We spend more time asking what would Jesus do instead of what did Jesus do.

Daily Christian living, in other words, is daily Christian dying: dying to our trivial comforts, soul-shrinking conveniences, arrogant preferences, and self-centered entitlements, and living for something much larger than what makes us comfortable and safe.

Because Jesus paid it all, we are free from the need to do it all. Our identity, worth, and value, are not anchored in what we can accomplish but in what Jesus accomplished for us.

The hub of Christianity is not 'do something for Jesus.' The hub of Christianity is 'Jesus has done everything for you.' And my fear is that too many people, both inside and outside the church, have heard our pleas for intensified devotion and concluded that the focus of Christian faith is our love for God instead of God's love for us. Don't get me wrong--what we do is important. But it is infinitely less important than what Jesus has done for us.

God's demand: 'be righteous'; God's diagnosis: 'no one is righteous'; God's deliverance: 'Jesus is our righteousness.

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

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.

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.

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.