Tullian Quotes & Sayings

One surefire way to know you're starting to grasp this message of grace is when you're finally able to admit that you're not the good guy - that you never were and apart from grace never will be. — Tullian Tchividjian

The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation. — Tullian Tchividjian

What I need and long for most has come from outside of me in the person of Jesus. — 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

There's no power in the world like the power of grace. — Tullian Tchividjian

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. — 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

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

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

Only the Holy Spirit can comfort a person in the depths of grief. — Tullian Tchividjian

Jesus plus nothing equals everything - and everything minus Jesus equals nothing. — Tullian Tchividjian

If any kind of obedience, regardless of what motivates it, is what God is after, He would have showcased the Pharisees and exhorted all of us to follow their lead, to imitate them. But He didn't. Jesus called them 'whitewashed tombs'
clean on the outside, dead on the inside. — Tullian Tchividjian

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

The law offends us because it tells us what to do - and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do. But ironically, grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there is nothing we can do, that everything has already been done. And if there is something we hate more than being told what to do, it's being told that we can't do anything, that we can't earn anything - that we are helpless, weak, and needy. — Tullian Tchividjian

We are, without doubt, broken people living with other broken people in a broken world. — Tullian Tchividjian

Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won't know the difference between moralism and what you're offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there's a difference - that what they really rejected wasn't real Christianity at all - will they even begin to consider Christianity.2 — Tullian Tchividjian

If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something. — Tullian Tchividjian

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves. — Tullian Tchividjian

Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. Too many people have walked away from the church, not because they're walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus. — Tullian Tchividjian

It's better to feel sorry for doing something bad than to feel superior for doing something good. — Tullian Tchividjian

We find it is when we feel no one could possibly love us that we are most eager for a God who says, I came to love the unlovable. — Tullian Tchividjian

I never had an intellectual struggle with the Bible, with the gospel, with the claims of Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian

The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness. — Tullian Tchividjian

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. — Tullian Tchividjian

As Luke 24 shows, it's possible to read the Bible, study the Bible, and memorize large portions of the Bible, while missing the whole point of the Bible. — Tullian Tchividjian

I was spending way too much time thinking about me and what I needed to do, and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he had already done for me. — Tullian Tchividjian

God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up. — Tullian Tchividjian

The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours. — 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

God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you. — Tullian Tchividjian

When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God's love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done. — Tullian Tchividjian

If the narrative we've adopted says that our lives have to get better in order for our relationships with God to be legitimate, we twist the gospel into a moral improvement scheme. — 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

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

When we succumb to temptation, we are failing to believe in that moment that everything we need, in Christ we already have. — Tullian Tchividjian

The fact is, real life is long on law and short on grace - the — Tullian Tchividjian

When we stop narcissistically focusing on our need to get better, that is what it means to get better! — Tullian Tchividjian

The bad news that we are all guilty is met with the best news that God loves and forgives guilty people. — Tullian Tchividjian

Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top. — Tullian Tchividjian

God does everything through people who understand they're nothing. And God does nothing through those who think they're everything. — Tullian Tchividjian

In the world's economy, life precedes death. In God's economy, death precedes life - the cross always precedes the crown. — Tullian Tchividjian

Grace frees you to be honest about what you've always known to be true about yourself: that you're weaker & more afraid than you want to be. — Tullian Tchividjian

Christianity is in no way a stoic faith. It fundamentally rejects the "stiff upper lip" school of thought. — Tullian Tchividjian

The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us. — Tullian Tchividjian

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant. — Tullian Tchividjian

In 'Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels,' I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God's grace as the sailors and the Ninevites. — 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

The gospel is good news to those who know they don't measure up. It's offensive to those who think they do. — Tullian Tchividjian

The apostle Paul claimed the Law is written on the 'fleshy tables' of the human heart (2 Cor. 3:3 KJV). What he meant are these 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts' are both instinctual and inescapable, part of our DNA. They are a psychological reality. We may justify our actions away, but deep down, we know when we've done something wrong. — Tullian Tchividjian

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's. — Tullian Tchividjian

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us. — Tullian Tchividjian

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. — Tullian Tchividjian

I think it's super important for the church itself to rediscover the gospel. — Tullian Tchividjian

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves. — Tullian Tchividjian

The focus of the Christian faith is not our morality; it is Jesus, who died for our immorality. — Tullian Tchividjian

