Best Quotes from Saints And Scoundrels In The Story Of Jesus by Nancy Guthrie with Page Numbers

Someone once said that Jesus began the most revolutionary movement in human history. A movement grounded in the unconditional love of God for the world, and a movement mandating people to live that love, and in so doing to change not only their lives but the very life of the world itself.

We must discover love—the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.

Real repentance always requires getting painfully specific regarding sins that we mourn over and turn away from.

Repentance is not modifying a few convictions here and there, but realizing that your whole interpretation of reality—God, yourself, your relation to God and the world—is misguided.

There is something broader to it. Repentance is not just a tweak. It’s not a slight adjustment on the compass. It is a full turn that proves itself to be genuine by the fruit that is borne in a person’s life.

Are you vulnerable? Is there fruit of genuine repentance in your life?

The fruit of repentance from self-centeredness in the form of being more concerned about the needs and hurts of others than about your own needs and hurts?

He loved what was right and hated what was evil.

John’s call is really the Spirit of God’s call to respond to the reality of the coming of Jesus by clearing the way for him in your own heart and life through repentance.

You don’t have to live in fear of the axe at the root of the tree of your life or the fire that would burn away the chaff of your life.

If you want to be part of the people of God, the family of God, it has never been about blood, but about belief.

No one gets into God’s family by being born into it. You must be reborn into it. And no one gets into God’s family through good behavior. The only way any of us become a part of this family is by grace through faith.

The family of Jesus is made up of people who come from less-than-respectable backgrounds and have less-than-perfect records.

If your story includes sexual scandal, deceit, or doubt, you’re going to fit right into this family.

The family of Jesus is made up of people whose belief is better-late-than-never.

Jesus’s family included outsiders, outlaws, scoundrels, and sinners, reminding us that grace is available for everyone.

The only way any of us become a part of this family is by grace through faith.

Don’t think you have to have everything about Jesus figured out before you put your trust in him.

Perhaps you think it would just be too embarrassing to admit...that you’ve been outside the family of genuine faith when perhaps everyone who knows you assumes otherwise. It’s not too late.

Jesus wants to welcome you into his family. He wants to share with you all that he stands to inherit.

That’s the kind of change we’re really interested in.

Real change does not begin with our initiative, our sense of a need to improve ourselves, or our decision to work our way through programs of personal transformation.

The only people who ever come to discover and truly experience God in his fullness are those to whom he chooses to reveal himself.

Real, lasting change that transforms us into the people God has created us to be begins with God taking the initiative in our lives.

Peter’s ‘rock-ness’ would be derived from his connection to the Rock.

With the cross and resurrection, everything changed for Peter.

If my life is going to be transformed from what I am by nature to what I’m called to be by grace, Jesus alone can do it.

Real change—the kind that turns a Simon into a Peter or a scoundrel into a saint—is not apprehended through good intentions, personal grit, rigorous accountability, or a decision of the will.

You can expect that there will be some friction as he goes to work.

If you are in Christ, if you are partaking of the ordinary means by which his grace and power are delivered to us, you can be confident that the Holy Spirit is using those means to create organic change in your character.

"When I grow up, I want to be . . . a hypocrite" said no one ever.

"Hypocrisy is the antithesis of sincerity and the opposite of integrity."

"We want to be people who are authentic, people of integrity, people whose lives are consistent with what we say we believe."

"If your lips have uttered the words, 'Your kingdom come, your will be done,' while having no intention of submitting to God in a particular area of your life, you might be a religious hypocrite."

"The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

"The remedy for hypocrisy is servanthood and humility."

"Sin loses its power when we name it, and hypocrisy loses its foothold in our hearts when we become more interested in being holy than in being impressive."

"If you can see that a bridge is out on a mountain pass that someone else is barreling toward, and you don’t warn him, that is cruel."

"What doesn’t come up on my radar? Do I love what God loves and hate what he hates?"

"There is hope for hypocrites. It is found in the gospel—the gospel of Christ’s perfectly righteous life, his atoning death, his glorious resurrection, and his all-sufficient, forgiving, delivering grace that flows into our lives as we become joined to him by faith that changes us from the inside out."

"Until we have a sense of what it means to be lost, I’m not sure we can come to any real sense of who Jesus is and why he came into this world or why we need him."

"Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, to seek and save the lost."

"To be lost is to wander through life aimless, disconnected, and confused, always hoping that the next purchase, the next experience, or the next milestone will fill the void."

"Zacchaeus had been seen, and he was being sought after. And isn’t that what we all long for?"

"Take a good look at me, Lord. I want you to see how having you in my life is no small thing to me. It’s changing me. It’s changing everything about my life."

"Grace allows you to be transparent. You can admit your sin because you know you’re savingly connected to the one who forgives sin."

"Zacchaeus was not just saying, 'Sorry if I hurt you.' He was saying, 'I know that I hurt you, and I’m taking responsibility to make it right.'"

"If you’re hiding from Jesus, you must know that Jesus is standing at the foot of whatever tree you’re hiding in. He’s saying, 'Come down. Today is the day. I’m here. I came for you.'"

