to Resolve the tension between high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves

“There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves:
to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to.
We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own.
Tolstoy got it halfway right:
anything that makes me feel comfort with God’s moral standard, anything that makes me feel, ‘At last I have arrived,’ is a cruel deception.

But Dostoyevsky got the other half right:
anything that makes me feel discomfort with God’s forgiving love is also a cruel deception.
‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’:
that message, Leo Tolstoy never fully grasped.”

Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910

From: Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky: The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey