1. The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
  2. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  3. Paul is writing as a man who has already lived a life of law-keeping while denying the resurrection.
  4. This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
  5. This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Common Places in Christian Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly,” edited by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  6. What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.
  7. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  8. Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
  9. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  10. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  11. 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.
  12. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.