The question remains, how do we get connected to this Isaianic Servant? How do we get into a relationship with Him so our perspectives and lives might be changed? We want to see God rightly, so where do we look?

While these are familiar words to us, frequently they are dealt with in ways that fail to take into account the context and the situation.

The season of Lent gives almost unparalleled opportunity for preachers to placard before their auditors the Cross of Christ and beckon Christians to take up their cross and follow Him.

Cliché preaching may be symptomatic of shallow, consumerist culture, perpetuating a problem rather than the solution.

God has placed preachers of His Word in the frontlines of His combat against Satan and all his minions that is fought out on the battlefields of the individual lives of believers.

The Gospel is our freedom from sin. It is Christ in the mirror, Christ for me and for you.

What we notice less often is that this same fear wonders about both the efficacy of the Gospel and the Law.

The Law must attack because nothing outside of Christ can enter Heaven—nothing!

What happens when our children are taught to read the Scriptures as evidence that God is a heavenly Santa Claus? When happens when they think God rewards or punishes them depending on whether they've been naughty or nice?

The Law though it does many things—restrains, exhorts the Christian unto righteousness, punishes—always rightly accuses and condemns sinners of their sin before a righteous, holy, and just God.

By Philip Melanchthon (from the 1535 Loci Communes), translated by Scott L. Keith, Ph.D.