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If you read this blog regularly, you have encountered many quotes from One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian.  Here is one final quote and how he ends the book.  Tchividjian is quoting Robert Capon: What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshipping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. . . Everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was t...

I resonate with the quote below as it has been part of my journey to this same understanding of the Gospel.  It is from One Way Love by Tullian Tchividjian. Specifically, the breakthrough in understanding the Gospel to be just as much for Christians as it is for non-Christians. I once assumed (along with the vast majority of professing Christians) that the Gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved before advancing to deeper theological waters after their conversion. I didn't realize that once God rescues sinners, His plan isn't to steer us beyond the Gospel but to move us more deeply into it. The good news that Jesus paid it all not only ignites the Christian life but fuels it as well. As my friend, J.D. Greear puts it, "The gospel is not just the diving board off of which we jump into the pool of Christianity. . .it is the pool that we swim in each and every day."

Below is another quote from Tullian Tchividjian from One Way Love: Unfortunately, this (story about looking for keys that are in our pockets) is the way so many of us Christians live: searching high and low for something we already have, trying to earn something we've already been given, forgetting that everything we need, we already possess in Christ. Or perhaps it's not that we forget, perhaps it's that we prefer having the "elf on the shelf" keeping track of our every move. It makes us feel safer. We would rather work under duress than live under freedom. Yet this is precisely why we need to hear, each and every week, the basic good news that because Jesus' finished work, we already have all of the justification, approval, significance, security, freedom, validation, love, righteousness, and rescue for which we desperately long--and look for in a thousand things that are infinitely smaller than Jesus.

There are some great deals for resources on the cross and resurrection this week.  I have personally only read the one by John Piper.  But have read other books by R.C. Sproul and Jonathan Dodson.  If you are looking for a helpful resource this Easter week, I encourage you to check out the following links. Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die by John Piper.  Available for $.99 here The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul.  Available here for free. Raised by Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson is also free here  I also recommend the following books about Jesus: Jesus Is ________________ by Judah Smith Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchvidjian  The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller The Gospel of Yes by Mike Glenn You can purchase these at Faith and Life Bookstore in Newton or your local Christian store.

The following is a post by Tullian Tchvidjian on Les Miserables. He does a great job putting into words the themes from the movie of law & grace. Last night we went to see Les Miserables. As has already been discussed here and written about here, the contrast between law and grace is both pronounced and profound. For me, the most powerful scene in the movie is Inspector Javert's song right before he kills himself. Javert embodies our natural addiction to law and our natural aversion to grace. Committed to the rigorous inflexibility of the law, Javert has been given grace time and time again from the very one he has mercilessly hunted for decades, Jean Valjean. The grace of Valjean haunts and radically disorients Javert. Javert sings: Who is this man? What sort of devil is he, to have me caught in a trap and choose to let me go free? It was his hour at last to put the seal on my fate, wipe out the past and wash me clean off the slate! All it would take was a flick of hi...