Tullian Tchividjian Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Tullian Tchividjian.
Famous Quotes By Tullian Tchividjian
A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance. — Tullian Tchividjian
The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be. — Tullian Tchividjian
If you look at the gospel, it just doesn't break things apart. The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation. — Tullian Tchividjian
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
Grace generates panic, because it wrestles both control and glory out of our hands. This means that the part of you that gets angry and upset and mean and defensive and slanderous and critical and skeptical and feisty when you hear about God's one-way love is the very part of you that is still enslaved. — Tullian Tchividjian
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
Job's unraveling wasn't wrong or sinful; rather, it was emotionally realistic. — Tullian Tchividjian
Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way." — Tullian Tchividjian
The Gospel declares that our guilt has been atoned for, the law has been fulfilled. So we don't need to live under the burden of trying to appease the judgment we feel. — Tullian Tchividjian
God knows us in all our conniving, self-centered, and jealousy-laden splendor and loves us anyway. — Tullian Tchividjian
Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other. — Tullian Tchividjian
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
To flee from God is to rise against God. It is stand-up, straight-out, in-your-face defiance against the One to whom we owe all loyalty and love. It means insisting that our way of doing things is better than God's way. — Tullian Tchividjian
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
As J. C. Kromsigt said, The good seed cannot flourish when it is repeatedly dug up for the purpose of examining its growth. — Tullian Tchividjian
We are all both victims and victimizers. Just as everyone suffers, no one is innocent of causing suffering themselves. — Tullian Tchividjian
God attaches no strings to His love. None. His love for us does not depend on our loveliness. It goes one way. As far as our sin may extend, the grace of our Father extends further. — Tullian Tchividjian
The smaller you get - the smaller life makes you - the easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped. — Tullian Tchividjian
God's grace meets us in messy places because messy places are all that there are. — Tullian Tchividjian
The tragic irony in all of this is that when we focus so strongly on our need to get better, we actually get worse. — Tullian Tchividjian
I was spending too much time thinking about how I was doing, if I was learning everything I was supposed to be learning during this difficult season, whether I was doing it right or not, taking my spiritual pulse, etc - my inner lawyer was working overtime. — Tullian Tchividjian
A biblical understanding of the Christian life is not 'let go and let God,' it's 'trust God and get going.' — Tullian Tchividjian
I think for far too long the Church has concluded that Christians don't need the gospel, it's simple what non-Christian people need in order to be saved. — Tullian Tchividjian
It's better to feel sorry for doing something bad than to feel superior for doing something good. — Tullian Tchividjian
The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit. — Tullian Tchividjian
Our dreams are a window into our theology. We are a proud people, the inheritors of the American Dream - the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right. Like bratty, self-involved little kids, we push past the Giver to grab for the gift. Can you see it? We use God for health, wealth, and emotional well-being, and in the process, we miss out on relationship with our heavenly Father. — Tullian Tchividjian
The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need grace — Tullian Tchividjian
For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you. And in the end, what we discover is that this really is enough. — Tullian Tchividjian
The refrain repeated through this books is that everything we need, we already possess in Christ. This means that the what-if has been taken out of the equation. We can take absurd risks, push harder, go further, and leave it all on the field without fear
and have fun doing so. We can give with reckless abandon, because we no longer need to ensure a return of success, love, meaning, validation, and approval. We can invest freely and forcefully, because we've been freely and forcefully invested in. (188) — Tullian Tchividjian
God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures. — Tullian Tchividjian
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I'd been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered. — Tullian Tchividjian
Cheer up; you're a lot worse off than you think you are, but in Jesus you're far more loved than you ever could have imagined. — Tullian Tchividjian
Hollywood is not known as a culture of grace. Dog-eat-dog is more like it. People love you one day and hate you the next. Personal value is very much attached to box office revenues and the unpredictable and often cruel winds of fashion. — Tullian Tchividjian
When Martin Luther was asked what we contribute to our salvation, he said, "Sin and resistance" — Tullian Tchividjian
Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted do not bother coming to our churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.2 — Tullian Tchividjian
The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves - a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
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. — Tullian Tchividjian
The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you". — Tullian Tchividjian
The gospel sets us free to become the romantic leaders of our marriages without fright or hesitation. Because we have been forever wooed by Jesus, we are now free to forever woo our wives. — Tullian Tchividjian
God did not rescue me out of the pain, He rescued me through the pain! — Tullian Tchividjian
We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering. — Tullian Tchividjian
The emphasis of the Bible is on the work of the Redeemer, not on the work of the redeemed. — Tullian Tchividjian
Spiritual growth is not about climbing a mountain, getting better, and therefore needing Christ less and less. Spiritual growth is about discovering more and bigger caverns of need into which more and more of Christ's grace can flow. — Tullian Tchividjian
Being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home. I couldn't figure out whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. — Tullian Tchividjian
There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
In those moments when I'm obsessively counting my sins against me, it is good news to remember that God has counted my sins against Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian
A person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their arms grow back may be the best description I've ever read of what it feels like for a depressed person to try to cheer herself up. Yet this description applies to any kind of suffering that resists our attempts to address it. — Tullian Tchividjian
The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It's for those who long to be freed from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to "become a better you." The gospel tells us that weakness precedes usefulness - that, in fact, the smaller you get, the freer you will be. — Tullian Tchividjian
