This means that Jesus’s message, which is the gospel, is a completely different spirituality. The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conserv...
These two chapters give us a great example of the banality of evil. Evil does not usually make people incredibly wicked and violent— that would be interesting, and tends to wake people up. Rather, sin...
There is a difference between believing that God is holy and gracious, and having a new sense on the heart of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing tha...
The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. In
The sacredness of the individual is not balanced by any sense of the whole or concern for the common good.
The manger at Christmas means that, if you live like Jesus, there won’t be room for you in a lot of inns. In
The lesson is that the medium is not the message, that we must not ignore uncomfortable truths just because they come through an unimpressive messenger.
The history of the patriarchs is filled with such missteps and moral failures. How could these be our moral examples? The answer: Biblical faith, unlike other kinds, is not primarily about emulating m...
The harmony and perfection of the completed heavens and earth express more adequately the character of their creator than any of the separate components can.
The gospel’s power is seen in its ability to completely change minds, hearts, life orientation, our understanding of everything
The gospel does not say, the good are in and the bad are out, nor the open-minded are in and the judgmental are out. The gospel says the humble are in and the proud are out. The gospel says the people...
The Swiss theologian John Calvin, in his commentaries on the Hebrew prophets, says that God so identifies with the poor that their cries express divine pain. The Bible teaches us that our treatment of...
The Christian principle that needs to be at work is Spirit-generated selflessness - not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It means taking your mind off yours...
The Christian life begins not with high deeds and achievements but with the most simple and ordinary act of humble asking. Then the life and joy grow in us over the years through commonplace, almost b...
The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us.
Some years ago, a man who regularly listened to my preaching made a shrewd observation. He said, When you are well prepared for your sermon, you cite a great variety of sources, but when you aren’t we...
Sin can only grow in the soil of self-pity and a feeling of owed-ness. I’m not getting a fair shake! I’m not getting my needs met! I’ve had a hard life! God owes me; people owe me; I owe me! That’s th...
Reformer John Calvin wrote of the divinitatis sensum, the sense of deity that all human beings have. There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity, and there...
Prayer upon Beginning One’s Work or Study My good God, Father, and Savior, grant me aid by your Holy Spirit to now work fruitfully in my vocation, which is from you, all in order to love you and the p...
Pieper writes: Leisure is the condition of considering things in a celebrating spirit. . . . Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity. . . . It is rather like the st...