One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are - Yancey

luke 6: 32 - 36.

you will be children of the most high because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

when you receive go's mercy, you become god's son while you are still wicked. jesus also say, 'if you are who are evil, know give gift to your children, what's more your heavenly father."

in the same line, same breath, you are evil yet you are beloved child.

is there any other religion, philosophy world thinking that say you are evil but yet you are belvoed child of god. no, but only in christianity you are both and tha'ts the key to be able to love your enemies

revolutionize understanding of sin. the power to love your enemies

luke 6:12-36: rhetorical game that jesus is plyaing, sinners vs evil.

he used the term sinners as if he agrees with the other that those unbelievers are sinners. "you don't want to be like sinner", "those are sinners" he goes along and use the term.

and he's calling as ungrateful and evil. this word 'evil' is stornger than sinner. So, he is saying, you don't want to be like those sinner, you're not sinner, you're evil!!!

when jesus talk like that, not only the unbelievers are sinner, the believers are sinner too. ungrateful and sinner.

if we don't redefine understanding of sin, we'll never understand the power of gospel.

les miserable - a person who had been brought down by grace will have this traumatic tranquility.

jean valjean was released from prison, and bishop myriel took care of him. but valjean one day, stole something from the bishop and ran away. he later caught by the police. but when he is caught, the bishop said, "oh i gave the gold to him, he was not stealing from me"

after hearing this, here is what happens to jean valjean. a strange emotion opposed to the hardness he acquired in prison. he preceived with dismay that the frightful calm which the injustice of his misfortune had conffered upon him was giving way. this celestial kindess was a formidable attack he had ever addressed.

we boast, self righteous. jean valjean feel his unjust suffering make a frightful calm, and the grace that he had experienced, he knew was formidable challenge. grace humbles him, but if he accept is, he knew he healed to the grace, he obliged to renouce hatred that the action of so many man had haunted him.

grace traumatizes you because grace said, no more boasting. grace ocme and said, you are like that.

The price paid, how costly grace is. you need to understand how big the gift is. 

imagine a friend of yours said, i was at your home and you werent there, sorry is shouldnt look but i look at the bill. Well, because i'm your friend, i;m gonna pay that bill. so, how would you feel?

it all depends on how big the bill is. 

1. if only your last month phone bill, your response would prob "well, thank you". but if that was a 7 years debt, you will bow down, kiss his feet and be thankful beyond imagination. 

all depend on how costly it was to the payer. 

you can appreciate the gift of  grace if you understand that grace is expensive and indispensable.

if you come to a wedding party, and they give you a souvenir of picture frame, that free gift is not life changing simply because it is not expensive and not indispensable. is it free? yes. is it gift? yes. but not life changing. Indispensable: you already have picture frame. But even if you didn't have, it is extremely easy to get one.

but what if you are a poor person in need of operation, and the operation in that remote place is unobtainable and expensive. what if a person, that is not too rich, give up his asset and sell everything to pay for your surgery. This is indispensable, you have to got it. Expensive, because this person went to poverty to save you.

It is not the free-ness of the gift, but the cost and indispensable of the gift.

Strangely, God is closer to sinners than to saints. God in heaven holds each person by a string. When you sin, you cut the string. Then God ties it up again, making a knot-thereby bringing you a little closer to him. Again and again your sins cut the string-and with each further knot, God keeps drawing you closer and closer


- Yancey

Jesus' gift of forgiveness, of grace, was to him more astonishing than Jesus' miracles. Miracles broke the physical laws of the universe; forgiveness broke the moral rules

- refugee from the Nazis, Karl Barth.

A state government can shut down stores and theaters on Sunday, but it cannot compel worship. It can arrest and punish KKK murderers but cannot cure their hatred, much less teach them love. It can pass laws making divorce more difficult but cannot force husband to love their wives and wives their husbands. It can give subsidies to the poor but cannot force the rich to show them compassion and justice. It can ban adultery but not lust, theft but not covetousness, cheating but not pride. It can encourage virtue but not holiness.

As I look back on my own pilgrimage, marked by wanderings, detours, and dead ends, I see now that what pulled me along was my search for grace. I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.

Philip Yancey

The great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there.

Richard Niebuhr

All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have His name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cy, abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him, as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.

Westminster Confession, Chapter 12

"Setting the mind and heart on things above" where "your life is hid with Christ in God" means appreciation, rejoicing and resting in what Jesus has done for you. it entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. 

- Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods, pg 172 -