Christ does not hide his wounds. He offers them.
The church does not await a verdict; she proclaims one.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 on Sinner Saint: A Suprising Primer to the Christian Life

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Christians have long enjoyed an absurd love affair with white-washing biblical saints.
We prefer this to be switched around. We want something to happen in us before anything happens outside of us.
But when we trust Jesus, then we close our eyes to it all and say, “Heavenly Father, I’m your child.
God preaches a concrete word to us in the present tense. We hear the Good News that Jesus is God’s mercy for us.
Jesus dies for the sin of the world. That means he dies for the person who disappoints us. He shed His blood for the person who doesn’t love us the way we want to be loved.
The Gospel is simple to confess. That is, we are justified by faith alone, through Christ alone, without the works of the Law.
The force of our love is violent. It is love acted out as, “I will love you in a way that’s best for me, and you’ll like it, and celebrate it, and reward me for it.
Our complaints about God's grace always sound the same: "It was good to see him in church with his son this morning.
No matter how loving we are, we don’t get bonus points with the Almighty for imitating Jesus. We love each other because we recognize that “this is one for whom Jesus died.
Why confess sin? Is it so we can get rewarded by God? A little extra grace or material good for our troubles, maybe.
When we think God is doing something for us here or there or everywhere, we are simply fixing labels and putting value on what we imagine God is doing for us.
The author, Flannery O'Connor, said, "All I can say about my love of God is, Lord help me in my lack of it."