John M.G. Barclay > Quotes

“What grace conveys is not a thing but a person; it establishes a relationship where the gift cannot be separated from the person who gave it. Grace is not an object passed from Christ to believers or a quality infused into them: it is, first and foremost, a transformative relationship with the Giver.”
― John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace

“Believers live a life derived from elsewhere, in a kind of “ex-centric” existence (an existence whose center is outside of oneself) that draws on Jesus’s life from the dead.”
― John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace

“We may conclude: grace is everywhere in Second Temple Judaism, but not everywhere the same. Describing Judaism as a “religion of grace” helpfully counters some still-common caricatures, but the label is of little analytical value. Sanders’s “covenantal nomism” is helpful in clarifying the sequence from election to obedience (the priority of grace), but it is conceptually incapable of grasping the differences we have noted, including the difference between congruous and incongruous grace.”
― John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace

“This gift of God is, and remains always, incongruous—a gift created out of human nothingness and received in trust. But it is designed to produce obedient lives that, by a transformative heart-inscription performed by the Spirit, produce what is pleasing to God. This grace justifies the ungodly but its purpose is not to leave them that way. In this sense, the grace of God is unconditioned (given in”
― John M.G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace