Tullian Tchividjian Quotes

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

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

- Tullian Tchividjian

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.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Whether this was explicitly taught or implicitly caught, I grew up with the impression that when it comes to the Christian life, justification was step one and sanctification was step two and that once we get to step two there's no reason to revisit step one.

- 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

Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance and accomplishments.

- Tullian Tchividjian

I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand why some Christians get mad when we say that the ultimate hero in the Bible is not Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc... but Jesus.

- 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

The required cheerfulness that characterizes many of our churches produces a suffocating environment of pat, religious answers to the painful, complex questions that riddle the lives of hurting people.

- 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

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

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

- 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

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.

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

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

When God saved me, He gave me a thirst to learn and to read and to study. I thrived in college. I got a bachelor's degree in philosophy and then went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.

- 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

The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.

- Tullian Tchividjian

The Bible is plain that God requires moral perfection. It tells us unambiguously that God is holy and therefore cannot tolerate any hint of unholiness.

- 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

Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.

- 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

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

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

When everyone in the world spoke the same language, God came down in judgment, breaking the world apart. But at just the right time, he came down again, this time to reconcile that sinful world to himself.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Christianity affirms that Jesus severed the link between suffering and deserving once for all on Calvary. God put the ledgers away and settled the accounts.

- 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 never had an intellectual struggle with the Bible, with the gospel, with the claims of Christ.

- 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

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

- Tullian Tchividjian

We are deeply conditioned against unconditionality because we've been told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment always precedes acceptance, that achievement always precedes approval.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.

- 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

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

- 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

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

I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively.

- Tullian Tchividjian

We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Death is the operative device that sets us free in Christ - when we die, we truly live.

- Tullian Tchividjian

When it comes to engaging and influencing culture, too many Christians think too highly of political activism.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Believe it or not, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

- 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

Rest assured: Before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we need; before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we have.

- Tullian Tchividjian

The gospel announces that God doesn't relate to us based on our feats for Jesus, but Jesus' feats for us.

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

We often read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us: our improvement, our life, our triumph, our victory, our faith, our holiness, our godliness.

- 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

Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

- 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

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

At some level, every relationship is assaulted by an aroma of judgment - this sense that we will never measure up to the expectations and demands of another.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. That's not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people.

- 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

Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

- 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

When you don't have anything to lose, you discover something wonderful: you're free to take great risks without fear or reservation.

- Tullian Tchividjian

For years and years, Christians have been singing about their wandering hearts. Our hearts need to be recalibrated and realigned and reoriented by God.

- Tullian Tchividjian

God has hardwired me to thoroughly enjoy and be sharpened by good and friendly theological discussion about the gospel.

- Tullian Tchividjian

God loves us too much to leave us in the hell of unhappiness that comes from trying to do his job. Into the slavish misery of our ladder-defined lives, God condescends.

- Tullian Tchividjian

There's absolutely no way you can feel the freedom to embarrass and humiliate yourself unless you have finally recognized that your identity is in someone other than yourself.

- Tullian Tchividjian

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

- 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 gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

- 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

The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

- Tullian Tchividjian

What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root.

- Tullian Tchividjian

Don't get me wrong - what we do is important. But it is infinitely less important than what Jesus has done for us.

- Tullian Tchividjian

If we read the Bible asking first, 'What would Jesus do?' instead of asking 'What has Jesus done,' we'll miss the good news that alone can set us free.

- 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

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

- 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

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

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

God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations.

- Tullian Tchividjian

From the time God saved me at 21 years old, I've always been fascinated by the parables of Jesus.

- 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