What made me love Christ wasn't that all of a sudden I figured out how to do life. What made me love Christ is that when I was at my worst, when I was at my lowest point, when I absolutely could not clean myself up and there was nothing anybody could do with me, right at that moment, Christ said, "I'll take that one, that's the one I want." You know the Bible calls the church Christ's bride. So, it's like standing before Jesus, completely exposed, all of our flaws and insecurities and- worse than that- our sins are right there in front of His face, and against all reason and rationale, the song or grace becomes startlingly, exhilaratingly true because the Groom looks at us and declares us beautiful. Spotless. Righteous. Justified. This is the gospel. It is important to admit, believers in Jesus, that Christians are not more moral than anyone else. The essence of the gospel and what we celebrate is not that "we can", but that "Christ did".
~ Matt Chandler, The Mingling of Souls
