David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.

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We confuse our success and failures with God’s judgment of us.
Jesus is still in the business of dividing. He has come to divide us from our sinful thoughts and habits. He has come to divide us from false views of the world and distortions of His Word.
Overcrowding on Mount Everest betrays what our culture worships. We bow down at the altar of the impossible to be seen as the conquerors, the champions.
We are so free as Christians that we don't even have to compare ourselves to other Christians.
As I weigh briefly here the advantages and disadvantages of preaching original sin and preaching actual sin, I don’t mean to argue for one and against the other. Instead, I mean to suggest a benefit in focusing a given sermon on one or the other, and that neither type of sermon should be the only type a Christian hears.
The Father knows our needs because he knows everything. This is a comforting thought, but only if He is gracious.
It is a strange irony, but in a world drunk on violence, it is only on the cross of violence that there is hope for peace in our world.
The gelded Gospel is shiny and attractive and compelling, and we can perform the procedure in any number of ways.
Pain is our birthright, but Jesus’ resurrection is our irrevocable end.
It’s no wonder we’re so attached to images; we are one. We are human hyphens between the celestial and the terrestrial.
Death can make us feel like tourists or strangers traveling across the landscape of someone else’s life.
Did the suffering stop? No. It actually got worse. The commands of what exercise to do next sped up and intensified for both of us. The Guide was allowing himself to be smoked with me.