This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 on Sinner Saint: A Suprising Primer to the Christian Life
The Fourth in the fire is Jesus.
If you struggle with doubt, take heart: You are not alone.

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God’s newly reconstituted Israel occurs in and around Jesus to include both Jew and Gentile, not by ethnic association but by faith and water (baptism) and blood (atonement and Eucharist).
The scandal of this text for the Jewish people is the inclusion of all nations and peoples into the Holy House of the LORD.
Sometimes I think I've gone through the whole forgiveness process, but forgiveness for me often feels like I'm weeding my garden. I forgive and another offense pops up.
God’s goal in all this is that His call to repentance impacts our lives by turning us to find peace and joy in Christ.
It is important to see how the LORD does NOT answer the questions Job and his friends have been wrestling with.
Here we have the other major theme within Romans: God will have mercy on whom He has mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He has compassion
There is no justification except by faith alone. The radical forgiveness itself puts the old to death and calls forth the new.
I rededicated my life as many times as I could when the guilt was unbearable. I would read my Bible more and pray more, yet I still struggled. I knew deep down, I was breaking God’s heart with my failure at being his child.
New normals are always sneaking up on us. Preachers ignore them to their peril and the peril of our hearers.
Jesus’ miracle in this sermon, then, is a type of the compassion He has for your hearers. While they certainly have many physical needs, your hearers also (more fundamentally) need Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness.
The lifeblood of Christ is the treasury that defines personal worth – your worth, my worth. Preach that; the price tag on your soul.
This food, already purchased and freely given in our pericope, is a foretaste of the feast to come as well; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end.