It Is Finished Quotes

“The law may expose bad behavior, but only grace can win the heart.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“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, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Samson’s story shows us a profound truth of Christianity: ours is a progress from strength to weakness, not weakness to strength. It is when Samson is at his weakest that he is most powerfully used. Samson ends his life blind and in chains. He is weak. So are we. God promises, in His Son, to perfect His power in our powerlessness (2 Cor. 12:9). So we can own our weakness. We’ll find God’s strength in it.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Many Christians think that God is perpetually disappointed with them. But because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, God sees us as friends and children, not as enemies and strangers. God is a good Father, and because we’re with Jesus, God’s affection for us is unchanging and His approval of us is forever.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“First, we need to understand theologically that the gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life, but it’s also the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“As long as we are seeking our worth in anything and everything but the gospel of God’s grace, we will keep seeking and keep wearing ourselves out in the process. But in Christ’s finished work is ultimate and eternal validation. And ultimate and eternal rest.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“We know that we deserve punishment and then, when we receive mercy instead, we discover grace. Romans 5:8 reads, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God gives forgiveness and imputes righteousness to us even though we are sinful and while we were His enemies (vv. 6, 8, 10).”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“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’s resolve for us. The gospel is the good news announcing Jesus’s 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, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Luther also said that one of our biggest problems was our own “good” works. They obscure our need for a Savior. “At the cross,” said Gerhard Forde, “God has stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you were really going to do something for him.” Genuine freedom awaits all who stop trusting in their own work and start trusting in Christ’s work.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“What we see here (and in our lives) is that love inspires what the law demands—the law prescribes good works, but only grace can produce them. Gratitude, generosity, honesty, compassion, acts of mercy, and self-sacrifice (all requirements of the law) spring unsummoned from a forgiven heart. This is how God works on us. He picks us, the least deserving, out of the crowd, insists upon being in a relationship with us, and creates in us a new heart, miraculously capable of pleasing Him.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Our identity is anchored in Christ’s accomplishment, not our own; Christ’s strength, not ours; Christ’s pedigree and track record, not ours; Christ’s victory, not ours. Who we really are has nothing to do with us at all—rather, it has everything to do with what Jesus has done for us.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“I used to think that the simple good news of Christianity was just for non-Christians. Jesus came to save sinners, but once someone became saved, I figured they’d move on to the advanced material. I saw the gospel as Christianity 101 and the rest of the Christian life as graduate-level courses. But I’ve come to realize that the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. Once God rescues sinners, He doesn’t give them something else to think about or do, He simply gives them more gospel, grace upon grace. All good theology is an exposition of the gospel.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“My friend Dr. Rod Rosenbladt told me the story of how he’d wrecked his car when he was sixteen years old after he and his friends had been drinking. Following the accident, Rod called his dad, and the first thing his dad asked him was, “Are you all right?” Rod said yes. Then he confessed to his father that he was drunk. Rod was naturally terrified about how his father might respond. Later that night after Rod had made it home, he wept and wept in his father’s study. He was embarrassed, ashamed. At the end of the ordeal, his father asked him this question: “How about tomorrow we go and get you a new car?” Rod now says that he became a Christian in that moment. God’s grace became real to him in that moment of forgiveness and mercy. Now nearly seventy, Rod has since spent his life as a spokesman for the theology of grace. Rod’s father’s grace didn’t turn Rod into a drunk—it made him love his father and the Lord he served. Now let me ask you: What would you like to say to Rod’s dad? Rod says that every time he tells that story in public, there are always people in the audience who get angry. They say, “Your dad let you get away with that? He didn’t punish you at all? What a great opportunity for your dad to teach you responsibility!” Rod always chuckles when he hears that response and says, “Do you think I didn’t know what I had done? Do you think it wasn’t the most painful moment of my whole life up to that point? I was ashamed; I was scared. My father spoke grace to me in a moment when I knew I deserved wrath … and I came alive.” Isn’t that the nature of grace? We know that we deserve punishment and then, when we receive mercy instead, we discover grace. Romans 5:8 reads, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God gives forgiveness and imputes righteousness to us even though we are sinful and while we were His enemies (vv. 6, 8, 10). Our offenses are infinitely greater than a sixteen-year-old getting drunk and wrecking his car, yet God’s grace is greater still.