"The Bible's purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible's purpose is to show you how God's grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is 'if you obey, then you will be accepted'. But the Gospel is, 'if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you're accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey'. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference."
"The gospel creates the only kind of grief over sin which is clean and which does not crush. It says: 'Look at Jesus dying for you! He won't leave you or abandon you–how then can you respond as you are? He suffered so you wouldn't do this thing! You are not living as though you are loved! As his child! It is not because he will abandon you that you should be holy, but because this is the one who at inestimable cost to himself has said he won't ever abandon you! How can you live in the very sin that he was ripped to pieces to deliver you from?' See the GRACE of God argument? It is the only argument which cannot be answered."
"Repentance out of mere fear is really sorrow for the consequences of sin, sorrow over the danger of sin — it bends the will away from sin, but the heart still clings. But repentance out of conviction over mercy is really sorrow over sin, sorrow over the grievousness of sin — it melts the heart away from sin. It makes the sin itself disgusting to us, so it loses its attractive power over us. We say, 'this disgusting thing is an affront to the one who died for me. I'm continuing to stab him with it!'"
- Timothy Keller
