1. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  2. 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).
  3. Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
  4. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  5. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  6. The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
  7. Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.
  8. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  9. 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."
  10. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
  11. To trust in the Lord, the Messiah, the Deliverer, is our salvation and our only hope. Yet he does not trust us to have this “trust” on our own or of our own will.
  12. Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.