1. Some explanations are better than others, but they remain our explanations—except if we had some perspective from outside, above, and behind nature.
  2. This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
  3. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  4. Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
  5. Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
  6. A theologian is a passive receiver of God’s active revelation about Jesus Christ, his words, works, and ways.
  7. Who is God really? He is offensive, anarchic by the world’s standards, and far too gracious to people who don’t deserve his time or attention.
  8. You are a child of God. You’re blameless, holy, perfect, and righteous. Don’t feel that way? Too bad. God is greater than your heart.
  9. Our value and our values, our life, our everything is from Jesus Christ given to us as a gift.
  10. God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
  11. God’s goodness spoke a promise of peace and mercy to the bewildered, a promise that rings out to this day.
  12. At the heart of The Idiot is Dostoevsky's confession of faith and the confession of all Christians.