1. The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
  2. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  3. This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
  4. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  7. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  8. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  9. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  10. The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
  11. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  12. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."