A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Sin as Predator
Chapter 2: Sin as Self-Deception
Chapter 3: Sin as Leaven
Chapter 4: Sin as Mistrust
Chapter 5: Sin as Self-Righteousness
Chapter 6: Sin as Leprosy (Part 1)
Chapter 7: Sin as Leprosy (Part 2)
Chapter 8: Sin as Slavery
Chapter 9: Healing of Sin: True Repentance
Chapter 10: Healing of Sin: Intimacy with God
Selected Quotes
- “If there is a lack of joy in your life today, if the thought of Jesus dying for you does not transfix and transform you, if you’re not able to draw power out of the thought of what he has done for you on the cross, then you don’t understand the enormity and power of your sin. You haven’t really seen how much of a debt Christ paid for you. You don’t know how far he has brought you. You don’t know the magnitude of what he has done. And you don’t know the seriousness and depth of your sin that led him to do what he did.” (ix)
- “Sin is acting as if we are God. We try to use God as the means to meet our own ends: our own joy, our own happiness, our own agenda.” (9)
- “Self-deception may not be the worst thing we do, but it’s what makes us capable of terrible things.” (28)
- “When we deny that we’re sinners who deserve nothing from God yet have been given everything when Jesus died for us, we deny the very idea of grace and blame both our problems and our lack of faith on God. When that is the case, no matter how many signs God gives us, we always want another one. If we reject God’s grace, we will always be unhappy. We’ll always be restless.” (59)
- “What we trust is where we are rooted. And our roots and our faith are one and the same. Therefore, the person who thinks themselves religious but doesn’t functionally, in practice, place their trust and hope in Christ doesn’t actually have their roots in God at all.” (70)
- “When we realize we are not victims of our circumstances but sinners who can call on someone much greater than ourselves to care for us, we can begin to truly live.” (77)
- “The more self-righteous we know ourselves to be, the less we actually are. The less self-righteous we think ourselves to be, the more we actually are.” (100)
- “Somebodies don’t get crucified. Nobodies do. Jesus had to be a nobody so that he could die on the cross and God could both pay for our sins and save us at the same time—so he could be both just and justifier. That is the wisdom and power of God.” (145)
- “Our suffering can give us the chance to pay the price of usefulness. We can let our troubles move us closer to the world, bound to and desirous of it, or we can let our troubles create a great heart in us. We can be deeper in bondage, or we can be free.” (150)
- “Someone must come after us and tell us the truth: God is not burning at the center of our life. And if God is not the center of our life, we’re slaves and don’t even know it. And there is no one more enslaved than the person who doesn’t know they are.” (168)
- “Many people go to God and think they’ve repented, but all they’ve really done is complain about the circumstances around the sin. They haven’t accepted responsibility for their sin, and that’s the reason they’re in the situation they’re in. Unless you take it fully on, you’ll never be able to take it fully off.” (189)
- “What looks like the path to your destruction—stripping away your self-righteousness and admitting you are a sinner—is actually the way to resurrection. We follow Jesus because he’s the One who taught us that the repenting soul is the triumphant soul, that to lose our lives is to find our lives, that we behold his grace and glory in the dark valley, not on the mountaintop. Let us find his light in our darkness, his joy in our sorrow, his grace in our sin, and his riches in our poverty. This is the way to be healed of our sin.” (194)