Grace in Practice Quotes

“If there is no resolution to the conflict between grace and law, then suicide is the right thing to do. In fact, many more people take their own lives than is publicly admitted.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Everyone needs the same amount of love, which is 100 percent unconditional love, the one-way love of God.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Any judgment, any evaluation - even if it approves and speaks a blessing - will be heard as a negation. This is an absolute first principle of this book. Law is an attack. It is heard as a negation by its recipient. All laws are negation. God's law is the negation.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“If there is the slightest chance of a person doing it for himself or herself, God's grace is made null.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“grace trumps church every time.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Prayer is the expression of a relationship. This is easy to say, and sounds a little trite. But prayer is one word: "Help!" That is what prayer is. It is the cry for aid in the circumstance where there is no aid and no resources to provide aid. Prayer is the "Help!" of the person whose intrinsic givens offer no way out.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Human people are either dead without grace or alive with grace.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Lilo & Stitch is a minor masterpiece of the world's instinctive grasp of grace. It puts most church preaching to shame.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“People hear judgment. I have already observed the common fact that we are so susceptible to judgment that we infer it.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“A systematic theology of grace puts church in its right place. Church is at best the caboose to grace. It is its tail. Ecclesiology, on the other hand, makes church into the engine.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“grace-based people are focused more on salvation and the problem of being human than they are on any institution, especially on an institution that evinces amnesia about its origin.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“the other themes of Christianity are infinitely more important than the "church idea.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Grace demolishes the human idea of success. It laughs about it.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Everyone needs the same amount of love, which is ioo percent unconditional love, the one-way love of God.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“You tell me that you intend the criticism you dole out to be for my own good. You tell me there is really love beneath the lecture. But all I can hear is the lecture. My receptors, as an ordinary original sinner, are wired to pick up the law. Tell me one thousand times that your law is in the service of love. I will even tell you I believe you. But I don't. There is no law in existence that can be heard as grace by sufferers and sinners. The cliche is true: we need unconditional love.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Grace begets grace. Law begets resistance.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Grace is what everyone wants. No one enjoys the stress of demand. It is terminally exhausting.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Grace is the end of the curse over life. It is the end of the law. This is why Paul writes as an exclamation his words in Romans 10:4: "Christ is the end of the law.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Most people who like their work do so because they feel free to be creative and are not being managed or controlled. This feeling has everything to do with grace and nothing to do with law.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“when work is produced from natural desire and motive, rather than from the idea of actions resulting in proposed consequences, the best work is done.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Liberty derives from grace, and it produces the things the law demands but cannot form.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“law fails, grace succeeds. Grace does what the law cannot do.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“Grace is one-way love. Take an inventory of yourself. Watch other people about whose happiness you care. You will see it over and over: one-way love lifts up. One-way love cures. One-way love transforms. It is the change agent of life.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“The law in society is a double message. It calls for perfection but stimulates rebellion. It creates the very thing it wants to control. The law is a dud. Social reformers have seen this forever. They have seen terrible ills and have worked tirelessly to correct them. They have been appalled by injustices and done everything to challenge them. Yet year after year, one injustice gives way to another.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“People do not wish to be challenged. People wish to be comforted. They wish to be supported. They wish to be encouraged and sustained. What people wish is to be loved.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life

“no law has been created that has the capacity to engender what it demands.”
― Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life