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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Unlike Luke, who provides most of the parts for the children’s program (the shepherds, the angel hosts, the innkeeper, and the animals), Matthew’s version is rated “M” for mature.
The reality of the Incarnation and the accomplishments of the Incarnate God-man, Jesus the Son, are even more astonishing because His story brings to a climax the long-storied history of Israel, with all her divinely-inspired and prophetic Scriptures.
James takes the Jewish expectation and thoroughly baptizes it in the light of the fact of the Incarnation. Messiah has come.
There he sat, awaiting his executioner. John looked around at what God and His Messiah were not doing, and even the greatest among those born of woman had his doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
Paul argues that now as the Messiah has come and has achieved what the entire Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Old Testament) has been moving toward, the Scriptures can be read as an open book.
The problem is not that we are unrepentant. The problem is our contrition is too small.
If someone confesses their sins into my ears, I have no options but to forgive them in the name of Christ.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
The Gospel outpaces all would-be and eventually fleeting identity-makers and brings in the truth of a renewed-in-Christ humanity.
Jesus offer us this vision of violence not so we might be drawn into it but so we might be drawn through it to come closer to Him.
I would like to tell you all that I have learned this discipline that I am like a weaned child living in full quietness, confident in God’s love and care for me. I cannot.
The lavish nature of God’s love is indicated by the fact that He, as Father, is the author of our being adopted as sons and daughters through Holy Baptism.