To the degree you experience God’s love towards you – seeing you as beautiful and radiant – to that degree sex won’t ruin your life.

Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you...

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life.

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there...

You (Millennials) are the generation most afraid of real community because it inevitably limits freedom and choice. Get over your fear.

Pastors must practice a two-fold program of cultural engagement: deconstruction and demystification of cultural idols, and reconstruction and re-enchantment of a gospel-shaped worldview.

If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.

The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show...

If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short,...

The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way – the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and...

Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.

In religion our only hope is to live a life good enough to require God to bless us, so every instance of sin and repentance is therefore traumatic, unnatural and threatening. Only under great duress...

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever...

…God’s grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver…. From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who...

before the nations.” We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.

Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work, without which work could bore you.

Underneath all notions of justice is a set of faith assumptions that are essentially religious, and these are often not acknowledged.

God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can...

The proper biblical understanding of sin is much more radical and far-reaching. It can never be used as a weapon, because it will recoil on anyone who tries to deploy it that way.

Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints.

You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime...

People “at the top” are eager to attribute their position to their own intellect, savvy, and hard work. The reality is much more complicated. Personal connections, family environment, and what appears to be plain luck...

Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one...

Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such...

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved...

Work done by non-Christians always contain some degree of God’s common grace as well as the distortions of sin. Work done by Christians, even if it overtly names the name of Jesus is also to...

For indeed, grace is the key to it all. It is not our lavish good deeds that procure salvation, but God’s lavish love and mercy. That is why the poor are as acceptable before God...

Christ’s miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will...

We often forget how thirsty we are because we believe we will fulfill our dreams.

Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.

Why didn’t Jacob simply refuse to go along with this bold, obvious swindle? Again, Robert Alter’s insights are invaluable. When Jacob asks, ‘Why have you DECEIVED me?’ the Hebrew word is the same one used...

Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger...

The weekly worship service can be very effective in evangelism of non-Christians and in edification of Christians if it does not aim at either alone but is gospel centered and in the vernacular.

Falling in love in a Christian way is to say,’I am excited about your future and I want to be part of getting you there. I’m signing up for the journey with you. Would you...

These are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed, and do all things. Christians have to be profoundly appreciative of good work done on absolutely everything.

…the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.

If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ’s love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the...

If you try to add to God’s salvation you subtract. If you try to add to God’s salvation you subtract. If you try to merit God’s salvation you haven’t believed at all, even if you...

Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don’t really want it at all, though perhaps they can’t admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very...

At Gethsemane: “Jesus is subordinating His loudest desires to His deepest desires.

The only way your child will grow out of their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for 20 years or so.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot...

Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and...

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep...

Think of people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian, it’s because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but...

…We must say to ourselves something like this: ‘Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn’t think “I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.” No, he was...

The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and...

All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.