The sinner is not the one who uses a lot of grace... The saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on take off.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that grace is abundant and that its true value is shown in how it is utilized rather than simply possessed.
Dallas Willard's quote suggests that grace is an important and plentiful resource, akin to fuel for an airplane. He contrasts the sinner, who may seem to misuse grace, with a saint whose life exemplifies the dynamic and active use of grace, akin to an airplane using fuel during a powerful takeoff. This implies that the measure of one's character is not merely in receiving grace, but in how fully and vigorously one lives out that grace in action.
In practice
In a sermon about redemption, one could use this quote to illustrate the concept of grace in everyday life.
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as βChristiansβ will become disciples β students, apprentices, practitioners β of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.
The first act of love is always the giving of attention.
So many people would like to have guidance from God because obviously, if you have a word from God, it's the best possible thing. But they don't relate that to life as a whole. Often they want guidance as a way of opting out of the responsibility of making decisions.
What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.
The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it.
Remember, it is not your weakness that will get in the way of God's working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness! Point to His strength by being willing to admit your weakness.
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.
Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
The kingdom is where the King reigns. If He is reigning in my heart, then the Kingdom of Heaven has come to me.
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
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