1. I can guarantee you that when Paul was overtaken by the Spirit and inspired to write these words, he did not have in mind your local school's boys' basketball tournament.
  2. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  3. Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
  4. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  7. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  8. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  9. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  10. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  11. The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
  12. Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.