1. 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.
  2. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  3. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  4. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  5. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  6. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  7. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
  8. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  9. The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
  10. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
  11. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
  12. Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.