The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

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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.
Long ago, the people of Israel began to sing words of encouragement to each other in times of distress. In their songs, the psalms, are three Hebrew words that provide stability for us. They are more than just words—each one encapsulates the way of God with his people. They serve as helpful handholds in times of stress and upheaval. The words are these: רָפָה (be still), קָוָה (wait), and שָׁמַר (watch).
There has been a blood atonement for sin. Jesus is our propitiation. Jesus has expiated sin. Lent climaxes with this expectation.
This petition is proof that the Christian life is not a practice in perfectionism. Rather, it is a life of dying and rising, lived under the cross of Christ, in the continual forgiveness of our sins.
Jesus does not give as the world gives. With Jesus, everything is guaranteed and has been finished from the start.
The book, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, by Josh Pagán, has just been released by 1517 Publishing. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, Pagán combines the analytic tools of history and philosophy to explore and evaluate competing explanations of Paul's belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. In this article, he introduces us to his book, which is available now on Amazon (see link at close of article).
The newest book from 1517 Publishing, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, was released this week. In this article, we asked the book's author, Joshua Pagán, to answer a series of questions about the book, so we could better understand his approach, his arguments, and how his book helps us better understand the resurrection of Jesus as the foundational confession of the church.
Paul says that the power of sin is the law. The more clearly we understand the law, the more sin oppresses and stings us.
The primary point of Joseph’s life (and every story in Scripture) is to point us to Christ. To tell us something about what God is like and how He interacts with His Creation.