How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”

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What Jesus promises is better than justice. Jesus promises grace.
We set our minds on things above, but our feet are firmly planted in the stuff of earth, our hands open to the treasure which is our neighbor.
This is not just a pericope about hereditary sin and actual sins, nor is it providing a pattern for prayer. It is fundamentally about God our gracious Father and His promise to hear us, answer us, and provide for us.
What pressures or dangers are these particular people, in this particular place, facing right now which keep them from being “rooted and built up” in Christ? What is keeping them from “abounding in thanksgiving”?
But it is not always helpful to create tidy categories of good and bad and to say, “Stop being ‘a Martha’ and do a better job of being ‘a Mary.’” That is a dangerous sermon to preach. In doing so, we can fall into the very thing we see Martha doing.
What might be a unique challenge of this text is how our preaching of it might itself resonate with its mystery. It goes to a broader question: How can we retain a sense of the “mysterious” in our preaching of mysterious texts?
Paul is giving thanks for the reality that the gospel grows just as much in the little places as it does in the centers of power.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is both a call to faith in Jesus and a call to love our neighbor.
How do we preach a text of exhortation while keeping the sermon Gospel-centered?
Despite the very real obstacles and difficulties, this entire scene is marked by God’s gracious work.
Nuance and subtlety have been replaced with scorched-earth contempt. It is us versus them. Compromise is not an option. Jesus, however, would have none of it.
The question is, how are you going to live out your life as someone who has taken up the Robe of Freedom?