An exclusive extract from Dane Ortlund’s new book, Surprised By Jesus: Subversive Grace in the Four Gospels
‘Guilt is not the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle,’ writes French psychologist Paul Tournier in Guilt and Grace: A Psychological Study (1962).
The deepest distinction among human beings is not between the bad and the good, but between those who know they are bad and those who do not. Yet, strangely, it is not the blatantly wicked who have the greatest difficulty seeing this, but the carefully obedient.
