Quotes about Unearned

grace happens at unexpected moments. It stops us short, catches the breath, disarms. If we manipulate it, try to control it, somehow earn it, that would not be grace.

Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it

if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved.

The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.

There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

God's grace does not operate on a reward for works basis. It is much better than that.

the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

grace is getting what we don't deserve (favour) and mercy is not getting what we do deserve (justice).

Grace, by definition, is something that God is not required to grant. He owes a fallen world no mercy.

Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit.