“The fear of the Lord” is our heart’s awakening to and recognition of God’s outrageous goodness.
The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.

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Grace does not emancipate us from any requirement of obedience. Rather, grace allows Jesus to be obedient on our behalf that the righteous demands of the law can be fulfilled.
God has in fact executed his plans for his people, plans of peace (probably a better translation than welfare), a future, and a hope in Jesus Christ.
The goal of language in the mouth of a Christian isn’t to hold power for ourselves but to give it.
Preaching is the first line of defense and catechetical offensive against these corrosive falsehoods.
Except for the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521 were the most important of his writings.
God uses the unlikely, the unexpected, and sometimes even the unsavory to deliver us and to crush the heads of his enemies
The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
Rachel was the beloved wife, to be sure, but she was not the maternal link between Eve and Mary. That blessed position belonged to Leah.
The “Lamenter” does not ask to carry out the vengeance/action himself, rather He trusts the LORD God to take care of business.
When sin comes out of the shadows and makes itself known, Christians can rest in and declare Christ's resurrection.
But the biggest problem with the Pharisee’s prayer is that he judges himself compared to other people, rather than to God. Our natural tendency is to do just this.
We have a Servant who stands in/is a substitute for Israel. This is the One who will atone for the sin of Israel—even the sin of the whole world.