[Discovering] ourselves as accepted in Christ begins to free us to be ourselves. It eats away at the root cause of our hiding -- fear of exposure. We begin to be free to be real, to drop our guards and take off our masks.

Church begins to breathe "grace," because everyone in church is there on the same terms. They are there because they are failures, and because they know to the roots of their beings that they are failures, and they have heard the good Word of Christ that they are accepted as failures in Jesus Christ, received as sinners. So there is no reason to hide and pretend. The ground of our acceptance is not in us; it is in Jesus. There is no reason to put on some kind of persona.