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“And there’s nothing more enslaving than self-salvation projects. They never end because they never work. The story of David and Goliath is meant to point us to the one true hero, the one hero who is perfect at all times.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“God knows us in all our conniving, self-centered, and jealousy-laden splendor and loves us anyway.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“November 22   |   Matthew 21:33–44 In a parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard, leases it to tenants, and then goes to another country. After a time, he sends servants to the vineyard to collect the fruit. Rather than give the master his profit, the tenants beat one servant, stone another, and kill a third. In response, the landowner sends more servants, only to see the same thing happen to them. Finally, thinking surely they will respect his son, the landowner sends his heir to the vineyard. Believing they will be able to keep the vineyard for themselves, the tenants kill the son. At that point, Jesus asks the Pharisees what the landowner will do in this situation. The Pharisees say what we would all say; they suggest doing what we would all want to do: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death” (v. 41 ESV). In other words, he’s going to turn that place into an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: no survivors. You see, the Pharisees, like us, are tuned in to the law. They’re thinking in terms of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They can’t see Jesus’s underlying point: they’re the tenants. Jesus quotes them Psalm 118, saying that the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. The son sent to the vineyard was rejected by the tenants … but that’s not the end of our story. Jesus says that anyone who comes into contact with this stone will be broken. All of our efforts, whether aimed at rebellion or at righteousness, will cease. The chief cornerstone will break us. There’s one important difference between the heir in the parable and Jesus. Jesus didn’t stay dead! And because Jesus was raised to new life and has given that new life to us, we can leave all our striving behind.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“I showed him how the gospel frees us from this obsessive pressure to perform, this slavish demand to “become.” I showed him how the gospel declares that in Christ “we already are.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“We make a huge mistake when we define our calling in terms of participation inside the church—nursery work, Sunday school teacher, youth worker, music leader, and so on. Our calling is much bigger than how much time we put into church matters. Calling involves everything we are and everything we do, both inside and, more important, outside the church walls. “Calling,” said Os Guinness, “is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“The good news is that God’s “I love you” is proclaimed specifically to those who don’t deserve it. In other words, we don’t need a makeover to be loved by God. God’s love is not fake or forced; it is an “I love you” that says, “I forgive you.” God’s “I love you” is based on the deserving of another. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). On the cross, Christ’s righteousness was given to us and our sin was laid upon Him. God’s “I love you,” aimed at His perfect Son, is ours forever.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“For a long time now, I’ve been convinced that the way most Christians think about redemption is influenced more by ancient Greek philosophy than by the Bible. We think of ultimate redemption as being redemption from the body, not of the body, and redemption from the world, not of the world. This, however, goes against what the Bible clearly teaches about redemption.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“The distinction between winners and losers is irrelevant when no one can claim victory.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Good advice and inspirational pick-me-ups rarely comfort a grieving person.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“God’s love expects nothing in return, creates our belief, yet does not depend on our belief.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“there’s nothing more enslaving than self-salvation projects.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“Our dire need for God’s grace doesn’t get smaller after God saves us—it actually gets bigger”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“No one is free of guilt, for the law is not subject to belief in it.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“When I look back upon resolutions of improvement and amendment, which have year after year been made and broken, … why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary, and despair is criminal.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“The good news is, in those moments when you feel as if God is killing you, He is. But He’s killing you to make you alive.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News

“In short, Christmas is God’s answer to the slavery of self-salvation. Jesus came to liberate us from the pressure of having to fix ourselves, find ourselves, and free ourselves.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News