self

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Lawyer #Legalism #Gods Will

My job as a pastor and theologian is to tease out the nature and the necessity of the gospel in meticulous ways, in everything I say, in everything I like. I want desperately for the church in America to rediscover the power and the beauty and the nature and the necessity of the gospel.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jobs #America #Church

God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Acceptance

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Thinking #Self #Pharisees

God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Ability #Mess

I grew up in a remarkable home, the middle of seven children. My parents raised us well. They loved us well. We laughed hard growing up. But being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home, whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some bad decisions about who I hung out with, I dropped out of high school, got kicked out of the house.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Children #Growing Up #School

The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Christian #Heart #Advice

I've got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we're super spiritual or we've got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won't guarantee that they'll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Mom #Spiritual #Dad

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#People #Get Better #News

Between writing, traveling, speaking, preaching, and doing my best to be a good husband to my wife and my three kids, that's about as much as one man or at least this man can do.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Husband #Kids #Writing

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Running #Real #People

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Self #Grace #Slavery

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Defeated

God's grace is so counterintuitive and everything we do in our life is just based on conditions. You do this for me and I'll do that for you. Or if you don't do this for me, I won't do that for you. And God's grace works in a completely different direction.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Grace #Different

Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Running #Grace #Bottom

My daily sins require daily distribution of God's grace. In that sense, it never ceases to surprise me because I don't deserve any of it. I mean, I deserve to be locked in a cage and for God to throw away the key.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Mean #Keys #Grace

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

#Grace #Our Relationship #Relationship With God

Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns - whatever it is for you - live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Dream #Teenager #Loss

My struggle isn't believing my performance can earn God's favor; my struggle is believing my performance can keep God's favor
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Struggle #Believe #Favors

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Acceptance #People #Done

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Christian #Jesus #Book

The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Moving #Persistence #Christianity

The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation. I've got friends who are surfers, doctors, lawyers, artists and entertainers. Some people are cool and some people are geeky. I look around at my friends and I think, only the gospel has the power to put together a friendship like this.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Thinking #Artist #Doctors

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Bad Day #Thinking #Suffering

The only thing that frees you from the need to pretend in order to make people believe you are something when you are actually not is the gospel because the gospel tells you that identity, my meaning, my security, and all of those things are in Christ.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Believe #Order #People

The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Heart #Justification #Sanctification

The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#People #Pressure #Transformation

The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Lying #Ideas #Grace

The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#World

Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Acceptance #Grace #Given

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Self #Enemy #Righteousness

Jesus plus nothing equals everything; everything minus Jesus equals nothing.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Minus #Plus

The emphasis of the Bible is on the work of the Redeemer, not on the work of the redeemed.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Emphasis

The gospel doesn't make bad people good, it makes dead people alive.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#People #Alive #Dead People

To focus on how I'm doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Christian #Focus #Done

The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Sacrifice #Generosity #Uncommon

Grace frees you to be honest about what you've always known to be true about yourself: that you're weaker & more afraid than you want to be.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Grace #Want #Honest

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Mistake #Law #People

Christian growth doesn't happen by first behaving better, but by believing better--believi ng in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Christian #Believe #Growth

God loves broken people because broken people are all that there are.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#People #Broken #God Love

Because Jesus was someone, you’re free to be no one.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Entitlement #Legalism #Complainers

God is the one to be praised, not our transformation.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Transformation

Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Men #Needs

Whether it's a Christian or a non-Christian, there's nothing like suffering to show us how small, needy, and not in control we are. Suffering has a way of sobering us up to the realization that we can't make it on our own, that we need help, that we're broken.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Christian #Broken #Suffering

Real, pure, unadulterated freedom happens when the resources of the gospel smash any sense of need to secure for myself anything beyond what Christ has already secured for me.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Real #Needs #Christ

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

#Christian #Get Better #Realizing

What I'm most deeply grateful for is that God's love for us, approval of us, and commitment to us does not ride on our resolve but on Jesus' resolve for us. The gospel is the good news announcing Jesus' infallible devotion to us despite our inconsistent devotion to Him. The gospel is not a command to hang on to Jesus; it's a promise that no matter how weak and unsuccessful our faith and efforts may be, God is always holding on to us.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Grateful #Commitment

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Hands #Long #Bitterness

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make good people good; it makes dead people alive. That's the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and every other world religion. All the others exhort their followers to save themselves by being good, by conforming their lives to whatever their worshiped deity is. But the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Acceptance #Other Worlds

Job's unraveling wasn't wrong or sinful; rather, it was emotionally realistic.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jobs #Unraveling #Realistic

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been on to more dearly than Him.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Pain #Heart

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Stress #Everyday #Judgment

God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin; while our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. It's a message revealing the radical contrast between the sinful heart of mankind and the gracious heart of mankind's Creator.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Heart #Grace #Forgiving

Grace could not have done it’s curing work if the law had not first done its crushing work.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Crush #Law #Grace

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.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Enough #Old Testament #Good Work

The cross [is] the ultimate statement of God's involvement in the world on this side of heaven.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Heaven #Sides #World

Information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Heart #Information #Enough

I wish I could say that everything I do is for God’s glory but I can’t. And neither can you. What I can say is Jesus’ blood covers all my efforts to glorify myself.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Jesus #Blood #Effort

Only when we see that the way of God's law is absolutely inflexible will we see that God's grace is absolutely indispensable. A high view of the law reminds us that God accepts us on the basis of Christ's perfection, not our progress. Grace, properly understood, is the movement of a holy God toward an unholy people. He doesn't cheapen the law or ease its requirements. He fulfills them in his Son, who then gives his righteousness to us. That's the gospel. Pure and simple.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Son #Simple #Views

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.
-- Tullian Tchividjian

#Real #Believe #Self