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

An identity based in the one-way love of God does not take into account public opinion or, thankfully, even personal opinion. — Tullian Tchividjian

Living for anything else besides God leads to death, not freedom. — Tullian Tchividjian

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

Flight from God always leads downward. It culminates not in the vivacious life we imagined but in what amounts only to stagnant sleep. It's why so many people seem to exist without ever really living. In fact, they aren't really living; they're only going through the motions - rarely if ever experiencing the internal shalom they were designed to enjoy from God, because they're running from him. — Tullian Tchividjian

We must reacquaint ourselves with the biblical weight of the problem that we less-than-perfect human beings contend with in the face of a holy and righteous God. — Tullian Tchividjian

Grace is upside-down, to-do-list wrecking, scandalous and way-too free. It's one-way love. — Tullian Tchividjian

Pulpits today are full of preachers telling one-legged people to jump higher and run faster. Musician Rich Mullins once wrote, "I have attended church regularly since I was less than a week old. I've listened to sermons about virtue, sermons against vice. I have heard about money, time management, tithing, abstinence, and generosity. I've listened to thousands of sermons. But I could count on one hand the number [of sermons] that were a simple proclamation of the Gospel of Christ."4 — Tullian Tchividjian

There is no better story in the Old Testament, or perhaps the whole Bible, for depicting the difference between the ladder-defined life and the cross-defined life than that of the Tower of Babel. — Tullian Tchividjian

One primary enemy of the Gospel - legalism - 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 (you could 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 (you could call this "back-door legalism"). — Tullian Tchividjian

The Gospel announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep judgment against us once and for all so that we could be free from the judgement of God, others, and ourselves. — Tullian Tchividjian

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

We are not responsible for finding the right formula to combat or unlock our suffering. — 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

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

The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished" — Tullian Tchividjian

If we're not reaching the same people Jesus reached, then we're not preaching the same message Jesus preached. — Tullian Tchividjian

Even one who has been to God a million times with the same problem need not fear exhausting the grace of God. — 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

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

You can be sure that your deepest desires reveal important truths about your spiritual condition. — Tullian Tchividjian

The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word. — Tullian Tchividjian

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom - because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian

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. — Tullian Tchividjian

I was afraid that if I surrendered my life over to God, God would tell me not to do those things that I desperately wanted to do. — Tullian Tchividjian

Countless millions of people live in self-protective mode every day. They're afraid to love and to be loved because they're terrified of being taken. They're desperately afraid of getting trampled, since all of us, to one degree or another, have been trampled in the past. — Tullian Tchividjian

If you're a Christian, here's the good news: who you really are has nothing to do with you - how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior, your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; His strength, not yours; His performance, not yours; His victory, not yours. — Tullian Tchividjian

Grace doesn't lead us into destructive behavior. Sin does. And grace is the only remedy for sin. The kindness of God leads to repentance. — Tullian Tchividjian

I enjoy receiving love from my wife. I'm ecstatic when Kim loves me and expresses affection toward me. Something in me comes alive when she does that. But I've learned this freeing truth: I don't need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need. — Tullian Tchividjian

The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom. — Tullian Tchividjian

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living. — 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

There is a strange impulse in many to protect Bible characters and to use them as inspiration ... as if sanctification happens as a result of emulation. — Tullian Tchividjian

My lifestyle got so disruptive to my family that my parents had no choice but to say, "You can't live here any longer if you're going to live this way." So, I was thrilled about it - thrilled! — Tullian Tchividjian

Our hearts are continuously rebellious. 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." If this goes on day after day after day, year after year, month after month, it would understandable for God to say, "I've given you ten trillion tries. You're finished." But it's not. So in that sense, His grace is always surprising, never ceases to be amazing and His mercy is remarkably outrageous. — Tullian Tchividjian

Grace loves without reference to what may or may not happen-which is precisely why such incredible things do happen! — Tullian Tchividjian

Disobedience happens not when we think too much grace but when we think too little of it — Tullian Tchividjian

Holy Saturday. The best reminder that the silence of God doesn't equal the absence of God. — Tullian Tchividjian

The only 'if' the Gospel knows is this: 'if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' (1 John 2:1) — Tullian Tchividjian

My failure to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles is the direct result of my refusal to die to my natural proclivity toward attaining my own freedom, meaning, value, worth, and righteousness - not believing that, by virtue of my Spirit - wrought union with Christ, everything I need, I already possess. — 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