A church full of grace leads to a culture of honesty, which is a messy church of uncomfortable growing pains. If no one is confessing or rebuking any sin in your church, it’s because the grace is not there. Only a gracious church would have the courage to regularly confess and rebuke. It won’t be the clean, sanitized, smiling church you wanted, but it’ll be the church you need. That grace could only come from looking at the cross, where the Perfect Man died as if he was the worst of us, but loved us because he was the best of us.

— from this post