The gospel declares, because of Christ's finished work for you, you already have all the approval, all the security, all the love, all the worth, and all the rescue you long for and that you desperately look for in a thousand places, all of which are infinitely smaller than Jesus. — Tullian Tchividjian
Today, remember that you're worse than you think you are. But remember, also, that God's gift of righteousness to you is greater than you could ever imagine. — Tullian Tchividjian
One-way love is rare, though, and it always comes as a surprise. Fortunately, the glimpses we receive in relationships are only a foreshadowing of God's love for us. They are like little arrows that point to the very heart of the universe, what Dante called 'the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,' the love that received its fullest expression in the person and work of Jesus Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian
God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin; while our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. It's a message revealing the radical contrast between the sinful heart of mankind and the gracious heart of mankind's Creator. — Tullian Tchividjian
My daily sins require daily distribution of God's grace. In that sense, it never ceases to surprise me because I don't deserve any of it. I mean, I deserve to be locked in a cage and for God to throw away the key. — Tullian Tchividjian
We spend more time asking what would Jesus do instead of what did Jesus do. — Tullian Tchividjian
Justification and sanctification are both God's work, and while they can and must be distinguished, the Bible won't let us separate them. Both are gifts of our union with Christ, and within this double-blessing, justification is the root of sanctification and sanctification is the fruit of justification. — Tullian Tchividjian
The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God. — Tullian Tchividjian
The God of the Bible is a holy and righteous God. Which is another way of saying that to relate to Him on His own terms, or to receive His blessing, requires perfection. God articulates this perfection in His Law ("Thou shalt" and "Though shalt not"). The problem is that we are anything but perfect! We are only human, as the saying goes. And the divine standard makes it painfully clear just how significant our limitations are. The person who takes the Law seriously is immediately humbled, if not demolished completely. — Tullian Tchividjian
Because of total depravity, you and I were desperate for God's grace before we were saved. Because of total depravity, you and I remain desperate for God's grace even after we're saved. — Tullian Tchividjian
Christianity is in no way a stoic faith. It fundamentally rejects the "stiff upper lip" school of thought. — Tullian Tchividjian
Remember on your best day that Jesus had to die for you. Remember on your worst day that he did. — Tullian Tchividjian
Living for anything else besides God leads to death, not freedom. — Tullian Tchividjian
Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns - whatever it is for you - live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person. — Tullian Tchividjian
As long as I am focusing on the faults of others, then I don't have to face my own. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
Contrary to what we conclude naturally, the gospel is not too good to be true. It is true! It's the truest truth in the entire universe. No strings attached! No fine print to read. No buts. No conditions. No qualifications. No footnotes. And especially, no need for balance. — Tullian Tchividjian
Punishment and judgment don't create a reformed heart; they create - at best - a heart full of fear, and - at worst - a heart full of rebellion. — Tullian Tchividjian
Christianity is the only faith system where God both makes the demands and meets them. — Tullian Tchividjian
In the Old Testament, we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament. — Tullian Tchividjian
We are not responsible for finding the right formula to combat or unlock our suffering. — Tullian Tchividjian
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?" — Tullian Tchividjian
God is the one to be praised, not our transformation. — Tullian Tchividjian
Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak;
because Jesus won for me, I am free to lose;
because Jesus was someone, I am free to be no one;
because Jesus was extraordinary, I am free to be ordinary;
because Jesus succeeded for me, I am free to fail. — Tullian Tchividjian
You are not obligated to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and find a way to conquer the odds, to be stronger or transform yourself into some better version of yourself. The pain you are feeling (whatever the degree) may be a reminder that things are not as they should be. — Tullian Tchividjian
The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself. — Tullian Tchividjian
Christianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute." — Tullian Tchividjian
If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back. — Tullian Tchividjian
Between writing, traveling, speaking, preaching, and doing my best to be a good husband to my wife and my three kids, that's about as much as one man or at least this man can do. — Tullian Tchividjian
Jesus came to show us that the gospel explains success in terms of giving, not taking; self-sacrifice, not self-protection; going to the back, not getting to the front. The gospel shows that we win by losing, we triumph through defeat, we achieve power through service, and we become rich by giving ourselves away.
In fact, in gospel-centered living we follow Jesus in laying down our lives for those who hate us and hurt us. We spend our lives serving instead of being served, and seeking last place, not first. Gospel-centered people are those who love giving up their place for others, not guarding their place from others
because their value and worth is found in Christ, not their position. — Tullian Tchividjian
The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
I became frustrated with myself for not being as sturdy and unquestioning as I knew a man in my position should be. — Tullian Tchividjian
The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong! — Tullian Tchividjian
Sin isn't only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. — Tullian Tchividjian
Walking with God doesn't lead to God's favor; God's favor leads to walking with God. — Tullian Tchividjian
Sometimes God has to remind you that you're weak so that you can be set free from your "self-sufficiency." — Tullian Tchividjian
When Jesus, our King, comes back, He will put this broken world back together again. You don't need to be ashamed of your grief, because your grief is a cry for that day
the day when we will enjoy sinless hearts and minds with disease-free bodies. Everything that causes pain and discomfort will be forever put away. — Tullian Tchividjian
To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian
When the condemning weight of the law is removed, people don't react with wild sin, as we might expect; they relax in their new freedom. — Tullian Tchividjian
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
Our assurance is anchored in the love and grace of God expressed in the glorious exchange: our sin for His righteousness. — Tullian Tchividjian
When I came to see that Christian growth doesn't happen by working hard to get something you don't have, but rather it happens by working hard to live in the reality of what you already have, this gospel insight radically transformed my life. — Tullian Tchividjian