The point is simple: Christian character is not manufactured by religious self-effort. It grows as we walk by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, and breathe the atmosphere of the Spirit.

“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace.” — Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace Imagine a man who has had every ounce of his humanity beaten out of him. His name is Jean Valjean. For nineteen years, he was locked away in a brutal French penal colony—initially for stealing a single loaf of bread to feed his starving niece, and then for trying to escape. For nearly two decades, he was treated not as a man, but as an animal with a number