Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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For out of the mouths of these opposition forces, gathered on enemy turf, comes the defiant declaration of death’s undoing: “Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!” An audacious act it is, to march smack dab into the middle of a place that screams, “Dead!” and to sing, “Alive!”
Jesus is thus not only the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel; He is their fullness. He fills them with words, people, actions, and institutions that testify of Him.
Here is the truth: we have gained more in Jesus than we lost in Adam. We lost human perfection in the first man's fall. We gained perfect flesh-and-blood unity with God in his Son's incarnation.
When the angel told Mary she had become a mother, she replied simply, ''Let it be to me according to your word.'' Therein is a grateful acknowledgment that the Creator had formed life in her womb.
Indeed, our Lord pronounced no beatitude upon the man who is loved by his wife and cherished by his children, but He does say, "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me," (Mt 5:11).
I don’t need to watch a blood-soaked story on CNN or visit someone of death row to familiarize myself with the beast of depravity crouched within the human heart. I just need to look in the mirror, to stare deeply into the eyes that are a window to a soul that has journeyed down dark paths whose only illumination comes from the fires of hell.
She against whom I preached, in her unexpected response actually “preached” to me three truths I have never forgotten.
What kind of fool does what David did? What kind of fool ignores the riches spilling out of his pockets to steal the only penny a poor man has?
For since it was not enough that the Lord of heaven and earth hung on your every word, his Word was made flesh and prayed among us, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, “offering up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save Him from death,” (Heb 5:7).
The Spirit, who endowed the tabernacle architects with wisdom from on high, overshadows Mary's womb, the new holy of holies, where Wisdom is incarnate below.
Though the theophanic elements at the Jerusalem Pentecost were not as diverse as those at Sinai, there is one prominent commonality between the two: divine speech out of divine fire.
The second truth, however, is that just because God has become a man does not mean he thinks, desires, or speaks as man generally does.