“Sin is not canceled by lawful living, for no person is able to live up to the law. Nothing can take away sin but the grace of God.”- Martin Luther Tullian Tchividjian (One Way Love) concluded in the last post that fight, flight, and appeasement don’t work, at least not in the long run. Fighters […]
“The law could promise life to me, if my obedience perfect be.”- Ralph Erskine (Scottish clergyman, 1685-1752) “If you want to make people mad, preach the law. If you want to make them really, really mad, preach grace.”- Dr. Doug Kelly, Tullian’s theology professor Tullian Tchividjian expands his discussion of judgment in Chapter 3 of […]
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”- Galatians 5:1 Tullian Tchividjian begins Chapter 3 (“Confessions of a Perfomancist”) of One Way Love with a discussion of the negative, even vicious, demands of performancism. Performancism is a world in which successes aren’t really […]
As Tullian Tchividjian concludes Chapter 2 of One Way Love, he boldly states that a major goal of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, especially Matthew 5:17-48, is to clearly emphasize that whatever we think our greatest sin is, in reality it is much worse. Jesus equates action with motivation, so that any attempts at self-salvation […]
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”- T. S. Eliot, “Murder in the Cathedral” Pastor Tullian Tchividjian continues Chapter 2 of One Way Love with a discussion of ethical behaviorism, a term psychologists use to describe a schema that exclusively defines a person’s righteousness in terms […]
In Chapter 2 of One Way Love, Tullian Tchividjian continues his discussion of the story of the prodigal son by noting that the parable is more than a beautiful story of God’s one-way love: “it’s a beautiful picture of God’s one-way love for an unloving and actively hostile person.” Yet, as Pastor Tchividjian asserts, the […]
Pastor Tullian Tchividjian (One Way Love) follows his discussion of The Parable of Two Sons with a tale of two very different lunches he had with concerned family friends, one before and one after he had been kicked out of the house at age sixteen. The first family friend read Tullian the riot act. However, […]
Then his master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?”- The Unforgiving Servant, Matthew 18:32-33 In Chapter 2 (“How I Almost Killed My Mother”) of […]
Pastor Tullian Tchividjian concludes Chapter 1 of One Way Love with the assertion that we often resist grace, even though it is beautiful and lifesaving. By nature, he notes, we’re suspicious of promises that seem too good to be true. Tullian states that we resist grace because: 1. even if we’re able to accept God’s […]
“Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.”- Tullian Tchividjian As Tullian Tchividjian continues Chapter 1 of One Way Love, he quotes the definition of grace by Paul Zahl in his book Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life: “Grace is a love that has nothing to do with […]
In Chapter 1 (“An Exhausted World”) of One Way Love, Tullian Tchividjian observes that reward and punishment, this for that reciprocity defines our economy, our relationships, our careers, and our institutions. Everything in our world demands two-way, conditional love. Pastor Tchividjian adds that through conditionality, we gain safety and control- as far as those two […]
In his Introduction to One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World, Tullian Tchividjian notes that the need for inexhaustible grace for an exhausted world never has been more urgent. Pastor Tchividjian further observes an unquestioning embrace of performancism in all sectors of life. He then offers his definition of performancism: “Performancism is the […]