Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.

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Spoiler alert! Jesus rose from the grave with the assurance that all believers will rise bodily with Him on the Last Day. And truth be told, Easter wasn't the first spoiler.
The life of holiness will overtake the world on the last day. Practice living in the coming world now.
Their hearts burned, their feet ran, and their mouths opened. “The Lord is risen, indeed!” they confessed, because this is what Easter does: It makes confessors.
We may hear the voice of Jesus through recordings and digital media, but the Jesus who walks through locked doors has no problem coming to us through technology.
We look for Jesus in all the wrong places because we are looking to glorify ourselves, to reinforce what we already believe to be true, to validate ourselves. But the glorification of Jesus is found in the last place we would ever look, the cross.
What fundamentally and truly matters about me is not what I do, but what has been done for me. Discipleship isn’t a virtue or habit that is honed through practice. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the one who has made it his mission to forgive sinners, raise the dead, comfort the troubled, and exorcise the demons that haunt us.
In the end, my only hope is that Jesus is always the initiator of mercy. He pursues me, even when I am unfaithful.
Jesus wouldn't allow religious people to determine his identity, define his mission, or put him in a safe, predictable religious box.
Every time the Scriptures are opened, we are repeating this scene. Every time the gospel is preached, we are replicating a moment wherein the faithless ones are greeted by their faithful Lord.
John chose to write these things for a specific purpose: “So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name."
Jesus reminds us of God’s mercy to the helpless, snakebitten children of Israel, then connects that story to him being lifted up on a cross to rescue an entire human race that is snakebitten by sin.
Many Christians are walking on eggshells, living as if we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. Which begs the question: Is he? Is God angry with us?