We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.

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In the end, my only hope is that Jesus is always the initiator of mercy. He pursues me, even when I am unfaithful.
I love the liturgy of my church, and ache for its full return. When all the world is changing, and everything is disrupted, what comes to mind is what is unchanging: the grace of God.
Every time the Scriptures are opened, we are repeating this scene. Every time the gospel is preached, we are replicating a moment wherein the faithless ones are greeted by their faithful Lord.
Nor can we see how God’s hand will guide us through every challenge of this life, we have to believe it. Afterwards, we see how it happened, but in the midst of challenges and trials, we walk by faith and not by sight.
This is no isolated or obscure fragment of New Testament writing. Contained within Paul’s correspondence to Philemon is one of the most striking portraits of the gospel ever recorded.
Christianity is about forgiveness for the sake of Christ. Yet often, we who have been forgiven much are sitting around expecting much from others.
In this final article in the series, “The Lord’s Prayer During Lent,” Philip Bartelt talks about the 7th Petition (“Deliver us from evil”) and the Conclusion (“For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”)
If you want to stay out of jail, look to the law. If you want into heaven, look to the promise. If you want to earn a paycheck from your boss, work. If you want to receive salvation from your God, believe.
The throne of grace is always available to us. For the Christian, it isn’t and never will be a throne of judgment. All of the judgment for all of our sin was laid upon our perfect Savior.
Righteousness by yourself is not just hard, it is impossible. It does not come about by your purity, your activity, or your loyalty. It comes through one thing: faith.
We must put away a whitewashed Christianity that says that God simply forgives because He is nice, kind, loving, gentle, etc. That is not how forgiveness works.
The view of Total Depravity as it is usually understood by outsiders (and even many insiders), is often misunderstood. Despite appearances to the contrary, Total Depravity does not mean totally evil.