"He wanted to be holy as God is holy. He knew he simply couldn’t keep holding on to his sin and take hold of Jesus as Savior at the same time."

"Having Jesus as his Lord and Savior meant there was a richness to Zacchaeus’s life that far surpassed the money he once had in his accounts."

"As frustrating as wasted time or effort can be, a far greater tragedy is a wasted life."

"There is a way to spend the capital of our lives that may appear wasteful to the world around us, but proves to be a beautiful way to live."

"You cannot serve God and money."

"Love for Jesus expressed in costly devotion is never wasted."

"We can never give him too much of ourselves, too much of our time, too much of our attention, too much of our affection. Jesus is worthy!"

"The shedding of his blood proved to be infinitely valuable, exceedingly meaningful, and completely effectual."

"Don’t be like Judas and the priests who sought to separate themselves from this blood. Come under this shed blood, value this shed blood, and accept the atoning benefit of this shed blood."

"Mary’s extravagant expression was a demonstration of how much Jesus was worth to her."

"Our most costly sacrifice could never surpass his great worth."

"Judas had become a follower of Jesus with the hope that it would be to his advantage, but now the tide seemed to be turning."

"The high priest entered the Most Holy Place to seek mercy for himself and for God’s people."

"What happened in that room was of supreme importance... It was all about one thing: mercy."

"If Aaron or his sons had been asked, 'What do you do?' their answer could have been, 'I’m in the mercy business.'"

"Death for the substitute; mercy for me."

"The death of this one man, Jesus, would not, in fact, keep the religious leaders and the temple in Jerusalem from perishing."

"The death of Jesus was the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement."

"Because the sins of all those who put their trust in Christ are fully dealt with in the death of Jesus, forgiven sinners are now welcomed into the presence of God in union with Christ."

"Someday you are going to stand before the Judge of all the earth... All who cry out to him find mercy today and will still be experiencing his mercy on that great day and into eternity."

"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

"Jesus, the Great High Priest, came to deliver, bound in chains. The righteous judge was condemned by a corrupt court."

Can I tell you the three words I love to hear more than any others? I love it when someone says to me, 'You were right.'

Three words I find very, very hard to spit out are: 'I was wrong.'

As humans, we have an amazing ability to deny our very real culpability, don’t we?

We’re always being told that we shouldn’t feel guilty, that guilt—whether or not it is warranted—is a useless, harmful emotion that should be jettisoned.

It got him thinking about his own past and whether he was someone else’s #MeToo.

It was a hard thing to admit to myself to realize I had assaulted someone.

That period of self-examination led to him to later tweet: #itwasme.

I would stare and zone out at girls, certainly creeping them out.

I remained silent when a classmate mentioned fantasizing about rape.

I would laugh with others and/or joke about such things as 'if there’s grass on the field, play ball' or 'any port in a storm.'

"Perhaps Jesus focused in on the lives of Joseph and Job as he talked with his two followers and pointed out the ways in which they provided living previews of his own life."

"But we would say, 'No, Matt, you don’t understand. That was always just a model of something far greater that we intended to give you.'"

"Confidence in the glory of the future enables us to endure the suffering of the present."

"When the Christ came, his life would take exactly this trajectory—the trajectory of suffering before glory."

"If you are in Christ, the day is coming when the trajectory of your life is going to take a dramatic turn, a dramatic turn upward."

"The glory of future in the presence of Christ enabled Stephen to endure the suffering in his present as he faced a cruel mob throwing stones."

"The glory of God is not bound up in a cube at the center of a room in a temple in Jerusalem."

"The day that some people may think is the worst day of your life will not prove to be so. Instead, it will be the very best day of your life."

"You can begin now to anticipate the day when you will enter into the fullness of his glory to enjoy him forever."

"O for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer’s praise, The glories of my God and King, The triumphs of His grace."

"If you think that someone in your world is too far away from Christ to ever take hold of him, or if you think that your own record of wrong is too great to be forgiven by him, then the story we’re looking at… is especially for you."

"Saul of Tarsus was perhaps the most notorious opponent of Jesus and his cause. A callous, self-righteous, bigoted murderer, Saul’s hands were covered in the blood of Christians."

"The one who had been breathing threats against them became the brother beside them. The blasphemer had become a baptized believer."

"Something supernatural happened to Saul on that road…His conversion was not the climax of a long process of God convicting him of sin… Jesus supernaturally revealed himself to Saul…"

"Imagine the humility required for Saul to admit that he had been so very wrong about Jesus—publicly, devastatingly wrong."

"No one comes to this radical shift without having their eyes supernaturally opened to the supreme worth of Jesus."

"The number of people who, like Saul, have become a near miracle in the story of grace should fill us with unshakeable hope."

"When we look at Saul, we can’t help but recognize that there is no sinner, no scoundrel, no blasphemer, no murderer, no person who is beyond the reach of the grace and mercy made available in Jesus Christ."

"A saint is someone who has been humbled by the reality of her sinful impulses… but instead of being constantly crushed by this reality, she finds herself constantly grateful for a far greater reality—the reality of the grace and mercy extended to her in the person and work of Jesus Christ."

"Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt! Grace that is greater than all our sin!"