1. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  2. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  3. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  4. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  7. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  8. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  9. 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.
  10. Morons though we all have been, there is nothing we need that Christ hasn’t given us.
  11. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  12. 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.