Jesus + Nothing = Everything Quotes

“To focus on how I'm doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been holding on to more dearly than Him.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Disobedience happens not when we think too much grace but when we think too little of it”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“We spend more time asking what would Jesus do instead of what did Jesus do.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“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.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“real spiritual growth happens as we look up to Christ and what he did, out to our neighbors and what they need, not in to ourselves and how we’re doing.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“I’m not saying the Christian life is effortless; the real question is Where are we focusing our efforts? Are we working hard to perform? Or are we working hard to rest in Christ’s performance for us?”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“William Temple in the nineteenth century, I like to remind myself and others that the only thing you contribute to your salvation and to your sanctification is the sin that makes them necessary.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“In fact, most of us convince ourselves that we’re actually honoring Jesus with our rules and regulations, that we’re paying attention to him and pleasing him more than ever. But all the while, we’re only demonstrating that we believe in ourselves much more than we do in Jesus. Our default faith mode is to trust, above all things, our own ability to create a safe, controllable, predictable world.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Because Jesus was someone, you’re free to be no one.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“The banner under which the Christian lives reads, “It is finished.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. . . .”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“because Jesus was strong for me, I was free to be weak; because Jesus won for me, I was free to lose; because Jesus was someone, I was free to be no one; because Jesus was extraordinary, I was free to be ordinary; because Jesus succeeded for me, I was free to fail.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Paul doesn’t pray that the Colossians will find something they don’t have; rather he prays they’ll grow in their awareness and understanding of what they already have.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Paul was originally a Pharisee, and the Pharisees in the New Testament were the ultimate moralists. They were remarkably astute at making sure their external behavior was spic-and-span. Jesus, in fact, called them whitewashed tombs, acknowledging how outwardly clean they appeared. Everybody saw them as super-spiritual, the truly religious. “But on the inside,” Jesus was telling them, “you’re rotting and dead.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Behavior modification cannot change the human heart. Outside cleanup never leads to inside cleanup.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“So I urge you once more: examine yourself. Dissect your heart. Recognize reality. What are you looking to (instead of Jesus) for meaning in life, for purpose, significance, security, direction, acceptance, approval? Ask yourself the same bold and probing question that Leo Tolstoy famously asked: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”[9] What are you living for? What are you depending on to provide the freedom, worth, and value that you crave?”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“A “yes, grace—but” disposition is the kind of fearful posture that keeps moralism swirling around in our hearts and in the church. Subtly, the force of that falsehood gets transferred into sermons in which the driving dynamic is to get Christians behaving properly.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“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. By believing that lie, we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in our lives and in the church by perpetuating our own slavery. The truth is, disobedience happens not when we think too much of grace, but when we think too little of it.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save themselves” by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (in essence, “back-door-legalism). In other words, there are two laws we can choose to live by apart from Christ: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” and the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It’s for those who long to be free from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to “become a better you.” Moralistic preaching is stimulated by a fear of the scandalous freedom that gospel grace promotes and promises. The perceived fear is this: if we think too much and talk too much about grace, and the radical freedom it brings, we’ll go off the deep end with it. We will abuse it. So to balance things out, we need to throw some law in there, to help make sure Christian people walk the straight and narrow.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Responding to our deep needs for acceptance and meaning and significance, we arrogantly assume that we have the capacity to somehow figure out and satisfy these needs on our own. We proudly put together our own ethical code, our own set of regulations and requirements, our own achievable standards and obeyable rules, all for ensuring the inner fulfillment our souls demand.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“As A. W. Pink once wrote, “The great mistake made by people is hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone.”[7]”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Deep within you, where is that restlessness, that agitation, that impatience, that anxiety? Why is it there? What is it you’re missing, and you’re trying to fill the gap?”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“So what are you trusting in, other than Jesus, to gain acceptance or approval, to experience security and significance, to find meaning and purpose, to discover identity and direction?”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Like the pain I experienced, your pain right now could be God prying open your life and heart in order to remove a gift of his that you’ve been holding onto more dearly than him. Or, to put it into the form I once read from Paul Tripp: “How is your present disappointment, discouragement, or grief a window on what has actually captured your heart?”[6]”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“Here’s one way to get your idols into focus: simply think about whatever it is in your life that, if you lost it, would make you want to quit living. Or, to put it positively, what are you really living for? What are you functionally depending on to make life worth living? Ultimately, if it’s anything or anyone other than Jesus, then it’s become an idol. Most idols in themselves are good things, good gifts from God—our spouse, our children, our hopes and dreams, our work, our success, our skills, our looks, our reputations. The trouble comes when we transform these into ultimate things. We end up depending on these things and these people to provide us with the meaning and purpose and freedom and security and significance that only Jesus can provide.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything