“I think that possibly, maybe, I’ve fallen for you…” As the song played in the background of the quaint Italian coffee shop, people ordered their café lattes and pastries, walking mindlessly past the young couple. To the passersby, they were two regular people having coffee — nothing noteworthy. That’s a fair judgment, though, seeing as how they felt the same way. “No one understands me quite like you do…” The song kept on, as though hand-picked for the scene, fitting perfectly as they sipped their lattes and let their eyes do all the talking. The only words that seemed to […]

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel. And there is perhaps no group of people who better embody the sin of self-righteousness in the Bible than the Pharisees. In fact, Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for them, calling them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites. Surprisingly to some, this demonstrates that the thing that gets in the way of our love for God and a deep appreciation of his grace is not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous goodness. In Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, I retell the story of […]