This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

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The Gospel is our freedom from sin. It is Christ in the mirror, Christ for me and for you.
The more that we hear the law, the more we recognize others as those who, like us, are torn and tattered by the wounds of sin and brokenness.
We take what we perceive to be freedom and turn it into a new credo, a new law, an idol to be lifted up and lived out.
God acts through His Word and means in order to create, restore, and renew inward faith.
Galatians 5 isn’t a move beyond Christ to the Christian life. Galatians 5 is the Christian life in Christ.
Jesus is the Word of God. God’s Word—on two legs (John 1:14). I’d read it in the first chapter of John’s Gospel many, many times.
Rather than calling me to pick burrs off my coat, God’s love strips me of my delusions and cuts to the heart of my disease.
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
The thing seems incredible, and I would not have believed it myself, nor have understood Paul’s words here, had I not witnessed it with my own eyes and experienced it.
But these good works aren’t done under compulsion. They’re done freely. They aren’t done so that God will love us. They’re done because He loves us.
Gospel questions don’t get a Law answer. Religious questions beg for Law answers.
I have been very busy lately, trying to understand things.