But the Bible locates the root issue as our separation from God.
The quartet of the vulnerable.
The illusion that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed; but that makes the lover into God, and no human being can live up to that.
The essence of sin is not [primarily] the violation of laws but a wrecked relationship with God, one another, and the whole created order. All sins are attempts to fill voids, wrote Simone Weil.
The Bible says that only in God do we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). We exist only because he is upholding us, keeping us together every moment. You are borrowing your being from him....
People who are excluded by culture, excluded by respectable society, and even excluded by the law of God can be brought in to Jesus’ family. It doesn’t matter your pedigree, it doesn’t matter what you...
But forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.
A saved person does not work (v 5a). This cannot mean that a saved person disregards the law (see 3:31). It must therefore mean that the saved person no longer trusts in obedience as a way to be saved...
Your religion is what you do with your solitude. In
You are loved for Christ’s sake, not because your heart and life are perfect.
Yes, of course, believing in universal moral truths can be used to oppress others. But what if that absolute truth is a man who died for his enemies, who did not respond in violence with violence but...
Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, I see who god is making yo...
When we set our hearts on power, we become hardened predators. We become like what we worship.94
When love of one’s people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life....
We see, then, that freedom is not what the culture tells us. Real freedom comes from a strategic loss of some freedoms in order to gain others. It is not the absence of constraints but it is choosing...
We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we ar...
We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him.
We have been exploring marriage as a means to help one another become the glorious, unique persons God is making us. Marriage partners can say, I see what you are becoming and what you will be (even t...
Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, purs...
To become wise is to become a disciplined person, given not to impulsiveness but to self-examination, to circumspection, and to clear thinking.