“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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One of the common things I see my congregants struggle with is the concept of forgiveness. Contrary to what I had assumed would be the case, I find congregants don’t struggle so much with giving forgiveness as they do living with forgiveness.
The more I heard the song, the more I heard the heart of the Gospel in the song.
Today, people often bemoan the loss of children in the church.
But when God's Word of Law and Gospel are tuned up, when they're properly distinguished, then Jesus' words rain down on us like thunderbolts.
Last year, a friend I follow tweeted, “Calling yourself a sinner is spitting on all the work that Jesus did to make you a saint.”
Among the things that perturb me about modern Christianity is our residual clinging to a sort of “Christian-karma.”
I grew up with a great deal of guilt. It still keeps me up at night. For one reason or another, I was convinced I hadn’t done enough to be loved by God.
In his Gospel account, Luke challenges us to play "Where is Jesus?"
God coming to us at Christmas encapsulates the essence of Christian faith: we don't make ourselves strong and then work our way up to a strong God.
He finds the woman and the man in the Garden and fought back for the identity of His people.
The devil is effective with this attack because it calls out all the things a Christian sinner experiences as simultaneous sinner and saint.
If the devil took over a church, I suspect it would be bursting at the seams every Sunday, with smiling faces, clean noses, straight morals, conservative voting, institutional fidelity