Tullian Tchividjian Quotes

I ended up dropping out of high school at 16 and getting kicked out of my home.

My parents told me, sadly, that because I was so disruptive to the rest of the household, that I could no longer live under their roof.

The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.

Here's one way I can know that I've forgotten the gospel of grace: when your sin bothers me more than my sin.

Christianity is not about good people getting better.

It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

Nothing makes me want to obey more than knowing that God unconditionally loves me and forgives me even when I disobey.

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

We are broken people living in a broken world with other broken people. We all need grace.

Remember on your best day that Jesus had to die for you. Remember on your worst day that he did.

If you feel compelled to respond every time you're criticized it reveals just how much you've built your identity on being right.

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

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

I think there is tribalism is a big deal inside of the church, that the church thinks of themselves as a tribe and not a mission.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works.

Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical.

Mt. Sinai says, 'You must do. Mt. Calvary says, 'Because you couldn't, Jesus did.' Don't run to the wrong mountain for your hiding place

Self-righteousness is the fruit of a low view of God's law and a lite view of your own sin.

Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other.

There is no better news than that the God who makes the demand for perfection also meets the demand for perfection on our behalf.

A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.

The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me.

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

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

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.

We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.

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

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

Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return.

Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.

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.

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves.

It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

Before we can even begin to grapple with the frustrations and tragedies of life in this world, we must do away with our faithless morality of payback and reward.

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.

Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died, and in Christ we have been raised.

I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.

The Gospel is not ultimately a defense from pain, it is the message of God's rescue through pain. In fact, it allows us to drop our defenses, to escape not from pain but from the prison of "How" and "Why" to the freedom of "Who?"

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.

Information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.

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

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.

God did not rescue me out of the pain, He rescued me through the pain!

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.

Thankfully, God's restraining grace keeps even the worst of us from being utterly depraved. The worst people who have ever lived could've been worse.

Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of Evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain.

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

When the Christian faith becomes defined by who we are and what we do and not by who Christ is and what he did for us, we miss the gospel - and we, ironically, become more disobedient.

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.

I was always in places where I was widely accepted, approved and loved and I was finally in a place where people did not approve of me, did not accept me and did not love me. It was killing me.

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.

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.